Quote:
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 14, 2006; 12:08 PM
Federal immigration agents this morning raided a construction site at Dulles International Airport, and several dozen workers were arrested, officials and witnesses said.
The raid was conducted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to ICE spokesman Dean Boyd. He said this morning that officials did not yet have an exact number of arrests.
But a witness at Dulles said about 60 people, most appearing to be Latinos, were stopped at the gate as they stepped onto airport property. They were led away in handcuffs and put in unmarked vans, the witness said.
The raid began about 7 a.m., and Customs agents were finished about 9:30 a.m.
The workers were employed by a number of construction companies involved in a major expansion of the airport. Among the projects are road improvements, an expansion of one Dulles concourse, construction of a new traffic control tower and an automated airport train system, according to the airport's Web site.
The contractors have trailers and facilities just off the airport property and they bus their workers to the construction sites. That is where the arrests were made.
ICE officials said the raid is part of their enforcement efforts at critical facilities where illegal immigrant workers would have access to especially vulnerable infrastructure. A breach of security at a busy airport such as Dulles could pose a risk, officials said. Other facilities that have been targeted by the agency in the past under the program include nuclear plants
and there were other reports of a couple of thousand other illegals arrested in the past week nationwide.
mostly formerly convicted felons.
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