...K P F T news

LEAD-IN BY HOST DAVID STILES: Early this week, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies arrested 143 immigrant workers at Bush Intercontinental Airport for working with fraudulent identification. The arrests were part of a federal security effort to make airports safer. Rochelle McNutt reports on what the US Department of Justice is calling Operation Tarmac:

STORY: On Monday, Houston became the 16th city to participate in a national security measure called Operation Tarmac.

A task force headed by the US Department of Justice and US Attorney's Office of the Southern District of Texas indicted 143 workers at Bush Intercontinental Airport for using fraudulent identification to obtain airport jobs.

All of the workers arrested were immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America, and according to the US Attorney's Office, all were seen as unacceptable security risks to the traveling public.

Ernest De Soto, spokesperson for Bush Intercontinental Airport says that letters were sent out asking employees to come in to clear up a problem and to reissue security badges.

They did not know they were going to be arrested.

"Absolutely no one arrested had any link, as far as the US Attorney says, to any terrorist groups or anything at all. They basically were illegally here in the country, they were illegally using ID's as far as social security numbers and stuff that were not theirs in order to get jobs. It was a clean sweep that's being done across the US."

De Soto says the employees don't actually work for the airport, but they are affiliated with companies that work at the airport, such as food concession and construction companies.

The Civil Rights and Economic Development Organization, a local group, consisting of lawyers and political activists who advocate for immigrant rights, are holding meetings to discuss their concerns about Operation Tarmac.

According to David Conn, a lawyer with the organization, mostly women food-workers were arrested.

"What's even more discouraging is that many of the people that were arrested were not actively working at the airport, they were on to something else in their life. Some of them were begged to come in by their former employer just so they could be arrested. How does that help anyone?"

Conn says that Operation Tarmac is dangerous because it's not actually focusing on terrorism; it's hiding failures to directly address terrorism.

"...it's a colossal waste of law enforcement resources. We need law enforcement personnel to be protecting us for many purposes. We don't need them to be creating media events where they arrest large numbers of people that serve food or who, in the past, once served food."

When asked about the arrests occurring so close to September 11th, Executive Assistant US Attorney Nancy G. Herrera said it was just a coincidence.

"...There's no specific, it's as I pointed out, coincidental. The bulk of the indictments were returned in August and there were some additional indictments that were presented and returned in the 1st week of September."

According to Conn of the Civil Rights and Economic Organization, Operation Tarmac has all the appearances of being done for show because the indictments were issued more than a month ago.

"So, if there really had been a serious concern with terrorism presumably, hopefully, the department would not have waited five weeks to carry out the arrests. What appears is that they waited five weeks so that they could carry out the arrests right before September 11th."

"That's not protecting us from terrorism. We need law enforcement officials to focus on protecting us from terrorism with well designed operations not what is essentially an I-N-S sweep."

Rochelle McNutt, KPFT news, Houston.

E-mail Rochelle McNutt at rochellemcnutt@yahoo.com .