For illegal immigrants, more fear of arrest

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CORRECTION

A report in the Q section Sunday incorrectly identified Reagan Sugg's affiliation. The Greensboro resident is working to start a North Carolina chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, not The Minuteman Project, a separate group that claims a similar mission to improve security along the U.S. border with Mexico.

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Vicente Guerrero trims grass and blows the clippings off the parking lot at the Willow Creek Shopping Plaza in Carrboro. The Food Lion there was one of several local grocers that fired Hispanic employees a few weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, because Social Security numbers didn't match their names in a federal database.

At the time, the supermarket cited heightened government scrutiny. Five years later, many unauthorized Latino workers say they live in fear of losing their jobs or being deported.

"You're afraid they're going to arrest you," Guerrero said in Spanish. "We're here, but we're working, and we're fine. We're not hurting anybody. ... What we want is for them to let us work."

Work-site arrests of illegal immigrants have spiked since immigration enforcement came under the Department of Homeland Security three years ago.

In fiscal 2001, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service visited work sites and arrested 19 illegal workers on criminal charges throughout the United States. Between Oct. 1, 2005, and May 31, the renamed agency -- Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- made 382 such arrests.

And those arrests were only of immigrants who never had valid visas. The number of actions against foreign workers who overstay their visas has gone from about 57 a month to more than 300.

Over the same period, ICE's annual budget has grown by $1 billion to a total of $3.8 billion.

ICE has about 3,000 agents to police an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants. It does not release statistics by state, but North Carolina especially has felt the crackdown because of its large military presence.

In the past year, immigration arrests involving military subcontractors have more than tripled. Nearly 40 percent of the arrests nationwide in 2006 have occurred at Fort Bragg near Fayetteville and at Cree Inc., a defense contractor in Durham.

Though aimed at protecting "critical infrastructure" from terrorists, the sweeps tend to net Latinos such as Raul Ibanez, a Smithfield forklift operator who was arrested at Fort Bragg when he arrived at work July 18, just as he had done for the previous two and a half years. Ibanez, one of 58 arrested that day, had custody of his four young children.

"Now they have only my sister-in-law and my brother," he said in an interview at the Johnston County jail, where he awaits possible deportation.

Michael Cutler, a former INS agent, is a current fellow with the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington research group that favors stricter enforcement. He says recent arrests are soothing public anxiety without actually making a dent in the problem.

"It's like putting a new coat of paint on rotted wood," he said.

Greensboro resident Reagan Sugg is working to create a state chapter of the Minuteman Project to report employers of illegal immigrants. He said prosecuting employees of military contractors is only scratching the surface.

"When is it going to be politically correct to visit some of the major industries in the state who employ almost exclusively illegal aliens?" Sugg asked.

Across the political spectrum, Michael Wilson, legislative director for the United Food and Commercial Workers union, said immigration authorities are trying to give the impression that they are fighting terrorism by going after illegal Latino workers.

"ICE has been so ineffective of an agency that anything they can do to attempt to be seen as an effective agency, they will attempt to do," he said.

Enforcement has had an effect on undocumented workers, according to retired Air Force Col. P.J. Crowley, director of homeland defense with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank based in Washington. Immigration raids are like speed traps or IRS audits, he said: Fear of getting caught is more important than actual penalties.

"In terms of enforcement, symbolism actually matters," he said.

The number of "no-match" letters sent out by the Social Security Administration has actually dropped about 85 percent since 2001, based on a policy set before Sept. 11. The agency no longer notifies companies with fewer than 10 nonmatching Social Security numbers and discourages companies with more mismatches from firing employees based on a nonmatch.

Still, fear persists among both employers and employees.

Neil Newcomb, who employs about 20 Latino immigrants at McAlister's Deli franchises in Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Cary, hasn't received a no-match letter since the policy change, but the post-9/11 immigration debate still makes him nervous.

"I'm a little more vigilant about making sure that my managers do the paperwork properly," he said. "It concerns me, but all I can do is to do what I'm supposed to do."