Immigrant workers who fled raid fired
Workers who fled a New Bedford hat factory after an immigration raid in the city have been fired by their employer, a company official said yesterday.
The firings are the latest in a series of reverberations after 13 seafood processing workers were arrested for alleged immigration violations Monday.
Immigrant workers all over New Bedford left their jobs Monday, and many did not return to work Tuesday, fearing further arrests. Many of the city's plants are heavily dependent on unskilled immigrant labor, and local activists say many of those immigrants are undocumented.
The New Bedford firings occurred as news broke of a joint operation, conducted a month ago by immigration and MBTA officials in Boston, to arrest nine T-station vendors who lacked valid immigration documents. Activists reacted angrily to news of both operations yesterday and said precious Homeland Security resources were being used to target those who posed little threat.
''They are fulfilling quotas, targeting low-hanging fruit," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. ''And unfortunately, low-hanging fruit in this day and age is the low-income undocumented worker who is sustaining industries in Massachusetts. What is striking here is that nobody was being followed or watched as a national security threat."
But those who favor stricter limits on immigration say this is exactly how the system is supposed to work, that those who are in the country illegally should be brought before judges and ordered removed.
About 30 employees of Ahead Headgear, a plant that embroiders golf caps and clothes, left their workstations at about 11 a.m. Monday after hearing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had arrested workers who lacked proper identification at nearby seafood processing plants.
On Tuesday morning, those hat factory workers were gathered together and told that they no longer have jobs.
''Basically, they left their jobs unauthorized, and I had to terminate them all for doing that," said Roy Jesus, operations manager at Ahead Headgear. ''I am trying to deliver for my customers, and I can't have people walking off the job. I don't want to set any precedents; if it happened again it would seriously cripple us."
Jesus said the employees had presented documents that proved they could work when they were hired. Now, he said, ''in hindsight, you could probably conclude that they have some kind of problem with their paperwork."
''It's bad news all around," said Corinn Williams, executive director of the Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts. ''It is a panic that is setting in when immigration authorities come down here . . . . It has repercussions for people in the [whole] workplace, and unfortunately, the company wasn't able to offer people their jobs back because they didn't want to take the risk."
Like the New Bedford operation, the Boston sweep was performed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in conjunction with other law enforcement agencies, a practice commonly used by immigration authorities, who may lack the information or resources necessary to locate immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally.
The Boston subway sweep began after the London bombings in the summer, when the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and transit police began background checks on all of the vendors who have carts and kiosks in MBTA stations. After 65 vendors were checked, eight were arrested for immigration violations Oct. 31.
''These men were not MBTA employees, but they had full access to our subway stations on a daily basis and keys to our storage facilities," said Paul MacMillan, deputy chief of the MBTA police.
Yvonne Abraham can be reached at abraham@globe.com. 
