BY SALM KOLIS
ATLANTA - Chants of "INS, we won't go, and if we go, we'll be back," echoed off the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) building in downtown Atlanta June 13 as demonstrators protested a series of recent immigration raids in the Southeast. The protest ranged from 30 to 50 at any one time. It began at noon and continued with a brief rally at 10:30 p.m. Participants came and went during the day as their schedules permitted.
INS cops conducted military-style raids at various worksites in this area at the beginning of June. Between June 5 and June 9 alone they rounded up some 530 people.
The action was called by U'NETE, a Hispanic community organization. Demonstrators carried homemade signs with slogans like, "Give us your tired, give us your poor, and we will deport them" and "INS, Dehumanizing, Degrading, Deporting." In a reference to the upcoming Olympics to be held in Atlanta, one sign read, "The world is coming to Atlanta, and Atlanta deports it."
A Georgia State University student said she and her friends were coming to the demonstration on the train and got into a discussion with a worker who said he supported the raids because he was unable to get a high-paying construction job. Employers told him they could pay undocumented workers only $5 an hour because their "lifestyle" was so different. The protesters countered by arguing that the employers could get away with this because of the workers "illegal" status, which makes it harder for them to fight for better wages.
One demonstrator carried a Mexican flag, which prompted a discussion on whether or not this was a good idea. In the end, the flag stayed up.
"We are tired of having our people degraded and our families divided by these raids," said protest organizer Rod Padilla. "Immigrants are being scapegoated for social problems.
"We're here to show they can't get rid of us that easily," said Maricela Coronado. "Hispanics need to unite, We've been taught to be quiet, but this isn't the time to be quiet."
The raids are part of a coordinated operation throughout the Southeast called Operation SouthPAW, so named because their supposed purpose is to "Protect America's Workers." INS officials said the raids took place because of hundreds of complaints they claim to have received protesting the use of immigrant workers at work sites in the Atlanta area.
According to the Atlanta Constitution, one construction worker, outraged because he was refused a job building a new federal center in Atlanta while undocumented Mexican workers were hired, reportedly wrote a series of letters complaining to government officials. Twenty-one workers were detained during a raid at the Atlanta Federal Center site.
Raids were reported at job sites in Chamblee, Hapeville, Kennesaw, Lithonia, and Gainesville as well. "They used a massive show of force - 30-40 police cars and helicopters were used to go after 19 workers," community activist Vicente Bautista said of the raids in Gainesville. "They were trying to panic people."
A sewing machine operator at Wilen Manufacturing in Hapeville, Miesa Zárate, described the raid that took place there. "Cops surrounded the building, there were cops all over. They came through looking at us, while the company announced over the loudspeaker, `We have guests in the plant. Please continue our work. Do not stop work. Do not huddle.'
"They walked directly to the Spanish-speaking workers. Initially there was a lot of joking about the raids, but as the day wore on, a more serious attitude arose, human solidarity came to the fore. We wondered what was happening to our co-workers. One of my co-workers commented `I wouldn't want to get picked up and shipped out of the country without even being able to make a phone call.' "
Some speculated that the Spanish-speaking workers were targeted by the INS with the collaboration of the company, because they were in the forefront of winning the fight to be represented by the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. But one of the shop stewards thought the company wouldn't work with the INS because of the fines. She thought it was the government, like in California with Proposition 187, the anti-immigrant rights referendum passed last year.
Salm Kolis is a member of United Auto Workers Local 882 in Atlanta.