(Bridging Boundaries)
"Robert J. Hildreth, 57, is the public face of the National Immigrant Bond Fund, a fledgling organization that helps immigrants swept up in Immigration and Customs Enforcement workplace raids post bonds...Since spring 2007, the fund has paid more than $180,000 to bond out immigrants snared in ICE raids in California, Massachusetts and Maryland. Word of the fund is spreading, but not quite fast enough for some immigrants caught up in the recent crackdown on businesses that hire illegal immigrants. In the past nine months, ICE has detained about 4,500 undocumented workers and 111 employers, according to ICE statistics."
After a raid in Houston, "on June 25, bond fund organizers struggled to find "on-the-ground support" to help mobilize the families of detained immigrants... One of the principles of the fund requires detainees' families to make matching contributions, which helps ensure they appear in court, organizers said."
"It wasn't until two weeks later that the attorneys got a notice the bond fund was available, we only had one person who was still being detained and whose family couldn't raise the bail money," Jimenez said.
"Hildreth, the son of schoolteachers, said part of his motivation to help immigrants came from his father, a historian."
"One of his big themes was that the immigration story in the United States is vital to the health and growth of our country," he said. "He drilled that into me."
"After graduating from Harvard University, Hildreth worked for the International Monetary Fund from 1975 to 1980, living in Washington, D.C., and La Paz, Bolivia. He returned to the U.S. and worked for major Wall Street firms until starting his own business in 1989, Boston-based IBS Inc., which buys and sells loans in international markets."
"I've been involved in Latin America since college," he said. "I know many, many, many Latin Americans, including many, many Mexicans, so I have a personal friendship, a personal affinity."
In all, Hildreth said he paid $130,000 to help the New Bedford workers, and detainees' families chipped in $100,000, securing the release of 40 people, he said. He said none of them skipped bond.
The fund has infuriated some advocates for stricter immigration reforms, who have called it "traitorous" on Internet message boards.
"There's one more reason — besides humanitarian — that this bond fund was created and it's just as important. It's political," he said. "We hope that if we get a lot of history helping people in raids, plus a lot of contributions, even if it's only a buck, then we can really have a voice next year in the immigration debate."
From: Carroll, Susan. "Illegal workers get help from fund." Houston Chronicle. Aug. 7, 2008. Full story at: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5929129.htmlMore info at:
www.immigrantbondfund.org
No comments:
Post a Comment