Labor Solidarity Defends Against Deportations

In 1978, Larry Remer wrote:

East Los Angeles — Mariachi music drifts out from the cantinas and the smell of chile and salsa fills the air. Nearly all advertisements are in Spanish. So are the greetings from brown-skinned passers-by. Were it not for the distinctively Southern California stucco homes and wide-paved boulevards, this district could be a shopping area in any major Latin American city.

In fact, many people consider East L.A. just that. With a population of more than one million, the mini-metropolis of East L.A. serves as cultural capital to the Chicano population of the southwestern U.S. East L.A. has its own indigenous newspapers and radio stations, its own political power structure, and its own burgeoning art and theater scene. Were it a separate political entity, East L.A. would be the third largest Spanish-speaking city in North America after Guadalajara and Mexico City.

But, in all things economic and political, East L.A.’s Chicanos are in an inferior position compared to the whites who live in the affluent suburban areas surrounding the barrio. This inequality is aggravated by restrictive immigration statutes limiting the number of Latinos permitted to enter the U.S. in search of work. Tens if not hundreds of thousands enter illegally, many of whom are attracted to East L.A. where they form an economic underclass of ​“undocumented” workers and a large pool of exploitable, cheap labor.

Suddenly, however, one of the linchpins of this system of exploitation is being subjected to a serious legal challenge. Backed by labor unions frustrated in their efforts to organize Chicano workers, a group of legal aid lawyers have thrown a monkey wrench into the government’s ability to deport ​“undocumented” workers. If their challenge is successful, both Chicano citizens and undocumented workers will benefit from the restriction of the power of the U.S. Border Patrol.

When the lime green vans of La Migra — as the Border Patrol is called — creep through East L.A., the streets go quiet. Practically every Chicano can count a close friend or relative among those vulnerable to summary arrest and deportation. There are an estimated seven to ten million ​“undocumented” workers living and working in the U.S. Each year, La Migra deports more than 750,000 people. Yet more come. As part of their constant search for aliens, La Migra periodically conducts massive sweeps through Chicano communities, as well as raids on factories and workplaces where aliens are believed to be employed.

Special police force

Knowledge of illegal workers from Latin America and elsewhere, living in barrios like East L.A., give La Migra its excuse for constantly policing the Chicano community. Over the years, the Border Patrol in the Southwest has emerged as a special police force for suppressing the Chicano population. And it is this harassment which is now under legal attack in the courts.

The test case arose from a raid by La Migra of the Sbicca shoe factory in South El Monte. Last spring a force of 40 armed immigration officers surrounded the factory and demanded that all employees produce their immigration documents. In the sweep, ​“undocumented” workers were arrested and taken to the L.A. INS office to be fingerprinted, photographed, and put on a bus for Mexico.

The raid was typical of dozens conducted each month by La Migra in the Los Angeles area. Those arrested were usually hurried out of the country so fast that by the time they had been missed by friends or family they were on the other side of the border.

But the Sbicca raid turned out differently. For several weeks, the Retail Clerks Union, AFL-CIO, had been organizing at the shoe factory. As often happens, La Migra had been called by the Sbicca management to rid the shop of unwanted union agitators. But this time, before the workers had been put on the bus, one of the union’s organizers brought in Peter Schey, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation.

Together with other lawyers from the ACLU, the People’s College of Law, and the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice, Schey went to court to seek a restraining order to stop the deportation. Their contention was that the Fourth Amendment rights of the workers had been violated when — before they were arrested — La Migra failed to advise them they were entitled to an attorney and that what they said could be used against them.

Lawyers win case

The court order was granted and INS was ordered to stop the buses. Then, Schey and several other lawyers met with the workers to advise them of their rights and to offer their assistance. Of those arrested, 65 decided to fight deportation.

Before Sbicca, deportation hearings were typically handled quickly and efficiently. ​“Undocumented” workers who, by their own admission, lacked the proper permission for entering the U.S., typically did not even bother to fight the proceedings. Told that they could either be immediately expelled from the U.S. or — if they chose to fight — formally deported, in which case they would be jailed the next time they were apprehended inside the U.S., just about everyone chose immediate expulsion. Once released inside Mexico, they would painstakingly begin the process of sneaking back into the U.S. and getting established in a new job all over again.

But the attorneys for the ​“Sbicca 65” attempted a new strategy. Assured that previous admissions to Border Patrol officers would be inadmissible, they instructed their clients to invoke the Fifth Amendment when questioned about their status, place of birth, and length of time spent in the U.S. This forced immigration officials to ask representatives of the U.S. State Department to travel to the workers’ hometowns and search for their birth certificates to prove that these peo- ple were born in Mexico and therefore not legally in the U.S.

The State Department not only lacked the staff to cooperate fully with La Migra, but even when it tried to obtain records, the cities of rural Mexico where most of the workers are said to be from proved too far-flung and record keeping there too inexact to produce any useful material.

Thus far, nearly half the Sbicca cases have been dismissed for lack of evidence. Moreover, the hearing process has forced immigration officials to bring their other activities in L.A. to a halt.

The Sbicca attorneys are optimistic that they can force La Migra to abandon altogether their factory raids and street sweeps. Notes Mark Rosenbaum of the ACLU, ​“I can’t understand why nobody realized this before. These are people, not cattle. And they have the same rights against self-incrimination as you or I or anybody else.”

Unions fight deportation

However, the most significant development in the Sbicca case has been the emergence of organized labor as a force on behalf of ​“undocumented” workers. The existence of two categories of workers — those with documents and those without — has been the principal dynamic in the exploitation of Chicanos in the U.S. Under the guise of searching for so-called ​“illegal aliens,” La Migra and local police agencies have harassed and threatened Chicano communities throughout the Southwest. More importantly, whenever Chicano organizing efforts — whether in the fields or in the factories— have started to coalesce, the green vans and buses of La Migra would soon appear on the scene to cart off the agitators and all the sympathizers, if possible. Even the fear of deportation has kept Chicanos from organizing at the workplace and — in many instances — from registering family members to vote here legally.

Over the past two years, several unions — notably the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), the International Longshoreman and Warehouseman’s Union (ILWU), the Retail Clerks, and the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America — have begun to organize ​“all workers” among the Chicano workforce in those industries where these unions are active. For the ​“undocumented,” this has helped hasten the day when they can achieve full rights in the workplace.

The experience of the ILGWU is typical. ​“More than 75 percent of our members are Spanish speaking,” notes Christina Ramirez, an ILGWU organizer. ​“And whenever we would start a campaign, the first thing the employer would do is call La Migra. Several times, it would be the day of a representation election and they’d show up and take away half the workers.”

Ramirez states that wages for workers in unorganized shops rarely are above the minimum, with ​“undocumented” workers typically receiving even less.

​“After Sbicca,” Ramirez continues, ​“things have changed a lot. We’re advising workers that they don’t even have to talk to immigration. It makes them feel more secure and they’re not afraid to get involved. Also, the number of raids has decreased and we’ve been more successful. Just this week 125 workers at Motif Apparel went on strike. All of them are ​‘undocumented.’ And they went back today — with a victory.”