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On July 6, 2005, U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested and detained immigrant workers from
the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina, by
posing as staff members of the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA). The arrests followed similar actions targeting
undocumented workers at military installations and facilities.
Without the knowledge of the federal or state
OSHA, ICE distributed flyers in English and Spanish that announced a
"mandatory" health and safety meeting with free coffee and doughnuts.
At the onset of the meeting, ICE agents announced that the meeting was
actually a work site enforcement action and then proceeded to arrest
over four dozen workers from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and
Ukraine. Many of the workers were employed by private contractors to
perform construction work on the base.
Representatives from federal OSHA and North
Carolina OSHA have strongly criticized the work site enforcement action,
stating that it has eroded trust between the U.S. Dept. of Labor and
workers it is charged with helping to keep safe. In 2002, OSHA targeted
outreach to immigrant and Latino workers because the fatality and injury
rates for these workers have continued to rise. This action by ICE has
seriously hampered OSHA’s effort, and it will be extremely difficult for
OSHA -- as well as other governmental agencies -- to gain the trust of
immigrant workers in the future. As an underfunded agency, OSHA relies
heavily on the willingness and ability of workers to come forward to
report health and safety violations. As is documented in the Human
Rights Watch report Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S.
Meat and Poultry Plants, documented and undocumented immigrant
workers are likely to work in unsafe conditions for fear that
complaining will jeopardize their immigration status or result in their
deportation. Notably, the enforcement action in North Carolina resulted
in the detention of undocumented, documented, and U.S. citizen
workers, seriously compromising the ability of OSHA to protect all
workers.
Since the arrests, advocates in North Carolina
have requested a meeting with the regional ICE office that administered
the raid to discuss future protocol. NILC also sent a national sign-on
letter to ICE headquarters requesting a meeting to discuss the agency’s
priorities regarding work site enforcement and the directives and
procedures that are needed to ensure that work site enforcement
activities do not interfere with workers’ rights.
--By
Tyler Moran, NILC policy
analyst
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