Defending bakery workers in San Diego

SAN DIEGO--Immigrant rights activists are coming together to prevent the deportations of workers from the French Gourmet Bakery.

On May 15, during a nationwide wave of Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids following this year's May Day marches for immigrant rights, 18 workers at the French Gourmet Bakery in Pacific Beach were arrested in a massive raid. Dozens of armed agents descended without warning, incarcerating workers who have been in the country as long as 18 years.

While at the bakery, ICE gathered names and addresses of other employees. Later that same day, apparently using this information, agents with guns and bulletproof vests showed up at student housing at the University of California-San Diego at the home of Jorge Narvaez, a student and bakery worker--and a legal permanent resident.

A student protest of some 50 people the following week led to an apology by ICE, which had violated campus policy by not informing the university administration about their presence on campus.

Through Narvaez and other students, activists were able to get in touch with bakery workers and their families, several of whom came to a fundraiser June 14 at Christ Lutheran Church (which donated food for the event). Sixty people attended the fundraiser, and $800 was raised for the workers and their families, two of whom, sadly, had already been deported.

Others began attending organizing meetings with activists from the Sí Se Puede Coalition (SSP), the American Friends' Service Committee (AFSC) and the International Socialist Organization (ISO). All remaining workers were released on bail, some of them traumatized by the experience, injured by handcuffs or missing wrongfully confiscated personal effects. Immigration hearings for those arrested are scheduled between August and December.

A solidarity meeting to broaden alliances and lay the basis for a public defense campaign was organized August 21, and was endorsed by SSP, the ISO, the San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice and the Border Angels. Forty people, including representatives of three labor groups, the Center for Social Advocacy and other leading local activists, came to this energizing event.

"I've devoted my life to becoming an immigration lawyer, but then [ICE] came to my home to degrade me," said Narvaez.

Worker Patricia Olvera described her terrifying experience with the unexpected raid, which caused her to flee. When caught by agents, they pointed a gun at her. "It's like they don't want you to work. But I have to work, I have two kids," she said. "They change your life, and they crush your dreams."

Other speakers spoke of small but significant defense campaigns springing up around the country in the wake of similar raids, and the need to hold politicians, especially those dependent on the immigrant vote, accountable.

A public campaign of protest has the potential to embarrass ICE, the courts and the politicians for their shameful disruption of working-class immigrant families and to stop these deportations.