Immigration action stirs panic in Eastern Washington

By Florangela Davila and Lornet Turnbull
Seattle Times staff reporters

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A targeted operation by federal officials to arrest and deport criminal immigrants is creating widespread disruption in Eastern Washington, where panicked, undocumented farmworkers have stayed away from their jobs and from businesses and have also kept their children out of summer school.

Sandy Trevino, a school-district employee in Quincy, Grant County, said more than 70 children from mostly migrant-worker families were absent from summer school this week.

Joe Escobar, a foreman in Zillah, Yakima County, said people aren't out looking for work in orchards like they usually are.

And Epitaceo Navarro, the owner of El Mejor Taquito in nearby Sunnyside, has noticed a 40 percent drop in customers this week. He estimates he's lost $2,000 in sales since Sunday.

Officials at the Washington Growers Clearinghouse and the Washington state Farm Bureau have been fielding calls from their members wondering whether what's happening is akin to workplace roundups of undocumented workers several years ago. Latino community advocates say people are afraid to shop at local markets, keep appointments with social workers or report for work.

But immigration officials maintain agents aren't conducting widespread sweeps or workplace raids. Instead, they are looking for some 400,000 foreign-born criminal fugitives nationwide, part of an operation that began in April. In Washington state, 41 criminal immigrants have been arrested and deported, said Leigh Winchell, special agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Seattle.

That number includes four people — three from Mexico and one from El Salvador — who were arrested last week for domestic violence, assault, theft and drug possession.

"There have been no roadblocks, no mass roundups, no going onto farmers' properties," Winchell said.

He said worries about wholesale roundups of illegal immigrants are unwarranted.
 
"Mass roundups are not that high on our priority list. That's not to say they'd never take place. The removal of criminal aliens — those folks who are here out of [legal] status and committed crimes on U.S. soil — is a national priority."

Worries, nonetheless, have triggered numerous calls to Spanish-language radio station KDNA in Granger, Yakima County, and to immigration advocates. Callers have reported immigration-enforcement vans parked outside stores and markets, or just off popular freeway exits.

Yvonne Lopez-Morton of Spokane, co-chairwoman of the state Commission on Hispanic Affairs, said she received some 100 e-mails — an unprecedented number — this week from various people reporting immigration raids in Othello, Adams County; seeing folks being handcuffed in parking lots in Moses Lake; or noticing fewer students showing up at ESL classes in Wapato, Yakima County.

"There's definitely a sense of panic out there," said Lopez-Morton, who urged immigration officials to host a type of town-hall meeting to assuage fears.

The state commission, which already had been scheduled to meet, took up the enforcement issue yesterday in an attempt to separate fact from rumor.

One rumor started July 2 when a Spanish-language radio station, KZHR, erroneously reported that immigration officials had arrested some 25 to 40 people outside a grocery in Pasco, said David Cortinas, president of the Tri-Cities Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

The store owner, according to Cortinas, subsequently lost so much money in sales that the station, in an effort to make amends, was planning on hosting a remote broadcast from the market today.

Officials with the state office of the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement yesterday were contacting farm leaders and the state's two U.S. senators, trying to quell the fears.

But "we're living in an age of communication. Someone gets arrested on immigration charges, and with everybody carrying a cellphone, it eventually turns into a story about 5,000 troops cleaning out a Yakima farm," Winchell said.

Florangela Davila: 206-464-2916 or fdavila@seattletimes.com

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com