Immigration agents search Bellingham shop

SEATTLE — Immigration agents served a criminal search warrant today on a Bellingham plant where 28 workers were arrested in February.

The search warrant was served on Yamato Engine Specialists, where a raid on Feb. 24 prompted Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to order a review of the action. Many workers arrested in that raid were released last week from a detention center in Tacoma, and some were given the option of obtaining work permits.

"Yamato is committed to our community and to the hiring of only authorized workers," according to a message on company's phone.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lorie Dankers said no arrests were made Thursday. She said the search was part of an ongoing investigation and would not disclose further details.

Shirin Dhanani Makalai, administrative manager and a member of the family that owns the engine remanufacturing plant, told The Bellingham Herald about 20 agents were searching the office when she arrived this morning.

"Ever since, they've been looking at all our paperwork and computers," she told the newspaper. "Whatever they want, we're providing."

The search drew suspicion from Rosalinda Guillen, executive director of Community to Community, an immigrants rights group in Bellingham.

"The whole thing is bizarre, to say the least," Guillen said. "It looks to us in the community that they're desperate to justify what they did."

The workers arrested in February were suspected of being in the country illegally. ICE officials said at the time that many of the workers used fake Social Security numbers and other counterfeit documents to obtain jobs.

Guillen said two were deported, but many were released last week and given permission to work. "They're being offered work permits to work anywhere," she said.

Makalai told the Herald the company is enrolled in the e-Verify, an online system employers can use to check the Social Security numbers of job applicants.

The raid on Yamato was the first mass arrest of immigrants since President Barack Obama took office. It appeared to contradict his policy that federal agents focus more on employers who hire undocumented workers than on the workers themselves.

The response from Napolitano to the earlier raid and release of the workers last week was heavily criticized by advocates of stricter immigration laws and enforcement, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform, based in Washington, D.C."

"Work site enforcement depends on holding illegal aliens and the employers who hire them accountable, but the administration is only tackling part of the problem," Federation President Dan Stein said in a prepared statement. "How do you enforce the law against the people who hire illegal workers and not enforce the law against the workers themselves who are also breaking the law?"