March 07, 2007

ICE raids Michael Bianco Inc. in Boston; Yvonne Abraham

Yvonne Abraham and Brian R. Ballou of the Boston Globe offer "350 are held in immigration raid" about raids at the Michael Bianco company in Boston. Allow me to change a few words in the article and provide this example of what this article would have been like if it had been published a century back:

Hundreds of immigration officers and police descended on a New Bedford leather goods factory yesterday, charged top officials with employing child workers, and rounded up 350 workers who could not prove they were over 16 years of age.

The waterfront company, Michael Bianco Inc., was using the children to produce safety vests and backpacks for the US military, officials said.

Workers inside the plant described a terrifying scene. At first, several hundred employees, most of them 11 and 12 years old, were told to remain at their sewing stations as officials reviewed their status. Chaos ensued, as some panicked workers tried to flee.

"When we realized what was going on, a lot of people were screaming and crying," said Tim Tinny, a supervisor who has worked at the company for six years since he was 8. "They told the older children to stand in one area and the younger children to stand in another area. It was terrible, they were crying and didn't know what was going to happen."

The ACLU is now threatening to sue the DHS, claiming that they engaged in height profiling. Meanwhile, representatives from the Association to Protect Child Laborers are interviewing the children to make sure that they can go back to work, assisted by members of the Democratic Party. Rep. Theodorius Kennedy (D-MA) is especially concerned about the fate of the childrens' younger brothers and sisters. He pledges to do everything in his power to make sure that their older siblings can get back to working their full 12 hour shifts. Developing...

Posted to Immigration2007a at March 7, 2007 04:30 PM