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“When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress or mistreat him. But the stranger who resides with you shall be to you like someone native-born among you; and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
– Leviticus, 19:33-34
I remember March 6, 2007, dawning unusually cold in New Bedford that year, almost like an omen of a day that would be bigger than itself.
I had hardly finished my coffee and hadn’t yet made my way to The Standard-Times newsroom when I got the call from an editor to head straight to the South End, where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was conducting a huge sweep of “illegal immigrants” at a factory that nobody had ever really heard much about. A place called Michael Bianco.
Immigration 2025 / Final in a series
This was about 10 a.m. and when I got to the site, which turned out to be one of the city’s old red-brick, early 20th century mills, most of the ugly work of the raid was invisible. A white bus stood out front waiting for the detainees and every so often a person in blue with a “Police ICE” insignia on their back would come and go from the Bianco front door.
What we later learned had been a dehumanizing roundup of mostly frightened women who had been working at sewing machines in the wide-open second floor of the Bianco mill, had been shielded from the eyes of the folks who had begun converging on the scene. It was only later that we found out that three ICE agents apiece surrounded each immigrant, and placed plastic zip ties around their hands.
Across the street, people got out of the cold at the former Tedeschi’s convenience store and New Bedford House of Pizza, and the rumors started almost immediately.
Many of the immigrants, some said, had gotten phony green cards around the corner at a shop called Aries Records, and had been directed to the store by the factory managers themselves. That rumor turned out to be true.
After a while, an ICE spokesman released a statement saying that no one had been seriously injured in the raid, and that pregnant women had been released with an order to appear before an immigration judge. That may have been true, but the news about other mothers rounded up that day was not so positive.
The rumors kept coming. Some said that some of the workers had jumped into the icy waters of Clarks Cove, where a Coast Guard vessel stood guard while two helicopters loomed overhead. That rumor turned out to be false, but the ICE statement that no one had been seriously injured also turned out to be untrue.
I later talked to one young immigrant from Mexico who had badly broken her ankle after jumping from the second floor of the factory to a loading dock below. By the end of the day, we were hearing about working mothers who were still nursing babies and who had been heartlessly separated from them.
At a community meeting in the basement of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish the next day, social workers and religious leaders from Catholic Social Services looked for ways to supply families with everything from diapers to formula to blankets and food.
Reliving the Bianco raid of 2007
A couple weeks later, at a city rally on behalf of the immigrants, one of the leaders of the effort, Howard Mabry of United Interfaith Action, quoted the Biblical passage that I began this column with: Treat the stranger the same as your neighbor, it says. I think it would be fair to say, however, that was not the only view at the time of how these immigrants should be treated.
One protester at the rally carried a sign that said, “ICE protects my mother, America, by deportation of illegal alien criminals.” She was removed from the event by police and an admonition by one of the organizers that those with similar views already had their forum on the airwaves of local talk radio.
Still, many people around the city were in shock over what had happened at Michael Bianco. There had been very little publicity beforehand that more than 500 people had worked making supplies for the Iraq war during the factory’s heyday between 2001 and 2005.
It had been common knowledge in New Bedford at the time that an estimated 3,000 undocumented immigrants lived here. They worked in the seafood houses and the clothing factories, the trash recycling operations, landscaping, roofing, and child care, among other places.
The big focus of the day, as I remember it, was a debate about why no one had cracked down on the employers of the immigrants. I remember writing a 2008 story about Guatemalan immigrants separating trash and recyclables at New Bedford Waste Services, an operation run by the well-known local owner of the city’s trash hauler at the time. While I did an onsite interview, a translator told me that two of the workers separating trash right in front of me on a conveyor line had phony green cards. The owner of the factory, who was standing by our side, looked shocked at the translator’s words.
As more information came out about the conditions at the Bianco factory that day, it seemed more like a place out of the era of New Bedford’s great 1928 textile strike than it did a 21st-century workplace.
The workers, almost all women, labored over rows and rows of machines. They made $7.50/hour and were docked $20 for spending more than two minutes in the restroom. They were fired after a second offense.
Sonia Matute, who was seven months pregnant at the time of the raid, told me the managers were always telling the stitchers to go “faster and faster” as they cranked out, with not a little irony, military vests and backpacks for the ongoing American war.
A few months after the raid, at a deportation hearing at the Kennedy federal building in Boston, Guadlupe Martinez, a 19-year-old from Mexico who was the person injured jumping to the loading dock, told me that she even then intended to stay in the country if she could. She still needed money to send back to Mexico, she said.
“My mother and father are old and cannot work,” she said through a translator.
Martinez was among 33 women at the Kennedy building that day and there were so many of them they sat on the floor waiting for their hearings. Catholic Social Services was among the groups that had stepped forward to help them, and that day at the Kennedy building there was talk of quietly working under the table as babysitters or cleaning ladies.
Among those on the floor was 38-year-old Matute, who had come to New Bedford from Honduras. She told me that the ICE agents had been good to her when they approached her at her sewing machine because of her pregnancy. She was “very big,” she said, and they let her go as long as she agreed to appear in court.
But Matute also said that she had not worked in the two months since the raid and that she was worried about money. Her boyfriend and 18-year-old son were also swept up in the raid and had been sent to Texas and Dartmouth jails, respectively. She was living on milk, beans and cheese from the government’s Women, Infants, and Children program, she said.
Like Martinez, Matute was determined not to go back to her home country if she didn’t have to, she said. “Here, we work very hard but we can eat good,” she told me, also through a translator. “There, we can’t even eat.”
Talking to those women on the floor of the Kennedy building that day made it clear to me what it’s like to be so desperate that you will do anything to survive.
At the time I wrote the columns about the Michael Bianco raid, journalists, myself included, were still using the term “illegal immigrants,” some even used “illegal aliens.” It was a demeaning way to refer to human beings and a few years later, the Associated Press banned the term.
Today we know that there are a wide variety of types of immigrants in the country, with and without the federal government’s permission. For those who don’t have permission, it’s more commonplace to refer to them as “undocumented immigrants” or some lengthier description like “immigrants without papers.”
If we’ve learned nothing else over the past two decades, it’s that the immigration issue is a complex matter and difficult to solve.
America, no doubt, remains more divided on the issue in 2025 than it was in 2007. But the immigrants we are most divided over are not the many emigres who come from Asia and Europe, but rather the ones who come from our neighboring Latin America.
Our Latino brothers and sisters, driven by poverty and violence and their often dysfunctional native governments, are attracted by the opportunity here. They have continued to cross the southern border to the United States in ever larger numbers these last 18 years. In fact, many of them have lived here without the permission of law for some four decades.
For myself, the Michael Bianco raid was a raising of my consciousness. There were 300 officers storming the Bianco factory that day, almost the same number — 361 — of immigrants who were detained. It was a scene like nothing I had ever experienced in the city.
I remember how upset former Mayor Scott Lang was that ICE had come to New Bedford and separated these mothers, and some fathers, from their kids.
Former Mayor Lang: Raid was ‘street theater’
He said he was all for throwing the book at any employer or anybody else who had conspired to create fake green cards. But terrifying women as they sat at sewing machines, making them think they might never see their children again, was unacceptable.
“I don’t want to see any families broken up or detained who have previously been allowed to come into the United States until I know what the federal policy is going to be,” he said.
And 18 years later, the U.S. is still waiting for that immigration policy.
Email columnist Jack Spillane at jspillane@newbedfordlight.org.
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You failed the follow-up.
The business was taken over by a company based in Missouri. How are they doing? Is the business still operating in New Bedford, under this Missouri company?
Bianco was using illegal immigrant workers, that is beyond dispute. It also came out that the company had been warned by the Feds of a high number of “No-match” employees, meaning they were warned they were hiring illegals. It also came out that the company was knowing fly aiding and abetting the activity.
I think it is relevant to know how the business successor did.
Is it possible to run the business without hiring illegals, telling them where to go to get fake ID, and, well……breaking the law?
The Missouri company went belly up.
Employee costs.
The New Bedford economy lost millions.
The New Bedford fishing community is dependent on illegals to cut fish.
‘Norwegians’ will not.
What a complex topic!!
This video is a very professional and moving production of what happened many years ago in New Bedford; the topic is currently top of mind for those living in New Bedford and other areas with a concentrated immigrant population. Jack Spillane paints a very compelling picture advocating for the basic human rights of innocent people who are just trying to “get along” and make a life here in the US.
Of course, as in most cases, there are multiple sides to this discussion. We do need to have a system for immigration into our country that is based upon legal process. That system worked reasonably well for decades, a foundation to populate the US with millions of wonderful and productive citizens (including my family). Hopefully we can get back to a modernized version of this system where we can be an empathetic destination for those who want to join our society, who are also willing to go through the complex processes that are required to make that happen. We should work to make those processes easier and more rational, but immigration still needs to have a workable and also enforced legal foundation.
The legal process is very easy.
A million in net worth buys you a green card.
Or a hundred mile an hour fastball.
We don’t want no ignorant Christian Conservative tomato pickers.
Christians, is a broad term that covers many kinds of sects and beliefs, just as immigrants, is also a broad term. It would unfair to those here legally in some way, like migrant workers who have sought and obtained permission to be here, being thrown in and categorized, with others who have not gone the legal route. Probably most Christians are all for the varied kinds of legal immigrants. Some christians are for any kind of immigrants, here legally or not.
What ever we do, must be sustainable at the end of the day. Some regulations and legal requirements, like it or not, can only make sense. Even if all this is worked out, there a some safety issues that we have to appreciate deportation being an option for. We first have to house, and provide medical care for our, below poverty level working poor, elderly and those with severe medical needs and serious disabilities. Not to forget our veterans especially the homeless ones, orphans and others deserving help like these. Let’s not think we can take care of all the another counties problems until we can first take care of our own problems and people. That would be ignorant.
“It would unfair to those here legally in some way, like migrant workers who have sought and obtained permission to be here, being thrown in and categorized, with others who have not gone the legal route.”
A million dollars buys you a Green Card.
We took care of Ireland’s “problem”, poverty.
And the Azores, still do.
“At the time I wrote the columns about the Michael Bianco raid, journalists, myself included, were still using the term “illegal immigrants,” some even used “illegal aliens.” It was a demeaning way to refer to human beings and a few years later, the Associated Press banned the term.”
Actually, the correct legal term, as used in immigration law, is illegal alien. That it is considered demeaning is a phenomenon of those advocating for such people. And, the AP is noted as a decidedly left outlet that won’t even go along with the president’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and has hence been un-invited to the oval office and air force one.
This issue is not complex, as you argue. It’s actually quite simple. Don’t enter the country illegally! If you do so you are putting yourself and your family at risk. I know, the benefits may outweigh the risks in your estimation, but it’s a risk you take, and if you lose – well, that’s on you, not those here legally.
In addition, they commit an additional serious crime by using a counterfeit green card. “The penalty for making or possessing a counterfeit green card can include significant fines, imprisonment for up to 15 years depending on the severity of the offense, and potential deportation from the United States, as creating a fake green card is considered a serious form of immigration document fraud under federal law; repeat offenders may face even harsher penalties. ”
I feel bad for the people who come out losers on this, I am not without compassion. But, a country without laws and borders is not a country for long. We must enforce the law, and respect the law. And those here illegally and fraudulently represent themselves as being here legally have not respected the law. That is no way to begin one’s journey towards permanent legal residence and citizenship.
You feel bad for people trying to improve their lives?
Thousands of ‘illegal immigrants’ are now citizens.
They are criminals?
Losers?
These “law and order” comments from MAGATs are sickening. No doubt from loud “patriots” and “Christians” who have never missed a meal, never been desperate enough to walk their children across the world to try to find some kind of safety.
Fix your own country, don’t bring your problems to others.
No one owns a country.
They are fixing their problem, by moving.
Just like our original settlers.
Did they have work visas?
Yes, lets go back 300 years to find an instance to compare to today. Elections have consequences. How many have you taken in? Oh the hypocrisy.
Let’s go back to the 1960’s/1970’s.
When America was Great.
The Great New Bedford/Azorean “invasion”
How many had visa’s?
How those those people destroyed our economy?
Elections have consequences, was New Bedford better off in 2020 than it was in 2016?
Were you?
Oh the hypocrisy.
“They”, the other, the different, our nation’s future Christian Conservatives do not want to be taken in, they want to thrive in a free and just society.
When did your people land?
Visas?
Why are the owner’s and manager’s names always kept out of the story? They know better but money gets in the way!
Who is they?
Whose money?
What way?
“Everyone suffers when people enter the country illegally causing the government to have to expend taxpayer dollars to find and deport them.” Fixed the headline for you.
Would letting them work cost the taxpayer less money?
What is the cost of removal?
Do you care?
Where did your family immigrate from?
I care about billions of tax payer dollars spent to house, educate, feed and transport people who broke the law to come here uninvited without a single vote of those taxpayers.
Do you care about the millions of Americans who depend on illegals to keep their businesses in businesses.
Lawn care and butt wiping.
Will clearing out New Bedford’s illegals Make New Bedford Great Again?
Like it was after The Greet Michael Bianco Raid?
There is a process to come into this country legally. Millions have done that and assimilated, me included. What makes these illegals who choose the illegal way special? What about those waiting in line to legally come here? Is it fair to them? Talk is cheap when what you advocate for doesn’t affect you.
The caption on this article is incorrect.
Legal immigrants to the USA need not hide, only illegal immigrants may wish to hide as their presence is illegal and of their own design.
USA immigration policy is very clear, illegal immigration into the USA subjects one to arrest, detention and deportation.
Fairness is subjective, is it fair for some illegal immigrants to utilize public monies for multitudinous living expenses when legal immigrants are providing these funds and paying the costs of the legal immigration process?
Is it fair for elderly, disabled and financially marginal taxpayers to have to provide benefits for some illegal immigrants when they cannot afford these benefits for themselves?
Living in the past (2007 and further) is a favorite pastime of New Bedford columnists.
Did the Bianco Raid make New Bedford Great Again?
Did Trump 2017-2020?
When?
New Bedford isn’t great if its greatness depends on criminals and slaves.
The raids are to keep wages down, plain and simple. When white European immigrants came here they were deported if they were criminals, mentally ill or carry an infectious disease . Now to keep immigrant wages down , very few are criminals , mentally ill or disease carry people.
Additionally, undocumented people who work have taxes taken out os their pay and cannot file taxes. I wonder how much money will be lost from that?