Customs enforcement officials aren’t calling it a migrant camp raid, but all Cathy Zappala knows is no one is left to irrigate and weed her onion fields.

On May 23, U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement stopped a van full of Mexican farm workers as it was leaving Zappala Farm labor camp on Muck Drive, at the Hannibal/Granby town line.

The ‘Raid’
ICE agents, under “Operation Return to Sender,” were looking for one man for whom they had a court deportation order. He wasn’t there, but the agents said the 16 workers on the bus admitted they too, like the man being sought, were illegally in the U.S.

The papers — I-9 forms and Social Security cards — they had given to the Cato-based Zappala Farms, one of the state’s largest onion producers with 700 acres in the two counties, were fraudulent.

Those workers, and five others located by the ICE back at the migrant camp, were taken into custody and now await a deportation hearing.

There is dispute between Zappala and ICE officials about the incident itself. Zappala said a full-time worker who was not taken into custody told her the other workers were treated roughly, handcuffed and made to lie on the ground. Others were rousted from the labor camp, a one-story brown building with small individual units. Zappala described the workers, including women, as “being scared to death.”

ICE spokesman Michael Gilhooly said he wasn’t there, but agents, for their safety, may use restraints on subjects in question. He said those who were at the scene told him the farm workers were cooperative. They are considered “collateral catches,” and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security gives ICE agents powers to take them into custody when they are found in the course of an investigation of a known fugitive. The man they were looking for was located a short time later off the migrant camp.

“We told them where to find him,” said Zappala, who said no one from ICE contacted anyone from the farm prior to the incident. Her husband had to call Homeland Security after the fact to find out what happened to the workers, she said.

Gilhooly said he wouldn’t discuss how ICE conducts its investigation, but said agents believed the man they sought would be in the van and that ICE would not give a farm advance notice “that would compromise the operation.”

He also wouldn’t discuss the details of the man’s case, only that an immigration judge had deemed him to have been in the U.S. illegally and issued a deportation order.

‘Operation Return to Sender’
The incident at Zappala’s is part of “Operation Return to Sender,” Gilhooly said.

Put in place for several months in 2006 and then resurrected in March, the operation had, as of the end of April, arrested and detained at least 750 immigrants in raids across the country this year, according to “Democracy Now!” a daily independent radio program carried on more than 500 stations.

The only other reported raid in New York was in Albany in April when 42 immigrants were arrested. Authorities raided private apartments and picked people off the streets. Two immigrants were arrested while buying a pizza.

An ICE news release from June 2006 claimed that “Operation Return to Sender” ended that month and had been targeted at those in the U.S. illegally with criminal records. The release indicated the operation brought in ‘more than 2,100 criminal aliens, gang members, fugitives and other immigration violators.”

Half of those arrested and subsequently deported did have criminal records for serious offenses, but half did not.

“Operation Return to Sender” is another example of a new and tough interior enforcement strategy that seeks to catch and deport criminal aliens, increase worksite enforcement, and crack down hard on the criminal infrastructure that perpetuates illegal immigration,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “The fugitives captured in this operation threatened public safety in hundreds of neighborhoods and communities around the country. This department has no tolerance for their criminal behavior and we are using every authority at our disposal to bring focus to fugitive operations and rid communities of this criminality.”

Zappala believes the farm workers she employed weren’t in the U.S. to commit crimes, but to make a living and to help support their families back in Mexico. She described the workers now in ICE custody as “very professional and well-liked.” She said they took their jobs seriously.

“It really irks me that ICE can come on our property without even a phone call,” she said. “And this could happen again and again.” She said that it is virtually impossible to tell if someone is providing fraudulent documentation. All of the workers gave her documents that appeared to be legitimate and she processed their pay as she would for any other worker, withholding Social Security taxes.

“The government was getting money from these people they could never claim back (because their Social Security numbers were fraudulent).”

Labor efforts
Zappala said until the U.S. can adopt a realistic guest worker program for agriculture that will allow aliens in, only to work legally and not become citizens, these problems will keep occurring. She is worried about replacing the crew that will likely be deported – she said there are few Americans who are willing to do agricultural labor. Last year, flooding took 75 percent of Zappala’s onions, and this year, the labor issue has put a negative pallor over the beginning of the season. She said the farm has made many efforts to become less reliant on random migrant labor, but they haven’t worked.

Zappala said one year, they went to Puerto Rico and with help from the U.S. Department of Labor, looked for people to come work in the onion fields. She said they interviewed several people, found the ones they wanted and then made arrangement to pay for training and their transportation to New York.

“They weren’t even the ones who came, and the ones who came, didn’t want to work,” she said.

She has also used a program called H2-A, a labor certification program created as a means for agricultural employers who anticipate a shortage of domestic workers to bring non-immigrant foreign workers to the U.S.

She said the farm was sued under the program. Mark James, Executive Director of New York Farm Bureau’s Finger Lakes office, said there are parts of H2-A that are difficult for farmers and as work progresses on the AgJOBS bill, there is an effort to change some of the H2-A regulations.

Meanwhile, Zappala is scrambling for a new crew and looks at the raid at her farm as a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars that will be used to deport productive workers.