Double Horror: Migrants illegally hunted like animals by ICE and exploited by people who take advantage of them

NEW BEDFORD, Massachusetts opinion published in the Boston Globe by Marcela Garcia:

New Bedford reels from ICE crackdown

Adrian Ventura sees federal immigration agents hanging around Acushnet Avenue, the heart of New Bedford’s Latino and Spanish-speaking community, almost every day — always in dark, unmarked SUVs with tinted windows.

Ventura, a former undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who now leads New Bedford’s Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores, a labor advocacy group, said it seems like the city has been singled out for aggressive enforcement under the Trump administration.

“We haven’t seen the same type of enforcement activity in Providence, Rhode Island, for instance,” Ventura told me in Spanish.

Ventura said he’s even witnessed the agents parked in front of St. Anthony of Padua, the Roman Catholic church on Acushnet.

The federal presence has cast a chill on the avenue, which is lined with check cashing stores and establishments with Spanish names adorned with Guatemalan and Honduran flags selling tortillas and other Latino foods.

While there is no up-to-date official count, Ventura told me that his organization has recorded 27 immigration-related arrests in New Bedford since the new administration took office on Jan. 20. “There has to be more, those are only the arrests we know of.”

While there is no up-to-date official count, Ventura told me that his organization has recorded 27 immigration-related arrests in New Bedford since the new administration took office on Jan. 20. “There has to be more, those are only the arrests we know of.”

“We’re very stressed out,” he said.

Last month, the wider public caught a glimpse of the atmosphere in the port city, where roughly 20,000 residents, or 1 in 5, are foreign born.

In a jarring video that went viral, heavily armed, unidentified federal agents surround a car they had just pulled over on a quiet New Bedford street. Inside, Juan Francisco Mendez, a 29-year-old Guatemalan father, sat with his wife, calmly telling the men outside that his lawyer was on the way.

Moments later, one agent retrieved an axe-like tool and shattered the rear window; glass exploded everywhere and Mendez was pulled from the car and arrested. The whole time his wife had been filming the incident, her voice trembling.

Mendez did not have a criminal record and appeared to be in the country legally. Last week, a judge ordered him released.

But the footage has become a visceral symbol of what many advocates believe is a campaign of intimidation targeting New Bedford’s immigrants, especially the roughly 10,000 people who lack work authorization. They now have to weigh the risks of their every move.

Ventura is worried the workplace raids, much like the notorious 2007 operation at the Michael Bianco Inc. textile factory, could be next. That raid resulted in the arrest of 361 undocumented immigrants.

There’s a more subtle impact of the federal crackdown: It may lead to more wage theft and harassment because victims will probably be too scared to come forward.

It’s a well-documented issue: Unauthorized workers fuel New Bedford’s fishing industry, the city’s major economic engine. It’s often referred to as the country’s most lucrative fishing port based on the market value of its product.

The industry has also been a hotspot for labor violations, as reported by my Globe colleague Katie Johnston, who found in 2023, that migrant children were working grueling shifts in the city’s fish plants. Many used fake IDs to secure jobs through staffing agencies, while employers and agencies evaded responsibility, citing difficulties in verifying age and identity.

Ventura is now working on a wage-theft complaint he received from Mariana, a Guatemalan unauthorized immigrant who lives in Providence. Mariana is an alias; she agreed to talk to me if I didn’t use her real name because she is afraid of the repercussions of going public.

Mariana just turned 18 last month but has been working full time at a seafood-processing plant in New Bedford for more than a year. She does everything: cleaning fish, packing boxes, labeling product. Mariana told me that she got the job through a staffing agency. She works varying hours every week — sometimes it’s 8-hour days, sometimes 11-hour days — but, on average, the weekly check she gets from the agency is in the $500-$600 range.

But out of that check, she has to pay around $160 “to the boss who gives us a ride every week,” she told me in Spanish. That would be a third-party transportation provider, a Guatemalan man who provides roundtrip transportation for the workers — around 15 to 18 people each ride — from Providence to New Bedford, she said.

“It’s not fair. He tells us, ‘if you don’t pay, there is no job.’ People are afraid of speaking up. They don’t want to lose their jobs,” Mariana said. Or worse — they don’t want to be reported to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and be arrested.

She’s always afraid during the 40-minute ride in the van “because we can be stopped at any moment” by federal immigration authorities.

On Sunday — Mother’s Day — Acushnet Avenue looked a little deserted, with only a few families venturing out to celebrate with their mothers in the area’s restaurants. 

A grocery store was pretty much empty, an employee telling me that there would normally be a line at the register. A flier from a local advocacy group posted by the cash register advertised services to immigrants: Call us and we’ll shop for you; need to cash a check? We’ll do it for you.

The chill in the air may be the whole point of Trump’s crackdown. But the real winners will be exploitative employers, unscrupulous staffing agencies, and everyone else who stands to profit when immigrants recede back into the shadows. 😞😟😢

Marcela García is a Boston Globe columnist.

Immigration is essential for growing the American economy

Are immigrants welcome here or not?

Echo opinion published in The Boston Globe by Marcela Garcia:

Despite recent pushback, immigrants are significant contributors to the Massachusetts economy.

Last month, in the midst of an emergency shelter crisis, Democratic Governor Maura Healey of Massachusetts warned migrants looking to move to the state that it has run out of room for them.

The message is clear: Migrants are not wanted here now.

On Wednesday, the state Legislature failed to reach a deal that would have approved Healey’s request for extra funding for emergency housing for newly arrived migrant families. There were disagreements among lawmakers over how to spend the funds, including whether the Hynes Convention Center could be used as a site to temporarily house migrants.

But lost in the debate is that, collectively, these migrant families will go on to become significant economic contributors if they’re allowed to stay and integrate. To be sure, that’s a big if. What’s undeniable is that immigrants create business at a greater rate than US citizens and add immensely to the economy.

Call it simple immigration math. Indeed, a new analysis and an interactive data map illustrate the contributions of immigrants to the United States.

On Monday, the nonprofit advocacy group American Immigration Council released 2021, figures on the tax contributions of immigrants, their participation in the workforce, home ownership data, and other metrics.

For instance, 1 in 8 individuals living in the United States is an immigrant, or 45.3 million people. While the immigrant population grew by nearly 4 percent between 2016 and 2021, the increase accounted for roughly 18 percent of the total population growth in the country in the same period. In 2021, immigrants paid more than $500 billion dollars in taxes. Included in that group are undocumented immigrants, who paid more than $30 billion in taxes in 2021.

The analysis also included a state-by-state snapshot of the immigrant population. In Massachusetts, immigrants represent nearly 18 percent of the overall population. Yet 1 in 4 entrepreneurs in the state are immigrants, which is higher than the national share of roughly 20 percent. As a group, immigrants have a spending power of nearly $50 billion and paid $17 billion in taxes in the Commonwealth.

In terms of the state workforce, nearly 29 percent of all STEM workers are foreign-born. They are also overrepresented in certain health care occupations: For instance, roughly 37 percent of home health care aides are immigrants.

The analysis also includes a count of the immigrant population here illegally. There are about 140,000 undocumented individuals (or about 11 percent of the immigrant population) in Massachusetts. They collectively pay 💲730 million in taxes.

As the Legislature continues its debate on the extra $250 million that Healey requested to deal with the shelter crisis, and Healey considers whether to keep a limit on the number of families offered emergency shelter, the data showing the impressive level of economic impact from immigrants in Massachusetts shouldn’t be ignored.