Draft
Resisting La Migra:
Defending immigrants spawns the Oregon farmworker movement
Part I: A meeting that changes the course of (my) history.
Even today, after countless times, driving through Mt. Angel, Oregon is a
surreal experience. Mt. Angel‟s a rural town of a couple thousand residents in the
Northern Willamette Valley, thirty-five miles southwest of Portland. All the
town‟s store fronts sport Bavarian-style facades. The town‟s signature event, an
annual, four-day Octoberfest celebration in mid-September, brings out the area‟s
predominantly German growers and attracts thousands of others. Locals and
tourists from Salem and Portland descend on the huge “biergarten” and the stands
selling bratwurst and sauerkraut. Hundreds don lederhosen and feathered hats.
I was barely twenty-three years old the first time I drove into Mt. Angel,
right in the midst of Octoberfest, 1976. As a Jew and the son of a World War Two
infantry private who, three decades earlier, had helped liberate concentration
camps as an eighteen-year-old draftee, I grew up with my father‟s express ban on
German-manufactured goods in our household and his prohibition on watching TV
programs like “Hogan‟s Heroes”, a 1960‟s comedy about allied POWs in a camp
run by bumbling Nazis. As a teenager, I had helped organize activities observing
the annual “Shoah” Holocaust commemoration at my reform synagogue and had
seen Night and Fog, a graphic French documentary on the Holocaust, at least ten
times. Just passing through a celebration of things-German gave me the creeps.
On a damp Saturday morning in mid-September 1976, I drove slowly down
Mt. Angel‟s Main Street, past the Octoberfest crowds beginning to gather. I
proceeded on a few blocks to the campus of Colegio César Chávez, where I was to
meet Cipriano Ferrel, a student there.
Rocky Barilla, a legal services lawyer in nearby Salem, had arranged the
meeting. Rocky served as the “adjunct faculty” supervisor for Cipriano‟s
internship at Marion-Polk Legal Services, under the auspices of the Colegio‟s
“College Without Walls” program. I met Rocky in March 1976 when he came to
Spokane, Washington for a legal training. He had found his way to the house
which I shared with three co-workers at Spokane Legal Services. I got in touch
with Rocky right after I moved to Vancouver, Washington to work as a VISTA
volunteer paralegal in the Clark County Public Defender office. “There‟s
someone I really want you to meet,” he said. “If you can come to Mt. Angel, I‟ll
set it up.”
Pulling into the Colegio‟s parking lot, I spotted Rocky‟s mid-„60s
Mercedes. His girlfriend stepped out and reported that Rocky had fallen ill and
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asked her to take his place. She recognized Cipriano standing just outside the
main building and introduced us. Cipriano had a round face, high cheek bones,
gold wire-rim glasses, a wispy goatee and waist length black hair. He stood a few
inches shorter than I and had a stockier build. As I approached, he extended his
hand but his body leaned slightly back, firmly maintaining his center of gravity. I
would soon come to see that as a metaphor for his personality.
At Rocky‟s request, Cipriano had agreed to show me around. “The
Chicanos took over this campus about three years ago and named it for César,” he
began as we embarked on a ten-minute tour of the campus‟ five buildings.
“Before that, when it was Mt. Angel College, the students were mostly hippies.
The College couldn‟t make it financially, so they recruited whoever they could.
That‟s how the hippies and the Chicanos arrived. The gabachos around here were
so freaked out about the drugged out hippies that they were relieved at first when
the Chicanos started arriving.” During a summer in Spain, I had learned enough
Spanish to get around, but that didn‟t include slang, like gabacho, coined by
Mexicans raised in the U.S. The context made its meaning pretty clear. “Like
bolillo,” I thought to myself: “white bread, Spaniards‟ slang for white people.”
Cipriano gestured to a huge cedar tree a few yards from the main road.
“They say that the fire department had to come out one night and rescue some
hippies who had dropped acid and climbed the tree, naked.” He went on to relate
the Colegio‟s protracted struggle against the U.S. Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) agency‟s efforts to foreclose on the Colegio‟s huge debt,
inherited from Mt. Angel College, and to evict the Colegio from the Mt. Angel
campus.
About his own path to Mt. Angel, Cipriano volunteered only the basics. “I
arrived here in Fall 1975 from Eugene,” he remarked before changing the subject.
I later learned that he had come to Oregon from his home in Delano, California.
He intended to enroll at the University of Oregon but was quickly drawn to the
Colegio. His parents worked in the table grape harvest, as did he and some of his
ten siblings. While still in high school, Cipriano formed a chapter of the Brown
Berets, a militant organization of Chicano youth. He joined the Farmworker
Movement, eventually becoming personal assistant and sometime bodyguard for
UFW co-founder César Chávez.
The conversation turned to conditions in the Mexican community. “La
Migra’s terrorizing people,” Cip told me. I did know that “La Migra” was slang
for the Immigration and Naturalization Service or “INS”. “Practically every week,
raids happen in the fields, at labor camps, at apartments, laundromats, anywhere
they think they can grab people. They sometimes set up check points on highways
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to catch workers going to work,” he explained. “We‟ve got to do something,” he
continued, “and a few of us here and in Salem are talking about exactly that.”
I‟d never seen an INS raid, but I had observed a deportation hearing in
Spokane, part of my paralegal duties at Legal Services. Mention of “checkpoints”
summoned a memory from 1969, the summer I turned sixteen, traveling up the
coastal highway toward Haifa, Israel. Looking out the bus window, I noticed the
six-inch steel-spike strips positioned to narrow traffic to one lane. The bus, along
with every vehicle in front and behind, stopped at that spot on the city‟s outskirts.
An Israeli soldier—no older than twenty—carrying an Uzi sub-machine gun
boarded the bus. He barked a command in Hebrew to the Arab man seated across
the aisle from me: “Show me your papers.” The man fumbled for a few seconds
but produced nothing. The soldier pulled him upright and pushed him toward the
front where another soldier escorted him off the bus. As the soldier with the Uzi
turned to continue his inspection, he greeted me and smiled. I had left my
passport in my room at the nearby agricultural school but I didn‟t need it. My
white skin and American appearance were the only credentials the soldier required
of me. Seven years later, the outrage I felt at that moment still sent a chill through
me.
Cipriano‟s description of La Migra got me thinking about my mother‟s
parents who had arrived at Ellis Island from Russia in 1923, fleeing the chaos and
anti-Semitic persecution of the civil war. My grandmother and her infant son—
my Uncle Al—were deported and spent months in Amsterdam awaiting a second
attempt to immigrate.
In the months following that Octoberfest day in Mt. Angel, Cipriano and I
and others did do something: we founded a new organization, the Willamette
Valley Immigration Project (WVIP), to defend immigrants by educating and
supporting them to assert their legal rights.
Almost exactly one year after the day we met, Cipriano and I found
ourselves in a cramped INS hearing room at the downtown Portland Federal
Courthouse. “This is a deportation hearing in the case of Alfonso GarciaDominguez,” announced Immigration Judge Newton T. Jones. Looking at me,
Jones continued: “Present in addition to Respondent is…”
The Project‟s first legal fight was on. Our defense of Alfonso would
establish a fundamental protection for immigrants that is still in effect today
nationwide.
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Part II: Law enforcement as resistance
Getting ready for a fight we set out to pick
WVIP opened the door to its two-room office in Portland‟s downtown
Dekum Building on May 2, 1977. Our inaugural press release declared our
mission: “to conduct community education on immigration law and policy and
provide legal representation on immigration matters, particularly deportation.”
Quoted in The Oregonian article headlined “Undocumented aliens learn legal
rights from volunteers”, WVIP co-founder and volunteer staff attorney Ann Witte
was considerably more pointed: “We want to let undocumented workers know
that they do not have to incriminate themselves if they are approached by
immigration officers. They do not have to answer questions…we will provide
legal services to them.”
Our unannounced goal was to dramatically slow the deportation machine‟s
wheels and raises its costs, resulting in fewer arrests. Our legal strategy to achieve
that goal depended on workers exercising their Fifth Amendment rights against
self-incrimination and refusing to sign waivers authorizing their “voluntary return”
to Mexico. The INS depended on these waivers to expeditiously remove several
thousand immigrants arrested in Oregon each year.
Our worldview connected undocumented workers‟ presence in Oregon and
INS‟s repressive practices to one hundred years of U.S. economic, immigration
and foreign policy. As we saw it, U.S.-based companies exploited other countries
economically, lowering living standards for workers there and caused them to
emigrate. U.S. domestic industries like agriculture capitalized on their lack of
immigration status as a key lever of control. Our work, we modestly promised
ourselves, would open thousands of eyes and minds to these injustices as we
struck a blow against “empire”—or at least our obscure corner of it.
In the Project‟s early days, we organized public forums and trainings in
Portland and at the Colegio which attracted a few dozen people, mostly political
and community sympathizers. Our presentations described the correlation
between labor needs in the U.S. and the economic conditions in Mexico. We
keyed on the Bracero program, begun during the Second World War, which
brought Mexican workers by the thousands to pick Oregon crops. Some entered
the U.S. with temporary work visas but many without, especially after the Bracero
program expired in 1964.
From day one, the Project stepped into the debate—raging as hot as ever
today—about the question “do undocumented workers take away jobs from “U.S.”
or “legal” workers?” Our position was—and is—“for most part, no”. Time and
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again, the INS would target raids in order to “free up” jobs for legal residents and
U.S.-citizen workers, but they rarely showed up to fill those jobs. One common
refrain from anti-immigrant pundits in 1977 posited that undocumented
immigrants “are eating our lunch”. We countered that, as the backbone of the
agriculture and service industries, they‟re making our lunch.
However compelling, our macro analysis and political rhetoric had precious
little impact on the realities of frequent raids and arrests. Therefore, we focused
our trainings on legal defense theories and tactics, on lining up the capacity for
quick and effective legal response, and on developing strategies for disseminating
clear and reliable information to workers and families. Quick response to arrests,
we concluded, necessitated an office minutes away from INS headquarters. The
Dekum Building on Third Street in downtown Portland placed us within eight
blocks.
Starting in October 1976, progressive lawyers, law students, legal workers
and community activists gathered into working groups in Eugene, Salem and
Portland. A common connection for most was membership in the National
Lawyers Guild. Founded in 1937 as the first multi-racial legal organization, the
Guild had 8,000 members and had long served as the legal arm of practically
every progressive movement and struggle. I had joined while still in Spokane and
made contact with the small but active Portland chapter. Within three weeks of
meeting Cipriano, I had recruited about twenty Guild members to the first Portland
gathering on organizing raid response. It was an encouraging sign of interest,
stoked by reports of major INS actions in Salem and Woodburn that month.
The first statewide meeting in January, hosted at Marion-Polk Legal
Services by Cipriano, Rocky and fellow staff attorney Steve Goldberg produced
agreement to incorporate two non-profits, open a Portland office in the spring and
a temporary summer office at Colegio staffed by three NLG “Summer Project”
interns. Incorporation papers filed March 21, 1977 established Willamette Valley
Immigration Project which we regarded as a more “activist” organization. Ten
days later, we incorporated the Willamette Valley Law Project as the research and
education arm, our entity qualified to be a “501(c)(3)” and receive foundation
grants.
We set to work on raising money. We submitted applications for the
Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) funds. In the early days
of the Carter Administration, Congress had enacted CETA and local jurisdictions
expected funding to become available imminently for distribution to non-profit
organizations.
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Developing a legal strategy
Though many among WVIP‟s co-founders came from the legal world, few
knew much, if any thing, about immigration law, much less the realities of
immigration law practice. Our preparations to open for business, therefore, took
on a “study group” quality.
As a part-time law school instructor on immigration law, Rocky got us
started, but our learning process was co-operative and “teacher-less.” We‟d assign
ourselves sections of law and legal treatises and then each present summaries,
complete with commentary about what we thought the law should mean. Since we
intended to do battle on INS‟s bureaucratic turf, it would have made practical
sense to seek out the small set of experienced immigration defense lawyers in
Portland for advice. We did eventually cross their paths but didn‟t seek their
guidance. They operated in the world of the high-priced “hired gun” which we
regarded as part of the problem.
Our reflex toward self-reliance would re-surface many times in the years
ahead. For the most part, it served us well, reinforcing our resilience and
resourcefulness. But we also over-indulged at times and ranged into a stubborn
“do-it-yourself” orthodoxy and the all-too predictable outcome commonly called
“learning the hard way.”
Our study and analysis persuaded us that an undocumented immigrant
invoking the constitutional right against self-incrimination could expose the INS‟s
legal Achilles‟ heel, even though deportation, the Supreme Court had long held,
was a civil matter, not a criminal one. In its infantile wisdom, the Court found that
expulsion from the country, however drastic its effect, does not constitute a
“punishment”. Defining immigration proceedings as outside the realm of criminal
law meant that the accused had no Sixth Amendment right to a lawyer at
government expense, if the accused could not afford representation.
“Respondents” (not “defendants”) in deportation hearings have a right to legal
counsel at their own expense. The Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful
searches and seizures likewise did not apply to deportation proceedings. The INS
could acquire evidence, including a confession, without a search warrant or
probable cause and use it to support a deportation order.
The right to “due process of law” is guaranteed to all by the Fifth
Amendment governs criminal and civil proceedings. It places on the INS the
burden to prove that the Respondent is not a U.S. citizen. Since few undocumented
workers carry around proof of their citizenship (e.g., a birth certificate, foreign
passport, or consular-issued identification), the only evidence INS can readily
procure is the immigrant‟s own statement or admissions regard citizenship and
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place of birth. In this light, what workers say—or don‟t say—to INS agents,
voluntarily or under interrogation, becomes crucial.
An immigrant who enters the U.S. without presenting him/herself at an INS
border crossing facility can be charged with a federal crime. Therefore, such an
immigrant apprehended inside the U.S. has a Fifth Amendment right to refuse to
answer a question about his or her citizenship and manner of entry. If the INS
uses coercion and/or misleading tactics to obtain an immigrant‟s statement, we
could move to exclude it as evidence at a deportation hearing. Without that
evidence, INS would have no admissible proof…and the immigrant Respondent
would walk free. Or so we theorized.
This strategy required three ingredients to succeed: (1) immigrants who
understood these rights and resolved to exercise them; (2) legal representation that
was affordable and accessible to immigrants; and (3) an administrative or judicial
court that accepted and validated our theory. The Project staff and volunteers
would provide the second and we set out in search of the first. We assumed that
sooner or later, the INS would encounter workers who, with our support, would
refuse to incriminate themselves, stand firm and contact us. A Project legal
defense team would spring into action. The resulting “test” case would produce
the third ingredient.
Crafting and distributing “Know Your Rights” cards
To educate and enlist workers, we quickly decided to create a tri-fold,
wallet-sized, bilingual card providing straightforward practical advice and the
Project‟s contact information. We boiled down our message to these essentials:
“Even if you don‟t have papers:
1. You don‟t have to answer any questions asked by Immigration.
Talk to a lawyer first.
2. Don‟t let officials into your house without a warrant.
3. Don‟t sign anything, especially a document for „voluntary
departure.‟
Don‟t give in to threats or promises. Talk to a lawyer about:
 A locally-held hearing before deportation.
 Release from jail with or without bail.
 Help getting your papers.
For FREE legal help, call Willamette Valley Immigration Project”
In the right hand corner, the card featured WVIP‟s logo: a women, holding a child
in her left arm and raising her right arm in a fist. She faced a man with his left fist
raised, grasping strands of barbed wire. Above the family floated the words “Ya
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Basta” and below them “Con La Migra” (“enough already…with La Migra”).
This, we felt, sufficiently communicated our political sentiments.
During the 1977 summer harvest season, WVIP staff, summer interns and
volunteers distributed the entire first printing of 5,000 cards at about a hundred
labor camps in the six Western Oregon counties with high farmworker
concentrations. In a typical visit, many workers initially reacted apprehensively,
even startled by strangers‟ mention of La Migra. By the time we‟d leave a camp a
few minutes later, workers seemed more at ease and at least guardedly reassured
that our visit did not foreshadow a raid. A few relaxed enough to volunteer stories
of their encounters with INS agents. Some took our offer at face value and
promised that they would call us if arrested. We felt hopeful but wondered
nonetheless how real our promise of help would actually seem when a worker
faced an armed and hostile agent.
Documenting INS practices and their toll
Before we got the chance to visit camps in the Columbia Gorge orchards
around Hood River and The Dalles, sixty miles east of Portland, the INS
conducted a major sweep. It started June 22, 1977 just as the cherry harvest got
underway. A team of eleven INS agents arrested and deported forty-six workers
and sent shock waves of fear which caused hundreds more workers to flee the
area.
Project volunteer David Bolaños and I traveled to The Dalles a few days
later to document the raids. We interviewed a few witnesses, including a worker
in a ten-cabin labor camp—the only worker left there. “They sped in, jumped out
of their patrol cars and walked directly into every cabin, demanding papers from
anyone they found inside,” the worker recalled. “A few workers returning to the
camp from the orchard saw the migra and ran,” he continued. “The agents nabbed
and handcuffed a couple of them and brought them over to where they had
gathered the others arrested in the cabins. A few minutes later, they were all on
the bus headed out. I don‟t think they even let any get their belongings.” He
paused and looked at the apparently empty cabins. “Some of the guys who got
away may still be around, but they‟re scared to return.”
In the months and years ahead, we‟d hear countless reports like that one. In
time, the workers‟ descriptions of INS tactics would come to sound “routine”. But
it was the worker‟s intense look, usually accompanied by an involuntary verbal
tremble, channeling rekindled anger or fear, that connected us in a personal way to
every first-hand account.
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Our investigation of the raid in The Dalles took a unique course. David and
I stumbled on a local supermarket manager who reported that he had ordered the
INS off his property. He confronted them as they accosted brown-skinned
customers in the parking lot and demanded papers. “They even pissed off the
DA,” he remarked. Noting our surprise, he added: “That‟s Bernie Smith, Wasco
County District Attorney. He‟s a grower, too, you know.” Actually, we didn‟t
know. We proceeded straight down the street to the county courthouse to learn
more.
Smith welcomed us into his office and launched excitedly into his
rendering of events without even asking us who we represented or why we
inquired. “I told those agents to halt the warrantless searches or face arrest for
criminal trespass,” he boomed. “They responded by implicitly threatening me
with jail for interference with federal authorities,” his voice still rising. “They told
me they had every right to enter orchards and referred me to Sid Lezak, the U.S.
Attorney. I called Lezak and he denied giving any advice to the agents. He called
back an hour later to inform me that the agents had only a limited legal right to
search private property without warrants.”
As Smith caught his breath, David and I flashed each other a look of shared
amazement. An anti-INS prosecutor telling us the what-all?! Smith leaned
forward in his chair and fired off the capper: “If these guys operate like they own
the orchards, they better be prepared to use those guns they‟re carrying. As far as
I‟m concerned, they‟re completely unprofessional and use Gestapo tactics.”
The cursory news reports on the raids in The Dalles mentioned nothing
about this incredible and apparently open schism within the usually closed ranks
of law enforcement brethren. This story had to be told, I decided. After returning
to Portland, I contacted an editor at The Oregonian, Oregon‟s primary daily paper.
“Did he say that on the record?” the editor asked. “I can‟t run that unless he
makes it clear that he did.”
With nothing to lose, I called Smith and explained my purpose. Again, to
my astonishment, he not only repeated his statement, but encouraged me to quote
him. And he added a new twist: “I‟m recommending to the county sheriff and the
judges [the title used by county commissioners in Eastern Oregon] that any
continuation of the informal agreement we have with the INS covering federal use
of our jail facilities be predicated on an end to warrantless searches…and we
should at least triple the charges for services to non-Wasco County authorities.” I
repeated his words back to him. “That‟s right,” he declared. “You know, they
only pay us ten dollars per person per day for federal prisoners we hold in our
jail.” Yet another thing I didn‟t know. He concluded by musing that perhaps the
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County should cancel the jail cooperation agreement altogether if the INS couldn‟t
respect private property rights.
I called the editor at The Oregonian, read out the quotes, and offered to
write the story as a “stringer”. “Ask INS for their comment and we‟ll go with it,”
he replied. Needless to say, the INS denied everything. “We‟re some of the besttrained law enforcement personnel in this country,” boasted INS agent Ed Fisher,
citing the ability of agents to speak Spanish. I also dug deeper into the raids‟
aftermath. I included this summary in the text I submitted for publication:
In response to the desperate post-raid calls for as many as 2,000
farm workers, a busload of Southeast Asian refugees arrived, and welfare
and food stamp recipients were brought out from Portland.
But the growers expressed dissatisfaction with most of the new
arrivals. As one expressed it: “White people just don‟t pick well. I‟m not
going to send $100 worth of equipment out with someone who‟ll only pick
$5 worth of cherries.” …
According to [INS District Director Lyle] Dahlin, The Dalles raid had
been planned for two or three weeks…because of reports of “trouble in the
area caused by aliens without jobs, complaints by students unable to
secure harvest work, and the pattern of where, when and in what
concentrations aliens are usually found.” Shortly before the raids, growers
had been reporting a shortage of farm labor.
Fisher said the INS was „not out to hurt anyone economically. The
growers are the victims of a bad situation; the illegals have come every
year and been hired. There‟re no skilled Americans left to do the job.‟
But the growers see a different problem: “We raise a crop that is
dependent on experienced, skilled pickers,” remarked one grower. “Then
the INS comes and runs off more than they round up. Even legal workers
are afraid of them and would just as soon work in California.”
On July 13, 1977, The Oregonian printed a 750-word article entitled
“Raiding INS agents rile officials” with my name in the by-line. Apparently
unable to overcome their squeamishness, they took out Smith‟s reference to the
Gestapo and they placed the article on the op-ed page, even though it read entirely
like a news story. “Raiding INS agents” would stand as my one and only foray
into paid journalism. The Oregonian paid me five cents a word.
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Part III: Putting our “resistance” strategy to the test
The raid that set up a legal show-down
Little did we know that barely a month after The Dalles raid, we‟d move
much closer to live action occurring less than ten miles from the WVIP offices.
On August 16, 1977, INS agents arrested ten Mexican farmworkers
including 18-year-old Alfonso García-Dominguez, his cousin, Toribio, and his
uncle Pedro. The three harvested vegetables for fresh market on Joe Cereghino‟s
truck farm in Gresham, just east of Portland. Alfonso and Toribio had come to the
U.S. two years earlier from Álvaro Obregon, Michoacan, a town near Morelia,
Michoacan‟s capital. In his forties, Pedro had come to the U.S. many times, first
as a bracero or temporary agricultural worker in the 1950s.
Agents took them in handcuffs to a small enclave of cabins nearby to
collect their few possessions. Once there, agents confiscated a lettuce knife and a
pair of scissors from Alfonso and threw them into the bushes.
Cereghino arrived at the cabins, and Alfonso approached him to show him
a phone number that Alfonso had written on his arm. “Contact Ann and see if she
can help,” Alfonso told Cereghino. Cereghino knew that “Ann” was an attorney,
but didn‟t know her last name or phone number. Before he could note the number,
INS agent Travis Martin grabbed Alfonso‟s arm and rubbed off the ink.
We would later learn that Martin‟s conduct on August 16th qualified as
“restrained” when measured on the scale of his brutality. He and fellow agent
Tom Casey had earned, and even relished, a reputation as “tough”.
Martin took the workers to INS headquarters for “processing”. Over the
next twenty hours, Alfonso made six separate requests to contact his attorney,
Ann. Agents ignored or refused the requests. At 11:00 AM the next morning,
Alfonso, Toribio and Pedro abandoned hope and signed INS forms waiving their
rights to deportation hearings, admitting their foreign citizenship, and requesting
“voluntary departure”. INS agents then allowed Alfonso to call Ann.
The “Ann” Alfonso contacted was Ann Witte. I had first met her in
October 1976, shortly after I arrived at the Public Defender office in Vancouver,
across the Columbia River from Portland. Ann had previously worked there and
then set up her all-purpose private practice representing low-income and working
people. Even before meeting her, I had learned of one of her claims to fame in
Clark County. In 1974, she became the first female attorney to wear a pants suit—
or pants of any kind—to court. The presiding judge rebuked and banished her
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from the courtroom. She wouldn‟t relent. He ultimately did. “Relentless”
described Ann well. With her high energy personality, rebel spirit, and actionhero drive, she established an instant rapport with her clients.
Ann got to know Alfonso and Pedro through her boyfriend, Jesus González.
At some point in their acquaintance, she surely told them “if you ever get arrested
by La Migra, don‟t sign anything and call me.” She probably repeated those
instructions whenever the conversation drifted into stories of run-ins with the INS.
After receiving Alfonso‟s call that Wednesday morning, Ann went straight
to the U.S. Marshall‟s detention facility one floor above the INS‟s offices. She
sought agent Casey‟s permission to visit the detainees. “He told me, grinning
from ear to ear, that they had signed voluntary departure forms and waived their
rights. He said he didn‟t have to let me see them, but he supposed I might help
them with paychecks or something so he‟d let me go in and say good-bye,” Ann
wrote a few days later. Her statement continued:
After ten minutes or so, I went back out and told Casey they‟d
repudiated and demanded a hearing. He puffed up and grew red and
stomped downed to the detention facility, checking his gun at the locker by
the door. He said they would have to tell him themselves. He wouldn‟t
“take my word for it or let me put words in their mouth,” because I must
have “filled them full of bull.”
When we got into the glass-walled room, he ranted for a minute or
two, but sort of ran down because his Spanish didn‟t cover what he
wanted to say. I left when he was shaking his fist at me and then came
back after calling the Marshall and the U.S. Attorney. I interrupted
[Casey]. He let me, to my surprise. I spoke to my clients, explained that
they had the rights I had told them about earlier, and that if they wanted
me to work for them, to try to get bail for them and tell them judge their
side of the story, they should just turn their heads over to Mr. Casey and
say “Si.” So they did.
Then the other agent, with the wavy silver hair, took me aside and
said he thought I should know that I was really misadvising these guys,
not doing them a favor, because this was their only chance for voluntary
departure and that was a lot better than deportation.
I said if that was the policy, it was illegal in my view and that I knew
they didn‟t think much of my knowledge, but I had read a lot and studied
several years and there was a lot of law outside of the Immigration &
Nationality Act that applied here. They might expect to learn from me, too.
He nodded, sadly.
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INS agents generated the paperwork for deportation proceedings and set
bond at $2,000 each. That meant posting the full amount, in cash, not ten percent
as routinely allowed in Oregon state courts. Since departure no longer appeared
imminent, the INS transferred Alfonso, Toribio and Pedro to a county jail thirty
miles away. This gave agents an opportunity to continue to browbeat them.
“Your lawyer doesn‟t know the law and can‟t help you… You‟re crazy if you
think el patrón [employer] will post your bail… You don‟t have any rights to
anything,” Alfonso later recalled. The agents repeatedly dubbed them “los tres
locos.”. These tactics partially succeeded. Toribio withdrew his request for a
hearing and “accepted” immediate departure “under safeguards”—in custody until
reaching the Mexican border. The “three crazies” were down to two.
On August 19th, Joe Cereghino put up $4,000 in bond money guaranteeing
the court appearances of Alfonso and Pedro. The INS released them and set their
deportation hearings for September 14th.
That summer, we had handed “Know Your Rights” cards to thousands of
workers. The one worker who actually acted on the card‟s advice, it turned out,
didn‟t have the card, but he did trust the person who told him to reject “voluntary
departure.”
Even before we got to the deportation hearing, the case of Alfonso GarcíaDominguez had illustrated two critical lessons. First, to foment resistance,
establishing relationships with workers would count for more than disseminating
information to them. Workers assumed—or would discover—that saying “no” to
INS agents risked serious consequences. Second, we needed to adjust our tactics
so that we and the detained worker did not depend on the INS respecting a
detainee‟s right to call legal counsel. Chances are, INS detained few, if any,
workers that summer who actually had one of our rights cards and asked to contact
us. But if INS illegally held workers incommunicado, how would we ever know?
Who‟s picking up our gauntlet…the one INS just cast back at our feet?
All of a sudden—and frankly, sooner than we imagined—we had our big
chance to test a central legal tenet of our resistance strategy: the admissibility of a
coerced confession as evidence to support a deportation order. How ready were
we?
Perhaps a more precise question was: who would be sitting next to Alfonso
in the counsel chair at his deportation hearing in three weeks? Admittedly, it
seemed a strange question, given the legal talent we had mobilized. By midAugust, however, the student summer interns were gone and the CETA grants, and
the staff whose salaries CETA would fund, had yet to materialize. Ann had
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returned to private practice and was tied up with other cases. We could have
called in Ann, or maybe one of our supporters, like Rocky, or some other legal aid
lawyer, but ultimately, we didn‟t have to. I took that seat next to Alfonso.
Having me assume that role might seem plausible enough, except that I
wasn‟t then and am still not an attorney or even a law student (at least in any
formal sense). I didn‟t look much like a convincing imposter either as I walked
into the hearing room in my second-hand sports coat and tie which accessorized
my collar-length black beard.
When Immigration Judge Newton Jones began the hearing with his rote
opening recitals and got to sentence which starts “Present in addition to
Respondent is…”, he looked up and paused, realizing that he didn‟t know my
name. I stated it for the record and handed him a “legal appearance” form which
listed my status as “accredited representative.” As near as we could tell, I was the
first person ever to do that in Oregon. Jones barely glanced at the form. His force
of habit propelled him right past that moment and its historic significance. “All
right,” he continued, not missing a beat in his cadence. “here is the appearance of
the attorney for the Respondent.”
Even before we opened WVIP‟s offices, we had discovered a provision in
the immigration regulations which allows non-profit organizations to seek
“recognition”. Recognized organizations could nominate individuals for a threeyear, renewable term of “accreditation.” An accredited representative is
authorized to practice at the administrative level before the INS, the immigration
court and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) with powers on a par with
attorneys. Given that we foresaw a prolonged campaign of legal battles, this
opportunity to bring non-attorneys into the corps of front-line legal fighters
seemed almost too good to be true.
To receive accreditation, nominees must have “good moral character” and
“possess the requisite experience in and knowledge of immigration law and
procedure”. Though “good moral character” is defined in the Immigration and
Nationality Act, there was no elaboration available in 1977—and still virtually
none today—illuminating what exactly constitutes “requisite experience and
knowledge” or how a nominee could demonstrate it.
The Portland District resisted WVIP‟s request for recognition but the BIA
overruled their contrived objections on July 1, 1977. The Project immediately
nominated me for accreditation. INS District Director, Lyle Dahlin, recommended
neither approval nor denial, claiming that he had insufficient information. The
BIA remanded the matter, instructing him, in effect, to get more.
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Dahlin elected to call me in for a personal interview, a sort of quiz. He
greeted me stiffly. His pale and fleshy face with its clipped mustache reminded
me of the ruthless Chilean dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Struck, as I was, by
that image, his soft-spoken manner surprised me. Like most of the INS‟s three
dozen district directors around the country, he was a career INSer who had risen
through the ranks.
Dahlin‟s interview with me lasted no more than twenty minutes. After
glancing at my two-page resume, he asked a half dozen questions, each about
basic immigration law and procedure—and none probing my moral character.
Though I answered one question incorrectly, he recommended approval. The BIA
granted accreditation on September 7th, exactly one week before Alfonso‟s
hearing. Ironically, the answer I got wrong pertained to “suspension of
deportation,” a type of case that would later become one of my specialties.
The day before Alfonso‟s hearing, a minor panic seized me. What would I
be bringing to immigration court besides my case file and my just-hatched career
as an accredited representative? True, I‟d been around the “law” off and on for as
long as I could remember. My “home-schooling”, conducted by my tax-lawyer
father, conditioned me to parrot meaningless legalese as a first-grader. After
eighth grade, I filed tax manual updates and ran errands at my father‟s downtown
Chicago law office. As a teenager, I trained and volunteered as a draft counselor.
I incited heated debates at the dinner table about the Vietnam War and about my
expected “future” as a lawyer.
To alleviate my anxiety on the eve of the hearing, I re-read the handful of
loose-leaf notebook pages on deportation defense in Immigration Law and
Defense, the National Lawyers Guild practice manual circulated for the first time
only weeks before. I shot over to the Multnomah County Courthouse law library
and looked up and read (in some cases, re-read) every legal precedent cited on
those pages, a skill I‟d mastered during my year writing appellate briefs at the
Public Defender. The judicial support for our strategy seemed sketchy at best.
“Wishful thinking,” I muttered to myself, cringing.
At that moment, I didn‟t draw much self-assurance from my self-guided
study of immigration policy history and administrative procedures. I scolded
myself for failing to learn more about the seven hundred possible grounds for
deportation. The notion that WVIP stood, as did only a relative few, at the edge of
this legal frontier afforded little consolation. Those few, it seemed, might not
know very much more than we did.
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The hearing that made history and the ruling that extended historic rights
The next morning, as planned, a dozen WVIP supporters assembled outside
the Federal Courthouse in Portland and proceeded together to the INS offices on
the third floor. Their excitement and anticipation thinned my fog of self-doubt.
The look on Alfonso‟s face cleared and concentrated my mind. Gone was the
elation and hint of cockiness I remembered seeing shortly after the INS released
him from detention. In its place, apprehension, even dread, shown through an
unconvincing veneer of nonchalance.
Entering the building, riding the elevator and stepping into the narrow
hallway lined with office doors, I kept an eye on Alfonso. A door twenty feet
ahead flung open and an armed detention officer wearing the trademark pine-green
Migra uniform strode out, thankfully headed away from us. Alfonso momentarily
froze, probably imagining the ruffians who had arrested him grabbing him again
right then and there. After all, he was coming to court to tell the judge how those
agents had mistreated him, and that might get them in trouble. One at a time,
agent Casey and agent Martin would take a seat a few feet away from Alfonso and
have to testify. We all assumed they‟d brusquely deny everything and direct
menacing looks at me and at Alfonso.
I had spent time with Alfonso doing my best to prepare him for exactly
that: a close-quarters, in-person confrontation on “enemy” ground. I described, or
better said, I “guestimated” the hearing process. I repeatedly assured him that, no
matter what, he would walk out of the hearing room with us. If the judge ruled
against us, we would appeal and his release on bond would continue unchanged.
He wouldn’t return to detention or be led away to the bus with bars on the
windows headed for Tijuana. I reminded him that we wouldn‟t be alone. We
role-played his testimony. Of course, none of that could eliminate the fear.
As Alfonso‟s case was called, we all entered the small office used to
conduct hearings. Nothing about it resembled a court room. There was no
elevated dais, no bailiff, no “gated” area in front with tables for the respective
parties and counsel, and no gallery. None of that would have fit. Our delegation
filed in, occupying all eight of the upholstered chairs which ringed the room,
including two right behind the judge‟s chair. For lack of seating, two or three
supporters remained standing in the corners. Alfonso and I took the two seats at
the far end of a cherry wood table set perpendicular to an ordinary office desk.
The INS‟s “Acting Trial Attorney” (actually another agent), sat to our right.
Judge Jones entered the room through a side door and immediately tensed
up. Before taking his seat behind the desk he ordered all observers to leave the
room. I started to argue but he would have none of it.
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“Why do we need all these people here?,” Jones complained.
“It‟s a public hearing, your honor,” I began, but he cut me off.
“No, it‟s not public,” he insisted.
“Great,” I thought to myself. “we‟re starting off with a controversy I didn‟t think
to research.” I thumbed hurriedly through my copy of the Code of Federal
Regulations Title 8, hoping to find some legal authority on the issue.
“Well, if it‟s not public then my client waives any right to privacy and
requests that these observers be allowed to stay,” I ad-libbed.
Jones didn‟t muster an instant come back, but his face turned red. Apparently, he
didn‟t know the law either. Or perhaps I had guessed right.
“Well I‟m not having anyone standing. This room‟s just too small,” he
declared.
We relented on that point, and those standing left the room. Since the judge
hadn‟t yet taken his seat and started the tape recorder, we weren‟t even on the
record yet.
As Jones nervously fumbled with the cassette recorder, I surveyed the
room. My gaze fixed on Cipriano, seated behind the judge and close enough to
tap him on the shoulder. Cip‟s “don‟t-mess-with-me” body-language and his dark
sunglasses sent a vibe even I could feel. “This could really get wild,” I said under
my breath.
Five minutes into the hearing, Jones‟ actions again caught me off guard.
He refused to accept into the record my legal memo supporting my written motion
to dismiss the proceedings. “You can brief your portions of authorities of law if
you wish to appeal,” Jones intoned, implying that argument of legal precedents
had no place in his courtroom. I managed to state verbally the essence of my
arguments for the record.
The hearing settled into a more “normal” progression. We denied
deportability, a sort of “not guilty” plea. The government offered into evidence
Alfonso‟s “confession” of his citizenship and “illegal” status. I called Alfonso as
a witness and walked him through the story of his arrest and detention: the arrival
of his employer at the cabins, the phone number rub-out, the denial of Alfonso‟s
six requests to call his attorney, Ann, the “los tres locos” ridicule, the
disparagement of Ann, and the various iterations of “we [the INS] know the law
and you have no rights.”
I moved to call a collaborating witness and Jones again cut me off: “Well
until such time as the Government contests that, I‟m going to accept the fact.” It
took me a few moments to comprehend that Jones was saying that he would take
Alfonso‟s testimony at face value. It had never dreamed that the INS would
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concede Alfonso‟s story, and in full. Martin didn‟t testify and neither did Casey.
We had an unassailable record of facts to support our legal case!
Waiting in the hall was our trump witness, Joe Cereghino. He agreed to
testify despite possible that the INS would retaliate by repeatedly raiding his
workforce and housing. The INS agents saw him there and thought better of
testifying. They faced the unenviable choice of admitting their misconduct or
perjuring themselves by denying it.
Judge Jones closed the hearing and then dictated his decision. He recorded
it on the cassette recorder as we all sat and watched. It seemed to take forever
because he repeatedly backed up the tape, replayed sections he had just dictated
and re-recorded those portions he found unsatisfactory. In his decision, he
mischaracterized our objections to admitting Alfonso‟s confession into evidence
as premised on the Fourth Amendment “search and seizure” protections. We
knew that the Fourth Amendment didn‟t apply and we never asserted that it did.
Jones never mentioned our Fifth Amendment “due process” argument at
all. “If he had only read my memo..,” I mused, but I quickly reminded myself that
Jones had been a career INS guy before becoming an immigration judge. If Jones
granted my motion, he would, in effect, be finding the INS agents guilty of
coercion. If he ruled for us, Alfonso would be acquitted and “get away” with
being in the country illegally. Jones, I figured, simply couldn‟t bring himself to
rule for us. He preferred to risk being reversed on appeal.
Twenty-eight months later, the BIA did reverse Judge Jones. The Judge,
the Board ruled, improperly admitted Alfonso‟s admission because it was obtained
in violation of the Fifth Amendment. Without that admission, there was no
evidence left to sustain the INS‟s burden of proof. The BIA terminated the
proceedings, the equivalent of dismissing the charges and acquitting Alfonso.
The Board went a step further, though. It published its January 1980 ruling
as Matter of Garcia, making it a legal precedent binding on all immigration judges
and INS officers. The ruling remains in force today: if coercion or interference
with the right to an attorney can be shown in the case against an immigrant
charged with illegal entry, the resulting evidence can be suppressed. Matter of
Garcia was the first and the last WVIP case that directly changed national
immigration law.
We‟ll never know why the BIA took this unusual step. The Board could
have quietly reversed Judge Jones without publishing the opinion. I‟d like to think
that my exhaustive and persuasive fifty-page legal appellate brief simply dazzled
the Board. I found crafting, researching and drafting the brief‟s seven principle
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arguments a fulfilling challenge, even a joy. Of course, it also helped having such
a clear and unchallenged statement of facts in the hearing record on which to build
the legal arguments.
While the case pended on appeal, Alfonso had remained free and immune
from re-arrest. Once the BIA ruled, the INS refunded the bail money, plus
interest, to Cereghino. We‟d run into Alfonso from time to time after that.
Though his de-facto immunity had expired, he still projected a certain vibe of
invincibility. Though we later lost track of Alfonso, but could only assume that he
if the INS ever re-arrested him, he calls us so we could try and outfox them again.
What did they really think of us?
By January, 1980, when the BIA issued their opinion in Matter of García,
we had fought many more battles with the INS, some over the very same issues.
The hearing of Alfonso García-Dominguez put us on the INS map. Mostly they
deeply resented and distrusted us. They would reflexively cover up papers on
their desks when we came into their offices, suspecting that we were snooping for
any leads we could spot regarding their plans for the next raid. We‟d become
fixtures in the District Director‟s waiting room, demanding his intervention in the
latest abuse of discretion by deportation officers and agents.
In late December 1978, after a number of hearings before Judge Jones, we
sent a letter to the chief immigration judge in Washington D.C. complaining of
repeated irregularities which undermined “fair” hearing practice. INS Trial
Attorney, Kendall Warren (a real attorney, not an agent playing the part) fired off
a five-page letter in rebuttal. He characterized our complaint as one more attempt
to “harry and distract” INS officials. He described us as: “a small herd of assorted
observers, representatives, and miscellaneous hangers-on” and offered this
assessment: “the crux of their problems: lack of experience, deficient
professional manners and instincts, and an unremitting hostility toward the Service
and its activities.”
Warren concluded that WVIP‟s problems were “of their own making…
manifesting the sentiments expressed in Spanish on the bumper sticker which I
saw on Mr. Kleinman‟s car: „Ya Basta con la Migra’ which, roughly translated,
means „we have had enough of the Immigration Service‟.” The chief immigration
judge never responded to our complaints.
Though Warren got the analysis wrong, our message—what he called our
“sentiments”—had gotten through loud and clear. The hostilities would escalate,
but we‟d eventually also win some grudging respect for hard and effective work—
even if it might fall short of “professional.”
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Part IV: Digging in for a Very Long Fight
The “small herd” of WVIP staff
Though intended as denigrating, Kendall Warren‟s description did
somewhat aptly cast the WVIPers as “assorted” and “miscellaneous.” We took
these pejoratively used terms to connote what we today might call “diversity”:
composed of “elements of different kinds.”
By November 1977, thirteen individuals had come forward to serve either
on the inaugural WVIP staff or the “second-wave” that succeed them. Five anglos
and eight Latinos, we hailed from nine states and three countries, with only one
native Oregonian among us. Age-wise, though, our “assortment” lacked anyone
over 33 years and was heavy on the twenty-somethings.
Since we initially conceived WVIP as a “summer project,” the wholesale
staff turnover in late August 1977 did not occur unexpectedly. The three law
students, Peter Fels, Mano Hernández and Arturo Torres, who staffed WVIP‟s
“summer office” at the Colegio, returned to law school as planned. Peter and
Mano had led the Project organizing committee in Eugene at the University of
Oregon Law School. Portland-based intern Kathy Haley returned to law school in
New England. That left me, Ann and Jesus López, a former farmworker living in
Hillsboro, a farmworker community west of Portland in Washington County.
Jesus had family ties and South Texas home-town connections to prominent
labor contractors based in Gervais, near Woodburn in Marion County. Jesus knew
the labor camps well both in Washington county and Marion county. As a child in
the 1950s, he lived in camps around Woodburn. Jesus had come through the
sometimes rough-and-tumble scene of Chicano-mexicano tensions and bore visible
scars to prove it. Remarkably though, Jesus seemed to harbor no resentment and
related equally well with his fellow U.S.-born Mexicans and with immigrants from
Mexico. Thanks to Jesus‟ enthusiasm, his spirit of community service, and his
street knowledge, we reached hundreds of workers the Project like would not have
encountered without him.
In mid-August, Oregon Legal Services offered Jesus a staff paralegaloutreach worker position in Washington County. WVIP‟s prospects for CETAfunded positions remained uncertain, so Jesus took the job. He remained a key
WVIP collaborator thereafter in the early years. In 1978, we‟d enlist his mother,
Nieves, co-founder and staff member of Salud de La Familia farmworker medical
clinic in Woodburn, as an active community supporter.
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For the last two weeks in August, I served as WVIP‟s sole staff person. I‟d
volunteered full-time since early June when I left the Clark County Public
Defender. I supported myself financially with the $1,100 severance pay
accumulated during my two years as a “VISTA” (a domestic version of the Peace
Corps). VISTA had placed me at Spokane Legal Services and then at Clark
County Public Defender. On September 1st, an unknown—but probably not
large—number of days before I would have resolved to face the question “how
much longer?”, I opened the letter which notified us that the Project was awarded
three CETA positions—starting that very day.
I took one of the positions and, about a week later, hired Jeanne Gross for a
second one. Jeanne had volunteered some and brought great administrative and
writing skills and the fluent Spanish which she‟d learned living in Mexico for a
year. She arrived just in time to manage the bureaucratic responsibilities for
another four CETA positions commencing October 1st. A year later, she enrolled
in law school in Portland; today she practices criminal defense and immigration
law in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
One by one, we added five more full-time staff in about six weeks,
recruiting pretty much by word of mouth. Cipriano recruited Juan Mendoza, a
Colegio student active in the campaign to resist HUD‟s evict campaign against
the college. Juan came to Oregon from Milpitas, California, near San Jose. Juan‟s
initial role concentrated on community outreach and he later assisted U.S. citizens
and lawful permanent residents with the application process to legally immigrate
immediate family members. Juan stayed with the Project until 1988, when he left
to found a cooperative of reforestation workers.
Next, we hired Phil Hornik, a New York native who had just passed the
Washington State bar exam after graduating from University of Puget Sound Law
School in Tacoma, Washington. Phil had joined the NLG law student chapter at
UPS. Like the rest of us, he had no prior experience with immigration law, but
promptly caught up and passed us in the “quick studies” club. Phil handled
individual cases, drafted legislation and sued the INS and local law enforcement
challenging their arrest and detention policies. Phil later when into private
practice in Portland specializing in immigration which he continues today.
Vicenta Montoya, Miguel Luengo and Ramón Ramírez rounded out the
hiring parade in the fall of 1977. Vicenta had taken a break from law school in
Nevada and come to Vancouver, Washington where her fiancée was stationed in
the military. She took the lead role in WVIP‟s legal research, training and
development of practice manuals for lawyers and community organizations. After
a year working with the Project, she returned to law school and became an wellknown immigration lawyer practicing in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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Miguel and his family entered the U.S. in 1974 as political refugees; he was
sixteen at the time. He and his father had been active in the Chilean Socialist
Party. The Pinochet government had imprisoned and tortured his father. At
WVIP, Miguel also worked on outreach. He also revised and polished our
materials in Spanish, given that he had more formal education in Spanish than the
other six of us combined.
Ramón arrived from Seattle, but he had lived and studied in Oregon off and
on for two years, enrolled in the Colegio‟s College Without Walls program. At
WVIP, Ramón worked on community outreach and individual immigration cases.
He had grown up in East Los Angeles, where the Chicano Moratorium Against the
Vietnam War and the United Farm Workers boycott politicized Ramón as a young
teenager. He came to Olympia, Washington to attend St. Martins University, but
transferred to the University of Washington, where he was a leader of Movimiento
Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA, the Chicano student organization), and
then to the Colegio.
Ramón and I have worked together since we both took part in a press
conference supporting Colegio on Halloween, 1977. After meeting Cipriano, I
had written an article on the Colegio‟s struggle for the Scribe, Portland‟s
alternative weekly newspaper and I had stayed active in the Colegio‟s defense. At
the press conference, held at Aguila, Inc., a social service agency in Portland
where Cipriano worked, I represented WVIP.
Though two days shy of his 23rd birthday, Ramón spoke with the force and
directness of a seasoned activist. He also stood out because towered over me and
the other speakers. His three-inch-high „fro extended his 6‟ 2” frame, earning him
the nickname “La Palma” (the palm tree), I later learned.
“I remember you,” Ramón said, turning to me cheerfully after the press
event. From the look on my face, he gathered that I didn‟t recall meeting him
before, so he helpfully refreshed my memory. “I came to your house in Portland
last July from Washington with the delegation from the Yakima Valley
Immigration Project for that meeting, you know, the one you forgot was
happening.” His face registered as I recollected one of WVIP‟s more ignominious
moments. He continued without a hint of anger or judgment: “When you
answered the door, you looked like you just got up.” Ramón looked away to more
fully visualize that Sunday morning “Yeah, Theo was really pissed off and tore
into you. He said you all were a bunch of flakes.” Ramón shot a self-conscious
glance in my direction and hastily wrapped up the story. “We came back later and
you folks got it together; it was a good meeting.” I defensively added a little
commentary of my own: “After that meeting, one of us nicknamed Theo „flaming
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asshole‟.” He let out a loud laugh “That fits,” he nodded, a smile lingering as his
laugh tapered off. Over the years, I‟d see that look again many times, a blend of
surprise, recognition and appreciation. I‟d come to associate it with Ramón‟s flair
and zest as a chef, encountering and celebrating sharp but spot-on spicing.
Cipriano had played a pivotal role in coalescing the forces that formed
WVIP. Once underway, though, Cipriano‟s presence remained peripheral. Only
those unemployed for at least six weeks qualified for the CETA-funded positions.
That requirement ruled out Cipriano; he worked full-time at Aguila. He did make
it his business to recruit others for WVIP staff positions, in particular, Juan and
Ramón. Cipriano would join the WVIP staff full-time for the summer of 1978, but
not step in permanently until Fall 1979, two years after the Project‟s founding.
WVIP‟s political and ideological roots
Cipriano and Ramón were local leaders in Oregon‟s small chapter of
“CASA” based at the Colegio. Better known by its acronym than by its full name-Centro de Acción Social Autónomo (Center for Autonomous Social Action),
CASA was founded in 1968 by Bert Corona and other left-wing activists and labor
organizers in Southern California‟s Mexican community. Cipriano and Ramón,
brought CASA‟s political orientation into the Project.
By the late 70‟s, CASA had major chapters in Los Angeles, Oakland, San
Antonio, El Paso, Chicago and Seattle. CASA‟s chapters and committees sought
to establish or combine workplace and union organizing, community organizing to
oppose repressive immigration legislation, and working class consciousnessraising and international solidarity.
CASA enlisted or helped create ally organizations to defend workers
against deportation and to file lawsuits challenging INS abuses. In CASA‟s view,
undocumented workers‟ vulnerability exposed them to the greatest exploitation in
the workplace. Employers used fear of the INS to manipulate undocumented
workers to accept lower wages and sub-standard conditions, to break strikes, or to
shun unions. CASA‟s response called for enlisting all Mexicans and allies—U.S.
born, lawful immigrant and undocumented—in the defense of undocumented
workers, labor‟s “weakest link”.
WVIP started in the role of ally organization but would gradually broaden
its mission to encompass all of CASA‟s core purposes. We organized community
forums on immigrants rights in sync with national CASA campaigns. We
distributed CASA‟s monthly bilingual newspaper, Sin Fronteras (Without
Borders) containing news of worker, immigrant and civil rights struggles, features
on Third World liberation movements, and editorials with political commentary.
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And though WVIP did not take up workplace organizing until 1980, we early on
adopted CASA primary slogan: “Con o Sin Documentos: Creamos la Riqueza y
Tenemos Derechos” (With or Without Documents: We Create the Wealth and We
Have Rights).
Making a federal—and a state—case out of it
After the García hearing excitement dissipated and the staffing-up process
wound down, we searched for something resembling a routine. Led by Vicenta,
the entire staff contributed to researching and writing training materials which we
published in late 1978 as the Non-Citizens’ Assistance Manual.
Like the Project itself, the Manual tried to simultaneously serve too many
audiences. The opening chapter re-printed the National Lawyers Guild‟s sevenpage summary and political critique of two centuries of U.S. immigration policy.
A two-page narrative, entitled Who Can Help You With Your Immigration
Papers?, which spoke plainly to immigrants, followed a detailed outline called
Criminal Acts Which May Cause Deportation, loaded with the legal jargon and
statutory citations which criminal defense attorneys needed in order to adequately
represent immigrant clients.
The Manual was a logical and valiant response to the immense unmet needs
we encountered at every turn. The Manual took what we were learning on the fly
and synthesized it into some useful nuggets. The Project‟s community outreach
and training targeted lawyers, legal workers, and the staffs of the handful of
community agencies most trusted in immigrant circles. Given the overall scarcity
of immigration expertise, even such modest activities generated a steady flow of
inquiries. Though we honed our material to be concise and precise, the Manual’s
content, we found, seemed to raise as many questions as it answered.
We kept up with the flow of outreach, training and follow-up support,
except when someone—a worker, family member or employer—called in to report
an INS raid or an arrest. At least a few times each week, those calls would also
come in after office hours, ringing at my home via call forwarding—the closest
thing we had to cell phones. We usually had only a few hours to react. First, we‟d
call the INS to confirm whether they‟d arrested the individual(s). Despite our
strained relations, the INS by and large answered our queries. We rarely caught
them misleading or lying to us. If a detainee was still being held in Oregon, we‟d
contact family members or the employer to line up bail money, then race to the
INS office to file a notice of appearance, and hope that the detainee would hold
firm and ignore INS threats and misinformation.
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We lost many more of those races than we won. And in most cases, there
was no race to run. The INS had already deported the person by the time we made
contact. In every case, family members appreciated our prompt efforts and any
information we provided. Dispelling doubt only partially relieved the emotional
sting of delivering bad news.
We frequently received calls reporting suspected INS activity. “INS raid”
had become the first thing most immigrants imagined if a family member didn‟t
show up as expected or if they spotted an official looking vehicle—especially a
light green one—or a plain-looking van with tinted windows. Most “sightings”
proved erroneous but their frequency reflected level of the anxiety pervading the
community.
Once in awhile, we‟d get a call that set off a chain of events which would
occupy us for days. On April 4, 1978 at 10:30 AM, Juan Bocanegra called from
the Portland INS office and informed us that agents planned to transport him to the
huge INS detention facility in El Centro, California, a few miles from the Mexican
border. The deportation hearing he‟d requested would happen there, they told
him. “If they move me, my operation could rupture,” Juan said, his voice wracked
with anguish. On March 14th, while held in the county jail on an INS warrant,
Juan had been stabbed by another inmate. He had undergone emergency
abdominal surgery and spent a week in the hospital.
After talking with Juan, I called INS Director Dahlin. He already knew that
we represented Juan. Our notice of appearance was in their file and I had called
the INS deportation officer a week earlier to re-confirm that.
“Mr. Bocanegra requests that his hearing be held in Portland,” I informed
Dahlin, and summarized the legal basis and medical necessity.
Dahlin called back thirty minutes later.
“You‟re request for a local hearing is frivolous,” he said.
“You‟ve got to reconsider,” I urged.
“You‟re client departs at 12:30,” he droned and hung up.
I called the U.S. Attorney in Portland, Sid Lezak. “We intend to file suit in
Federal District Court right away to prevent Mr. Bocanegra‟s removal,” I told him.
I hadn‟t expected Lezak himself to take my call. His answer surprised me even
more: “I‟m phoning Mr. Dahlin to ask him to refrain from transporting Mr.
Bocanegra until the issue can be heard,” he promised.
At noon, when I arrived at the INS offices, I was told that Juan was already
gone. “I‟m waiting here until Mr. Dahlin agrees to see me,” I told his secretary.
An hour later, she ushered me in. “I demand that you return my client to Oregon
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immediately,” I declared, trying to sound more stern than angry. “Your client is
gone,” Dahlin replied with annoyance.
Back at the office, Phil, Vicenta and Jeanne had started to draft the half
dozen pleadings needed for the lawsuit. As I exited the Dekum Building elevator
and proceeded down the fourth floor hallway, the staccato of three electric
typewriters grew steadily louder. I took a turn typing and composed an affidavit
detailing my conversations with the INS officials and with medical personnel
treating Juan.
While Juan‟s medical condition raised concerns, our primary contention
was that spiriting him off to the El Centro corralón—the “big pen” as immigrants
called it—violated his right to counsel. Few, if any, attorneys were available in El
Centro to serve the thousands of detainees there. A hearing in Portland would
afford Juan his only chance to be represented.
Twenty four hours after the INS rushed Juan Bocanegra out of Oregon, Phil
called the U.S. Attorney‟s office one last time. “They say that Dahlin refuses to
budge,” Phil relayed to us. He gathered up the lawsuit paperwork and set off to
file it. At a hastily-arranged hearing on April 7th, District Court Judge Otto Skopil
Jr. granted our request for a “temporary restraining order” directing Dahlin to
immediately return Juan to Portland. Skopil‟s order excused Dahlin‟s
intransigence by stating that “Dahlin was unaware of the plaintiff‟s precarious
health status.” That fictitious fig leaf couldn‟t disguise the INS‟s naked defeat.
Juan Mendoza and I exited the federal courtroom together. We noticed
Ramón towering over five-foot-three-inch tall Phil, both walking ahead of us with
a spring in their step. “Don‟t mess with Yogi and Boo-Boo,” Juan wisecracked,
conjuring the “Jellystone Park” bears of 1960s TV cartoon show fame . Though it
took me only a few minutes to recover from laughing, my images of Ramón and
Phil were forever altered. “It‟s a good thing that winning isn‟t the only fun we
ever have,” I said to myself.
The ruling in Bocanegra v. Dahlin figured in a much bigger case four
months later in Los Angeles. INS agents raided the Sbicca shoe factory at the
height of a union organizing drive there and whisked seventy workers to Tijuana.
Lawyers allied with CASA cited our case and convinced a federal judge to order
the INS to bring the workers back to Los Angeles because the INS refused their
requests for deportation hearings.
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Part V: Basing operations on the community‟s turf
The move to Woodburn
During WVIP‟s first twelve months, it became ever clearer that our
anticipated battles with the INS would be few and far between. We could
continue to “get the word out” to undocumented immigrants about their rights.
We could not expect that they‟d exercise those rights on the strength of indirect or
superficial connections with us. We could best—and arguably only—establish
those bonds by basing our operations in the immigrant community.
In our first year, we had proven—at least to ourselves—that the INS could
be resisted. We‟d also gained valuable experience in resistance tactics. WVIP‟s
Portland office remained a viable, even critical venue for continuing to learn, to
train, and to launch a quick response to INS activity. We concluded, though, that
to foster and instigate any semblance of sustained resistance, we needed to be
nearer to the heart of the Mexican community.
That meant setting up shop in Woodburn.
In 1978, Woodburn was the closest thing to an epicenter for Mexican
people in the Willamette Valley and environs. Tens of thousands of Mexican,
mostly farmworkers, lived or worked within a twenty-five mile radius of
Woodburn. The number of Mexicans living in Salem, the state capital fifteen
miles south of Woodburn, certainly exceeded the 3,000 who lived in Woodburn.
Given that Woodburn‟s population was one-tenth of Salem‟s, it was the
concentration of Mexican people that made Woodburn unique.
In the late l950‟s, farmworker families began settling in town, leaving the
isolated labor camps on nearby farms. By the time WVIP moved in, the Mexican
community consisted of three main groups: Texas natives who arrived as migrant
farmworkers mostly in the 1950‟s, immigrants from central Mexico who settled in
Woodburn during the late 1960‟s and 1970‟s, and immigrants from Mexico
migrating seasonally to Woodburn from their home base in California. By the late
70‟s, immigrants from Mexico dominated the agricultural workforce and
Mexicans born in Texas—the tejanos—had mostly moved out of farm labor and
into manufacturing jobs, small businesses, social service positions, or farm labor
contracting.
In 1978, Woodburn‟s 10,000 inhabitants also included significant numbers
of Russian immigrants, orthodox “Old Believers” who had arrived from Brazil and
Argentina in the late l960s. Their ancestors had first fled the 1917 revolution in
Russian, heading to China. In 1949, they immigrated to South America to escape
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the Chinese Revolution. Around Woodburn, some Russians quickly became small
farmers or labor contractors who employed Mexican immigrants. Predictably,
tensions developed between Russians and Mexicans, driven by workers‟
perceptions—at least partly well-founded—that Russian growers tended to
demand more and pay less than other growers.
Woodburn also included a neighborhood built in the 1960s called “Senior
Estates,” situated on the town‟s westside near the I-5 interstate freeway. Senior
Estates had attracted a couple thousand retired white folks to the bungalows which
encircle a members-only golf course. Neighborhood leaders managed to enforce a
“no-one-under-55” residency rule. Golf carts puttered down the quiet streets to
and from the nearby Estates shopping center. Mexicans received a chilly
reception in the Estates, even when working there as landscapers or cruising the
garage sales, widely regarded as the best in town.
The City fathers embraced Woodburn‟s burgeoning diversity by adopting
“City of Unity” as the town motto. The City Seal featured a golf-club-toting
retiree, a flowing-bearded Russian, and a sombrero-wearing Mexican and his
donkey. We seldom saw donkeys in Woodburn, but we did encounter enough
asses to merit such official recognition.
Woodburn‟s original, ten-square-block business district hugs the Union
Pacific tracks, the main West Coast railroad artery. Front Street abuts the tracks
and has a dozen two-story, red-brick buildings, most dating from the early 1900s.
In the early 1970s, white business owners and their clientele gradually abandoned
the original town center for bigger and nicer buildings on Highway 99E, on
Woodburn‟s east side. By the late 70‟s, most businesses in downtown catered to
the Mexican community, some operated by tejanos. These business owners had
limited capital to upgrade downtown buildings or they rented from absentee
landlords, giving the district a run-down feel.
On weekends in the spring and summer, especially Sundays, downtown
Woodburn bustled with activity. Whole families came north from Eugene and
south from Longview, Washington—each eighty miles away—and from points in
between to buy fresh sweet bread, tortillas, the latest norteña musical releases,
plus imported boots, clothing, and foods. The “Pix” movie theatre showed classic
Mexican movies to packed houses.
The parking lot near the Pix became the de facto town square where people
hung out, much as they had in their home towns in Mexico. On weekdays, the lot
filled with patients of the adjacent medical clinic, Salud de la Familia, which
primarily served farmworkers on a sliding fee-scale basis.
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On May 12, 1978, we opened a one-room store-front office across from that
parking lot. “It will be open for at least the summer,” the Woodburn Independent
reporter wrote, quoting me. “If we find the funds, we will keep it going,” I
predicted. We hoped to contribute to and unite with Woodburn‟s identity as the
Mexican community‟s cultural and services hub in the Willamette Valley.
The Border Patrol pays a visit
We hadn‟t finished introducing ourselves in the community when, on
October 15th, la migra swept into the fields around Woodburn. “Immigration
arrests 100 at Woodburn,” screamed the Oregon Statesman headline. It wasn‟t
news to us; our phone was already ringing off the hook.
For nearly a week, five agents sped down gravel roads, ran after workers
harvesting cauliflower, searched labor camps, and snagged workers entering a
prominent vegetable processing plant. Four of the agents came to Oregon from
the Border Patrol post at Blaine, Washington. They apparently didn‟t have enough
to keep them busy there at the Canadian border.
The arrests sent shock waves through the Mexican community and rattled
the area‟s tight-knit circle of growers. As the cauliflower began to rot, growers
demanded that Oregon Governor Bob Straub intervene. The day after the
Governor did so, INS Director Dahlin announced that he had suspended the raids.
The agents were “entitled to a day off,” he told the Statesman. Asked why the
INS initiated the operation, he cited “fifty complaints” from people in the
Woodburn area.
By the third day, we had alerted our media contacts and we began
patrolling the streets, following up on phone tips from the community. If we
managed to actually catch the INS in the act, we could offer assistance to anyone
detained. Our presence might discourage the kind of blatant misconduct which
Alfonso García had suffered or permit us to document it and then bring legal
action to challenge it.
Early that afternoon, I got a call from a worker at the Woodburn Day Care
Center. “They‟re parked in our lot,” she blurted. The panic in her voice obviated
any need to ask who. “I‟m on my way,” I replied, trying to sound calmer than she
was. Before leaving the office, I called the Statesman and a couple of Portland TV
stations. “Our crew‟s in the area,” one assignment editor told me. “We‟ll radio
them.”
As I drove into the Center‟s lot, I spotted the Border Patrol cruiser parked
there. Just inside the main door, I found the Center director standing in front of
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two agents on either side of a young woman holding a baby. “He just came in
here and wanted to get the baby,” the director said later. “They came in through
the side door—I didn‟t see them until they were in the hallway. They mentioned
something about there being an alleged illegal alien and I told them to kindly go
around and enter through the front entrance,” she continued. Irritated about the
delay, one agent then threatened to arrest her for “harboring.” “Legally, we do not
release a child to anyone,” she recalled telling him.
The agents had come to get eighteen-month-old Luz Elena Magallanes, a
U.S. citizen. They had Luz Elena‟s mother, Celia, in custody. They had also
arrested Luz Elena‟s father, Rodolfo. Celia refused to sign a “voluntary
departure” form unless they took her to pick up Luz Elena.
I didn‟t know Celia but I hurriedly told her that she had a right to a hearing
and didn‟t have to accept immediate deportation. “My child is sick,” she
responded and burst into tears. The director turned to the agents and, in an
increasingly angry tone, described the hospital treatment Luz Elena had recently
received for abnormal growths. One of the agents stormed out. “He‟s probably
going to call for back-up,” I told myself.
Just as the agent reached his cruiser, a television van pulled in next to it. A
cameraman jumped out, camera already in hand. He and the reporter walked
swiftly into the Center. “We‟re asking that this woman be released on her own
recognizance because she has a sick child,” I declared as the filming rolled.
Reporter and camera whirled around to the agent for a response. The look of
panic had shifted to him; he froze.
Within minutes, back-up rolled in. But it was “ours”, not theirs: another
television crew. They began filming the agent talking on the radio with his
superiors. A few minutes later he hung up handset and came back into the Center,
the second film crew in tow. “We‟re going to bring her husband here and release
them both into your custody,” the agent announced, scowling at me. “You better
bring them to the INS office tomorrow at 1 PM.” Both agents left the Center and
sat, stewing, in their patrol for half an hour until another cruiser arrived with
Rodolfo in the back seat. The tearful family reunion released all the pent up
tension and fear. The cameramen couldn‟t get enough of it.
Our first in-person encounter with INS was seen by thousands on the sixo‟clock news. The Statesman ran a color photo of a relieved mother and child on
the front page.
Though we‟d prevailed in a highly visible clash, the streets would remain
deserted for days as immigrant families hid, hoping not to hear a knock at the
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door. For them, that meant no work, no school, no medical appointments, and no
food shopping. They waited for some “all clear” sign with no idea of when it
would come or who would send it.
The INS deported 156 immigrants that week. We had “rescued” two, at
least for the time being. Though media accounts of the showdown at the
Woodburn Child Care Center portrayed INS as spiteful and outmaneuvered, we
hardly felt like “winners.”
Driving a wedge between local law enforcement and the INS
As we drove around Woodburn attempting to pick up the INS‟s trail, we
stumbled upon a practice that would shape our anti-migra strategy: local police
cooperating on raids.
Our legal research had previously turned up U.S. Attorney General memos
clearly delineating that immigration enforcement was strictly a federal matter.
Local officers had no authority to initiate action but they could act under the
express direction of INS agents, such as standing guard over those whom INS had
arrested. At the scene of a raid, local police could maintain order and secure
premises.
We had followed developments in a lawsuit that WVIP co-founder Rocky
Barilla had brought against the INS, the Polk County Sheriff and the Police Chief
of Independence, a small town south of Salem and home to hundreds of
farmworker families. In May, 1978, Rocky won a federal district order, issued in
Portland, which barred the town police officers and county deputies from
stopping, questioning, or detaining individuals in order to determine their
immigration status.
Since Independence is only thirty miles from Woodburn and given that the
court order attracted press attention, we assumed that Woodburn Police Chief Lyle
Henderson took notice and had instructed officers to act accordingly. Therefore, it
surprised us to come upon Woodburn Police openly and proactively assisting INS
agents. “We heard they were on Corby Street at Max‟s apartments” Ramón
recounted later. We all knew that decrepit tri-plex well because Ramón, Cipriano
and I shared a house just four doors away. “The Woodburn cops were pointing
out to the migra which units to target. When I challenged them, the migra asked
me for my papers. I just stood there and gave them a look like „Go ahead and bust
me, but otherwise I‟m not moving as long as you‟re here‟.” The raiding party
decided to withdraw rather than have us watch them as they continued to yell for
the presumed occupants to open the door. We considered it another “save,”
though we couldn‟t say how many people actually escaped arrest that morning.
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A few days after the raids subsided, we made an appointment with Chief
Henderson to present our complaint about his officers‟ actions. What little we
knew about Henderson suggested that he fit the stereotype of the small rural town
police chief. Though not a grower himself, he had a small horse ranch outside of
town.
The receptionist led Cipriano, Ramon and me into Henderson‟s office. He
didn‟t get up but motioned for us to sit. We took the hint and Cipriano got right to
the matter at hand. “Your officers are enforcing immigration laws. That‟s illegal
and we want it to stop. If it doesn‟t, we‟ll bring legal action,” Cip told him in a
firm but matter-of-fact tone. Henderson swung his cowboy-boot-wearing feet off
his desk, stood up and said: “Thanks for coming in. Now I‟ve got to go feed my
horses.” He walked out, leaving us sitting there. As far as we could tell,
Woodburn Police collusion with the INS ceased that day, but Police-community
relations would remain mired in mutual distrust and suspicion for at least another
decade.
Another important facet of local law enforcement cooperation with the INS
involved immigrants detained in local jails on state or municipal criminal charges.
Organizing and conducting raids taxed INS manpower and strained their
logistics budgets. The Portland INS office had less than a dozen agents. A major
raid might take weeks to arrange and still not guarantee results. Leads might have
gone stale, workers might evade apprehension, and “complications”—like WVIP
observers—might crop up.
By enlisting county and city jailers, however, the INS could dramatically
improve their effort-to-results ratio. Normally, those arrested for traffic or minor
criminal charges were quickly released on bond or personal recognizance. In the
case of Spanish-speaking detainees, local jailers—encouraged by the INS—
frequently asked: “tienes papeles?” (do you have papers?). If detainees said “no,”
refused to answer, or responded unconvincingly, the jailers would hold them until
an INS agent arrived. INS detention officers developed a circuit, stopping at local
jails about weekly to interview and remove detainees they deemed deportable.
Hundreds of immigrants fell into this trap every year in Oregon.
Local jailers, our research determined, had no more right to inquire about
immigration status than local police should on the streets. What‟s more, if the INS
asked jailers to detain suspected—or admitted—undocumented immigrants, that
“hold” automatically should expire in twenty-four hours. If INS agents didn‟t
arrive at the jailhouse door by then, jailers had to remove the hold. That would
clear the way for the detainee to post bail on the local charges.
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In July, 1978, WVIP brought a federal lawsuit against the eastern Oregon
county of Umatilla. Jailers there—150 miles east of Portland—had held Trinidad
De La Cerda for three days on an INS telephonic “hold.” In October 17, 1979, the
federal district court in Portland ordered the INS to send written notification to all
county sheriffs and to the district attorneys in Oregon‟s thirty-six counties about
the “24-hour” rule. The notification obliterated the “no one told us” defense.
Violations could therefore be costly. Umatilla County paid De La Cerda a $1,000
settlement for forty-eight hours of illegal detention.
Our broader struggle to minimize local enforcement of the federal
immigration laws went on to engage the Oregon Attorney General, who issued an
opinion reinforcing our position. In 1987, the Oregon Legislature wrote the local
enforcement prohibition into state law. The lead legislative proponent was State
Representative Rocky Barilla, elected in 1986.
Eventually, the advent of “community policing” would broadly
institutionalize policies of “non-cooperation” with the INS. Community policing
prized trust between law enforcement officers and the community they policed.
Encouraging all victims of or witnesses to crime to come forward meant
eliminating barriers such as fear of deportation.
Community policing would come to Woodburn and to Marion County, but
it had not yet emerged on July 30, 1983. At 5:30 AM that day, a squad of Marion
County sheriff‟s deputies stormed a small labor camp one mile north of
Woodburn. Armed with shotguns, the deputies roused the camp residents and led
them away at gunpoint. A Marion County judge had ordered them detained for
medical quarantine. Two among the sixteen who were arrested had contracted
typhoid fever but allegedly had not sufficiently followed through on the required
treatment.
County health officials locked all sixteen workers in an isolation wing of
the state hospital in Salem. Suspecting that the workers were undocumented,
health officials contacted the INS. The officials apparently fretted about paying
four weeks‟ lodging and hoped the feds would pick up the tab. INS agents
interviewed the workers and issued formal “detainers,” instructing county officials
to notify the INS when the quarantine was lifted.
On August 20th, the county quietly released the workers without notifying
the INS. WVIP and Salud de la Familia clinic leaders had interceded and
persuaded county commissioners that if the quarantined workers were deported,
other undocumented immigrants would likely forego treatment in the future rather
than risk a similar fate. The commissioners‟ decision enraged the INS who had
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earlier announced their deportation plans. Those plans, the Salem Statesman
Journal newspaper editorialized on August 16th, “stir legitimate fears that if
another outbreak of serious illness occurs, it may not be reported. The health
issue, unlike housing or work issues, affects us all, even the most uncaring
members of the community.” The word “unlike” dismayed us and much work lay
ahead if we hoped to eliminate it.
Still, we had managed to force the county to take some responsibility for
their traumatic, punitive, miserly, and dangerous actions. And we assumed that the
INS stiffed them on the detention bill.
Serving the needs which the community brings to us
As the October, 1978 INS raids around Woodburn receded, immigrant
families started coming out of the woodwork to seek the Project‟s help. We
regarded this as an important shift. Over the Project‟s first eighteen months,
Project staff initiated contact with thousands to offer legal advice and support, but
only a few dozen immigrants had come forward on their own.
We attributed this change to several factors. First, as we had seen when
handing out “know your rights” cards in labor camps, undocumented immigrants
understandably regarded with skepticism anyone unknown, especially pertaining
to immigration status. The combination of fresh, stepped up Immigration Service
pressure in close proximity pushed immigrants past their fear.
Second, we became increasingly aware that others before us had promised
help or raised hopes for change, but not delivered it. Usually, they worked for
“anti-poverty” agencies, sometimes more crudely known as “poverty pimps.”
Starting in the mid-1960s, President Lyndon Johnson‟s “War on Poverty”
dispatched massive funding to new federal agencies and to non-profit
organizations established to serve poor people and eliminate poverty. Non-profits
suddenly ballooned with big grants to carry out programs, many with sketchy
strategies and flawed oversight. They staffed up on the fly, mostly attracting
inexperienced idealists and some outright opportunists and rip-offs.
In the Willamette Valley, anti-poverty organizations—notably the Valley
Migrant League—fanned out in the farmworker community to assess needs and
recruit clients. Anti-poverty programs focused on housing, education and job
training; some programs functioned reasonably well; others flopped. Eager to
serve everyone, the idealists raised expectations that the organizations couldn‟t
meet. Motivated only to fulfill outreach and enrollment quotas, the opportunists
made promises knowing or callously ignoring that they couldn‟t be kept.
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Anti-poverty agencies accumulated an ample portion of unsatisfied
participants and disgruntled prospective clients awaiting help that never
materialized. Though immigration services figured only marginally in antipoverty programs, the community undercurrent of disillusionment with promisemakers initially put us in an unfavorable light. People in difficult straights cherish
what little hope they could sustain and they resented “community organizers” who
squandered it.
Ramón, Cipriano and Juan Mendoza knew the anti-poverty organizations—
and their reputations—well. Though we therefore understood the community‟s
ambivalent reaction to our outreach, we found it galling to have so little (compared
to those organizations) and still have to work our way out of a credibility deficit of
their making.
Five months of hard and consistent work in Woodburn was paying off as
word spread about our assertive and modestly successful confrontations with the
Immigration Service at the Woodburn Child Care Center and on the streets. We
had the first unambiguous indication that barrio presence mattered: immigrant
families walking through our office store.
A few sought information on a family member believed deported in the
October raids. Even when the news was bad, the momentary shock gave way to a
confident prediction: “he‟ll be back in a few days.” In those days, crossing the
border was dangerous and smugglers charged a couple hundred dollars, but most
Mexican immigrants seemed to take deportation in stride because they took reentry for granted. INS agents and detainees would needle each other with
comments like “see you back in Oregon next week” as the INS bus unloaded at the
Mexican border. Today, increased border security have astronomically increased
the dangers and costs (smugglers now charge thousands) . No one‟s joking any
more.
Some who came by the office wanted to know exactly how to be prepared
if the INS came to their homes or workplaces. We had our advice down to five
points: start saving for your INS bail, make sure a trusted (preferably
documented) person has access to that money, keep our phone number on your
person, call or get word to us if you‟re arrested, and don‟t sign anything. Even
though we always added a sixth point—“we can‟t guarantee that this will work”—
families walked out the door more hopeful because we‟d given them a concrete
plan and our commitment to back it up.
The one question we heard every day was: “can I fix my papers?” A look
or tone suggested that many who asked already intuited that the answer was “no.”
We‟d routinely respond with two stock questions: “Do you have any immediate
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family member who is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident? Have you
been in the U.S. at least seven years?” When neither elicited a “yes”, we‟d briefly
enumerate the narrow categories for legal immigration, offer our “five point” plan,
and invite people to help us organize for more responsive immigration laws.
Once in awhile, the answer to the first of our two “screening” questions was
“yes.” We‟d encounter with a family who had or could file what we called a
“visa” case. If they could get through the rather convoluted paperwork, a family
member—spouse, child, or parent—could become a lawful permanent resident.
When we launched WVIP, we pledged ourselves to Migra resistance, first
and foremost. The unpredictable, high-stakes, and fast-moving work of
deportation defense required that we not become mired in “visa” casework. We‟d
managed to stick to that regime. Rather than refusing to handle visa cases, we
planned to train community people to act as lay counselors under our supervision.
The October, 1978 raids challenged the sufficiency of that response. More
specifically, Juan González did. He brought a fistful of INS paperwork into the
WVIP office [two weeks] after the Border Patrol agents had returned to Blaine. As
González looked on, Juan Mendoza sifted through the forms.
“You have a Fifth Preference case, because your sister is a U.S. citizen”
Mendoza told him.
González cut right to the chase: “Can I get a permit for me and my family?”
“Yes,” Mendoza replied.
“Can you help me?” González pressed.
“We don‟t handle visa cases, but we can give you advice or refer you to a
lawyer, and we‟re planning on training community people to assist people with
cases like yours,” Mendoza answered, trying to sound as helpful as possible.
“I don‟t have money for a lawyer. I can‟t read or write in English, so I
don‟t know what I‟d do with advice,” González countered.
Mendoza and González stood in silence, both eyeing the paperwork that
wasn‟t going to complete itself.
“How do you help people?” González asked, genuinely puzzled.
“We try to get people out of jail if La Migra arrests them and we
represent them at their deportation hearings,” Mendoza explained.
“So do I have to wait until they arrest one of us and then you‟ll help me?”
González asked, his expression and tone simultaneously registering the irony.
It could have been that no one ever put the question quite that plainly or
had raised it in the sobering period that follows the adrenillin rush of raid
response. It could have been the backdrop beyond Juan González‟s left shoulder,
the street level view through our store-front‟s twelve-foot-wide picture window
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looking out on that parking lot, the center of the Willamette Valley‟s Mexican
community‟s universe.
The syntax, circumstance, and setting combined to spotlight a path that
suddenly seemed as absurdly obvious as Juan‟s González‟s question. It set in
motion a profound change in our thinking, in our strategy and in our daily work.
We set a new course, one which required different answers, including the one we
gave to Juan a few weeks later.
The answer was: “No, you don‟t have to wait until INS arrests you.”
Building a community base one visa case at a time
We had handled a few immigrant visa cases before Juan González‟s, so we
had some idea what it might mean to take on a sizeable caseload in addition to our
deportation defense work. Visa cases rapidly came to dominate the Project‟s
service work. By the end of 1979, we had accumulated one hundred cases in
progress. The percentage of deportation defense cases rarely exceeded twenty.
Helping immigrants obtain legal status became our movement‟s longest
standing program. We would assist roughly 6,000 families over the next thirty
years.
The average case took nine months to a year, including several stages of
form filing each followed by months of waiting. Every case involved a minimum
of fifteen forms, documents, translations. The paperwork trail started at the INS
and ended up at the U.S. Consulate in Mexico. The INS generally allowed the
applicant to remain in the U.S. until the applicant‟s appointment for final
processing at the Consulate. If, at that appointment, the consular official found
something askew, the applicant could not return to the U.S. until the glitch was
resolved. Mistakes proved costly and seriously disrupted lives.
Before we fully enmeshed ourselves in the realm of immigration red tape,
we had launched our experiment to train community volunteers to be visa
“counselors.” We envisioned creating a weekly “visa clinic” where families could
bring their paperwork or just their questions. The volunteers, under our
supervision, would give advice, fill out forms, and prepare English translations of
required documents, such as Mexican birth certificates. Though we were aware of
no organization applying the “clinic” strategy to immigration processing, we knew
that community organizations had employed that strategy for similar purposes.
The United Farm Workers‟ service centers organized clinics on income tax return
preparation. Both Cipriano and I had trained as miliary draft counselors in high
school and volunteered at draft counseling clinics.
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We recruited a small group of individuals we believed to be wellintentioned and reasonably capable. In the initial training sessions, the group
struggled to master the visa process minutia. Our vision of counselors requiring
minimal supervision began to cloud.
Our enthusiasm for the clinic approach evaporated altogether when one
trainee, María Ochoa, took what we had taught her and became a free-lance
“immigration consultant.” We already knew of at least three such rogues in the
Portland area, but none based in Woodburn or Salem. Like them—and many
hundreds more in the Southwest—she called herself a notaria or “notary”, as in
“Notary Public”. She paid the negligible state fee and received the certificate
entitling her to witnesses signatures and documents. A notario publico in México
is a lawyer who holds a quasi-judicial position. María and her fellow posers took
full advantage of the assumptions which Latin American immigrants bought to the
term “notaria” when they encountered it in the U.S. In 1987, we persuaded
legislators to amend Oregon law and prohibit a Notary Public from using the term
“notario publico.”
Over time, Ochoa defrauded hundreds by charging outrageous sums for
incompetent or nonexistent legal work. Among this turn of event‟s many
horribles, it reflected poorly on our training and screening and we shuddered at the
thought of turning out more María Ochoas. We folded the clinic.
Though we often found visa paperwork tedious, we relished the joy, relief,
and appreciation that every family expressed when they attained permanent legal
status. We never advertised our visa services. Word of mouth through family,
home-town, and workplace connections brought us a steady—and occasionally
overflowing—stream of work. And of community supporters.
We often didn‟t really get to know the families on a personal level. In a
few cases, we felt grateful not to be drawn into the family‟s painfully evident
internal dysfunction. We did grow close to some of the families we served and
they figured among our most stalwart defenders. Like Juan González.
Juan lived with his wife and four teenage sons in a small dilapidated farm
house next to three deteriorating mobil homes on the outskirts of Woodburn. It
was just the kind of hamlet that the INS looked to raid. Juan‟s wirey frame, ruddy
skin, and ever-present non-filter cigarette contributed to his hard-living
appearance. His excitable demeanor and survivor mentality spurred him to
challenge our “deportation defense only” policy. His sharp wit and good-natured
banter, lighting a twinkle in his eye and triggering a mischievous smile, leavened a
personality that might otherwise seem pushy or obnoxious.
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For Juan‟s wife, María, no office visit was complete without her insistence
that we stop by their home soon. When we did, there was no leaving without
another plate of food—to go. At some point she realized that none of our
respective mothers lived in Oregon. From then on, she made a point of calling if it
seemed like we hadn‟t visited in a while.
Juan had grown up on an ejido—communal farm land—in western state of
Jalisco. He had spent his entire adult life working in the fields, mostly on the U.S.
West Coast. You name it; he‟d planted or harvested it. He deputized himself to
scout and report sightings or rumors of INS activity. The instant he heard that his
youngest son, Javier, had died in a car accident, Juan came to straight to our
office. He utterly broke down as he told us, trusting that we‟d help him find the
will to go on.
Bonds this strong endured well beyond the gut-wrenching day when we had
run out of tactics to stave off a client‟s deportation. For the Project‟s visa clients,
the elation of holding a freshly minted lawful permanent resident “green card”
might fade, but the memory of our instrumental role did not.
I found special meaning in those relationships. I had moved to Woodburn
from Portland when we opened the WVIP office there. Immigrant families‟
readily accepted me and included me in their social circles and events. They made
a place for me, often an honored one. Without intending it, I had stepped into
roles that I had seen my father occupy via his law practice: making a confusing
and intimidating system intelligible, moving those he counseled to face difficult
realities and decisions, and being there for people—and taking effective action—
when it really mattered.
As I had observed growing up, certain duties and expectations accompanied
those roles. For my father, they included phone calls at home on evenings and
weekends from clients. My co-workers and I received many such calls. We also
found that a stop at the market rarely took less than forty-five minutes. An
increasing number of immigrants felt entitled to buttonhole us in the produce aisle
for an impromptu consultation.
“Sell the boat”
Unlike firefighters, who hear an alarm bell they know signals an
emergency, we never knew which phone call would spark a deportation defense
mobilization. On May 16, 1979, four days after our first anniversary in Woodburn,
the alert was delivered in person. That morning, the INS raided a house located
less than 200 yards from our office.
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Right from the start, the INS arrests of Raul Ramírez Sr. and his wife Petra
struck us as strange. We knew that Raul and Petra were U.S. citizens born in
Texas. Why would a large INS squad descend on their home? We promptly
learned that the INS had arrested another seventeen people there, all allegedly
undocumented immigrants living in the Ramírez‟s basement. The INS charged
Raul and Petra with the federal crime of “harboring” those seventeen immigrants.
Within hours, the Ramírezes posted two hundred dollars bail and returned
to Woodburn. The seventeen workers, however, remained in federal custody,
lodged in the Polk County jail thirty miles from Woodburn, as “material
witnesses.” Despite dogged advocacy by WVIP and the Federal Public Defender
in Portland, the workers spent fifteen days behind bars. At that point, eleven were
deported, their testimony against the Ramírezes no longer useful, and we
eventually won the release of the other six. Raul and Petra later plead guilty to a
misdemeanor count, paid a small fine and were place on unsupervised probation.
Salem‟s daily paper, the Statesman-Journal, slammed the INS‟s
“insensitivity to human values.” They pointed out that “overloading the Polk
County jail—so some of prisoners must sleep on mattresses on the floor—is just
the latest example.” They characterized the workers‟ detention as the “height of
bureaucratic nonsense.”
In the Mexican community, the case set up a classic “which side are you
on” dynamic. Raul was a small scale labor contractor, employing the workers he
housed in his basement. The Ramírezes elicited considerably sympathy and
support from their fellow tejanos, who viewed Raul and Petra as the victims of
persecution for providing the workers a “service.” To some immigrant mexicanos,
including some of seventeen in jail, the ten dollars per week which each worker
paid to the Ramírezes to live in two basement rooms and share one bathroom,
seemed unremarkable. It was business as usual.
Other immigrants resented what they saw as exploitation. For Cipriano,
Ramon and I, the calculation seem pretty simple and damning. The workers at the
Ramírez house paid a total of $170 per week. We paid $175 rent for a small threebedroom house—per month.
Controversy in the community took an interesting turn when the Ramírezes
sought help from Father Arnold Beezer, parish priest at the St. Luke‟s Catholic
Church in Woodburn. Raul, Petra, and most of their workers attended mass at
St.Luke‟s.
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Raul asked Father Beezer to donate use of the parish hall for a dance to
raise money for the Ramírezes‟ legal defense. “I told them to „sell the boat‟,”
Father Beezer recalled, referring to the late-model outboard parked in the
Ramírezes‟ driveway. Father Beezer‟s bluntness and his message both surprised
us. He had always seemed mild-mannered and conflict-averse.
The St. Luke‟s dance idea never went anywhere. Neither did the boat. We
surmised that Raul and Petra decided to cover their legal bills out of those tendollar-a-week payments.
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Part VI: Organizing for Fair Immigration Reform
No matter how much migra resistance consumed us, we recognized from
the start that it represented, at best, a stop-gap response to undocumented status.
Our deportation defense work forestalled departure for a few. Once underway, our
visa work guided a few hundred people to legal status. That left thousands in
Oregon and millions nationwide in an indefinite limbo. Only a drastic and
progressive change in U.S. immigration laws would replace vulnerability and fear
with security via a path to permanent legal status.
Border enforcement, legalization, “guest” worker visas, national
identification card, due process rights for immigrants and refugees: these big
ticket items, and their packaging into “comprehensive immigration reform,” rose
to prominence in the late 1970‟s. Thirty years later they are, once again, at the
heart of a raging debate.
The ebb and flow of immigration and of immigration debate is certainly
nothing new in United States history. Our cursory study suggested that some
combination of political, economic and demographic factors converged about
every three decades to produce a legislative overhaul. Laws passed by Congress
in 1921 and 1953 restricted immigration and punished immigrants. These laws
reflected the prevailing political climates of their times: fear of socialist and
anarchist agitation and fear of communist influence, respectively.
The national debate we entered
When WVIP came on the scene, the immigration caudron seemed headed
toward another of its thirty-year boil-overs. All around us, we saw fuel for the
fire.
INS patrols and and apprehensions rose dramatically in the 1970‟s. In
1968, the INS arrested 150,000 immigrants, including 30,000 at the borders or
ports of entry. By 1978, arrests had exploded to nearly one million. In Oregon,
six hundred deportations in 1975 shot up to 1,600 in just the first half of 1976.
In Texas and California, the most popular destinations for immigrants who
arrived in increasing numbers from Mexico, state legislatures passed harsh antiimmigrant laws. California enacted a version of “employer sanctions,” fining
employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers. In 1976, Texas ordered
school districts to check students‟ legal status and charge tuition to families of
undocumented children. Federal courts in both states threw out the laws on the
same theory that limited local police enforcement: the U.S. Constitution declared
immigration a federal matter, thus preempting states from acting. In 1982, the
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U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Texas law, affirming the right of all children
to public education. Today, many question whether today‟s Court, dominated by
Republican appointees, will uphold that principle and issue similar rulings.
Localities and states are, once again, passing anti-immigrant ordinances and laws.
Federal court challenges to those laws are surely wending their way to the
Supreme Court.
In 2007, vigilantes calling themselves “Minutemen” conducted armed
patrols at the U.S.-Mexican border, mostly in Arizona. In 1977, it was the Klu
Klux Klan who stood guard near San Diego, making citizen‟s arrests of suspected
undocumented immigrants—actions public blessed of the San Diego police.
Border Patrol officers gave the KKK “Grand Dragon” David Duke an official tour
of the border. At that time, the KKK was still the premiere racist organization in
America. For more than a century, the group had pressed the cause of white
supremacy by terrorizing and murdering African-Americans, Jews and their allies.
The roll-out of major legislative initiatives rounds out the historical
parallels between 1977 and 2007. President Carter unveiled his “Immigration
Plan” in August, 1977, eight months after taking office. The Plan‟s centerpiece
provision offered immigrants permanent legal status to undocumented immigrants
if they could prove seven years residence in the U.S. For most of those in the
country less than seven years, the Plan created a five-year temporary status, but
left decision on their ultimate fate to a later date. Carter also proposed to double
the number of Border Patrol agents, to create a national identity card, impose
employer sanctions, and to add billion of dollars to loan and aid programs for
countries “sending” immigrants to the U.S. (hoping to reduce that flow).
The Plan drew immediate and vociferous criticism from conservatives and
from radicals, including us. Moderates, liberals and business interests gave the
Plan, at best, a tepid response. Though the Democrats controlled the Congress, the
Carter Plan stalled almost immediately upon arrival.
We dismissed out of hand President Carter‟s call for more immigration
enforcement. Militarizing the border would only cause more suffering and do
nothing to address the economic desperation that drove immigrant workers to
enter the country unlawfully, often at great personal risk. We predicted that
implementation of a national ID card would prompt law enforcement officers
would single out brown-skinned people, regardless of citizenship, for scrutiny.
Employers would cite fear of sanctions to justify discrimination against Latinos in
hiring or to camouflage the firing of pro-union workers. Both measures would
aggravate entrenched tendencies to discriminate based on perceived “foreign”
appearance.
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Employer sanctions also would undermine our legal strategy for resisting
deportation. Workers arrested by the INS who rejected immediate departure,
withstood INS pressure, and posted bond, would be barred from resuming
employment during the drawn-out process of contesting their deportability.
Without employer sanctions, an employer did not risk a fine for allowing a worker
to return to work while free on bond.
Rather than fining employers for hiring undocumented workers, we
advocated aggressive and coordinated enforcement of labor laws. This strategy
contemplated INS cooperation in place of repression. When labor enforcement
agencies encountered employers violating wage and safety laws, affected workers
who were undocumented would be offered temporary legal status. Workers could
thereby assist the investigations, press claims for wages or damages, and help
neutralize any competitive “advantage” which employers had derived by hiring
undocumented workers. California labor agencies persuaded the INS to join a trial
run targetting in the garment industry in Los Angeles, a sector notorious for slavelike working conditions and a chronic target of INS raids. The results were
promising but federal authorities allowed the experiment to wither.
In 1977, we united with the national call that undocumented workers should
receive legal status simply because they contributed to the U.S. economy. This
stance remains a righteous one but it was never particularly realistic or politically
viable. More recently, in the anti-immigrant climate that intensified after
September 11, 2001, the national immigrants‟ rights movement—us included—
increasingly shifted to calls for “earned legalization.” To become “legalized,”
undocumented immigrants would have to pay a stiff fine plus application fees,
continue to work or study, learn English, pay back taxes, and pass security and
medical screenings.
Thirty years ago, we were not nearly that pragmatic. We rejected the Carter
Plan‟s avenues to legal status as woefully limited and uncertain. Though we
couldn‟t join them in Los Angeles on December 31, 1977, we raised a glass to the
National Coalition for Fair Immigration Laws and Practices and their New Year‟s
eve party slogan: “Make 1978 the Year for Unconditional Amnesty.”
The debate within the debate
On October 28, 1977, WVIP sent a half dozen delegates to a major national
Chicano-mexicano convening on immigration in San Antonio, Texas. Two
thousand activists congregated, mostly to hear speeches by national Chicano
leaders and to debate resolutions delineating a common analysis and position—
what we called our “line”—on immigration policy and politics.
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Contrary to my expectations, the conference offered only a few workshops
analyzing the Carter Plan. This contrasted with my only other comparable
experience attending the National Lawyers Guild convention two months earlier in
Seattle. The Guild‟s meetings delved deeply into the practicalities of legal and
political strategies. As near as I could tell, scant effort was devoted in San
Antonio to concretely planning a national campaign to defeat the Plan. Sessions
consisted of plenaries or factions caucusing. The Friday night opening session at
the El Tropicano Hotel ballroom featured sixteen speakers and ran past midnight,
followed by a reception until 2:00 AM (or so).
After three days of jockeying—public and private, the conference issued a
communiqué declaring total opposition to the Carter Plan, demanding dissolution
of the INS, advocating a “bill of rights” for undocumented workers, and calling for
self-defense tactics against the Klan.
The conference afforded me my first glimpse of national radical politics in
the Chicano-mexicano community. The climactic plenary on Sunday featured
speeches by top leaders, each representing one of the four national organizations
with sizeable contingents there. The speakers outdid each other with forceful
rhetoric but all of them skimped on the specifics about what was to be done. The
speeches throughout the conference captured the moment‟s spirit of worldwide
ideological struggle: communism versus socialism versus capitalism; national
liberation versus colonialism; women‟s liberation versus male chauvinism.
Another unexpected dimension was that blistering attacks were not limited
to the migra, the racist vigilantes and the greedy capitalists. Speakers pointedly
denounced each other‟s organizations and their alleged “unprincipled” tactics
employed to manipulate the conference. The accusations sounded vague, at least
to a peripheral novice like me. Attending the conference did help me to identify
the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) as the group referenced in CASA‟s re-cap,
published in Sin Fronteras. Their editorial lamented “[CASA‟s] manipulation
and division by a „pseudo‟ leftist „party‟, formed by opportunist and leftist
elements produced by the North American middle sectors.”
The speeches—and perhaps the entire conference—generated more “heat”
than “light.” On the final day, high-running emotions propelled Raza Unida Party
leader José Angel Gutierrez to leap on stage, jump over the speakers‟ table, grab
the mic, and fire off a rebuttal to criticism of his Party. Shouts of ¡Abajo! largely
drowned out his harangue. This response seemed to combine a literal meaning—
“get off the stage”—with the customary political one.
For us at least, the energizing atmosphere of a critical mass of activists
engaged in urgent struggle bested the intermittent sniping. In under three months,
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the Chicano/mexicano Left had assembled an impressive show of force against the
Carter Plan and La Migra. Though the internal divisions stymied attempts to form
a national coordinating committee incorporating all factions, the conference
highlighted the need and quantified opportunities to work nationally.
Before we arrived in San Antonio, we had seen ourselves as far from the
“action” centered in the Southwest and DC. The conference put Oregon on the
immigrants‟ rights map and moved us to visualize a role at the national level. In
subsequent convenings and campaigns, we would have a seat at the table. I left
San Antonio feeling much more viscerally that I was part of a broader movement.
For some among us, the social behavior customary at conventions actually
transcended the political squabbling. At the height of the final plenary, I noticed a
member of CASA‟s Seattle delegation walking smartly by, headed for the
elevators to the hotel rooms. In each hand, he carried a tall mixed drink. I found
out later he had a “meeting” with a compañera he had just met. She had arrived
with the Socialist Workers Party delegation. The meeting was, no doubt, an
opportunity to pursue…the debate.
Immigration reform returns bigger and badder
After announcing its immigration plan, the Carter Administration never
seriously re-engaged the issue. Instead, Carter became bogged down grappling
with economic stagnation and escalating inflation. Those, plus the Iran hostage
crisis, which errupted in late 1979, monopolized the rest of his presidency.
On immigration, Carter resorted to the well-worn gambit for covering a
political retreat: he appointed a study commission. The Select Commission on
Immigration and Refugee Policy, composed of sixteen commissioners including
four cabinet secretaries and eight members of Congress, undertook an unusually
robust process which lasted two years. The Commission conducted twelve
regional hearings at which seven hundred witnesses testified.
On March 1, 1981, the Commission published a 450-page final report
putting forward sixty-seven recommendations. Their core elements differed little
from the Carter Immigration Plan. I delivered the Project‟s public comment on the
report: “All this time and money has been spent and they haven‟t come up with
anything different. They need to begin to address the economic disparity between
the U.S. and [immigrants‟] countries. They should address why people want to
come here.”
By the time the Commission‟s report landed on the President‟s desk, Jimmy
Carter no longer sat there. Ronald Reagan had taken the oath of office six weeks
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earlier. Reagan announced his own plan on July 30th. Like Carter, he proposed
employer sanctions, stepped up border enforcement, and temporary legal status for
undocumented immigrants. New components, drawn from Commission
recommendations, included an experimental program bringing in 50,000 “guest”
workers annually and a modest increase in family immigration visas.
On February 22, 1982, Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) and Rep. Romano
Mazzoli (D-KY) introduced their version of immigration law overhaul. Their
positions as immigration sub-committee chairmen lent instant traction to the
“Simpson-Mazzoli” bill. In just under a year, three major initiatives had
materialized, two with bi-partisan backing. For the first time, the champions of
immigration reform had gained significant momentum.
The Carter Plan‟s quick demise short-circuited our intention to organize a
community campaign to oppose it. The Reagan Plan and Simpson-Mazzoli posed
a much more serious threat. Simpson-Mazzoli capitalized on organized labor‟s
backing for employer sanctions (their solution to unfair labor competition) and the
agribusiness lobby‟s embrace of a “guest” worker program. The latter especially
alarmed us because it signaled a revival of the Bracero program.
Between 1942 and 1964, the U.S. imported more than four million
Mexicans as temporary workers, mostly in agriculture and railroad jobs. Their
collective nickname, braceros, meaning those who work with their arms, branded
them as somehow comparable with beasts of burden. Not surprisingly, the
treatment they received often comported with that image. The Bracero program
became synonymous with long, hard hours, low wages, total employer control,
and barracks-style housing segregated from society.
A bracero’s visa authorized him to work only for a specific employer.
Changing employers without permission or going on strike subjected the worker to
deportation. The program directed employers to withhold a portion of wages and
send it to the worker after he had returned to Mexico. Tens of millions of dollars
never made it into workers‟ hands.
Growers occasionally and effectively deployed braceros to break strikes
mounted by other farmworkers. In May 1951, the nascent National Farm Labor
Union organized a strike in the Imperial Valley melon harvest, near CaliforniaMexican border. Protected by the El Centro police, 4,000 braceros already in the
vicinity flooded into the melon fields. Though the Bracero program expressly
forbade strikebreaking, the Department of Labor dragged its feet on the Union‟s
complaint. The stike collapsed; eventually, so did the Union.
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The Bracero program had begun as a short-term measure to remedy labor
shortages during World War Two, but it became a mainstay for agribusiness. The
program peaked in 1959 at about 450,000 workers —nearly four times the highest
annual total during the War. Pressure from organized labor and leaders like César
Chávez finally shamed the Congress into terminating it, eighteen years after the
program was originally scheduled to end.
Talk of reinstating a massive importation of temporary laborers—re-cast as
“guests” to connote friendlier treatment and more dignified standing—hit a raw
nerve for Lee G. Williams. On April 30, 1980, Williams, a retired U.S. Labor
Department official who directed the Bracero program from 1959 until 1964, told
the Dallas Morning News that the program “was nothing short of „legalized
slavery.‟” He elaborated: “The braceros were hauled around like cattle in Mexico
and treated like prisoners in the U.S.” As for the Bracero program‟s beneficiaries,
he sounded equally blunt: “It was purely a money-grabbing scheme by the
corporate farms.”
We would repeated Williams‟ damning remarks every chance we got. The
immigration (and “guest” worker) debate‟s never-ending nature ensured that we
would have ample opportunity.
Organizing “total opposition”
Like Carter, Reagan announced an immigration initiative within months of
taking office. Reagan inherited an immigration caldron bubbling more vigorously,
thanks to the federal government‟s high-profile failure to anticipate and manage
the “Mariel boatlift” which had suddenly brought 125,000 Cubans to U.S. shores
in May, 1980. During Carter‟s presidency, the INS had logged another four years
futilely attempting to staunch Mexican immigration. Reagan‟s long-time cronies
in California agribusiness implored and expected him to deliver a dependable and
compliant labor supply.
In this context, we took the Reagan Plan‟s unveiling on July 30th as our cue
to organize a broad, active and open-ended opposition campaign. Four days later,
we sent Cipriano to offer our leadership at the inaugural convening in Washington
D.C. of the National Immigration and Refugee Network. Cipriano‟s report
confirmed our assessment that the Reagan Plan constituted a potent threat.
Straightaway, we prepared to establish a broad coalition to, as we put it,
“stop” the Reagan Plan. More realistically, we sought to slow its progress by
raising public awareness, especially among key ally groups who could mobilize
pressure on Oregon‟s two U.S. Senators and five congressional representatives.
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The coalition could also become an important vehicle to catalyze public actions
against stepped-up INS activity in Oregon.
On November 7, 1981, two weeks after the Reagan Plan was introduced in
Congress, we assembled fifty activists at the American Friends Service Committee
meeting house in Southeast Portland and founded the Oregon Coalition for
Immigrant and Refugee Rights (OCIRR). Three days later, at a Portland press
conference to introduce the Coalition, we came out swinging. “We declare total
opposition,” Ramón announced, quoting the Coalition‟s unanimous verdict on the
Reagan Plan. “It‟s a Plan that creates racial hysteria, it pits the Mexican worker
against U.S. worker, and it violates the rights of people in this country,” Ramón
proclaimed. “The „guest‟ worker program would create a „reserve army of labor‟
to break strikes,” he added before reprising Williams‟ “legalized slavery”
accusations.
The Oregon Coalition pulled together Latino social service organizations,
Oregon Legal Services staff, the National Lawyers Guild, the ACLU, Latin
America solidarity groups, community action agencies, progressive labor activists
(usually rank and file rather than elected union leaders), Black United Front
leaders, progressive religious congregations and organizations, and political
groups like the Rainbow Coalition. It would remain active for five years but never
expand much beyond a choir of the converted. In that sense, “alliance” might
better describe OCIRR than “coalition.”
With a few exceptions, most OCIRR members, both individuals and
organizations, already shared our analysis and took an active interest in
immigration issues. OCIRR‟s core functions, therefore, were to organize the
supporters we had, to motivate them to get more active, equip them with
information, arguments, and a common message, and coordinate efforts to reach
prospective supporters. Logically, OCIRR‟s three working committees were
publicity, fundraising and speakers‟ bureau.
Though lead time was limited, we prepared OCIRR‟s initiation in a fairly
methodical fashion. Ramón and Cipriano prepared a two-page overview including
topics ranging from an organizational chart to the color scheme for information
packets as a means to quickly divide founding meeting attendees into small groups
while assuring a diversity of work backgrounds in each group. We studied the
CASA Political Commission‟s seven-page political theory document entitled “Our
work in the Coalition for Fair Immigration Laws and Practices”, which began with
a primer on “The Art of Uniting Forces.” Though we considered ourselves less
doctrinaire or dogmatic than some many had encountered in the national
movement, it didn‟t hurt to remind ourselves that, we “win people over through
our clarity, our honesty, our humility and our hard work.”
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We resolved to recruit others to take up key OCIRR leadership roles, but
we expected them consult with us—and, if necessary, defer to the Project—on
major decisions about strategy. For example, we assumed that the Project would
would follow our lead on supporting or opposing specific legislative proposals.
We put forward Ramón as OCIRR Secretary, implicitly understanding that he‟d
“staff” OCIRR. Other WVIP staff would lend a hand as needed, while volunteer
leaders would “do what they could.” Former WVIP staff attorney Phil Hornik
faithfully edited Desalambrar (roughly translated, “take down the wire”), the
OCIRR newsletter. Organizations like the Eugene chapter of Clergy and Laity
Concerned devoted major staff time to OCIRR campaigns.
Right from the start, OCIRR‟s founding Chairperson, Sherry Sylvester, also
stood out. Sherry had grown up in Oilton, Oklahoma, a hamlet thirty miles west
of Tulsa nestled on a big bend in the Cimarron River. Shortly after arriving in
Oregon, I had met Sherry at The Scribe, Portland‟s alternative weekly, where she
was managing editor. She acted on her notion that we get better acquainted by
inviting me to the Mountain Moving Café, a lesbian hang-out decidedly chilly
toward the presence of men. She was both unapologetically Okie (she pronounced
her home town “Alton”) and feminist. She took pride in her distant relative, Dinah
Sylvester, a fiesty character in the Plymouth, Massachusetts witchcraft trials of the
1660‟s. The determination she brought to Coalition leadership also welled up
from deep in her working class upbringing.
Like us, Sherry had jumped on the funding streetcar named CETA. She
snagged grants four times the amount WVIP received and, virtually over night,
built Women in Transition, a one-stop empowerment and social service center for
women on the move. After leaving Oregon in the late 1980s, she earned a Masters
of Political Management in New York, became a columnist in New Jersey, and
handled communications for high profile political candidates.
The courteous way that Sherry took no guff and kept the Coalition on
course complemented Ramón‟s more freewheeling style as Coalition Secretary.
When Ramón‟s public pronouncements verged on the over-theoretical, Sherry
would chime in with plain statements like “it‟s about cheap labor” or “people are
starving in Mexico because half the food growing on their land feeds us each
winter.”
On March 7, 1982, two weeks after Simpson and Mazzoli upped the
legislative ante, OCIRR organized a major conference in Portland to jump-start the
opposition campaign. We invited Amit Pandya, staff counsel for the National
Center for Immigrant Rights—and our D.C. eyes and ears—to keynote. We
bonded with Amit over his ability to bridge the realms of insider policy
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machinations and grassroots resistance. His knack for visualizing each from the
perspective of the other sharpened our practice, especially thinking steps ahead of
our adversaries. His address to the conference re-affirmed our contention that
Simpson-Mazzoli signaled an historic urgency: “American immigration law gets
revised every generation and when it gets changed, it stays with you for a
generation.”
The conference succeeded in galvanizing the one hundred-plus participants
to action in the subsequent months. We could only imagine how more fired up
people would have been had they heard the stirring performance of Latin
American movement music which Seattle-based Grupo Armar had come to
Oregon to present. Somehow, the group lost its way between Woodburn and
Portland. We had apparently failed to connect with them about the conference
location street address. Since cell phones would not be available for another
decade, Grupo Armar could not contact us and simply returned to Seattle without
playing a note.
Legislation that passed by refusing to die
Though he hailed from Wyoming, far from any international border, and
had no other obvious reason to promote immigration reform, Sen. Simpson used
his cattle-prod style of advocacy to drive his immigration bill forward. On August
17, 1982, the Senate voted eighty to nineteen to approve it. Mazzoli, however,
was no Alan Simpson; the bill died in House of Representatives.
In the next Congress, a resurrected bill squeaked through the House, 216 to
211, on June 20, 1984. The process bogged down again over differences with the
Senate version. Mazzoli retired from Congress that fall. When the new Congress
convened in January, 1985, a much more powerful lead proponent for immigration
reform had surfaced in the House: Rep. Peter Rodino (D-NJ). Rodino, one of the
heroes of Nixon impeachment process in 1973, used his House Judiciary
Committee chairmanship to move immigration legislation.
In the fall of 1986, the bill, now called Simpson-Rodino, seemed once
again poised for failure. Over five years, the legislation had passed the Senate
three times, the House once, been pronounced “dead” many times, undergone
name changes and countless hearings, and alerted by dozens of amendments.
Even as late as October 9, 1986, differences in the House and Senate passed
versions threatened to shipwreck it again.
A final compromise moved the residency cut-off date to qualify for
“amnesty” from January 1, 1980 to January 1, 1982, but deleted protections for
Central American refugees. To appease growers, the compromise required INS to
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seek a search warrant before entering open fields. To satisfy organized labor, the
compromise eliminated a “sunset” (automatic expiration at a future date) on
employer sanctions.
When Simpson-Rodino passed both houses on October17, 1986, its basic
architecture mirrored the 1977 Carter Plan.
What had the Oregon Coalition achieved in the course of this fight?
OCIRR had built a statewide immigrants‟ rights network and interacted personally
with thousands of Oregonians, mostly through presentations to small groups.
Coalition-organized street protests, letter writing and phone calling to
congresssional offices, and mainstream media coverage had established OCIRR as
a player in Oregon‟s debate on immigration and a respected, if junior, partner in
national immigrants‟ rights work. Coalition leaders, Ramón in particular, gained
valuable experience in the high-powered and fast-changing world of Capitol Hill.
When conversations around the Project touched on national affairs, Cipriano
usually turned to Ramón and asked “what‟s the feeling on the „Hill‟?” Ramón
learned not to take that bait.
OCIRR earned the trust and support of Oregon‟s most senior representative
in the U.S. House, Democrat Les AuCoin. During what proved to be the decisive
House debate, AuCoin staff called Ramón repeatedly for guidance on votes. At
our request, AuCoin voted for amendments that, in our view, improved the bill or
ameliorated some of its potential harms, and he voted “no” on final passage.
Our most influential allies operating on Capitol Hill, chiefly UFW Vice
President Dolores Huerta and Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), worked right down
to the last minute and managed to improve Simpon-Rodino‟s legalization
provisions. They won inclusion of the Special Agricultural Workers (SAW)
program along side the “amnesty” program. Nationally, a million farmworkers
would eventually gain permanent legal status through SAW, in addition to the 2.7
million immigrants who legalized through “amnesty.”
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Part VII. Raising political consciousness in the Mexican community
Immigration defense and community service became our calling cards but
they did not encompass our aspirations about the scope of political struggle. We
explored themes and mediums to impact how the folks in our midst viewed the
community, society and the world.
While still at the Colegio, Ramón, Cipriano and Juan had organized small
community forums on struggles near and far, including the Puerto Rican
independence movement, the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende,
and the United Farm Workers boycotts. Most events attracted only a modest
crowd. WVIP-organized community forums also drew small audiences. Clearly,
we needed to try something different: cultural appeal to spice up the otherwise dry
delivery of our messages calling the community to greater awareness.
An easy act to follow
Through CASA, Ramón had developed contacts with street theatre troupes
in California and México. Both Ramón and Cipriano had seen troupe
performances attract and compellingly connect with audiences on political topics.
More than a dozen such groups had sprung up in California alone,
following the example of Teatro Campesino which Luis Valdez had founded in
1966. Luis pulled together farmworkers like himself in Delano to develop skits
which creatively and entertainingly raised worker morale and relieved tension and
fear as the table grape strikes intensified. Actors with no formal training, but with
a flair for mimicry and comedic timing, performed on picket lines and at UFW
meetings. Teatro Campesino players improvised scenes which delighted and
embolden workers by satirizing the growers, supervisors and henchmen.
Costumes and props were spare, sometimes just a sign hung around an actor‟s
neck to identify his or her character.
Political theatre spread rapidly but it hadn‟t taken hold in Oregon. In May
1978, I had helped WVIP co-founder Jesus López incorporate a non-profit named
Teatro de la Comunidad. They based themselves in Washington County, forty
miles from Woodburn. None among us in Woodburn possessed the talent to
creatively contribute, much less sustain a troupe. The group didn‟t make it much
beyond the paperwork, brainstorm and experimentation stages.
The stillbirth of Teatro de la Comunidad only strengthened our desire to
put theatre‟s organizing power to work in Oregon. The only viable option, it
seemed, was to bring groups from California. Their presence might even surface
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aspiring actors in our community who could breath lasting life into a fledgling
initiative like Teatro de la Comunidad.
In August 1978, we arranged for Teatro Primavera to come from Los
Angeles and perform at the annual Fiestas Mexicanas in Woodburn. The Fiestas
began in 1964 as a vehicle for area growers to show their appreciation for harvest
workers. It grew to include the staples of small-town fairs: a funky parade
through town, a queen and court of princesses, food booths, bands, a Saturdy-night
dance and a Sunday Catholic mass. The Fiestas eventually added a low-rider car
competition and a soccer tournament.
By 1978, the Fiestas lasted an entire weekend and attracted thousands to
Woodburn‟s largest public park. The growers had long since fallen away. A local
group, the Latin American Club, had assumed responsibility. The Fiestas was its
sole project. Each year as the Fiestas approached, the Club‟s leadership would
meet at the pink wood-frame house they had purchased with past Fiestas’ net
proceeds.
In June 1978, Juan Mendoza and I attended a Club meeting to broach the
idea of inviting Teatro Primavera to that year‟s Fiestas. Before getting down to
business, the Club‟s half dozen regulars, mostly elderly tejanos, stood and recited
the Pledge of Allegiance. Juan and I stood but remained silent. Turned to face the
flag in the corner, Club members didn‟t notice our act of conscientious objection.
Our divergent approaches to patriotism narrowly avoided torpedoing
collaboration.
When the meeting arrived at “new business,” Juan presented our pitch. For
one thousand dollars, we could bring Primavera‟s six-member troupe. Club
members‟ receptivity surprised us. Though a pretty staid bunch, even they
recognized that the Fiestas line up had become stale. They baulked momentarily
at the price, but we rallied them by volunteering to arrange housing and by
pointing out that $1,000 was less than half of Primavera’s normal rate for out-ofstate performances. The Club unanimously approved the plan, content that they
were getting a good deal.
To supplement Primavera‟s revenue, we organized two benefit
performances, one in Portland intended to attract Project supporters, and the other
in Hillsboro, home base for Teatro de la Comunidad founders. The ridiculously
low admission price of $2.50 helped generate a good turn out, maintaining the
Project‟s visibility outside of Woodburn.
Primavera rolled into Woodburn a dozen strong, twice the number we had
expected. The chance to check out the Willamette Valley enticed several
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understudies and family members to jump on the Oregon bandwagon. Even the
resulting logistical scrambling couldn‟t drampen our enthusiasm to show
California-centric activists our movement outpost. “I had no idea there were so
many mexicanos this far north,” exclaimed Primavera director Rubén Castro as he
surveyed the fifteen hundred who filled the park bleachers. “Woodburn reminds
me of California towns twenty years ago.” We‟d hear those reactions again
countless times over the years from our out-of-state visitors.
Primavera performed La Mímica del Oprimido (The Mime of the
Oppressed). The play silently portrayed workers in a factory struggling with
speed-ups, low wages, and company-store style exploitation. Relying only on
physicality and musical accompaniment, the depiction of workers‟ actions and
emotions as they prepared to confront the factory owner commanded the
audience‟s undivided attention. As the troupe acknowledged the crowd‟s standing
ovation, I noticed Club leaders smiling broadly.
At the Fiestas dance later than night, Rubén and company added a
spontaneous bonus, sitting in with the band and putting on a dance exhibition of
sorts. The Primaverans left Oregon delighted to have come and the Club was
pleased enough to throw in two hundred dollars extra to feed the Primavera
entourage.
Building on that success, we again approached the Club in 1980 to bring
Teatro De La Gente from San José, California. Remembering Primeravera’s
success, they readily agreed to similar terms. Club members asked little about De
La Gente or their intended performance. Had they inquired, we would have
explained that De La Gente was founded in 1970, inspired by Teatro Campesina,
and had become active leaders in TENAZ, the association of fifty Chicanomexicano theatre groups nationally. We might have deflected questions about the
play they‟d present.
De La Gente called it “Soldado Razo” (Buck Private), a play written years
earlier to stimulate opposition to the Vietnam War. De La Gente had revived it as
a response to President Carter‟s July 2, 1980 order re-instating mandatory draft
registration. Registration had lapsed in 1973 as U.S. involvement in Vietnam
wound down. By 1980, left-wing guerrilla insurgencies in El Salvador and
Nicaragua had stirred sufficient anxiety among U.S. military planners to convince
Carter to set war preparations in motion.
Soldado Razo told the story of Johnny, an ordinary barrio youth who
volunteers for military service, ignoring the misgivings expressed by his mother
and friends. The plays most riveting scene comes at the end. The character of La
Muerte dressed in a calavera (skeleton) costume, claims Johnny and turns to the
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audience, slowly panning the crowd, his outstretched arm chillingly pointing to
young men in the crowd. The impact was discernable not only in the faces of
mothers and young men, but by their eagerness to take the buttons we handed out
as they left. “Chale Con El Draft, ” the buttons read, reviving the Vietnam Era
“Hell No to the Draft” slogan.
This time, the Latin American Club leaders came away anything but
content. “The Fiestas is a family-oriented event,” the Club president told us
sourly as he informed us that street theatre‟s run at the Fiestas Mexicanas had
come to an end.
The “art” uniting forces begets the “blend” syndrome
In the Chicano and farmworker movements of the 1960s and 1970s, eyecatching posters held a stature akin to street theatre. Poster production emulated
street theatre‟s artistic, agitational, and, in many cases, amateurish quality. Our
dabbling in poster printing unquestionably qualified as one those cases.
We developed our affinity for posters principally at the Colegio‟s graphic
studio and at Rescate Press in Seattle. Rescate was housed at Centro de La Raza
and operated by members of CASA. They turned out both silk screen and offset
works. Ramón had volunteered at Rescate and picked up basic printing skills.
Carlos Manriques, a bona fide silkscreener, ran the Colegio‟s art studio and taught
Ramón and Juan.
Carlos gave us open access to the Colegio studio and we spent long
hours—up to sixteen at a stretch—“burning” images on a screen using chemical
emulsion and then printing and drying posters. With our level of skill, producing
200 two-color posters took the better part of a week. Since none of us could draw,
we “borrowed” graphic images. We re-produced them using the Colegio‟s line
camera and darkroom to shoot and develop large size negatives, another laborious
process.
Our first product was WVIP‟s informational poster printed on 17” x 22”
stiff, cream-colored paper. At the top, one-inch black letters screamed “CON O
SIN DOCUMENTOS: UD. TIENE DERECHOS” (With or without documents,
You have rights). Below it in red was an eleven-inch tall rendering of the “Ya
Basta Con La Migra” graphic which we had adopted as WVIP‟s coat-of-arms. We
put up the posters at businesses, agencies and labor camps. Each poster had
quantities of WVIP‟s know-your-rights cards stapled at the lower corners.
The power of youthful determination drove us onward. Our next piece—
possibly our best—promoted a benefit we organized in August 1978, the “Raza
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Unity Dance”. We employed the “blend” technique, spreading several wide bands
of color on the screen, each separated by a thin bead of white paint, creating a
shading or rainbow effect when squeegeed across the screen. In the first printing
run, we created a background of bright red fading into yellow and then into
orange. The second run overlayed the lettering plus the stunning logo of the main
musical act, a local Tex-Mex band called “Machete.” We credited the poster with
a major share of the gig‟s smashing success.
The Raza Unity Dance poster encouraged us to get more “serious.” In
April 1980, WVIP moved into more permanent quarters, a small house on Young
Street, two blocks east of the downtown core. We named the house‟s back room
“Taller Gráfico de la Raza” (Mexican graphic studio), part of a grander vision we
called “Centro de Comunicaciones Ricardo Flores Magón.” Magón was a radical
propagandist during the Mexican revolution, persecuted in both Mexico and the
U.S. The U.S. charged him with sedition and imprisoned him in the Leavenworth,
Kansas pennitentiary, where he was assassinated.
In a grant application seeking $434 for set up materials, we described the
Taller as “the only Mexican media arts center in Oregon, offering technical skills
and producing quality materials.” We put a brave face on our expertise:
“experience has shown us to be a good teacher.” We estimated our art squad at
fourteen, all under thirty-five years old. We envisioned artistic activity occupying
every inch of the back room‟s175 square feet.
With the grant, we purchased screen materials (and made our own screens),
paint, a second-hand light table, four hundred clothes pins, and wire. We drilled
holes through each of the pins and strung them on two parallel runs of wire
stretching wall to wall. Presto!: we had a drying apparatus which could handle
two hundred posters.
Neither the Centro de Comunicaciones nor the Taller Gráfico ever
flourished. In fact, they barely crawled along for a couple of years before folding.
In that time, we produced three or four more posters, all featuring the blended
background.
We did extract an important strategic lesson from our silkscreening
experience. The “blend syndrome” became our shorthand for applying the same
old tired approach because it‟s all you know how to do. That we discovered, was
one art we could visualize.
Old-fashioned leafletting
We couldn‟t act, couldn‟t draw or paint, our silkscreening was marginal,
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but we could write a good informational leaflet. Our leaflets were well thoughtout; they set out clear context, analysis and ideas. If they had weaknesses, they
were wordiness and unimaginative lay-out.
A representative specimen was the “Open Letter to the Mexican
Community” which we produced and circulated on March 30, 1981. As the title
suggested, its content approximated an editorial. We fit five hundred words on a
legal sized page, with an English version one side, and Spanish on the other. This
format became standard, not unlike the “blend.”
The “Open Letter” responded to alarm and upset sparked by anonymous
racist flyers found on car windshields in downtown Woodburn. The flyers
declared “open hunting season” on Mexicans. Our Letter denounced the cowardly
act and pointed out other kinds of attacks fed by the same mentality, including INS
raids and documented cases of anglo vigilantes and employers assaulting Mexican
workers in the Willamette Valley.
The Letter‟s main thrust, though, re-directed discussion of bias to issues of
institutional racism, including employment discrimination, police harassment and
inadequate education. “It is not enough to denounce a racist leaflet,” the Letter
concluded. “Fighting racism is the responsibility of all peoples. Our labor has
helped to build Woodburn. We demand and deserve respect for our human and
civil rights, our culture and ourselves.”
We recruited six other groups to join as Letter signers, another regular
feature of WVIP leaflets. Open Letter signers included the Chi-Lites and New
Breed, two local clubs of low-riders, our way of encouraging them to see
themselves as having a political voice.
The Open Letter‟s message caught the attention and won the endorsement
of the Governor‟s Commission on Hispanic Affairs and other mainstream Latino
groups. Their interest, in turn, generated media coverage. A Salem StatesmanJournal article quoted the Open Letter‟s concluding sentences and put on the
record the Woodburn School District superintendent‟s responses to our assertions
about the causes of the high Latino drop-out rate
Though we had no newspaper, we got our editorial points across. We and
our co-signers circulated the Open Letter at schools, agencies and workplaces.
And we placed it on those windshields in downtown.
Studying to raising our own consciousness
In June 1980, we undertook a self-directed study process designed to
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sharpen our critical thinking and set a baseline of shared knowledge. We
conducted ten sessions that summer on labor topics that would become central to
our work: farm labor conditions, the reforestation and agribusiness industries,
labor contractors, and the UFW struggle in California.
Only a handful of us participated, but the study cycle assembled or created
documents that we‟d re-use and build on as we integrated others into active roles.
“You have to know what the hell you‟re talking about,” Cip declared as he
opened the first session. “We‟re dealing with the Man and we have to know his
shit as well as he does. That sparks our creativity.” The process, we promised
ourselves, would build our self-confidence and our trust in each other by pointing
up, admitting and addressing what we didn‟t know.
We carried out our study process under the flag of the “Frente Trabajador
Autónomo” (Autonomous Worker Front), an entity we conceived to be a “party”
overarching our “organizations.” Like the Taller Gráfico and the Centro de
Comunicaciones Ricardo Flores Magón, the Frente shrank from its modest
beginnings to become an unexplained line at the bottom of Project stationery and
the name on an eight-foot wooden plank hanging above the little house‟s front
porch.
Our organizational staying power—and “brand recognition”—resided in
the Project‟s service programs, and our campaigns to organize workers,
community members and outside supporters. Still, we had worked diligently to
craft the name Frente Trabajador Autónomo. In retrospect, the Frente‟s
underwhelming presence and failure to launch suggest that “anonimo”—
anonymous—was more fitting than “autónomo.”
Gathering each year at the intersection of history, culture and ideology
In 1980, WVIP began what would become an annual tradition that lasted a
dozens years: organizing a community celebration of Cinco de Mayo and
International Workers Day. Like many of our programs, the annual event‟s
origins were an amalgam of intention and circumstance.
Having the moved to Young Street location in April, our planned open
house in early May coincided with May 1st and May 5th. For some time, we had
mulled over ideas for organizing a recurring community event with mass appeal
and an explicitly political orientation. The confluence of international, national
and local significance swept us into action. With our customary optimism, we
billed the event as the “First Annual” Celebration, we assumed that we‟d schedule
it for the first Sunday in May, regardless of date.
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In the 1970s, community celebrations of Cinco de Mayo had gained
currency among Mexicans in the diaspora. Commemorating the Battle of Puebla
in 1862, where Mexican forces improbably triumphed over the invading French
Army, Cinco de Mayo was a well-established holiday in Mexico but an obscure
one as contrasted with Mexican Independence Day, September 16th. In the U.S.,
beer companies, led by Anheuser-Busch, have commercialized and sterilized
Cinco de Mayo. It eventually overshadowed Mexican Independence Day. Cinco
de Mayo is now generally perceived as the Mexican equivalent of the Irish‟s St.
Patrick‟s Day. In our celebrations, though, we rejected this trend and played up
Cinco de Mayo‟s anti-imperialist and national pride qualities.
Left-wing political organizations had long commemorated International
Workers Day (IWD). Tens of millions took to the streets annually in Europe,
China, and Latin America (including México) to demonstrate working class
solidarity, but in the U.S., anti-communism had vaporized mass observances
during the 1950s. Ironically, International Workers Day commemorates the 1886
Haymarket Massacre which occured a rally supporting striking workers…in
Chicago, Illinois.
An annual Celebration of IWD and Cinco de Mayo created the opportunity
to re-tell those basic stories of resistance and to re-cast them in contemporary
terms. Many who attended had no idea that anglo workers in the U.S. had a rich
tradition of class struggle, much less that IWD had originated in the U.S. We
transposed the underdog Mexican Army, overcoming the seemingly omnipotent
French, to be immigrants taking on La Migra or farmworkers standing up to the
growers.
In its first years, the Celebration also evolved into a showcase for cultural
groups, especially folkoric dance troupes, and local pop-music bands. That
worked for us because it attracted and entertained a good-sized crowd and it
ensured we‟d have a good amplification system. The Celebrations‟ other standard
features included food, children‟s activities, a keynote speaker, and a WVIP
political message. True to our do-it-on-the-cheap tendencies, we hustled food
donations from local stores and depended entirely on volunteers to produce the
celebration. Cash outlays usually amounted to a few hundred dollars which we
managed to defray by passing the hat and collecting contributions from those in
the food line.
The first three Celebrations all suffered the effects of spontaneity and
disorganization, exacerbated by the location: the less than ample grounds around
that small house. The outdoor musical entertainment at the inaugural Celebration
in 1980 ended abruptly and pre-maturely when the police threatened to confiscate
the sound equipment. We had failed to secure a sound permit because none of us
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knew we needed one or thought to inquire. The following year, a downpour—
typical for early May in the Willamette Valley—scattered the crowd. Not even
half could fit inside the house. Threatening weather the next year finally
convinced us to seek a more suitable venue.
In 1983, we moved the Celebration to the gym at St. Luke‟s Catholic
School ten blocks away. The logistics improved greatly. “We‟ve now established
this Celebration as a community event,” we noted in our internal evaluation. “Now
we need to work more on the political content.”
We chose Cipriano to deliver the Project‟s address that year at the Fourth
Annual Celebration. That role had rotated among Cipriano, Juan and Ramón, the
Project‟s three Latino staff. About two weeks out, Cipriano announced at a staff
meeting that I should take his place on the program. His proposal was met with an
awkward silence. It was as if three cartoon-like bubbles floated above our heads,
each reading: “how will people feel about a white person speaking for a Mexican
organization?” Cipriano answered the question before Ramón, Juan or I
verbalized it. “Larry‟s earned the opportunity and it‟s time we showed that to the
community.” Though we didn‟t disagree with his premise, we all felt uneasy
about his conclusion. But Cipriano‟s views—and especially his infrequent
pronouncements—carried decisive weight.
Cipriano had decided that the time had come to cross a line we had tacitly
drawn. “Next, we‟re going to hear from a compañero who has worked side-byside with us for six years,” Cip announced to the crowd. “At these annual
celebrations, you‟ve seen him around, darting here and there to help keep it all
together. A few people in this gym are able to be here because of Larry‟s role
defending immigrants who face deportation. Today he takes on a new role:
speaking to you on behalf of our organization.”
Over the those six years, I had spoken for the Project many times at forums
or to the media about immigration issues and events. I had always done so
extemporaneously or working from an outline. As I walked on stage, I clutched a
few half-sized sheets. On them, I had neatly typed the text which I had drafted
and fine-tuned. In it, I acknowledged the privilege and the limitations of my role
as an outsider. I described the challenges posed by a federal government
ratcheting up the INS repression, which we saw and felt all around us, and
proposing more. I pledged my commitment to continue resisting it. “We‟ll need
more allies, but it‟s also going to require another level of unity, one we need.to
build among Mexican people from both sides of the border.”
Though my message re-stated the Project‟s familiar line, the novelty of me
as its exponent claimed the crowd‟s attention. The speech seemed generally well-
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received, but a few of our more “narrow nationalist” Chicano friends pulled aside
Ramón or Juan to grumble about the selection of messenger. No one complained
to Cipriano.
Dolores Huerta keynoted the Celebration in 1984. She delivered a fiery
denunciation of the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill as it approached an historic
congressional vote. Her presence helped attract over 500 people, then our largest
crowd ever, including prominent Latino leaders who came from Portland, Salem,
and Eugene to hear and see her. For the first time, we garnered press attention
beyond the Woodburn Independent.
We extended Celebration‟s “political content” into the children‟s program.
At the Sixth Annual Celebration in 1985, children jockeyed for a turn bashing a
piñata which distinctly resembled Uncle Sam, complete with top-hat. Around the
neck of the candy-filled effigy, Cipriano had hung a sign that read “Reagan.” An
attention-getting photo on Statesman-Journal’s front page depicted a blindfolded
boy in full swing, his stick inches away from hitting the sign. “I‟m getting some
heated phone calls,” Father Peter Davis, the St. Luke‟s parish priest, understatedly
reported when he called us the next day. The following year, “scheduling
difficulties” prevented St. Lukes from hosting our Celebration. We moved it to
the cafeteria of a local elementary school.
Not one elected official ever appeared on the program or attended the
Celebration. One likely explanation is that we never invited any. In those days,
local politicians either figured only peripherally in our work or had an adversarial
relationship with us. We assumed that the Celebration‟s radical symbolism and
rhetoric would discomfort them.
Occasionally, the program‟s pieces meshed powerfully and broke through
the blur of routine. In 1986, we brought immigration lawyer and singer-guitaristcomposer Enrique Ramírez from San Francisco to perform and keynote. He
melded his songs and their political lyrics, his lawyering war-stories, engaging
showmanship, and community activist wisdom into a memorable show. The
crowd could more fully appreciate Enrique‟s presentation because we had lured all
the children outside to break the piñata.
Even after thirteen consecutive years organizing the Celebration, we had
developed no meaningful way to measure its impact. We continued it out of habit.
It had a life of its own, and an increasing staid one. Like its beginning in 1980, the
Annual Celebration‟s demise did not result from a painstaking deliberation. We
transformed the intended Fourteenth Annual Celebration on May 2, 1993 into an
impromtu memorial for César Chávez who had died nine days earlier. The follow
year, we organized a huge ceremony on April 28th, dedicating another facilities
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milestone: the refurbished headquarters building next door to—and six times the
size of—the little house (whose inauguration had kicked off the Celebration
tradition). By 1995, another, more structured annual event competed with the
Celebration‟s place on the calendar. We had founded PCUN, Oregon‟s
farmworker union in 1985, and ten years later, we moved PCUN‟s membership
convention from the fall to late April.
Though we retired the tradition of celebrating Cinco de Mayo and
International Workers Day in Woodburn, we preserved at least parts of the
Celebration‟s legacy. We gathered workers and we incorporated cultural
performances into those gatherings. We re-cycled the Celebrations‟ themes and
slogans. We tried—and sometimes managed—to remember the event-production
lessons which the Celebration taught us.
We carried forward the resistance spirit of the Battle of Puebla and the
Haymarket Massacre.
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Part VIII: Raids escalate and we struggle to keep pace
On August 13, 1981, exactly two weeks after President Ronald Reagan
unveiled his immigration reform plan, the INS conducted the largest single-day
raid in Oregon history. A team of fourteen INS and Border Patrol agents arrested
ninety-two workers at the Castle & Cooke mushroom plant in Salem. The raid
ominously signaled a new INS enforcement strategy: using raids to coerce
employers to stop hiring undocumented workers.
Though the Reagan Administration proposed employer sanctions as part of
its plan, INS officials opted to implement a form of de facto sanctions without
awaiting congressional approval. At the mushroom plant on August 13th , the INS
arrested a quarter of the workforce. Knowing that even a day‟s lost work wreaks
havoc on the mushroom cultivation cycle and forty thousand pound daily harvest,
the INS made Castle & Cooke management an offer they could hardly refuse. If
Castle & Cooke agreed to screen all future job seekers with the INS, the INS
promised to refrain from conducting raids at the plant.
Castle & Cooke capitulated and some other employers would follow their
example. Though employer sanctions‟ fines for knowingly hiring undocumented
workers would not become law until November 1986 and would not take effect in
agriculture until 1989, a regime of sanctions became a reality on the ground in
selected locations eight years earlier.
The mushroom plant raid represented a tactical escalation as well as a
strategic one. A phalanx of officials and vehicles descended on the plant, armed
with a search warrant which they worked three weeks to get. This struck us as a
marked contrast with what we had previously perceived as a largely impromptu
approach to arresting undocumented immigrants. Though the INS in Oregon
conducted some kind of enforcement activity every week, the INS presence in
Salem tended to revolve around a routine stop at the county jail to remove
undocumented immigrants otherwise eligible for release from local custody. If
they didn‟t fill the van, INS agents might hit one of Salem‟s run-down apartment
complexes, or cruise through Woodburn‟s downtown, looking to arrive “full” at
the Portland INS office.
These incursions, plus the occasional small scale “sweep,” reinforced the
notion that no one was immune. La Migra might even arrest grandma and the
granddaughter she babysat, as they did one August morning in Woodburn. We
helped people cope with a persistent sense of low-level dread and we became
practiced in pulse-quickening incident response.
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In our few close encounters with INS agents on the streets (at the
Woodburn Children‟s Center or the Corby Street apartments), we had caught them
off guard and they had elected to retreat. We regarded the Castle & Cooke plant
raid as an INS statement, something like: “we can show up in force, take control,
and make a lasting impact.” In the community, fear intensified, but so did anger.
The day that the heat came on full blast
When I jumped out of my car at the mushroom plant‟s main gate at 11:30
AM on that Thursday morning, the temperature was already in the low nineties. A
worker had called us thirty minutes earlier, as soon as the INS had barreled in. I
counted four vans and seven patrol cars, some sporting the Border Patrol insignia.
The sheer number of vehicles suggested that this was no “ordinary” raid.
For the next four hours, we camped outside the plant, consoling the
anguished family members who gathered and recording information we‟d need to
seek release of workers. Standing in the mid-day sun, peering through the sevenfoot high chain link fence, we watched impotently as agents chased workers in and
out of the long, narrow mushroom sheds on the thirty acre site. County sheriffs
blocked the plant exit. Company officials, armed-folded, stood at the entrance to
the administrative offices. Some workers intially ran. Others hid in the
mushroom bed bunks filed with ammonia-treated compost. The only
undocumented workers employed at the plant who escaped arrest were those who
had the day off or had called in sick.
The mushroom plant‟s year-round, immigrant-dominated workforce and
fenced perimeter made it an inviting target. “We‟re at their mercy,” Personnel
Director Hector Hinojosa lamented to us after the raid. “They raided us five years
ago and we knew they‟d be eventually be back.”
At about three o‟clock, the agents apparently satisfied themselves that they
had detained every one whom they suspected of being deportable. By that time,
the temperature had hit one hundred degrees and workers had spent up to two
hours sitting in the vans and patrol units. A prison bus arrived to transport the
workers that agents couldn‟t cram into the vans and sedans. As the bus rolled
back out through the plant gate, relatives and detainess desperately yelled
messages to each other. From inside the bus, Armando _____ recognized me and
pressed his tattered “green” card against the bus window mesh. “Tell them it‟s not
a fake,” he pleaded, his face panic-stricken.
Fortunately, the INS caravan was not headed directly to México or the
Portland airport. We followed the procession to the town of Silverton, fifteen
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miles northeast of Salem. The INS had arranged to use the National Guard
Armory building there on Main Street as a temporary holding facility.
We watched workers file into the Armory basement for “processing.” We
later learned that INS agents lined them along a wall and brought them one-by-one
to be interviewed at long folding tables. Workers‟ cash was confiscated to pay for
their transportation to Mexico. Most would depart with nothing but the clothes
they wore.
Family members had also followed the flotilla from Salem. Across the
street from the Armory, their numbers grew steadily as word of the raid spread.
The arrival of each distraught relative set off a new round of weeping in the
crowd.
The INS stop over in Silverton bought us time to seek release of at least
some of the workers. Juan, Ramón and I continued our curb-side counseling and
interviewing. “There‟s nothing we can do for him, right?” Juan asked me on
several occasions, before delivering a final verdict to a workers‟ relative or friend.
From the facts they‟d given him, Juan had concluded that the worker had no path
to legal status or couldn‟t come up with bail for release pending a deportation
hearing. Amid the all the stresses, the added toll of repeatedly and definitively
saying “no” seemed more than he could bear. I, too, would mentally search for
that illusory something which would made a difference. “Está cabrón,” I
muttered to him and to myself. It‟s a bitch.
Many workers either had no family in the area or had relatives who were all
undocumented. Other workers, some with U.S. citizen children, preferred to play
it “safe” and deny to INS that they had those ties, fearing that the INS might arrest
and remove them, too.
“How can they deport my husband?,” screamed a white woman in English
as she walked up to Ramón. Around us were a half dozen Mexican women born
in the U.S., each with a husband behind those Armory walls. In our conversations
with these women, they sounded hurt, scared, victimized, incensed, but not rippedoff. The white woman‟s cry conveyed her anger and torment, but also, it seemed
to me, an unmistakable sense of entitlement. She assumed that her privilege as
white people automatically extended to her relatives of another race. Before the
day was over, more than one white woman would cross the street and get right in
the face of the INS guards or local police assigned to monitor the crowd and the
passing traffic. On this occasion, at least, none of the Chicanas did.
By late afternoon, we had ascertained and documented that sixteen
detainees did have legal status or were spouses of U.S. citizens. We contacted the
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INS guards posted at the Armory door and presented our annotated list. Over the
next few hours, those sixteen came out that door, one or two at a time. Each time,
a joyous reunion ensued. Other families swarmed those newly liberated,
beseeching them for news of their loved ones. One of the first to be released was
Armando. “They checked the number of my mica. I told them it was good,” he
reported excitedly.
After sunset, the heat eased. On the sidewalk, weariness and resignation
replaced shock and distress. Some family members had left to Salem and returned
with gym bags with spare clothes. After delivering them, they re-joined those
maintaining a vigil-like presence.
INS had declined our requests for immediate release of three other
detainees. Their family members assured me that they could come up with bond
money and they authorized me to intercede with the INS to halt removal of those
detainees. I prepared an legal appearance form and a handwritten statement on
behalf of each, requesting a deportation hearing and revoking any request for
“voluntary departure” they may have signed. About thirty minutes after receiving
the paperwork, INS agents granted my request for access to personally interview
my clients.
As I descended the wide staircase into the stuffy, sweltering basement, an
agent met me at the landing a few steps above the foot of the stairs. I gave him my
clients‟ names. “Stay here and I‟ll bring them over,” he responded. As I waited, I
surveyed the scene. The subdued atmosphere contrasted sharply with the tense
scenes I‟d witnessed earlier. Workers slumped against the walls. Some lay prone
on the floor, sleeping. Others talked quietly. An occasional laugh broke the pall
of silence. A few agents tipped back their folding chairs and rested their cowboyboots on the tables.
I wasn‟t alone on the stairway landing. The agents had allowed a few
visitors to chat with detainees and hand over personal belongings. An agent
walked my clients up to the landing and I introduced myself. I explained that they
would be detained in a local jail for a day or two while I sought to reduce the
amount of bail required for their release. (Within twenty-four hours, I had
convinced an immigration judge to lower bail from $3,000 each to $1,500, $500
and zero.)
Before I had finished my interviewing, an agent announced that visitors
needed to leave. A group of people started up the stairs. As they neared the top, I
heard another agent yell “stop him, he‟s one of ours!” The agent leaning on the
railing nearby jumped up and blocked the stairway as other agents rushed up stairs
to grab the detainee who had tried to sneak out. After a brief commotion, the
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agents sorted through the group and confirmed that no other detainees had
infiltrated. The agents glared at the visitors as they departed..
As he strode back down the stairs, agent Larry Highsmith spotted me
talking to my client and headed straight for us. He stopped abruptly about twelve
inches away. “You need to leave, now!,” he barked, his face still red with
embarassment. “I‟m not done talking to my client,” I answered, trying to sound
matter-of-fact. “I‟ll leave shortly and besides, you know who I am,” I added. By
August, 1981, I had crossed paths—and swords—with all of the agents assigned to
Portland.
He took another step towards me, grabbed the waist-line of my pants and
started to lift me off the ground. “You‟re leaving or I‟m taking you out,” he
hissed. He stood four inches taller and was slightly thinner than me. My teeth
clenched, my eyes squinted and my body stiffened. I pulled my elbows back and
balled my fingers into fists. I looked him in the eye, drew a breath. “You better
take your hands off of me,” I said, each word enunciated to accentuate my
growing fury. “Let go of me or I‟ll fuck you up.” It seemed to register that I
might really do it, reckless as that would have been. Before he could visualize the
political hay that the INS could make from a headline like “Advocate Assaults
Federal Officer” or the medal he might receive for provoking an act that would
have cost me my accreditation, he released me and stepped back a couple of paces.
“Everything‟s going to be fine,” I said to my client, trying my best to sound reassuring. She looked startled but quickly said goodbye.
I left without making eye contact with Highsmith. In fact, that moment on
the landing proved to be the last time I ever did. Over the next five years or so, I‟d
pass him in the narrow hall at the INS‟s offices. I always made a point of looking
right at him. He never looked at me. If a case I handled involved him, he‟d turn
to a third party (another agent or receptionist) and say “tell Mr. Kleinman…”
sometimes prompting quizzical looks from them.
At two in the morning on August 14th, two buses rolled out of the Armory
parking lot. The next stop for the seventy-threes workers on board was Tijuana.
Family members stood up on the parkway grass to offer one more frantic wave.
“I‟ll be back next week,” yelled one worker through the bus window.
By then, the A&W fast food stand next door had long since closed, actually
earlier than scheduled. Between the INS, who bought hamburgers for the agents
and for the detainees, and the families with cranky children, the A&W had
exhausted their provisions. A hand-lettered sign on the glass door read “Ran out
of food.”
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The August 13th raid still resonated with mushroom workers twenty years
later. In March, 2001, they sought PCUN‟s help and finally stood up to abusive
conditions and practices at the plant. One day on the picket line there, a tall
bearded man rushed up to me and grabbed me in a bear hug. “Remember me? I‟m
Armando,” he shouted. “You saved me that day.” He didn‟t have to explain
which day.