Intérprete de Corte en EUA deja su imparcialidad y opina sobre redadas que involucran a inmigrantes guatemaltecos.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080724/NEWS/80724039

Congress panel hears debate on Postville raid

JANE NORMAN • jnorman@dmreg.com • July 24, 2008

Washington, D.C. – The judicial proceedings following the Postville
immigration raid demonstrated “a grave distortion in the legal structure
of government” in which immigrant workers’ rights were denied, a court
interpreter told a congressional subcommittee today.

Erik Camayd-Freixas, a certified Spanish interpreter who served in Iowa
for two weeks, stepped outside of his usual role as an impartial officer
of the court to harshly criticize the way in which immigrants arrested May
12 at the Agriprocessors plant were treated.

Camayd-Freixas said that guilty pleas were obtained under duress, the
defendants did not know what a Social Security number was and were not
guilty of “intent” crimes, and there was inadequate access to lawyers.

He said it is his opinion as an educator that due to the immigrants’ lack
of schooling and low rate of literacy – many are from poor villages in
Guatemala — most had a level of conceptual and abstract understanding
equal to that of a third-grader or less.

He said that “proud working mothers” were “branded like cattle with the
scarlet letter of an ankle monitor, dehumanized and reduced to begging at
the doors of the church” when they were released on humanitarian grounds.

“I saw the Bill of Rights denied and democratic values threatened by the
breakdown of checks and balances,” said Camayd-Freixas, a professor of
Spanish at Florida International University who wrote and distributed a
15-page essay on his experiences and was featured on the front page of the
New York Times.

But a Department of Justice official defended the process, and said that
Immigration and Customs Enforcement for years had been gathering
information that the majority of the kosher meat processing facility’s
employees were in the country illegally. More than 70 percent of those
detained were using fraudulent Social Security documents, she said.

“These were not victimless crimes,” said Deborah Rhodes, senior associate
deputy attorney general.

In booking, “the atmosphere was calm and orderly,” Rhodes said, and no
constitutional rights were violated in the courtroom. The detainees had
access to phones, hot meals were served by a local caterer and public
health officials were on site, she said.

Marcy Foreman, director of the Office of Investigations for ICE, said
workplace actions target employers who “adopt a business model of
employing and exploiting undocumented workers.”

The agency used a humanitarian approach at Postville and took
“extraordinary care,” said Foreman, who added that as a Jewish person she
strongly objected to the use of the term “concentration camp” used by one
critic to describe the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo where
detainees were held. “I equate that to the murder of millions of
individuals,” she said.

Some 389 workers were detained in the nation’s largest immigration raid.

The nearly all-day hearing was before the House Judiciary Committee’s
subcommittee on immigration. The chairwoman, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.,
said that “the information suggests that the people were rounded up,
herded into a cattle arena, prodded down a cattle chute, coerced into
guilty pleas and then to federal prison.”

She said there were 17 defendants for each lawyer, group hearings, scripts
that instructed lawyers what to say in court and limited time for lawyers
to meet defendants. “Just like a cattle auction,” Lofgren said.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., characterized
the arrests as “brutal” and “there’s a spirit of meanness that seems to
undergird this massive raid.”

But Rep. Steve King, a Kiron Republican and the top member of the GOP on
the subcommittee, said those who had obtained false documents to work at
Agriprocessors had committed a crime that affected real people, and each
was represented by a criminal defense attorney.

“For far too many years, employers have gotten the message that they can
hire illegal immigrant workers with few or no consequences,” said King.
“ICE worksite enforcement actions like the one in Postville put those
employers, and the illegal workers themselves, on notice that if they
choose to violate the law, they are subject to prosecution.”

He also said that “I don’t know if the tone of this hearing encourages
enforcement of the law” and could be “intimidating” to immigration agents.

Lora Costner, of Newport, Tenn., told the subcommittee about how she and
her husband were victims of identity theft when two illegal immigrants –
not connected with Postville — began using their Social Security numbers.
“I have to fight every day to prove who I am,” said Costner, at one point
breaking into tears.