One of the workers said ICE agents instructed the employees to group together by legal status. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are “conducting an operation in support of an ongoing criminal investigation” at a technology refurbishment and repair company located approximately 30 miles north of Dallas, in Collin County, an ICE spokesman said Wednesday. Collin County is about 275 miles north of Houston. Family members of workers at the CVE Technology Group branch in the city of Allen, especially husbands, have arrived outside the company, waiting for information. One of them got a text from his wife, who asked him to call an attorney. One woman, whose mother is an employee, was also outside waiting, in tears — at first. Maria Soria’s mother, Socorro Lechuga, 46, was released by ICE agents conducting the raid inside CVE Technology. Soria, 24, said her mother, who Soria said has worked for the company for around six years, had a petition for legalization already in place before the raid. Lechuga is originally from Guerrero, Mexico. Soria received a voicemail message around 10 a.m. It was from her mother and it said ICE agents had arrived at the company and she didn’t “know what’s going to happen.” “I was worried at first, because you hear ‘ICE’ and everything goes downhill,” Soria said. “I got myself together,” she added, and left work at a health care insurance company in Las Colinas drive to Allen. She called her mother’s lawyer, who told her not to worry because, he said, “they’ll either release her or set a bond to be released within 48 hours.” He added that “they can’t do anything to her, pretty much, because she does have a petition in place.” “So that gave me a peace of mind, that at least I know my mom will be OK,” Soria said. “As far anyone else here, I really don’t know their status or their situation, so that’s a whole different story.” Employees who are working at the company with legal immigration papers have been given green wrist bands to wear. One of those workers, Mathew Varughese, works “repairing cellphones.” He said ICE agents arrived around 10 a.m. and some people began running. Agents instructed workers to group together by legal status. Varughese said that at that point there wasn’t a lot of reaction from employees: “Standing, no talking. Ladies crying.” He said he estimates that about 60 percent of CVE Technology employees are women. Buses, one of which says LaSalle Corrections Transport on the side, were also on the scene. One woman was in the building applying for a job when ICE agents arrived. She says there were hundreds of people inside. During the raid, a few people gathered with demonstration signs. Subscribe to Today in Houston Fill out the form below to subscribe our new daily editorial newsletter from the HPM Newsroom. Email* First Name Last Name * required<doc-sep>DALLAS — Immigration agents have arrested nearly 300 people at a North Texas technology company in what authorities say is one of the largest enforcement actions of its kind in a decade. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says federal agents arrested 280 workers Wednesday at CVE Technology Group in Allen, a city about 15 miles (24 kilometers) northeast of Dallas. The federal agency says the technology repair company employees were working in the United States illegally, but did not release details of who was detained. ICE says it began auditing the employment document of workers at CVE Technology after receiving tips that the business was knowingly hiring people not authorized to work in the country. CVE employee Yessenia Ponce described the raid as “crazy” to KERA News and said people were screaming. Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters Copyright © 2021 The Washington Times, LLC.<doc-sep>US immigration agents arrested more than 280 suspected unauthorized employees Wednesday in a raid on a phone equipment repair business in Texas, the largest such sweep at a single worksite in more than a decade, officials said. Agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations division made the arrests after serving search warrants at CVE Technology Group and four of its staffing companies in Allen, a Dallas suburb. Authorities said the operation was part of an ongoing criminal investigation and that they were acting on tips that the company may have knowingly hired workers with fake documents. The arrests Wednesday are part of the Trump administration’s renewed focus on cracking down on businesses suspected of employing undocumented workers. ICE officials have said that employers who hire undocumented workers gain an “unfair advantage” over others and take jobs from US citizens and legal residents. In the last fiscal year, ICE agents made nearly 10 times as many immigration arrests at workplaces than they did in the previous fiscal year. In August 2018, ICE agents in Texas arrested 160 undocumented workers at a trailer manufacturer. John Sandweg, former acting director of ICE during the Obama administration, said such a large number of individuals being arrested would add further strain to an already overwhelmed immigration system. Immigration courts have a backlog of hundreds of thousands of deportation cases, detention capacity has been limited, and resources continue to be focused on the flows of migrants coming to the border. “This is not the kind of place where you’re going to find public safety threats or those threatening the integrity of the border, and while I certainly support robust enforcement against employers who cheat, the focus of limited immigration resources on people who may not pose a public safety threat is a waste of resources,” he said. Such raids were once more common. ICE agents arrested nearly 400 workers at a meat processing plant in Postville, Iowa, in May 2008, the last operation that netted more arrests at a single worksite. The Obama administration, however, cut back on large sweeps. “Businesses that knowingly hire illegal aliens create an unfair advantage over their competing businesses,” said Katrina W. Berger, special agent in charge of HSI’s Dallas field office. “In addition, they take jobs away from U.S. citizens and legal residents, and they create an atmosphere poised for exploiting their illegal workforce.” Advocates, such as Farheen Siddiqi, a senior staff attorney with RAICES, which provides legal services to immigrants, said the raid would have a devastating impact on community members. “There are many families that are impacted by this,” she said, noting that she witnessed children standing outside, near the site of Wednesday’s raid. “They were feeling helpless.” When buses transporting the arrested immigrants departed the office parking lot, families at the scene grew even more distraught, Siddiqi said. “It was a really disheartening situation,” she said. “They were in shock. They were asking, ‘what do I do?’”<doc-sep>DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – The day after what is being described as the largest single work site immigration raid in the last 10 years in the U.S., many questions still loom over the future of the 280 people arrested and their families. ICE agents raided CVE Tech in Allen on Wednesday after receiving tips of undocumented workers being employed at the electronics refurbishing company. The exact release numbers weren’t known on Thursday but some, mainly pregnant women and mothers of young children were already being released. Felix Villalobos is a volunteer at RAICES, a nonprofit organization that offers legal counseling to refugees and immigrants. VIDEO RELEASED OF ICE RAID IN ALLEN Villalobos says some will of the people who worked at CVE will be released with a notice to appear before a judge at a later date, others will have to bond out, and those with prior criminal and or immigration records will more than likely remain in ICE custody and deported within a few weeks. “That’s what I want to find out is do you already have a removal order? Because if you do your chances are extremely limited,” said Villalobos. There is very little I can do for you.” He says those who will be released or bond out and go through the immigration justice system could have to undergo a process that lasts several years. “The odds of winning in immigration court are pretty low and general”, about the challenges of fighting a deportation,” he said. However, Villalobos said there are current laws and policies, including asylum privileges that might apply on a case by case basis.<doc-sep>
Federal immigration authorities arrested more than 280 employees of a Texas company in what officials said was the biggest single workplace raid in a decade. The homeland security investigations unit of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said the employees of CVE Technology Group Inc. in the city of Allen, north of Dallas, were arrested on administrative immigration violations and that they were working in the United States unlawfully. The raid was part of an ongoing investigation into complaints that the company may have knowingly hired people who are in the U.S. without authorization and that many of those workers were using fraudulent identification documents, the agency said. CVE Group Inc. is a New Jersey-based company that refurbishes and repairs consumer tech products and has a national receiving center in North Texas, according to the company's website. The company could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday. "Our focus is the criminal investigation," said Katrina W. Berger, a special agent in charge for ICE's Homeland Security Investigations in Dallas. "As far as immigration-related arrests, this is the largest ICE worksite operation at one site in the last 10 years," she said. Relatives of workers came to the facility after word of the operation spread, some emotional and wondering about their loved ones, NBC Dallas-Fort Worth reported. Anel Perez, the daughter of a worker who was been detained, told the station, "It's not fair. It's really sad and it makes a lot of people really angry and frustrated," Berger said she could not discuss many details of that ongoing probe but that "the numbers of the administrative arrests we made today hint at the significant scope of this investigation." ICE said that all those arrested would be interviewed "to record any medical, sole-caregiver or other humanitarian situations," and that the federal agency would then determine whether any would be considered for humanitarian release. But the agency also said in the statement, "In all cases, all illegal aliens encountered will be fingerprinted and processed for removal from the United States." Berger said that authorities were still vetting information and she did not have the nationalities, ages or any criminal backgrounds of those taken into custody. ICE said that search warrants were executed at CVE Technology Group Inc. and four of CVE’s staffing companies. Berger said that federal law requires all employers verify that workers are in the country legally with an I-9 form. ICE said an audit of those forms that began in January "confirmed numerous hiring irregularities." "In this case with CVE, we received many tips that they were hiring illegal aliens who were using fraudulent documents," she said. Berger, speaking generally and not about this case, said that immigration laws aim to ensure U.S. citizens and legal residents have a fair chance at getting jobs and that companies compete on the same playing field. In addition, workers hired illegally can be abused and exploited such as by being paid less or subjected to unsafe working conditions, she said.