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Customs agents terrorize immigrant community

Published Jul 19, 2005 11:02 PM

The U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration describes its mission as seeking to "assure the safety and health of America's workers ... and encouraging continual improvement in [the] workplace."  Despite a mixed record of enforcement, OSHA's creation was rooted in the fight for an eight-hour day and the fightback by workers against unsafe working conditions.  
 
Now, the Federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is manipulating the promise of OSHA to launch a vicious attack on one of the most vulnerable sectors of the working class--undocumented immigrant workers.  
 
Immigrant laborers working for contractors at the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, N.C., were recently given fliers announcing a mandatory safety meeting sponsored by OSHA.
 
Once at the location, workers discovered that the meeting was a ruse planned by customs officials to round up and persecute immigrants. Forty-eight people from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and the Ukraine were detained and now face deportation. Workers at the meeting described swarms of agents who entered the room and began making mass arrests. (New York Times, July 16)
 
The U.S. government claims its actions are a necessary component of its "war on terrorism."
 
Dean Boyd, a spokesperson for the immigration office, justified the raid: "We believe it is a very serious vulnerability when there are illegal aliens working at Air Force bases ... they have access to some of the most sensitive work sites in the U.S. Our job is to take actions to immediately remove them from positions where they can do harm."

Most of the arrested workers installed air-conditioners and heating units, or worked in construction, cleaning or cutting grass.

Boyd has called for procedures that would encourage closer cooperation between OSHA and the immigration office.
  
The international president of the United Food and Commercial Workers, Joe Hansen, criticized the entrapment for making it less likely that immigrant workers will voluntarily report workplace injuries in the future.  
 
Cecilia Munoz, vice-president of the National Council of La Raza, issued a statement saying, "We think it's an absolute outrage and danger for the immigration authorities to use this type of tactic."  
 
Munoz pointed out, "Our ability to keep the work force safe depends on workers being able to complain, and, by masquerading as OSHA officials, immigration authorities will clearly discourage immigrant workers from coming forward. This won't affect just immigrant workers, it will affect the safety of all workers."

Perhaps it is not coincidental that immigrant workers have recently won organizing victories in notoriously “right-to-work’ anti-union North Carolina, including a 2004 campaign for recognition by 8,000 workers, immigrants from almost all the states of Mexico, now represented by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee.

Increasingly the U.S. government is using the pretext of “terrorism’ to demonize workers who protest and to divide the working class along racial lines.  
 
These tactics make it more important than ever for the entire working class to close ranks with its immigrant brothers and sisters.