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Crackdown targets illegal aliens
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34 workers arrested in North Tonawanda
By DAN HERBECK
News Staff Reporter
8/31/2006
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Dennis C. Enser/Buffalo News
Suspected illegal aliens, bused from a North Tonawanda greenhouse, enter a downtown processing center on Wednesday.
A government crackdown on illegal aliens targeted a hydroponic tomato greenhouse in North Tonawanda on Wednesday, as federal agents made 34 arrests.
Authorities said they expect that most of the men and women arrested at the Fortistar tomato facility on Shawnee Road will be deported to Mexico within a week.
They also were required to plead guilty to misdemeanor criminal charges, under a tougher government policy on illegal immigration. In the past, government attorneys in Buffalo deported thousands of illegal aliens but rarely prosecuted them criminally.
"Illegal immigration poses an increasing threat to our security, public safety and economy, and hard-hitting interior enforcement will reinforce the strong stance we already take at the border," U.S. Attorney Terrance P. Flynn said after the arrests.
A defense attorney, though, said the federal government was acting unnecessarily harshly.
"They're throwing the book at people, but it seems a rather harsh punishment for people who are only here because they're trying to start a new life in America," responded David G. Jay, an attorney for one of the Mexican men arrested. "Many of us have ancestors who came to this country to start a better life, and in the old days, our country welcomed them with open arms."
The Bush administration has said it has to try new tactics to stop the flow of illegal aliens into the United States. More than 11 million undocumented aliens - many of them farm workers - reportedly live in the United States.
Prosecutor John E. Rogowski, who presented the cases in federal court, said most of the people arrested on Wednesday immediately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of entering the country without an inspection.
"They will be deported," said Peter J. Smith, a supervisor of immigration investigations for Homeland Security in Buffalo. "All the people who are being prosecuted criminally are people who were found to have false identification, including false Social Security numbers."
Two men, including Jay's Mexican client, Ruben Baltazar, 24, will face more serious felony prosecutions for illegally entering the country.
"The government has said he is charged with a felony because he was already deported once before - from El Paso [Texas] in June of 2001," Jay said of Baltazar.
Rogowski said the second man charged with a felony could not be found on Wednesday and is considered a fugitive.
The arrests were made at the 12.5-acre Fortistar hydroponic greenhouses, where company officials said 3.5 million pounds of tomatoes are grown annually. The company also runs a power co-generation plant in North Tonawanda.
A manager at the greenhouse referred a reporter's questions about illegal aliens to a company official in White Plains, but that official was not available.
In recent months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from the Department of Homeland Security have made three of the largest roundups of illegal aliens in area history.
Defendants were taken from North Tonawanda by bus to downtown Buffalo.Many appeared nervous or confused as they listened to an interpreter explaining the proceedings before U.S. Magistrate Judge Hugh B. Scott.
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