Response to ICE raids ongoing in Indiana, Massachusetts communities

Published: 2007-03-22

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has conducted raids in recent weeks at workplaces across the U.S. to round up workers who are in the country illegally. In two communities where raids took place March 6 -- South Bend, Ind., and New Bedford, Mass. -- members of the Catholic community and the wider community continue to help families torn apart by the federal action, especially children left in limbo. A majority of the detainees in both places were women, many of them single parents with babies or toddlers. In South Bend, 36 candles at a prayer vigil and information session March 6 at St. Adalbert Church commemorated 36 members of the parish's Hispanic community who were detained in the raid on Janco Composites, a Mishawaka plant that makes fiberglass products for a variety of industries. In Massachusetts, Bishop George W. Coleman of Fall River asked parishes in the diocese to take up a collection to assist Catholic Social Services in serving the immigrant community in New Bedford. Deportation is likely for many of the 361 illegal immigrants jailed following the March 6 raid at a manufacturing plant there, but freeing the jailed mothers with young children as well as providing for the immediate basic needs for affected families has become an around-the-clock battle for Catholic and other agencies.

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