Free Republic

The decision by Herndon's mayor and several Town Council members to protest a Democratic fundraiser last month and a fiery community meeting that followed have ignited a free-speech debate and opened old wounds about the town's tough anti-illegal immigration policies. The hubbub started Sept. 16 in downtown Herndon...Mayor Stephen J. DeBenedettis and council members Dennis D. Husch, William B. Tirrell Sr. and Charlie D. Waddell, Republicans, joined a handful of sign-holding protesters outside a fundraiser where Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) was speaking... Republicans used it as a chance to hold a "tea party" to protest policies of President...

('Cry me a river, illegals denied their RIGHTS!' alert!) For decades, Huffines Plaza in Lewisville (TX) has been an unofficial gathering spot for day laborers. The shopping center, along Interstate 35E near State Highway 121, provides quick and easy access for employers who need an extra hand willing to give a day's work for a day's pay. While this informal employment system seems to have worked for years with few problems, day laborers no longer feel welcome at the plaza, where "no trespassing" signs have been posted recently and police have been asked to start enforcing trespassing laws.

So under the new law, the city will fine any driver who doesn’t pull off and park to hire the workers. The citation is $250 for the first offense, $500 for the second and $1,000 and up to three months in jail for the third.

-snip- Day laborer Wayne Coldiron, 41, turned himself in to Escambia County authorities and Leonard P. Gonzalez Jr., 35, was arrested in neighboring Santa Rosa County, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said. Earlier Sunday, authorities charged Gonzalez's father, Leonard P. Gonzalez Sr., with evidence tampering. Police said the 56-year-old tried to paint over and hide damage on a red van that was spotted on surveillance video leaving the home where Byrd and Melanie Billings were shot to death Thursday. Eight of the couple's children were asleep in the house when the shootings took place. -snip-

Officials from several area restaurants have made citizen's arrests on 27 day laborers at the Home Depot on Gale Avenue in Industry, authorities said Thursday. Officials from businesses near the Home Depot at Gale and Fullerton Road near Rowland Heights recently complained that laborers were urinating in public and harassing customers in the parking lot.

It is not official yet, but you can bet on this happening. Thomas Perez, the current Labor Secretary for the State of Maryland, and former board director for Casa de Maryland, one of the most influential immigrant advocacy organizations in the country, will take over (literally) as the Head of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). According to Wikipedia, CASA de Maryland is to Maryland politics what MoveOn.org is to national politics. CASA is affiliated with the National Council of La Raza, which is the largest Hispanic "civil rights and advocacy organization" in the United State. CASA has...

NEW ORLEANS — They are the men still rebuilding New Orleans more than three years after Hurricane Katrina, the head-down laborers from Honduras, Mexico and Guatemala who work on the blazing hot roofs and inside the fetid homes for a wad of cash at the end of the day. But on the street, these laborers are known as “walking A.T.M.’s.” Their pockets stuffed with bills, the laborers are vulnerable because of language problems and their status as illegal immigrants. And as Hispanics have become the prey of choice in crumbling neighborhoods here in one of America’s most crime-ridden cities, racial...

They are down and out in the United States and homesick for Guatemala. And El Salvador. And Honduras. And Mexico. And they would go back without even an American penny in their pocket if only they had enough to get home. They are the discouraged and disillusioned Central American and Mexican day laborers who, in a sign of how hard times are in this economy, find themselves so broke they can't send much, if any, money back to loved ones they haven't seen for years. "We have lost our reason for being here," laments Jose Perez, 42, a Guatemalan living...

NORWALK - On a cold Tuesday morning, Anabell De La Cruz opened the back of her Jeep and began handing out presents to Hispanic day laborers who have children living with them. The men, some finishing a hot meal of tamales, washed down by Atole, a drink De La Cruz brought with her, patiently waited to receive the Christmas gifts. "If it's hard for us in this economy, imagine how hard it must be for them," she said. For day laborers, this is the toughest Christmas season in years, as jobs have almost disappeared, according to one worker, an Ecuadorian...

LOS ANGELES -- A year ago, a day-laborer center adjacent to a Home Depot here teemed with Latin American immigrants who showed up and found a sure day's work painting, gardening or hauling. These days, more than immigrants are packing the Hollywood Community Job Center: Unemployed Americans are joining them. There's little work for anybody. "Everybody is coming to look for work," says Rene Jemio, outreach coordinator for the hiring hall. "It's not just your average immigrant anymore; it's African-Americans and whites, too." For the first time in a decade, unskilled immigrants are competing with Americans for work. And evidence...

For the first time in a decade, unskilled immigrants are competing with Americans for work. And evidence is emerging that tens of thousands of Hispanic immigrants are withdrawing from the labor market as U.S. workers crowd them out of potential jobs. At least some of the foreigners are returning home. "We see competition from more nonimmigrant workers," says Abel Valenzuela, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who studies day laborers. "Employers are also paying less than in previous years," he says. In the third quarter of 2008, 71.3% of Latino immigrant workers were either employed or...

More than 50 day laborers stood, bored, anxious and mostly silent, in the sun-blasted parking lot of a Home Depot here last week, tracking the ebb and flow of customers and hoping for work. The hours crawled by. Six, maybe seven men scored jobs. The rest just waited... Two years ago, when the economy was booming and home-building was thriving, many of these same laborers were working every day. Now, they are lucky if they work twice a week, many of them say. Their lives have become a test of wits, patience and hope. Simple lives have become simpler. The...

HAYWARD — Walking to and from school has been a nightmare for Amoni Packnett, an eighth-grader at Cesar Chavez Middle School. The 13-year-old and other girls are the target of daily whistles and hard stares from day laborers, who often also stalk the girls, along Tennyson Road in south Hayward. "It can get uncomfortable, and I feel violated," Packnett said. "We just want something to be done to prevent this from happening again." Helping children feel safe along a stretch from Ruus Road to the railroad tracks on Tennyson Road — an area dominated by day laborers — was the...

Big-box, home-improvement stores in Los Angeles will have to set aside space for day laborers under an ordinance passed by the City Council on Wednesday... The shelters must be easily accessible and include drinking water, bathrooms, tables, seating and trashcans. The stores may be required to work with Los Angeles police in developing a security plan, according to the unanimous vote by the 15-member lawmaking body...

A Los Angeles City Council committee unanimously recommended an ordinance that would require home improvement stores that are 100,000 square feet or larger, or any building with 250,000 square feet or more of warehouse floor area, to set aside space for day laborers. The space required must include shelter from the elements, be easily accessible and equipped with drinking water, bathrooms, tables with seating, free condoms, and trash receptacles. Bethany Leal of the Multi-Ethnic Immigrant Worker Organizing Network, urged adoption of the ordinance. “These immigrants have journeyed far from their native countries,” Leal observed. “Most have entered the United States...

Brace yourself, Los Angeles. A storm has been building for four years over a controversial city ordinance on day laborers that has infuriated conservatives nationwide, and it's about to break -- perhaps as early as this week. The ordinance, which was approved last week by the City Council's Planning and Land Use Management Committee and will soon appear before the full council, requires home-improvement chains seeking to build new big-box stores or renovate existing ones to submit "day laborer operating standards" to the city. These standards don't require the stores to build shelters for the workers, but if day laborers...

"LOS ANGELES -- Companies that open large home-improvement stores in Los Angeles would have to set aside space for day laborers under an ordinance unanimously approved today by a City Council committee." "If passed, the ordinance would require new home improvement stores that are 100,000 square feet or larger, or any building or structure where 250,000 square feet or more of warehouse floor area is added, to set aside space for day laborers seeking employment from customers." "The shelters would have to be easily accessible and equipped with drinking water, bathrooms, tables with seating and trash facilities." "Bethany Leal with...

History was made in Thousand Oaks California on the corner of Hampshire Boulevard and Royal Oaks Street, Saturday July 12. Hundreds of illegal alien day laborers have been crowded in this peaceful city owned park area along Hampshire Road in Old Thousand Oaks. For many years, hundreds of possible illegal alien day laborers have littered this area. Sadly, this rundown area is the first thing outside tourists see when tourists exit the 101 Freeway on their way to visit the state-of-the-art Thousand Oaks City Theater complex. This Thousand Oaks city sponsored day laborer center was essentially CLOSED for that one...

The nation's economic downturn — especially a slump in the construction industry — is having a disproportionate impact on Hispanic workers, a study released Wednesday found. Hispanics have lost nearly 250,000 jobs over the past year in the construction sector alone, pushing their unemployment rate (seasonally adjusted) to 6.5 percent in the first quarter of this year. By comparison, the unemployment rate for non-Hispanics was 4.7 percent, said the study by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. Two years ago, the gap was much smaller. At the end of 2006, the unemployment rate for Latinos was...

New ordinances cracking down on businesses allowing day workers to congregate add to declining numbers in Orange. The number of day laborers in town has dropped 80 percent this year, in the wake of two municipal laws meant to stopping the laborers Further, City Attorney David DeBerry said he spotted approximately eight day laborers at Chapman and Hewes avenues on a recent day."That's a huge drop," DeBerry said. "There's usually 70." Councilman Jon Dumitru said the new law, enacted on March 13, adds to the ordinance enacted in January aimed at stopping day laborers from soliciting for work. "It's not...

Construction skid sidelines Latino immigrant workersBy Susan Ferriss - sferriss@sacbee.co Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, March 30, 2008 Story appeared in METRO section, Page B3 Jose Espinosa worked his way out of the strawberry fields of Central California in the early 1990s, determined to learn a profitable trade. **SNIP** Latino immigrants like Espinosa, legal and illegal, were the backbone of California's housing boom, and they are feeling the pain of what Espinosa calls "una recesion." **SNIP** About a quarter of the nation's construction workers are Latinos, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a research institute in Washington, D.C. Pew also...

LAKE FOREST – Elfego Fuentes and other fellow day laborers will meet on Jeronimo Road Saturday morning not to solicit for work but to volunteer, and improve their image.

It's tough out there for day laborers as jobs dwindle with the slumping economy. The workers outside a Home Depot in north San Bernardino say fewer contractors and homeowners have been driving up looking for gardeners, plumbers, painters and carpenters. Salvadoran illegal immigrant Juan Rosales says he's lucky now to earn $150 a week doing construction work, about half what he was making. Mexico immigrant Roberto Panuco, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, says, "We're becoming desperate." He's traveled back to his hometown in northern Mexico to do some farming a few months a year because of the grim job...

Realizing they were about to thrust the city smack into the middle of the national immigration debate, San Antonio leaders are now balking at the idea of opening a center for day laborers. Resurrected in the fall as a full-fledged project after more than two decades of inaction, the City Council was poised this month to consider a staff proposal to create a facility where workers, mostly undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America, could gather and be hired. After twice tabling the issue, a presentation scheduled for Tuesday was scrapped indefinitely by council members who said the proposal needed...

The next time you need someone experienced in lawn care, landscaping, general labor, moving, construction cleaning, house cleaning, and many other jobs, whether for a few hours or a few days, come to EL SOL. You will be glad you did. – Friends of El Sol Neighborhood Resource Center That's the pitch being used to bring illegal aliens together with prospective employers in Jupiter, Fla. The El Sol Neighborhood Resource Center was the town's solution for stopping ''migrant workers'' from lining the streets each day to wait for employers to drive by and hire them. Sometimes as many as 100...

ATLANTA -- Outside the Home Depot on Ponce de Leon Avenue, no one engages in theoretical debates about whether illegal immigrants are competing for jobs with Americans. Here, the competition unfolds whenever a truck pulls into the parking lot, its driver looking for day laborers. On any given day, about half of the 30 or so men waiting to pounce on those trucks are Latinos, many of them undocumented. But the rest are African American men like Sam Gibbs. One chilly afternoon, Gibbs, 47, sprinted like a teenager toward a red pickup, hawking his services to two black men inside....

MEXICO CITY - Lorenzo Martinez, an illegal immigrant who has lived in Los Angeles for six years, has a message for his kin in Mexico's Hidalgo state: Stay put. The steady construction work that allowed him to send home as much as $1,000 a month in recent years has disappeared. The 36-year-old father of four said desperation is growing among the day laborers with whom he competes for odd jobs. Sporadic employment isn't the half of it. Martinez said anxiety is also running high among undocumented workers about stepped-up workplace raids, deportations and increasing demands by U.S. employers for proof...

Martin Coyotecatl-Aca, his younger brother Jesus and a friend, Ricardo Gonzales-Gutierez worked for 10 hours as day laborers ripping shingles off a roof. At the end of the two days, they said, their boss refused to pay them for one of the days. What happened next is in dispute. The three now are sitting in the Passaic County Jail, charged with robbery and facing possible deportation, according to Detective Capt. Robert Rowan of the Clifton Police Department. A lawyer for the three Mexican nationals, whose names were supplied by police and who all live in Passaic, say the men are...

Bad news. As our folks were leaving, the fake indian showed for the first time in a year, gathered 12 guys with him, and said 'lets get them', and they jumped D, E, and old man N. D was hit with a rock and had his head split open. Some of our folks had already left, so there were only 4 left. Heather managed to stay in her car. I knew something was going to happen there today, but decided to put my car in the shop and blow that feeling off. Needless to say, this is one of the...

PHOENIX -- The legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona was arrested Saturday during a demonstration at a Phoenix store that has been a site of controversy over illegal immigrant day laborers. Capt. Paul Chagolla said Daniel Pochoda was arrested as activists demonstrated in front of Pruitt's Furniture and that Pochoda is accused of misdemeanor trespassing. The owners of Pruitt's have complained that their business is being harmed by day laborers' presence. Sheriff's deputies have responded with arrests, drawing protests from immigration rights activists. "I'm not their favorite guy," Sheriff Joe Arpaio said. "They've sued me. I...

Herndon Police Investigate Homicide posted 12:16 pm Sun October 28, 2007 - Herndon (Virginia) police are investigating a homicide the occurred Saturday night. Officers were called to the 1,000-block of Alabama Drive around 9:45 p.m. Saturday. Investigation revealed 20-year-old Luis Miguel Abrego Romero stabbed Juan Jose Alvarenga Alvarenga in the upper torso. Alvarenga was transported to INOVA Fairfax Hospital where he later died. Officers say Romero fled the scene on foot and his current whereabouts are unknown.

SAN DIEGO -- Flames were only one worry for some illegal immigrants in the fire zone. Equally scary were the crowded roads and evacuation centers, heavy with law enforcement officers, including U.S. Border Patrol agents. Some wondered if they would be deported if they went to shelters. "We decided that we wouldn't go because they ask for your name and everything," said day laborer Jose Salgado, waiting for work off the 5 Freeway near Rancho Santa Fe. SNIP (San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders) The mayor, he said, has always looked out for the needs of the migrant community and has...

Sheriff's Lt. Rosie Enriquez chats with day laborers at 47th Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. She believes a day labor center could help cut crime by getting job seekers off the streets. Florence Low / flow@sacbee.com Sacramento day laborers who gather in a parking lot at 47th Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in hopes of getting work, cluster around a motorist who stops to hire someone Lt. Rosie Enriquez sat in a parking lot in her unmarked cruiser, looking out at a small sea of about 50 men waiting for the promise of work to...

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Another man was arrested on suspicion of arson in California as authorities were investigating into some of the wildfires that have been devastating large areas in the state for five days, officials said Thursday. Los Angeles police said they have taken Catalino Pineda, 41, into custody Wednesday after local residents reported that he light a fire and walked away from a hillside in a suburb area. The arrest was made a day after law enforcement officers shot dead an arson suspect and detained another in San Bernardino, about 100 kilometers east of Los Angeles....

Day laborers plan to conduct a march Friday morning from the Orange Resource Center to what march organizers call the "newly formed day laborer corner," at the corner of Chapman Avenue and Lincoln Street. The one-mile march begins at 8:30 a.m., with a press conference scheduled for 9:30 a.m. at the new corner, which is between Tustin and Cambridge streets on Chapman. Organizers say the march is in response to the new city law requiring users of the Resource Center provide two forms of identification. The Orange City Council voted Oct. 9 to reinstate a requirement for day laborers at...

A plan to require large home-improvement stores to set aside space for day laborers moved ahead Friday as the Los Angeles City Council asked for a final ordinance. "This is a citywide problem and rather than try to go back and retroactively fix the issue, we should deal with the stores before they open," Councilman Bernard Parks said. Under the measure, all home-improvement stores in Los Angeles with more than 100,000 square feet will be required to set aside space for day laborers that includes plumbing facilities. Parks said that while he appreciates the economic development that comes with the...

Community and business leaders met last night with officials from the Metropolitan Police Department to discuss recent crime exacerbated by a throng of day laborers who gather at a Northeast shopping center looking for work. "When you have a group of people who are not from your neighborhood, and a large group of men gathering, people become worried and become fearful," said Raymond Chandler, an advisory neighborhood commissioner who scheduled the meeting at Isle of Patmos Baptist Church at 12th Street and Rhode Island Avenue. "These people are coming into our community wreaking chaos and confusion." As many as 200...

About two dozen demonstrators gathered outside a D.C. Zoning Commission meeting last night to object to plans to place a day-laborer center in a Northeast shopping plaza. "I do not want to see a day-labor center in the area," said Pat Smith, a program analyst who lives a block from the proposed site, near a Home Depot at 901 Rhode Island Ave. NE. "I don't want to see my taxpaying dollars going to illegal immigrants." D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr., Ward 5 Democrat, plans to spend $500,000 in city funds for the project, which he says would also provide...

Herndon officials turned over 13 inmates to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the two months since the town began the federal partnership in June, police said Friday. Town police processed the inmates under the controversial 287(g) program, offered through ICE to allow local police to initiate the first stages of deportation proceedings for illegal aliens arrested on other charges. "Based on these initial results, the program is doing exactly what it is designed to do -- giving our officers another tool in their efforts to remove criminal illegal aliens from our community," Herndon police chief Toussaint E. Summers Jr. said...

The Town of Herndon announced yesterday that it would close its 21-month-old day-laborer center next week instead of complying with a judge's ruling that the site must be open to all residents, including those who might be illegal immigrants. The decision to close the site, which became a flash point in the national debate over immigration, was reached late Tuesday by Mayor Stephen J. DeBenedittis and the six-member Town Council after a 2 1/2 -hour closed-door session. It brings the western Fairfax community virtually full circle in its attempts to regulate -- critics say drive out -- its large population...

The Town of Herndon announced yesterday that it would close its 21-month-old day-laborer center next week instead of complying with a judge's ruling that the site must be open to all residents, including those who might be illegal immigrants. The decision to close the site, which became a flash point in the national debate over immigration, was reached late Tuesday by Mayor Stephen J. DeBenedittis and the six-member Town Council after a 2 1/2 -hour closed-door session. It brings the western Fairfax community virtually full circle in its attempts to regulate -- critics say drive out -- its large population...

A Fairfax County Circuit Court judge has struck down a Herndon law forbidding employers to solicit day laborers anywhere but at a single center, a new turn in an already complex tangle of immigration, labor and law in the small Virginia town. Judge Leslie M. Alden overturned a district court ruling and declared the ordinance unconstitutional, the town announced Wednesday evening.

"The town of Herndon, (Virginia) plans to take over operating its day-laborer center because city officials cannot find a qualified group to manage the facility in accordance with newly passed restrictions, according to the Washington Post.....Reston Interfaith and its affiliate Project Hope & Harmony, the current operator of the center, provided job training and English lessons to laborers, but refused to check workers' legal status. Reston Interfaith runs the center on a grant provided by Fairfax County. The grant runs out September 14....The Herndon Town Council recently required whatever group manages the site to check workers' legal status...." http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0807/451380.html...

"I do this every day," says the frowning man as he strides across the RaceTrac gas station parking lot in Arlington. "I signed up to work at RaceTrac, not to be a policeman." Charles Clark, a RaceTrac employee, walks toward a cluster of a dozen day laborers standing along South Cooper Street with hopeful eyes, looking for work. But their eyes turn dull as Clark approaches. They know what's coming. Clark marches past posted signs -- "No Trespassing. No Loitering." He says sharply: "Y'all can't be here on that side of the fence." The men nod. Some take a step...

Town votes day laborer center must check paperworkAssociated Press - August 15, 2007 10:35 PM ET HERNDON, Va. (AP) - The town of Herndon's day laborer center now must check the paperwork of workers who congregate there.After two days of hearing debate, the town council voted tonight that a new group must run the center. The current operator -- a nonprofit called Project Hope and Harmony -- says it's not their job to enforce immigration law.Herndon's day laborer center was 1 of the region's first. It has sparked debate over illegal immigration and how to deal with workers who used...

A Herndon Town Council public hearing on the future of a taxpayer-funded day-laborer center moved toward midnight last night, as dozens of speakers signed up to discuss several proposals including a provision to require the center's new operator to verify workers' legal status. The council has applied for a temporary permit extension for the site's operator, Project Hope and Harmony, which does not verify employment eligibility, while the town procures a new operator for the Herndon Official Workers Center that would be required to check legal status. "We're happy that the Town Council is taking a step closer to bringing...

Fairfax County has terminated its financial contract with Reston Interfaith, managers of the Herndon Official Workers Center, according to county officials. The contract currently provides $175,000 in annual funding for the controversial day labor center's operation.

NORTH COUNTY -- A new study shows that day laborers on street corners and in hiring halls make up less than 1 percent of the work force, and that most are in the country illegally. As local anti-illegal immigration activists intensify their protests over day labor sites, a new statewide study suggests that public attention on this matter is out of proportion to the number of day laborers in California. The number of people who stand on street corners looking for work make up 0.02 percent of the state's total work force, according to the study by the Public Policy...

The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, as mandated by Congress in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, was implemented to strengthen our border security. This means that Americans traveling to Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and countries in the Caribbean will need a passport to re-enter the U.S. by air after Sept. 30. This is just great. We are obligated to deal with our massive bureaucracy if we want to pop over to Canada for a few days, but our illegal-alien friends have no such restrictions. They can come and go as they please, with the approval of lawmakers all...