DSS urges release of 21 more detainees

[Ian David]

Eulogio Alvarez fed his daughter, 10-month-old Ashley, as she was held by Esperanza Guiterez during a gathering of immigrant families at St. James Church in New Bedford. (John Bohn/ Globe Staff)

By Maria Sacchetti and Kathy McCabe, Globe Staff | March 12, 2007

HARLINGEN, Texas -- The Massachusetts Department of Social Services yesterday urged federal authorities to release at least 21 immigrants detained during a raid on a New Bedford factory and held in Texas detention facilities. Nineteen of the detainees are the sole or primary caretakers of children in New Bedford; DSS also called for the release of a woman who said she was recently diagnosed with cancer, and a 17-year-old boy, because he is a minor.

A day after interviewing dozens of people detained Tuesday because they could not prove they were in the country legally, DSS social workers said detainees told them they feared for their children in Massachusetts. The children range in age from infants to a 17-year-old, and include a disabled 4-year-old girl who requires a feeding tube and 2-year-old boy with a respiratory ailment.

Some detainees told DSS workers that their children were with baby-sitters relatives, or friends. Some did not know where they were, according to DSS workers who interviewed more than 200 detainees this weekend in Port Isabel Detention Center, near Harlingen, and another center in El Paso.

DSS Commissioner Harry Spence said he was "extremely upset and angry" that immigration officials whisked the detainees, mostly women, out of Massachusetts on Wednesday before these cases were discovered.

"If the department had been given access to the detainees at Fort Devens on Tuesday night, as we consistently requested, then a great deal of this could have been avoided," Spence said in Harlingen. "The threats to the children's safety that the federal action caused could have been greatly diminished."

More:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/03/12/dss_urges_release_of_21_more_detainees/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+City%2FRegion+News

[Cobalt Violet]

1. If that woman with cancer doesn't get out of there...

She will likely get no treatment.