June 15, 2007
The Grand Island Independent
Harold Reutter

La Raza hires group to look into social service response in G.I., two other communities

Rosa Castaneda of the Urban Institute is in Grand Island this week conducting research on the impact of last December’s ICE raid on employees of the Grand Island Swift & Co. plant and their children.

Catherine Montoya of the National Conference of La Raza said Grand Island is one of three communities being studied nationwide.

The other two are Greeley, Colo., where Swift employees were also the subject of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid, and New Bedford, Mass., where ICE officials detained more than 360 employees of a leather goods factory.

Montoya said La Raza contracted with the Urban Institute to do the study because it is "one of the most well-respected national research groups."

She said the Urban Institute is known for the high standards of its research projects.

Newspapers, radio and television provided lots of anecdotal evidence about the impact of the ICE raids on children.

Because of those reports, Montoya said, La Raza officials know that, when parents were detained, many children waited at school and were picked up by people other than their parents.

But there is little statistical information on how long those children waited at school and exactly who picked them up, she said. There also are no statistics about how children got to school the next day.

Montoya said La Raza is interested in what access children might have had to mental health services. She said her organization wants to know what role Nebraska’s Child Protective Services played following the raid.

Although parents may have been in the United States illegally, many of their children are U.S. citizens, Montoya said. As a result, La Raza wants to know if children were able to access government services if family income was cut off or reduced.

Grand Island is the last community where research is being conducted, Montoya said.

All three communities were chosen because they are relatively small, she said.

New Bedford has a population of almost 94,000, while Greeley has a population of almost 88,000.

Montoya said Grand Island, at about 43,000, is by far the smallest of the three cities.

Grand Island has a number of mental health professionals and social service agencies.

However, one question the study hopes to answer is whether the city’s resources were adequate to handle an influx of 300 students who perhaps needed services within the space of a few hours, Montoya said. The system is not designed to deal with such a big influx all at once.

"We want to make sure that kids don’t fall through the cracks," she added.

School employees, people working in social services and people connected to Grand Island’s churches who responded to the raid were all interviewed, Montoya said.

"In many ways, people in the churches were the first responders," she said.

Montoya said one of the goals for the research is to compile the information in a way that will provide reliable statistics. The statistics will be tabulated once this week’s research in Grand Island is completed.

"We’ll spend the next 45 days writing the report," Montoya said. The report will be presented when the National Council of La Raza meets at the end of July in Miami.

They’ll also share the results with people in Grand Island, Montoya said.

Gloria Sarmiento of the Nebraska Appleseed Center in Lincoln said her group asked La Raza to consider including Grand Island in its study.

Sarmiento said La Raza has promised to share its results with the Nebraska Appleseed Center, whose mission includes integration of immigrants into Nebraska society and civic participation by immigrants. It wants to ensure that immigrants have access to good education and economic opportunity.

The Nebraska Appleseed Center favors legal representation for immigrants who may be facing deportation and who have some legal claim to living in the United States with their family.

Montoya said one reason La Raza wanted to do its study is the feeling that immigrants will face greater enforcement efforts. She said there have been a number of ICE enforcement efforts since the Swift raid. All talk of immigration reform -- including what some people call amnesty -- calls for greater enforcement efforts against immigrants who are in the United States illegally.

As a result, La Raza said it wants data on the resources a community needs when there is a major ICE enforcement effort.