Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

McNamara: Raid was planned with DSS, state

By

Eileen McNamara tears apart DSS head Harry Spence — and the Patrick administration:

Federal immigration agents first briefed senior members of the incoming Patrick administration about plans to raid a Massachusetts sweatshop that employed undocumented workers last December, days before Governor Deval Patrick even took office.

In the following two months, there were face-to-face meetings and conference calls between state officials and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to discuss the potential human as well as legal consequences of the planned roundup of laborers working illegally at the Michael Bianco Inc. leather factory in New Bedford.

…So, enough with the breast-beating pretense that the Patrick administration was blindsided by the stealth tactics of shadowy federal immigration officials. This is political grandstanding of the most transparent kind.

It goes on, detailing other contact that DSS had with ICE, pre-raid.

I’m really not sure about the conclusions that McNamara draws, and it strikes me that she’s too willing to believe that Spence and Patrick should have known that ICE was going to put these folks on a plane to Texas — the “race to the airport”. She seems a bit too willing to believe ICE’s version of the events in planning. Even if everything in this column is absolutely true, it doesn’t excuse ICE’s actions.

However, this does seem to be a problem:

Given the state’s performance, that is almost funny. As late as yesterday afternoon Nancy Fernandez Mills, communications director for the Patrick administration, was insisting that “the governor was not told and did not know the raid was happening until it was going on” and that “DSS did not know about this raid until it was in progress.”

Told that, in fact, members of Patrick’s Cabinet had briefed him about the operation weeks ago and that Spence had participated in a conference call with ICE the day before the raid — a fact the commissioner himself acknowledged in yesterday’s newspapers — she reconsidered: “I’d like to retract that statement until I talk to someone who actually knows something about this timeline.”

It is going to be a long four years.

Uh, yeah, that statement sounds “non-operative.” Not good.

Update: Mark’s got more, and has some similar questions. It comes down to this: Just because DSS met with ICE beforehand does not mean that ICE was thorough and truthful in what they said, or are now saying. It does make Patrick, Fernandez et al. look bad in saying it was a surprise, though.

UPDATE: Here’s Patrick’s response:

“I don’t know what dispute there is about what the state knew and when we knew it. There is no doubt about it that we were advised in advance of the raid and were working with Washington to prepare for the aftermath. On the day of the raid and in the immediate hours and days afterward, the (state) workers on the ground didn’t have the level of cooperation we’d thought we would have.”

And as I think of it, I don’t recall hearing that Patrick himself ever denied knowing about the raid before it happened; maybe someone can set me straight on that. Fernandez Mills seems to be out of the loop, which is still not good. But aside from that, McNamara’s column is becoming more and more confusing to me; her level of outrage seems to be disproportionate to the amount of blame she can actually pin on Spence and Patrick as of now.

As they say, “Developing …”

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  1. That is a great column, in MHO. I wonder if the seven-month old baby who suffered from dehydration was consulted about the child protection aspects of the raid

    The night before the sweep, Bruce Foucart, the ICE agent in charge of the operation, spoke with Spence to coordinate law enforcement and child protection aspects of the raid.

    The truth is everyone involved with this sorry fiasco looks like a more or less complete idiot.

  2. I never really cared about the car or the drapes.

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    I thought the Ameriquest call was a rookie mistake. Didn’t approve, but not the biggest deal.

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    This, however, is beyond sloppy. To have your COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR saying that you were completely surprised after 3+ months of briefings and meetings?!?

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    Who’s steering this ship?

    • Did Fernandez Mills just make that up, or was that the party line from discussing it with Patrick? Did those words ever come out of Patrick’s mouth? “I didn’t know”? That wasn’t my understanding, so I was surprised to read her saying that.

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      If she’s just wandering off the reservation, that’s a firing offense.

    • Captain Queeg?

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      Aside from the fact that these unfortunate people (illegal aliens) were caught between a rock and a hard place, how could the state and feds screw this up so bad? To add insult to injury the state house then had the temerity to lie about it. Did they think for a nanosecond that everyone and their brother would not be on the phone to the press to correct the record or point a finger within minutes. I figured this was cooked up three weeks ago, now we find out it has been three months and everyone at the previous and current administration was “on board”.
      Why the charade?

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  3. Yes, you heard it here first. 

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    You know I’m getting a different feeling than others when reading this story.

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    I do think that ICE was not as forthcoming McNamara as would lead us to believe.  Yes, Spence was informed and he knew that social workers would not be available on site.  But it does sound like they were informed that they could interview people after the raid.

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    Immigration authorities denied a request by Spence to allow state social workers to accompany agents during the raid, Foucart said, “because this was a law enforcement action.”

    “I couldn’t have them interviewing people at a crime scene,” he said. “I was happy to set up a triage center at the New Bedford DSS office.

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    So enough of the mock outrage Eileen.

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    She asked why did he call Chertoff, hmmm, I don’t know maybe because ICE was full of it when they informed the state that they could interview all people?  Could be ya think?

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    Do you think that Patrick got on the phone with Chertoff and said WTF?  Why are people being flowed to Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania?  We were supposed to interview all detainees!!!

  4. …if the company was primarily a federal contractor, did the ICE not coordinate with the federal contractor in regards the raid?  If so, what did the contractor do to protect its interests.  If they didn’t, why not, if the feds wanted their contract fulfilled.

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    There is something very fishy going on here.

    • The DoD and I suppose any contractor assumes on “good faith” that the entity that they are contracting with is operating in a legal manner.

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      If the DoD had fore knowledge that the company was acting outside the law I would imagine that they would refer the matter to the US Attorney (in MA don’t hold your breath) or the US Dept of Justice or the agency in which investigation of the alleged civil or criminal violation would be most appropriate.

      • …performed by DoD in its contracting. 

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        Or at least that DoD used to perform–maybe they don’t do oversight any more.

  5. …on WRKO the day after the raid.  This was met with much scepticism (actually, I was advised that nobody could hear the voices in my head).  But he SAID what is the transcript above.

  6. he definitely knew in advance. i’m pretty sure he admitted that basically as soon as it happened.

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    the point is, what was he supposed to do?

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    He couldn’t stop the feds from doing the raid.

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    While he could have sent out a warning to the public about what was going to happen, I wouldn’t be shocked if that would be illegal and it certainly could have caused a mass panic that would be as bad or worse than what actually happened.

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    I think this is a different McNamara column than the one I read last, but I’ll check it out when I have some more time before I make any judgements. However, I wouldn’t believe a single word ICE said in this matter – or DSS. Furthermore, even if Patrick knew about it months ago – and delegated this mess to DSS – it’s DSS’s fault for what went on, not Patrick. Simply put, while DSS is in disrepair, Patrick has had neither the time nor the resources to fix it.

    • He couldn’t stop the feds from doing the raid.

      But he could have quietly put into motion the appropriate state agencies to minimize the child care issues.

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      Being predisposed to oppose any enforcement of federal immigration law, the Governor, through his own lack of cooperation, has no legitimate beef with how the feds handled the sweep.

      • We (the state) just rehabbed many housing units at Camp Edwards.  In fact, we were set up for 1,000 refugees from Katrina, and took in about 300.

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        This rehab is only a year old, and those people have all moved on, either to their nown new homes here or back to New Orleans/Mississippi.  Harry Spence knows about it because he was involved in the refugee arrival.  It’s no big secret.

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        Why not bring the detainees there?  It’s in a military base and is a secure facility.  BUT it has family style apartments.  Nobody gets to walk off, but nobody is cut off at the same time.  Likewise, it’s close to New Bedford.

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        BTW – I renew my outrage that the owners have bail.

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        And I also hope Barney Frank gives the same amount to MIRA as he got from the owners of Michael Bianco.

          • knowingly hiring undocumenteds.

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            directing undocumenteds to a place where they could get false documents.

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            labor law violations relating to payment of workers and improperly withholding wages as a means of disciplining.

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            so there’s some significant fraud there that gets connected with taxes, probably workers comp, etc.

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            if they get any fines or time for it, it will be so mild that it was still worth it for them to do what they did. in some industries, the chances of being caught are just factored into the cost of doing business. and that’s only relevent in the event that all the planets align and some enforcement agency looks at them.

            • knowingly hiring undocumenteds.

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              Guy walks into your office seeking a job. Completes an I-9 for you stating that he’s a citizen and hands you a SS card and maybe a birth certificate that looks legit.  You hire him.  You (the employer) have complied with Federal law. 

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              BTW, many illegal aliens have legitimate SS numbers.

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              At that point, it’s the same as any US citizen:  wage and hour laws (i.e. overtime, minimum wage, etc.)

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              I have yet to see anything that contradicts the business owners statements that all wage and hour laws were complied with.

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              I don’t know their innocent, but neither have I seen anything they were guilty of a crime.

              • …there is a rather simple solution to the fake identification papers problem.  A central registry, maintained by the US government, of all persons who are entitled to be in the US.  An employer could check the prospective new employee against the central registry to determine whether the prospective employee is legally eligible for employment in the US.

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                That solution isn’t perfect, of course.  But it would work probably most of the time.

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                BTW, I’m sure that IBM would be more than happy to supply the tabulating machines that would be up to the task of maintaining the government’s central registry.

              • I don’t know how to format a comment box here, but here’s a fairly clear passage from the Globe’s story, day after the raid…

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                http://www.boston.co…

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                “””””Months later, an undercover agent posed as a Mexican illegal immigrant and recorded conversations with company officials in which she was open about her purported status. According to the affidavits unsealed yesterday, Insolia and other managers told her that many of the company’s workers were in the country illegally, and even encouraged her to seek false documentation from Torres, the music store worker.

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                The undercover agent bought a green card and a Social Security card from him for $120, according to the federal documents. Another company official told the undercover agent that she would hire her relatives if they, too, provided false documents.””””””

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                I know what you’re getting at, though. In most cases, there is no months long investigation with undercover agents and therefore employers skate on the “knowingly hire” part. But if you go on enough jobsites and talk to enough workers, you know things work.

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                As for the wage and hour stuff, that’s detailed elswehere in the same story.

                • do a blockquote

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                  (blockquote)quoted text(/blockquote)

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                  Don’t use parentheses, though, use begin angle bracket (shift-comma) and end angle bracket (shift-period) instead.

            • That these empoyers and their cohort are looking down the barrel of some serious jail time. As a matter of fact they may be indicted unfer the Rico Statutes alleging an ongoing criminal conspiracy, so they could be eligible for 29 years plus.

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              Now, if we have to rely on our US attorney in Boston, these bums may be looking at a fine. US Attorney Sullivan has been looking the other way at the criminal enterprise commonly known as the Big Dig and has done nothing other than window dressing and the ocassional sham prosecution, why should we expect anything more. The fact that these scum have been generously contributing to our “esteemed” federal legislators adds icing to the cake. Sullivan will be unemployed shortly, he can’t rock the boat and miss out on another hack job.

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              Employers of illegals should all lose their businesses, be financially ruined and then locked up for a minimum of five years.

              • whether PP is an expert or not, the factory owner was allowed to fly away to Puerto Rico, according to the Herald.  Has he returned, or did he catch a connector to points unknown? 

            • Maybe it’s my perspective.  But then again, I have to maintain my own I-9 file.  So, if someone busts down my door and hauls away an employee off to deportation, and I’ve done nothing except 1) take his properly completed I-9 and 2) looked at a valid appearing SS number and birth certificate, I kinda hate the idea of sitting in a cell without bail.

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              Why you feel they might be considered flight risk, I don’t know.

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              From the charges I can now tell that indeed, there appears to be some complicity, or at least probable cause to see that the employers may have known many employees were illegal. 

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              Sufficient reason to deny them bail?  I don’t see it. YMMV.

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              It’s really (another) wake-up call to the employers.  Watch your I-9 file.

              • didn’t mean to load you up with stuff above. hadn’t seen this yet.

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                there are several services that allow you to check employee records if you have a question, I believe.

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                and if you pay SS on a bad name/number combination, you’ll get a letter back from them saying so. a that point, I believe there’s a greater legal burden placed on the employer.

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                the issue is usually irrelevant, though. employers care that they’re cheap, not that they’re illegal. the numbers are bad, but the work is usually temporary. so if SS is being paid, the worker is gone before the letter comes.

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                my experience has also been that taxes aren’t paid because workers are either classified by the employer as an “independent contractors” and or paid in cash.

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                i don’t know which of us would be considered more naive, but i don’t think there are many employers at all who hire undocumenteds “unknowingly.” if they don’t know it’s because they go out of their way not to know.

        • ….would have been an excellent option.  I am confused as to who you are suggestion should have made that happen.  Clearly, the Commonwealth could have made the suggestion, but the Feds were the only ones in any position to make that call.

        • …Why not bring the detainees there? (Camp Edwards)

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          Why don’t you ask your Republican compatriots why they didn’t do that, instead of shipping them down to TX?

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          There are a few things that are remarkably suspicious, not only in this, but also in the earlier raids on meat packing plants in the midwest a few months ago after the election.  It is the fact that the raids occurred after the election that make them suspicious.  One would think that, if the Bush malAdministration was actually concerned about illegal immigration, it would have made and enforcement effort before the election.  Since there is no indication that it did, I would infer from that, that they aren’t really interested in illegal immigration.

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          Regarding a comment above, regarding the documentation that would suffice for an employer to avoid sanctions for hiring illegal aliens, if people are really concerned about illegal immigration and perhaps the documentation requirement should be tightened.  Perhaps a national database should be instituted of persons who are eligible for employment in the US.  I’m sure that IBM would be ready, willing and able to sell the US government the tabulating machines.  You don’t really want to go in that direction, do you?

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          Regarding the New Bedford raid, I still find it very suspicious that the FedGov was not aware of the nature workforce at the facility that is supposedly a FedGov contractor.  Something strange is going on in connection with the raid–something very, very strange.

          • Again – not everybody was shipped to Texas – some are still in Barnstable County.  So the sheriffs were contacted – there may be some in Bristol as well.  My recollection is that they wre all initially taken to Hanscom for processing.  At that point – did Spence or Patrick even make the availablity of Camp Edwards known?  It was decommissioned as housing long ago for armed services – why would people from the Feds have even known about the recent refurbishment?

            • …Maybe they did make known what facilities were available.  Maybe they assumed that the feds, presuming they were lccal, would have known about Edwards.  (I know the ritual: “when you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME.”  We don’t have to go through the Felix Ungar litany.)  Maybe they wouldn’t have expected the feds to whisk the detainees out of state so rapidly without conferring with state officials to determine whether there were local facilities that were available.

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              I don’t know.

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              What I do know is that physical detention was unnecessary if the point was to require that the detainees show up for immigration hearings.  That’s the point, isn’t it: to require the detainees to show up for their immigration hearings?  Clip an ankle bracelet on, and you’ll know where they are at all times.  If they’ve left the country, you might not know where they are, but they’ve deported themselves, which is one of the goals of an immigration hearing.

          • The same employers that give a cursory glance at “employment documentation” are the same employers who would very carefully scrutinize a new hundred dollar bill
            proffered for payment. They are low life vermin. They should have had at least a million dollar bail set and/or the title to their businesses.

      • Even if DSS and the feds worked together in swell fashion for the longest time eva… aren’t you forgetting that it’s a relatively small organization with lots of responsibilities already. How is it supposed to deal with that kind of a raid? They probably didn’t know who had children, who were the undocumented workers, etc. etc. etc. Furtermore, even the ICE has said that immigrants weren’t revealing who their children were, etc., presumably for fear that they’d be found. Or just fear in general.

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        Doing this kind of a raid and expecting DSS to pick up the crumbs to make sure it’s not a humanitarian disaster is irresponsible. The ICE should have been in charge of all these things. They’re the one’s creating the problems, they should clean up their own messes. I can only imagine the hundreds of thousands this state has wasted cleaning up after their mess. The ICE could have easily slapped on some wristlets to keep track of all the undocumented workers, let them go for the time being so they could deal with all their family and home situations, while they waited for their day in courts. The fact that many of them were sent away from Massachusetts without due process was not only irresponsibly – but also clearly illegal, as one judge halted the further removal of them from our state.

      • More from Patrick, this is pretty much been the consistent answer.  The more you read the more that it’s true.  Did the state know? Yes.  Did ICE inform them that they would be able to interview detainees?  That’s the question, it’s seems that it was the case and when ICE instead flew people out of the state before they could be interviewed that when Patrick got on the phone to the federal level. 

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        The governor responded to the suggestion the state did not move fast enough by saying, “I don’t know what dispute there is about what the state knew and when we knew it. There is no doubt about it that we were advised in advance of the raid and were working with Washington to prepare for the aftermath. On the day of the raid and in the immediate hours and days afterward, the (state) workers on the ground didn’t have the level of cooperation we’d thought we would have.”

        Several DSS workers ended up flying to Texas after the raid to track down illegal immigrants who were taken away from children who required additional help.

    • Furthermore, even if Patrick knew about it months ago – and delegated this mess to DSS – it’s DSS’s fault for what went on, not Patrick. Simply put, while DSS is in disrepair, Patrick has had neither the time nor the resources to fix it.

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      The buck stops … there?

      • on Mitt Romney’s desk. If, in a year’s time, DSS is still just as screwed up, then you can drop it on Deval’s. You can’t just expect someone to be governor and magically fix everything in this state as soon as he’s here. The fact that he’s been trying to fix things has lead to a lot of his publicity woes (be it fixing his office, with all its furniture in disrepair, or town-state govt dynamic, which is clearly pissing off people on Beacon Hill).

        • Like someone else said, you do social work with the DSS you have, not the DSS you want to have.

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          Seriously, if the Governor knew of the impending raid months in advance, there’s no buck passing to be had, IMHO.

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          I also happen to think that there is at least some probability that the ‘humanitarian’ crisis might be exaggerated. 

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          It presents an interesting set of outcomes: a) he knew about it, and Mass DSS was incompentent and did a lousy job. Blame Romney?  I believe that won’t fly. b) he knew about it and Mass DSS did a compentent job, but the Governor and Senator exaggerated the crisis with some “political grandstanding” (McNamara’s quote) c) he didn’t know about it, which at this point seems unlikely if McNamara’s column is accurate.

        • on the channel 8 news tonight behind the governor? While the governor was being grilled and bumbling and stumbling Trav was laughing! Someone is going to have a very long four years.

          • According to The Globe Trav is leaaving the State House very soon.  Which is probably why Panagiatakos isn’t running for the Meehan seat.  Perhaps he has enough votes for Senate President?

          • …what are you referring to by channel 8?

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            On our cable system, channel 6 is NECN, and broadcast channel 7 is cable channel 25.

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            If you’re referring to cable channel 8, it is a mistake to presume that the channel allocations on all cable channels are the same.

    • Giving the governor the benefit of the doubt, he has only been office a few months, however he is the chief executive and he bears all responsibility, he is the commanding officer.

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      With three months prior knowledge one would hope they could do better. What’s going to happen if we have a catastrophic (Katrina) hurricane.

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      If the governor had uttered a peep re this matter he would be standing before a federal grand jury for obstruction of justice.If he did it on the QT everyone he associated with leaking this would be standing next to him for conspiracy.

  7. It is not surprising nor particularly important that a member of Governor Patrick’s inexperienced press relations team was “out of the loop” about the degree of knowledge and coordination between DSS and ICE prior to and during the New Bedford immigration raid.

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    The issue that should concern Massachusetts residents is that neither DSS or nor any policy person in the Governor’s Office has established any type of professional management relationship with ICE or the Department of Homeland Security ten weeks into the Governor Patrick administration. The Governor’s policy people and key department and agency heads, such as Harry Spence at DSS who is a Romney holdover, should have established a working, trusting relationship with ICE/Homeland Security so that a debacle such as what occurred in New Bedford never would have occurred.

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    Again, I come back to the fact that Gov. Patrick has demonstrated in just 10 weeks he is a mediocre manager. He needs to hire a Chief of Staff or Deputy Chief of Staff (or designate Lieut. Gov. Tim Murray with responsibility for coordinating federal-state relations) who has substantial management experience and will impress upon the Governor’s youthful policy advisors and all of his department and agency heads the vital importance of managing federal-state relations effectively. Otherwise, the New Bedford fiasco will just be one of many to occur over the next four years, and the GOP will be primed to re-capture the Corner Office.

    • … but I wonder: Does anyone have a “trusting” relationship with ICE/DHS? Are Chertoff et al. to be trusted? I’m pretty doubtful. IOW, ICE could have really screwed over DSS/Patrick, and we wouldn’t know any better — not even from McNamara’s columns.

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      So, I’m still not convinced that DSS could have/should have done anything differently. I’m trying to be receptive to that notion, but we still don’t know exactly what the disconnect was.

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      Now, the disconnect between Fernandez Mills and Patrick is pretty damn glaring, and that’s just got to be fixed.

      • are we just going to have a system where the feds sweep in with threadbare local notice, make their raids, and then leave the responsibility of cleaning up the mess to state social service agencies?

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        this pretty much qualifies as an unfunded mandate.

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        who’s picking up the tab to provide humanitarian service to provide for these detainees? and plane tickets to texas for dss officials? shouldn’t this all come from the feds, and not massachusetts taxpayers?

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        if comprehensive immigration reform ever ever comes to pass, issues of federalism and the role of states and municipalities really needs to be spelled out. and the fact that this is currently such a vague grey area, often left to the whims of the administrations of the particular states, only underlines what a mess our current system is.

      • If Deval had not voided the deputization of State Police Officers as ICE agents, they probably could have participated in the raid.  Had State Troopers participated in the Raid the Commonwealth could have had eyes and ears in the raid to ask questions that were pertinent to the Commonwealth.

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        But Patrick shot that down.  Sometimes you see the trees for the forest or whatever the saying is.  This is one of those times.

      • The federal government and the state government are two separate sovereigns.  This has been explained to us many times when the federal government pursues a prosecution after a state government’s own prosecution.  The state government should not get itself involved in enforcing federal laws, for fear that the law enforcement policies of the two sovereigns become entangled.

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        A subtle issue, but a real one.

    • That the governor’s chief of staff, media reps, and every state agency remotely connected with this would have statements to be issued, in any eventuality. Days later no one has any idea who did what, who said what to whom, who knew what and when they knew it and then they try to conceal the fact, rather than fabricating nonsense.

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      Personally, it appears that there is a lot of micro managing going on. Initiative seems to be lacking. Everyone seems fearfull to do anything and the result is nothing is getting done.

      • There is little doubt that the Governor could have done more to mitigate the aftereffects of the sweep.

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        I believe the reason he chose not to act more vigorously is that it is more politically expedient to demogogue the issue than it would be to explain to some angry core constituents as to why he would choose to cooperate with ICE.

  8. It seems to boil down to three options:

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  9. The federal government is proceeding on the ongoing basis of stunning mendacity that we’ve seen for the last 6 years.

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  10. The state government is proceeding on the ongoing basis of stunning incompetence that we’ve seen for the last 2 months.

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  11. Some combination thereof.

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    Bleah.

  12. Patrick prides himself in being pro-immigrant, right?. Based on that, when he heard about this raid, wouldn’t one assume that he would attempt to do everything within his power to ensure that this entire fiasco went smoothly? And even if his efforts were in vain, he could at least stand up today and say that he did his best. But that’s not what happened.

    • One would think. Best defense. “Every effort by this office was made to make this a legally responsible and humanitarian effort”. End of story.

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      Now he has debacle # 4 or is it #5 on his hands. I’ve lost count.

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