On the heels of May Day marches for immigrant rights around the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers conducted raids targeting El Balazo Taqueria chain in the Bay Area on May 2. ICE officers stormed 11 different chain locations in at least six cities. According to detainees, the agents came in and locked the doors. No one was allowed to leave as every taqueria employee on duty in all locations was interrogated.

ICE claimed to have had warrants for "wanted criminals" and insisted that it didn't do a haphazard sweep. But according to its own press statement, ICE arrested 62 people, all of them Latino. The detainees were taken to the ICE office in downtown San Francisco.

Immigrant workers across the country are facing the same type of repression—from Iowa and Texas to right here in Santa Cruz County. In San Francisco, politicians (including Mayor Gavin Newsom) and the corporate media are conducting a publicity campaign blaming immigrants for the problems of crime and poverty in Bay Area cities.

A forum took place on August 7th at the Beach Flats Community Center in Santa Cruz to hear El Balazo workers and movement activists talk about the impact of the raids and the progress of the defense campaign, and to discuss the way forward in the struggle for immigrant rights. Read More

Waving placards and chanting, "No one is illegal", over three hundred pro-immigrant demonstrators called for the reaffirmation of San Francisco's sanctuary program on the steps of City Hall on July 30th. They countered about a dozen anti-immigrant members of the Minutemen Project. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom appeared in front of City Hall shortly after a loud rally and defended the city's status as a sanctuary offering protection for undocumented immigrants. He said the goal of San Francisco's sanctuary ordinance is to promote public safety.

Immigrant Rights groups organized for years to get the sanctuary legislation passed in 1989. San Francisco's sanctuary policy was adopted to allow undocumented residents full access to city services without question about their legal status. It is beneficial to the whole community in many ways, one example being that it encourages crime victims and witnesses to participate in the legal system without fear of immigration authorities. It also assures that children will be educated rather than left without schooling, and that public health measures such as vaccines are available to the community in its entirety for the common good.

During the morning rally Renee Saucedo, an attorney with La Raza Centro, spoke for many saying the city should affirm the sanctuary law and "call out these hatemongers," referring to the Minutemen Project, a small group that came to attack Newsom in particular and liberal leaning San Francisco in general. La Raza Centro was one of many groups that called for the protest to counter the Minutemen's racist stance.

Read More | Photos | Two Arrested At Minute "Men" Counter-Protest | Raging Grannies Announce Support for 7/30 Pro-Immigrant Demo in SF | Emergency Protest Against the Minutemen in SF | Resolution reaffirming San Francisco's status as a City and County of Refuge | Slideshow from Alianza News

On the July 18th indynewswire, danielsan of 101.1 FM Freak Radio Santa Cruz spoke with Julia Harumi Mass, staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California (ACLU-NC), to discuss a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in an attempt to learn more about the Homeland Security agency ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

ICE and its supporters consistently say that round-ups and raids are conducted for reasons of national security because they prioritize immigrants with criminal backgrounds. However as Mass explains, the reality is far different. In Santa Cruz County, the September 7 and 8, 2006 raids resulted in 106 arrests, yet only seventeen people went through a removal proceeding process, while everyone else was deported without a hearing.

From start to finish, ICE raids are founded on racial profiling, unconstitutional entry, search, and detention, lack of due process, unequal enforcement of the laws, abuse of authority and inconsistency... all in the name of homeland security. Read More and Listen to Audio

see also: Union-busting by Any Other Name... | Santa Clara County Supes React to ICE Raids

On the heels of the largest and most aggressive immigration raids in northern California to date, Santa Clara County supervisors voted to oppose a federal immigration measure that they say would affect all workers adversely.

Provisions in the Secure America through Verification and Enforcement Act of 2007 (H.R.4088) would expand an electronic verification system that Santa Clara County supervisors say would adversely affect all workers. "The SAVE Act's punitive approach fails to fix our larger immigration problems," Supervisor Blanca Alvarado said. "Hopefully next year Congress and the administration will do what's really necessary; take more concrete, positive steps toward comprehensive immigration reform."

The elected supervisors expressed concern that documented workers and naturalized citizens could get mistakenly snagged in the faulty program. They cited a report indicating that a decrease in federal revenues of more than $17 billion over the 2009-2018 period would likely result, causing an increase in undocumented workers being paid outside the tax system.

County residents asked supervisors to make a statement after the largest and most aggressive Northern California workplace raid to date. On Friday, May 2, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided 11 El Balazo restaurants in San Francisco and the East Bay. Workers and witnesses report that undercover ICE agents entered the restaurants, ordered lunch, sat down to eat and then called in uniformed ICE agents to surround the restaurants and block exits. ICE inspected employees personal belongings and detained more than 60 workers despite not having a single arrest warrant. The raid took place a day after May 1 demonstrations in San Jose and San Francisco calling for labor and immigrant rights. The timing of the raids is suspect; many see them as being clearly retaliatory and designed to punish immigrants for speaking out.

Julia Harumi Mass of the ACLU-NC on ICE Raids | Employment Verification Would Create a ‘No Work List’ in the U.S.

Post-Katrina reconstruction is still in progress throughout the Gulf Coast, with much of the City of New Orleans still in ruins. Dos Americas: The Reconstruction of New Orleans is a documentary focused on those rebuilding the city through interviews with some of the estimated 100,000 Latino migrant laborers who have converged in the area over the past two and a half years. Despite terrible working conditions, massive fraud, a housing crisis, severe harassment by law enforcement, and very limited resources, New Orleans’ Latino community has mushroomed since the storm and is establishing an infrastructure proportional to its size.

Take a look at how this community is organizing to defend itself against numerous injustices and the attempts to bridge the gap between themselves as new residents and the pre-Katrina population, all within the context of the extremely unique and tragic context of post-Katrina New Orleans. Come to one of the first screenings of Dos Americas: The Reconstruction of New Orleans, on Sunday, July 20th at 7:30pm at the Resource Center for Nonviolence in Santa Cruz. This free event will include a Q&A with one of the filmmakers. Read More and View a Trailer

Racism and anti-immigrant hysteria have been increasing in Italy in recent years. Hate crimes have been on the rise with reports of gangs of right-wing youth attacking Roma in Rome, Genoa, Turin, Milan and other cities.

Seventy years ago this month, Italy's Fascist regime published a "Manifesto of Race", which paved the way for its notorious racial laws persecuting Jews and members of other supposedly "inferior" minorities.
Now, the country's rightwing government has again stepped up special measures against an entire ethnic group.

In their election campaign earlier this year, Berlusconi and his allies had already made clear their intention of deporting tens of thousands of Roma back to Romania and former Yugoslavia. In mid-June a March decisions by Italy's highest appeal court was released stating that "it is acceptable to discriminate against Roma" because the court found that "they are thieves". Following the release of the court rulling, Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, announced that a file is to be drawn up containing a DNA data base with digital fingerprints and photos of all Roma irregardless of their citizenship.

Unicef has protested that this is discriminatory and a violation of the UN's Declaration of the Rights of the Child. The Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana denounced the move as "an indecent and racist proposal" reminiscent of "when Jewish children were identified with a yellow star on their sleeves".

The European Parliament voted July 10th to adopt a resolution calling on member states to "review and repeal laws and policies that discriminate against the Roma on the basis of race and ethnicity." In November 2005, the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia reported that Roma minorities are the ethnic group most susceptible to racism in the European Union. A spokesman for an Italian NGO opposed to fingerprinting states that life expectancy for Roma living in Italy is already under 60.

Read More | Anti-Gypsy sentiments out of control in Italy | Berlusconi government steps up its attacks on Roma and foreigners | Plight of the Roma: echoes of Mussolini | Move to fingerprint Gypsies reminds many of Italy's darker days | Italy Leads Fascist Revanche in Western Democracies

European Roma Rights Centre | Italy Indymedia

"Jonah" Larrama, a traveler who spends most of his time in SF and NY, is being held at the Northwest ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] Detention Center in Tacoma, WA. He is known locally from Food Not Bombs, Homes Not Jails, and various tenants' rights, homeless rights, bike rights and animal rights activities among other things. He was arrested at the end of May for trespassing to watch the sunset from a roof of a building in Seattle and spent some time in county jail. An ICE raid took place at the jail and he was transported to the Northwest Detention Center because his citizenship status is in question.

The Northwest Detention Center is a private for-profit immigration prison owed by a corporation called GEO, which operates prison facilities in Australia, The UK, South Africa, the US and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The facility's housing capacity is 1,000 detainees, making it the largest detention center owned by GEO Group on the West Coast. They are notorious for mistreating their detainees, sometimes to the point of fatality. The GEO Group is an international corporation that operates prisons around the country and is frequently in the news for its abuse of prisoners in its care resulting in many preventable deaths.

There will be a variety show benefit at Station 40 in SF at 3pm on Sunday, June 22nd. Read More

On May 30th, the Movement for Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA) organized a rally and press conference at Beach Flats Park in Santa Cruz to denounce recent raids by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE). Community members, union representatives, religious leaders, students and other local activists created a space for community members to become informed of their rights if approached by ICE agents.

Members of the community are increasingly threatened, brutalized, detained, and deported. Children are afraid to attend school, academic performance is being negatively affected, and families are being torn apart. Read More with Photos and Video

see also: Migrawatch Denounces ICE Raids

Thousands of immigrants and their supporters around the country and in San Francisco marched in favor of a more just immigration policy for the US on May 1st. The next day, 63 immigrant workers from El Balazo Taquerias were raided and detained by ICE. Also recently, 17 people were rounded up at their homes by ICE in San Rafael. Immigrant rights groups, labor, faith-based groups, and many others will gather for a press conference and rally to denounce the Bay Area raids, and to support the taqueria workers on the day of their first court hearing. They will gather on Tuesday, May 27th at 10 am outside of the Homeland Security Building at 630 Sansome St., in downtown San Francisco.

Indybay's past coverage: SF Protests Against I.C.E. Raids | Socialist Worker: Report from 5/5 protest | BAIRC's Raid Response Toolkit | SF Gate: 900 nabbed in California on immigration charges

On May 22, more than 2,000 Berkeley High School students of all different nationalities streamed out of class and formed a human chain around the school to protest the escalating attacks on immigrants. As they linked arms, they chanted “Immigrants are people!” A young woman with the group Fighting for Immigrants’ Rights and Equality (FIRE), which organized the protest, said, “Most of the school went out with us… Ooooh it made the whole school feel good, like we were a family, no matter what race you are or nothing, like we were together.”

In the first three weeks of May, ICE (Immigration and Custom Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security) made 900 arrests in California. The day after May 1st, when thousands of immigrants marched in the streets, ICE agents raided 11 branches of a chain of Bay Area taqueria restaurants, arresting 63 people. The day after Cinco de Mayo, ICE vans drove though the streets of Berkeley and East Oakland, including in the neighborhood around Berkeley High. A family of four was arrested in their home near the high school. As word spread, worried parents rushed to the school to pick up their kids.

In Oakland, which has declared itself "sanctuary" city for immigrants, Mayor Ron Dellums went to Esperanza Elementary School after reports of ICE vans prowling around and declared, "We don't want this type of intimidation. Immigrants are human beings, and need to be dealt with respect." Dellums said police officers would be posted at the school the next day to prevent ICE from coming onto school grounds.

Photos: 1 | 2 | Video: 1 | 2 | ICE raids in Berkeley, Oakland frighten schoolchildren, parents

danielsan writes, "Migrawatch heard about it first, sending a message Tuesday night to be on alert. Turns out five people were disappeared by the Feds in Watsonville, plus two in Capitola, fifteen in Seaside, two in Salinas, and another in San Jose. As always, they claim they are selectively targeting dangerous criminals and those who have defied orders to be deported, yet the Santa Cruz Sentinel quotes Lori Haley of ICE, saying "Six of the people arrested had criminal convictions." What about the other nineteen people?

"That proportion isn't the exception, either. In fact it's the rule: so far in 2008, only 300 out of 1,620 human beings arrested are called "criminal aliens" by the Senile. So for every "criminal" that ICE picks up, four more people are the acceptable colateral damage." Read More

see also: ICE Raids Update on May 29th in Watsonville | Denouncing ICE Raids Press Conference and Rally on May 30th in Santa Cruz

Marciano Cruz was born in Oaxaca, Mexico. For over 20 years, Marciano, also known as Chango, has been working to improve the lives of people in the greater Santa Cruz community. He is currently a staff member at the Resource Center for Nonviolence (RCNV). On May 11th, Marciano received the “Most Caring Coach Award” by USA Weekend. He is being honored for his work as founder, chief organizer and president of La Liga de La Comunidad, a countywide soccer league for youth and adults.

On May 12th, Marciano was recognized with "Marciano Cruz Day" in the city of Santa Cruz and received a Mayor's Proclamation from Ryan Coonerty during a celebration in the parking lot of the RCNV. Marciano was also presented with resolutions from John Laird of the California State Assembly and Joe Simitian of the California State Senate. In addition to his time and dedication to La Liga de La Comunidad, Marciano also enjoys surfing with his friends and helping kids learn how to surf safely with proper gear. The Beach Flats Community Garden, which is now blooming with new growth, began with the vision and dedication of Marciano and some of his friends from the neighborhood. Read More and View Photos

In San José and all across the United States, marches for immigrant and workers' rights are reviving the long-dormant American tradition of May Day. While legislation for comprehensive immigration reform has stalled in Congress, demonstrators are poised to take the struggle to the next level.

For the third year in a row, immigrant workers and their families went into the streets to march on May Day. From coast to coast, over a hundred thousand marched on May 1, 2008 to demand respect and recognition as workers who contribute so much to building the United States. The largest demonstration was reportedly in Chicago where some 15,000 people participated.

Their numbers were much smaller than two years ago on May 1, 2006 when millions marched against the threat of being criminalized by the Sensenbrenner Bill (H.R. 4437). That unprecedented outpouring of protest ensured that the bill would die in the Senate, but it also unleashed a wave of immigration raids by the Bush administration that has kept millions of undocumented immigrants and their children living in fear of forceful separation and deportation. Read More and View Photos