Outcry After Louisiana Teacher Arrested During School Board Meeting
January 11, 2018 by admin
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A Louisiana teacher questioned whether the superintendent should receive a raise. Then, she was ushered out of a school board meeting and handcuffed.
The dramatic arrest on Monday — which was caught on video — has drawn outrage in the U.S. and beyond. The Vermilion Parish School Board offices were locked down on Tuesday after receiving threats, board president Anthony Fontana told The Daily Advertiser in Lafayette, La.
The Vermilion Parish teacher, Deyshia Hargrave, will not face charges.
“I have reviewed the video, and I am not going to approve any charges against the teacher,” Ike Funderburk, the city attorney in Abbeville, the parish seat, told KATC. “I have talked with the attorney for the school board. They do not wish to pursue any charges against the teacher.”
Since it was posted to YouTube on Monday, the video has been viewed more than 1.7 million times.
During a public comment period at the board meeting, Hargrave stood up and voiced opposition to superintendent Jerome Puyau receiving a raise.
“I have a serious issue with a superintendent or any person in a position of leadership getting any type of raise,” she said calmly. “It’s absurd that we’re even considering giving someone a raise when these teachers are working this hard and not getting a dime.”
The board then voted to approve the raise for Puyau, reportedly moving his salary from around $110,000 to more than $140,000.
At that point, Hargrave addressed the room again. “How are you even going to take a raise?” she asked. “It’s basically taking our money.”
At that point, a security officer, later identified as a deputy city marshal paid by the school board, approached Hargrave and asked her to leave the meeting. “You’re going to leave or I’m going to remove you. Take your things and go,” he said.
She asked whether it was against policy to stand as she spoke and pointed out that the board was directly addressing her. She then complied with the officer’s request and walked out of the room.
Seconds later, the video shows the security officer forcibly putting Hargrave in handcuffs as other teachers voice outrage.
“What are you doing, can you explain?” Hargrave asks.
“Stop resisting,” the officer replies.
“I am not, you just pushed me to the floor,” the teacher says.
Outside, the officer says he gave her “many directives to leave” and ushers her into the back of a police vehicle.
Hargrave was booked into jail overnight, according to KATC, even though the superintendent said that “shortly after the meeting that he had called to inform police that the system didn’t want any charges pressed.”
The city appears to be distancing itself from the officer. Funderburk, the city’s attorney, emphasized in his statement that the officer “is not acting in any official capacity on behalf of the city of Abbeville.” He also stressed that “the city of Abbeville has absolutely nothing to do with the events of the other night.”
The ACLU of Louisiana said Hargrave’s expulsion from the meeting and arrest “are unacceptable and raise serious constitutional concerns.” It adds: “The Constitution prohibits the government from punishing or retaliating against people for expressing their views, and the fact that a schoolteacher was arrested at a public meeting of the school board is especially troubling.”
Fontana defended the officer’s behavior in a statement to KATC.
“If a teacher has the authority to send a student, who is acting up and she can’t control, out of the classroom to the principal’s office, under our policy we have the same rules,” Fontana said. He added that the officer “did exactly what he was hired to do. He followed the procedures completely. She’s the one who made the choices that got her arrested.”
Two board members have complained that the board does not treat women fairly, according to The Associated Press.
“No reason for anyone to be treated this way. So far in three years, only women have been removed from board room meetings,” board member Sara Duplechain told the wire service.
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Immigration Agents Target 7-Eleven Stores in Push to Punish Employers
January 11, 2018 by admin
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In a statement, 7-Eleven Inc., based in Irving, Tex., distanced itself from the situation, saying that the individual stores are franchises that belong to independent business owners, who “are solely responsible for their employees, including deciding who to hire and verifying their eligibility to work in the United States.”
“7-Eleven takes compliance with immigration laws seriously and has terminated the franchise agreements of franchisees convicted of violating these laws,” the company said.
If ICE hoped to make a bold statement, it could hardly pick a more iconic target than 7-Eleven, a chain known for ubiquitous stores that are open all the time and sell the much-loved Slurpees and Big Gulps. Many a 7-Eleven franchise has been a steppingstone for new legal immigrants who want to own and run their own small businesses.
Not all franchisees have been scrupulous about whom they hire. ICE called its Wednesday sweep a “follow-up” of a 2013 investigation that resulted in the arrests of nine 7-Eleven franchise owners and managers on Long Island and in Virginia on charges of employing undocumented workers. Several have pleaded guilty and forfeited their franchises, and have been ordered to pay millions of dollars in back wages owed to the workers.
“This definitely sends a message to employers,” said Ira Mehlman, the spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors more limits on immigration and stricter enforcement.
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According to ICE, federal agents served inspection notices to 7-Eleven franchises in California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington State and Washington, D.C.
Employees at two 7-Eleven stores on Staten Island said that immigration agents visited the stores on Wednesday. But the agents were shown valid employment records with Social Security numbers, two workers at each of the stores said, and no one was arrested.
In all, 16 of the 98 stores visited on Wednesday were in the New York City area, according to an ICE spokeswoman, Rachael Yong Yow, who would not specify their locations.
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In Miami Beach, an employee at one 7-Eleven said that while no agents showed up at her store, her boss asked workers to make sure their employment records were up to date, in case ICE continued its visits. Agents dropped in on 7-Eleven stores in seven cities in southeast Florida, including Miami Beach, according to Nestor Yglesias, an ICE spokesman; he, too, declined to identify specific stores.
Under President George W. Bush, ICE grabbed headlines by rounding up unauthorized workers at meatpacking plants, fruit suppliers, carwashes and residences. In a shift, the agency under President Barack Obama focused on catching border crossers, deporting convicted criminals and pursuing employers on paper, by inspecting the I-9 forms that employers are required to fill out and keep to verify their workers’ eligibility.
By targeting 7-Eleven franchisees and their workers on Wednesday, ICE under Mr. Trump appeared to be melding the approaches of his two predecessors: Go after employers while also detaining employees whom agents encountered without work authorization.
One of the biggest workplace immigration raids, in May 2008, resulted in the detention of nearly 400 undocumented immigrants, including several children, at an Iowa meatpacking plant. Sholom Rubashkin, the chief executive of the Agriprocessors plant, which was then the largest kosher meatpacking operation in the country, was eventually convicted of bank fraud in federal court.
President Trump commuted Mr. Rubashkin’s 27-year prison sentence last month, after years of lobbying by a number of prominent lawyers and politicians who considered his term unduly harsh, and perhaps even anti-Semitic.
Correction: January 10, 2018
An earlier version of this article misstated when nearly 400 people were detained in an immigration raid at an Iowa meatpacking plant. The raid was in May 2008, not July.
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