Using a Virginia law that passed this summer, House Bill (HB) 570, the local police then turned in some of the workers to federal immigration authorities. Eleven workers now face deportation.

The spirited crowd marched along Route 1 near the 7-Eleven where the arrests were made. Protesters chanted in Spanish and waved signs condemning the arrests and calling for the repeal of HB 570. The concluding rally was held in front of Ricos Tacos Moya Mexican Restaurant on Route 1, where a meal was served after the action.

Speakers at the rally included a representative of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who denounced HB 570 as racial profiling by the police; Mahonrry Hidalgo, who is part of a similar struggle of day laborers in Freehold, New Jersey; Norberto Martínez of Mexicanos sin Fronteras (Mexicans without Borders) in Washington, D.C.; and Ricardo Juárez, a local organizer of the march and of the Workers Committee of Woodbridge.

Other organizations that took part in the march included the Farm Labor Organizing Committee , Coalition of Immokalee Workers, ANSWER, and the Socialist Workers Party.

Earlier in the day, about 100 people attended a two-hour town hall meeting at the Prince William County auditorium where a heated debate ensued.

Members and supporters of the Virginia Coalition Against Terrorism—an ultrarightist, anti-immigrant group—took part in the meeting with signs, shouts, and catcalls. “If they are illegal, take them away. Enforce the law. That’s why I pay taxes,” said Michael Crowe, one of its members. The percentage of Latinos in the county has increased from 9 percent to 16 percent in the past four years, an increase Crowe calls an “immigration invasion.”

Others supported the workers, denying the allegations of Prince William police captain Tim Rudy that the day laborers used alcohol and drugs, littered, urinated on the property, and sexually harassed women.

“I’ve found them to be entirely, in my experience, polite, hard-working people,” said Bruce Smith who lives in the vicinity of the 7-Eleven. “They have been as good as neighbors as anybody in the neighborhood.”

Ricardo Juárez, organizer of the Workers Committee of Woodbridge, a project of Mexicanos sin Fronteras, said in an interview, “These arrests are a targeting issue against an organized group of workers. There are a lot of workers looking for jobs, but it is these organized workers who have been arrested.”

Among its activities, the Workers Committee organizes English classes, carries out informational campaigns, works for legalization of undocumented workers, distributes food, and helps to secure wages when the employers do not pay. The HB 570 law gave state and local police the authority to arrest “illegal” immigrants without a warrant. The law, which targets alleged “terrorists,” is supposed to apply only if the immigrant had been convicted of a felony, had been ordered out of the country, or was suspected of committing another crime.

Juárez said that this law should not have been applied at all in the case of the arrested workers. “We are workers, not criminals,” he said. Several placards carried in the November 20 march made the same point.

The group continues to organize the day laborers. They are working with an immigration attorney who is challenging the law on loitering, which has been ruled unconstitutional by the state supreme court.

A court hearing was set November 29 for more than a dozen of the workers facing the loitering charge. In the meantime, day laborers are still waiting for employment outside the 7-Eleven, taking the risk because they need work to survive. Juárez said that because of the publicity fewer contractors come by and the job situation for these workers has become more difficult.

“Yesterday only five workers got jobs, while 100 needed jobs,” said Juárez.  
 
 
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