gaithersblog.net

Kelly Brewington writes:

As certain as the morning chill, the men in work boots, jeans and wool caps flock to the parking lot of the 7-Eleven at Broadway and Lombard Street at the first sign of daylight, eager for work.

But a day after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers descended on the parking lot in unmarked sport utility vehicles and arrested 24 men suspected of being illegal immigrants, everything was different.

While rumors of immigration raids abound in the immigrant community, the mass arrests were unprecedented in Baltimore, advocates said.

Lourdes Montes-Greenan, Latino services manager at East Harbor Community Development Corp., said rumors alone can paralyze the community with fear. She said she remembers a family who hired a van to transport their children to school, rather than walk the streets, after hearing rumors of raids.

“When things like this happen, the rumors just increase,” she said. “You are going to hear more stories, and people are going to be more paranoid.”

CASA employees spent Wednesday tracking down family members of the men who were arrested and linking them with attorneys. Eliza Leighton, an attorney with CASA, said the group is considering its legal options after the arrests, which it insists were an example of ethnic profiling.

Advocates said that when officers arrived at the convenience store parking lot, they asked for documents only from men who “looked Hispanic.” In addition to men on the parking lot, the agents asked for documents from passers-by on a nearby sidewalk, said Leighton.

Of the 24 men arrested, Raimondi said, six had criminal records, eight had been previously removed, and one had been caught six times crossing the border. All of the men are in removal proceedings. On Tuesday night, they were transferred to a jail. Thursday, they are expected to be transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Texas, he said.

• Sebastian Montes writes, Crabbs Branch selected for day laborers:
  

  The order to start work on a new day-laborer center off Shady Grove Road came nine days before county officials told the public where the site would be and before they filed for Planning Board review.

  Chuck Short told county staff to begin readying the site located in the County Service Park at Jan. 9 meeting with ‘‘a conference room-full” of county employees, said Harold Adams, acting chief of engineering and management services for the county’s Department of Public Works and Transportation.

  It wasn’t until Jan. 16 that the DPWT got word that the project would be going for Planning Board for review, Adams said. Work on the site continued.

  ‘‘We started to level the spot to put the trailers on, the mandatory referral came, and since we already had equipment there, we kept doing the work,” Adams said. ‘‘We cut the driveway and pedestrian path, but that was before there was any discussion of a mandatory referral. It’s something that we needed to do, so we did.”

  ‘‘We determined that this project would not be appropriate for anything less than full Planning Board review,” said Edwards, team leader for the Interstate 270 corridor. ‘‘We wanted to have an open process, and administrative review would have limited the ability to have actual community members see it.”

  The county says it is going into the hearing earnestly — ‘‘It could be that we get helpful comments that could add value to the project,” Lacefield said, — but is unwavering in its commitment to the plan.

  ‘‘We’re going to move forward with this. The fact that we’re going to have a day-laborer center is not going to be reversed with what happens with the public hearing or the Planning Board,” Lacefield said Monday.

  (Font coloring mine)

• Melissa J. Brachfeld and Sebastian Montes write, County gets mixed reaction to choice for center:
  

  Several Derwood residents are not happy with the county’s decision to move the site to their community.

  ‘‘I think it’s a problem that what Rockville and Gaithersburg don’t want, Derwood gets,” Pat Labuda, president of the Greater Shady Grove Civic Alliance and a member of the Shady Grove Advisory Committee, said Thursday. ‘‘Derwood is not the solution to what nobody else wants.”

  She said she feels that putting the day-laborer center in Derwood would add more traffic to the area and complicate the already difficult process in implementing the Shady Grove Sector Plan.

  Brad Botwin, a member of the Shady Grove Advisory Committee and former co-president of the Greater Shady Grove Civic Alliance, said he, like Labuda, is mostly concerned over how the day-laborer center would affect the sector plan implementation process. He said he has dedicated years participating in the planning process for the project.

  ‘‘At no time in three and a half years did the notion of a day-laborer center come up. Ever,” Botwin, who has actively opposed the county’s support of illegal immigrants, said.

  Leggett has asked the county Planning Board to expedite the required mandatory referral process for the day-laborer center, but according to the planning rules. Leggett can make the ultimate decision. The board is scheduled to hold a public hearing on Feb. 8.

  ‘‘People can testify, but for what purpose?” Botwin asked. ‘‘They’ve already started the construction.”

  Lacefield said the county hopes to have the center running by mid-February. The county also hopes to hire the immigrant advocacy group Casa of Maryland to run the center, he noted.

  Casa already operates the county’s day-laborer centers in Silver Spring and Wheaton.

  (Font coloring mine)

• In their editorial (which at the moment can be found at http://www.gazette.net/editorials/#2, it isn’t clear if there is a permanent link) they state:
  

  Presuming the choice gets the green light after a public hearing next month before the county’s Planning Board, whose role is only advisory, the new center will bring to an end a tortured process to come up with a site in Gaithersburg.

  At the same time, it is certain to re-ignite questions about the county government’s long-term role in supporting centers for the laborers, some of whom are in the country illegally, as well as renew the debate over national immigration and workforce policies.

  Leggett’s statement announcing the half-acre site, near 16640 Crabbs Branch Way, called labor centers ‘‘a temporary expedient” that help solve ‘‘a practical problem.”

  In the Gaithersburg case, the ‘‘practical problem” was loitering, littering and public urination in the well-kept neighborhoods around a church parking lot where the workers congregated, sometimes seven days a week.

There were several stories of interest in this week’s Gazette. A number of them addressed the County’s day laborer plans; I’ll put those in a separate post following this one.

• Chris Robinson writes, Annapolis retreat puts city’s needs in focus:
  

  Public safety, Olde Towne revitalization and thoughts on a new senior center were topics of extensive discussion at Gaithersburg city leaders’ annual retreat in Annapolis on Saturday.

  Public safety

  Council members also discussed public safety in Olde Towne, after a spike in violent crimes the past few months in and around that area drew concerns in recent public meetings.

  City leaders said a police beat system would let officers focus on specific parts of the city.

  However, the city currently employs 50 officers and Police Chief Mary Ann Viverette has said they would need 10 more officers before beginning that system due to the draw it would have on police resources, Humpton said.

  The city will hire three to five more officers this year, he said.

  Katz encouraged the city to examine whether police can increase an emphasis on Olde Towne in lieu of the beat system.

  Viverette has been briefed about the request and the city is examining the possibilities, Humpton said Tuesday afternoon.

  Two Gaithersburg residents and two reporters attended the meeting.

• Chris Robinson writes, Revised affordable housing regulations win approval:
  

  Gaithersburg mayor and City Council unanimously approved the revised regulations for the affordable housing ordinance during a meeting last week.

  In a nod to the proposed Broadstone Apartment redevelopment project, which could displace about 350 families that currently live there, the approved ordinance allows eligible tenants displaced by redevelopment to have first pick of the affordable homes once they are available.

  A change also was made in the per-unit fee required of residential developers in Olde Towne from $2,500 to $1, although the mayor and City Council would annually review the amount.

• Chris Robinson writes, Gaithersburg men robbed, beaten with chain:
  

  Two Gaithersburg men were beaten and robbed by eight men at the Festival at Muddy Branch shopping center parking lot Saturday night, police said.

  One of the suspects beat the men with a chain, but no other weapons were involved, Wagner said.

  The 36-year-old victim was taken to a hospital where he was treated for non-life threatening injuries, Wagner said. His status is unknown as of Monday evening.

  Anybody with information about the crime should call Gaithersburg police at 301-258-6400.

  This would be the same incident I posted about a couple of days ago.

Mocoprogressive has the details. Also, there stories in the Baltimore Sun, Washington Times, Washington Examiner and the AP. From the Times:

BALTIMORE — Federal agents taking a break from an unrelated assignment yesterday arrested 24 illegal aliens at a Fells Point 7-Eleven after the men attempted to solicit “underground” employment from the agents.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were stopped in the convenience store parking lot when the group of Hispanic men approached the agents’ unmarked vehicles, ICE spokesman Marc Raimondi said.

Of those arrested, 10 were Honduran, eight were Mexican, five were Salvadoran and one was Peruvian, ICE officials said.

Six of the men have criminal records in the United States, eight of the men have failed to comply with final removal orders from an immigration judge and one man had been caught at the border on four occasions, ICE officials said.

The nonprofit immigrant-advocacy group CASA of Maryland called the arrests an “illegal raid” that was beyond ICE’s authority.

“Asking a bunch of people about their immigration status is well beyond the confines of a specific warrant,” CASA spokeswoman Kim Propeack said.

Gosh, Kim, that must be frustrating. Is it also illegal to ask the men their immigration status if they are soliciting employment — from ICE agents, no less? Perhaps CASA needs to re-focus their efforts on cultural awareness, or possibly start offering classes on “How to identify The Man”.

Update: Mocoprogressive notes that ICE has published a press release regarding this incident.

Update 2: Mocoprogressive notes that ICE has removed their press release regarding this incident.

According to the City Police Crime Summary,

Armed Robbery

On 01/23/2007 at approximately 2:45 pm, a twelve year old walking home from Forest Oak Middle School, was approached by two Hispanic males. One of the suspects pulled out a folding knife and demanded the victim’s cell phone. The victim gave the suspects his cell phone and MP3 player. The suspects then walked away last seen walking into the woods next to Kelley Park. An investigation is ongoing.

Suspect 1: Hispanic Male, 18-20 years old, 5-10 to 6-00, 150-160 pounds. Wearing blue jeans, red winter coat with a black strip on the sleeve, and a white bandana covering his face. Armed with a folding knife.

Suspect 2: Hispanic Male, 18-20 years old, 5-10 to 6-00, 150-160 pounds, wearing a white sweater and blue jeans.

Forest Oak Middle School is on Saybrooke Oaks Blvd, between Girard St and Mid-County Highway, just east of North Summit Ave/Goshen Rd.

There’s a lot in this world that I don’t understand. Robbing a 12-year-old — of anything, in any circumstances — is definitely one of them. But another thing on this list is stealing a cell phone. Can someone explain this to me? Are they trying to steal the cell service? If so I’d think that there’d be only the briefest of windows during which this would work, because the owner will be calling the carrier to have the phone disabled, and in that window all calls will be logged and the phone could potentially be tracked to a location. Are they trying to steal the phone itself? And if so, are they planning getting it to work with their own cell service (problematic and costly, I’d think, unless both were from a GSM service that used SIM cards, which AFAIK means Cingular or T-Mobile around here) or is there really much of a black market on deactivated cell phones? Of course, another option is that the thieves are stupid or just plain mean…