[nukkad] Facts on INS Raid at Randolph AFB, San Antonio, TX

[Harshal Chhaya <hchhaya@epsilon.pair.com>]

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Just received this first person account of the INS raid at the AFB.
Methinks this has not caused a big hungama nationally (in the US, that is) 
is because the Indian community does not have any political clout. We have
never been a vote bank and do not participate actively in regional
or national politics. This is changing with 2nd and 3rd generation
Indians becoming more active but it will be a long time before we
as a group are taken as seriously as the other ethnic groups.

- 'shal
harshal@mumbai-central.com


Facts on INS Raid at Randolph AFB, San Antonio, TX

This email is sent on behalf of every Indian who is working at Randolph Air
Force Base. We have been working at the base since 1996 developing some
state of the art applications. Most of us are distributed among two major
projects Civilian Modern DCPDS and Military Modern DCPDS or simply called
CIVMOD and MILMOD. These two projects are supposed to serve about 350,000
military and 180,000 civilians based all over the world. Both the
applications are being developed in Oracle's tool called Oracle HR (Human
Resources).

1) Incident at the Randolph Air Force Base.

This is exactly how it happened with minor differences in some cases.

This happened on the morning of Thursday; 20th Jan 2000 around 9.00 AM at
our place of work. As we (other colleagues) were busy involved in our work,
we heard from the program manager that all U.S. citizens need to go out of
the building for 45 minutes. We assumed that it's a routine military drill
or exercise etc. and started walking towards the exit door. On our way to
the exit door, we saw that INS agents were manning the exits. As we walked
towards the door, they asked us to step aside while letting all the
Americans to go. They then asked for our identifications and started asking
about our names, company name etc. For some of the people they asked about
5-6 questions and then arrested, but to most of them got arrested based on
their name alone. They already had arrest warrants issued on them and none
of us had any idea what's happening.

All these time, we had no idea why the INS agents were asking all these
questions and what crime had we done.

We felt so humiliated when they handcuffed us in front of our fellow
colleagues and paraded us down through the hallways looking for their van.
Some of us even had to walk all around the block searching for their vans.
They never read any rights to us nor did they explain why they were
arresting us. There was no resistance of any kind from us but we were still
treated like common criminals. The biggest irony is that a lot of us were
pleading to use the restroom and the request was mostly denied and had to
wait about 4 hours. They then asked for our passport, H1's etc. and some of
us said that they have it in their apartments, bank lockers etc. Some of us
even had copies of it at our workplace and showed them to the agents. But,
this was of no use.

We were dumped into their vans with our hands cuffed and were taken from one
apartment complex to the other to retrieve our documents. Even pregnant
women, green card holders were not spared from this ill treatment. Most of
us got all of our documents from the apartments and they did not verify
anything over there. They took all of us to INS office and dumped us into a
cell occupied by others. They invited one by one for questioning with our
files already in their hand and it took an average of 2-3 hours per person.
They want us to fill a questionnaire, which will be filed in our cases, and
we are not sure what to answer. They gave us an option to wait until our
attorney arrives from Houston (about 200 miles away) and hinted that it will
delay the whole process waiting for him. We were really eager to get out of
there as soon as possible and it looked like they took advantage of the
situation.

Before they asked us questions, they read out our rights and they still did
not reveal the charges against us. We answered their questions to the best
of our knowledge and memory under the given circumstance. Once we signed the
questionnaire then they told us that we were arrested because we failed to
comply with Immigration Law. Their charge is "You failed to maintain status
or to comply with the conditions of your nonimmigration status in that you
were not working in Houston, Texas in accordance with your approved Labor
Condition Application and petition for nonimmigrant worker; to wit: You were
working at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas". None of us were
aware of this law and we were always under the belief that we were staying
and working legally since the day we entered here in United States. As a
matter of fact most of us are still working for the same company since day
one.

The valid documents an employee should have are original passport and a copy
of H1B approval. The H1 approval just shows the address of the company
(sometimes address of the attorney) and doesn't show the supposed location
of our work. Even if any law is violated, it's not the responsibility of the
individual employee but it's the responsibility of the employer. We have no
clue why we are being punished instead of the corresponding employers.

INS stated that none of the 40 people arrested has any criminal record and
not considered a threat to the community. AFPC stated that none of us have
access to classified data and were not believed to have breach the security
at the base.

Basic impression put out by the media was that all foreign nationals were
replacing U.S. citizens jobs, US Federal law permits 1,15,000 H1-B visa
approvals a year. In the last couple of years, Indians are snagging more
than 40 per cent of this quota because of the heavy demand for information
technology professionals in the US. Recently U.S. congress passed a law
allowing more foreign hi-tech workers to come into the U.S. because there is
a acute shortage of hi-tech workers in the country. It proves the local
media's version of saying U.S. citizens are replaced with foreign nationals
is totally unjustified and mistaken. The demand is so great that some US
lawmakers, lobbied by the industry, are seeking to raise the cap to 2,00,000
next year.

The whole questioning and interrogation went unto 6.30 p.m. and we came to
know that our bond was set to $5000 per head. At that point they charged 23
employees including 4 women. The men were transferred to Wachenhut
Correction Center in Karsen City (about 80 miles away) and women were
transferred to a detention center in downtown. We had to stay overnight in
those detention centers in most deplorable conditions.

We posted the bond on Friday and everybody was released by evening.

Inconsistency observed:

1.Green Card Holders: They were about 5 or 6 green card holders and they
were also handcuffed and dragged along with us. They were released after
they showed their green cards either in their corresponding apartments or in
INS building. 2.Even though INS declared that they were targeting only two
companies (Frontier & Softech) they arrested other Indians even though we
showed proof that we were working for different companies.

Hardships:

1.INS arrested some of us even though we don't work for those two companies
and the reason was that we were not carrying our passport and H1B documents
in person. We were not aware of this rule and it's not practical and
advisable to carry those important documents with the crime rate rising up
day by day.

"Is this criteria not applicable to other than Indian nationals working in
the same place ?" we are asking this question because INS did not bother to
check the same documents with other foreign nationals working at the same
place.

2.They retained driver license and social security cards of some of the
detained persons. It is extremely difficult for anybody to survive without a
driver license particularly with small children. We are facing problems even
to buy groceries and perform our daily activities.
3.We are not sure how long the case might prolong and INS indicated that we
cannot work for that period of time. We are not sure whether it might take
two months or one year and it is extremely difficult for anybody to survive
for that long without a pay.



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