Chertoff Defends Immigration Raids, Detentions

WASHINGTON — Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff on Wednesday defended the administration's treatment of legal and illegal immigrants during workplace raids and at detention facilities.

At a sometimes contentious House hearing, Chertoff also said that the initial stage of a "virtual fence" along the Southern border is working, despite technical problems and other glitches that have delayed the effort.

"We have a system that is operational and has already assisted in identifying and apprehending more than 2,000 illegal aliens trying to cross the border since December," he told the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law.

The Government Accountability Office said in a recent report that the 28-mile project is "not an optimal system" and would need a redesign before expanding it further. That would delay the first phase of the broader technological fence by three years, to 2011, the GAO report said.

Chertoff faced pointed questions from Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, and Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., about the treatment of children at immigrant detention facilities at the T. Don Hutto residential facility in Taylor, Texas and and a smaller facility in Berka, Pa.

Sanchez said that children at the facilities had been put in cells alone for hours, awakened in the middle of the night with flashlights in their faces and threatened with being permanently separated from their parents.

Attorneys for several of the children confined at the Hutto facility contended in lawsuits that conditions there were inhumane and violated minimum standards for minors in custody. The case ended in a settlement that included new standards for the centers.

Chertoff said that he couldn't judge the conditions because he "wasn't there," but that "eventually, this was resolved to the satisfaction of the plaintiffs."

Rep. Melvin Watt, D-N.C., asked Chertoff to explain what it meant that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had power to "briefly detain" people and whether that included denying them food, water, access to their families and to union representation. Watt said this occurred at raids last year of Swift & Company meat packing plants.

Chertoff said that "no specific amount of time" has been determined by the courts as far as detention periods, and pointed out that many of the people arrested had committed identity theft.

Watt also suggested that Chertoff needed more minority staff members to deal with immigration-related issues and other matters. He pointed out that the 10 staff people behind Chertoff at the hearing were white males.

Chertoff replied, "I wouldn't assume that the ethnic background of everyone is self-evident."

That comment upset Watt, an African American, who then asked the staffers to please stand up if they were black or if they were women. He then asked the Congressional record to reflect that no one left his seat.

Chertoff also had a tense exchange with Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who asked him why thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina were still in "formaldehyde trailers."

Chertoff objected to the term, saying that every trailer sold in the United States has some formaldehyde. He also said that people do not want to leave the trailers for many reasons, including that they do not want to move to areas where affordable housing has been built.

"We are using every means at our disposal to move people from the trailers," he said.

Unsatisfied with the answer, Waters said the situation was "unconscionable and shameful."

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said that people might move out of the trailers if the government made them pay rent. The comment drew a chuckle from some GOP lawmakers, including Rep. Steve King of Iowa, ranking member of the subcommittee.

On another topic, Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, asked Chertoff to consider putting people's citizenship status on a new tamper-proof federal I.D. being implemented in the next few years. People who are not U.S. citizens should be required to have another tamper-proof immigrant identification card, he said.

Chertoff replied that the idea would raise constitutional questions.

On the Web:

Department of Homeland Security: www.dhs.gov