ICE raids Michael Bianco Inc. in Boston; Yvonne Abraham

Posted Wed, Mar 7, 2007 at 2:30 pm
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...

Comments

amanda (not verified)

Wed, 03/07/2007 - 22:05

Good one. One can also use child labor to parody WSJ editorials, Michael Bloomberg, etc. Bloomberg: "It is as if we expect child protective services to do what a century of communism could not: prevent a tot's natural human instinct for freedom and opportunity. You might as well sit on the beach and tell the tide not to come in." The easiest one is take white slave owners' excuses for how their business could not survive without slaves and substitute the exploiters of illegal alien labor. The arguments are virtually identical.

mary (not verified)

Thu, 03/08/2007 - 00:59

Mexicans are hijacking the American Dream with the help of OUR government! This company reportedly also did work for COACH- you mean to tell me that they can't pay a decent wage for those products!!! DISGUSTING! Watch Kennedy twist this into these poor Illegals need our protection...He doesn't give a crap about American workers!!!

Fred Dawes (not verified)

Thu, 03/08/2007 - 04:54

Many soon the real mexican ideals will be understood real,real well. But by that time "we the people", will be part of history or inside camps. To fight for freedom is a good thing and right, but with this government you would only be called a terrorist against mexico and its drug dealers. THIS GOVERNMENT IS IN THE HANDS OF THE EVIL DOERS OF THE WORLD.

Lydia (not verified)

Wed, 03/11/2009 - 21:47

Just one problem I noticed right away. There weren't immigration police or ICE raids 100 years ago.