The police arrested 10 immigrants in Jackson Heights

NYtimes.com
October 22, 2008

Police, Responding to Complaints, Arrest 10 Men at Day Laborer Gathering Place

By KIRK SEMPLE and AL BAKER

The police arrested 10 immigrants on Tuesday on charges that they blocked a sidewalk at a popular gathering place for day laborers in Jackson Heights, Queens, the chief spokesman of the Police Department said.

The arrests came in response to repeated calls from neighborhood residents complaining about the laborers —most of them undocumented — who congregate every day at the intersection of Broadway, 37th Avenue and 69th Street, said the spokesman, Paul J. Browne.

“Police responded to community complaints about them blocking the sidewalk and congregating,” Mr. Browne said, adding that there were 50 to 60 workers at the location on Tuesday morning before the arrests.

“We responded and asked them to disperse,” Mr. Brown said. “All but 10 of them did.”

Several day laborers who were at the intersection on Tuesday afternoon and said they had witnessed the arrests, denied that the police had given the men an opportunity to disperse. The police, they say, pulled up in two vans, demanded identification from a group of workers clustered near the curb, and took those men away.

Those arrested were charged with disorderly conduct for blocking pedestrian traffic and were taken to a local precinct, where they were being held pending arraignment, Mr. Browne said.

They were unable to provide verifiable identification, Mr. Browne said.

The arrests shocked day laborers who congregate at the intersection. By Tuesday afternoon, several hours after the arrests, about two dozen had returned to the site. The men, some of whom had been going to the intersection for more than three years, said it was the first time the police had arrested workers there.

Indeed, city authorities for years have generally left day laborers alone at the dozens of sites across the city where they gather to wait for work.

But the authorities said that Tuesday’s police action was simply a response to neighborhood complaints and did not represent the start of a crackdown on day laborers.

Mr. Browne described the action as “a police commander responding to complaints” from residents about “a large group congregating.”

Chris Newman, legal director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Los Angeles, called the arrests “troubling.”

“If they were arrested for disorderly conduct based on the theory that they were blocking the sidewalk, that would be very serious because it raises First Amendment questions,” he said.

Federal courts, Mr. Newman added, have ruled that day laborers enjoy the same First Amendment protections as other people, particularly in public areas like sidewalks.

A 28-year-old Mexican laborer who would give only his first name, Enrique, said he was standing with the other laborers at the intersection late Tuesday morning when the two police vans arrived.

“One officer got out and said in Spanish: ‘You guys can’t be here. Come here and show me your identification,’ ” he recalled, and added that he and several other workers sidled away, ignoring calls from the officers to return. “I didn’t stop,” he said.

Several laborers who witnessed the arrests said they did not hear the police explain why the men were being detained.

“It’s abuse,” said Jorge, 26, a laborer from Ecuador.

A diminutive Mexican woman pushing a 2-year-old boy in a stroller appeared at the intersection, tears dampening her cheeks. She said her husband was one of those arrested.

He had called her on his cellphone as the police started asking the men for identification, said the woman, who gave only her first name, Olivia.

She said that both she and her husband were in the country illegally and had four children, all of whom had been born in the United States. She said she was afraid that her husband was going to be deported.

“He’s the one who works,” Olivia said, sobbing. “Who’s going to support the four children now?”