First Person: the complete story of what happened after the Postville raid

Nightprowlkitty alerted us to this post by Duke at The Sanctuary:

Today's New York Times features an article based upon an exclusive interview with Erik Camayd-Freixas, Ph.D. of  Florida International University. Dr Camayd-Freixas was one of  26 federally certified interpreters called into service during the Postville Iowa meat packing raid this past May.  As a court appointed interpreter, Dr Camayd-Freixas witnessed first hand the abuses and systematic disregard for civil and human-rights that marked that raid.

In 23 years as a certified Spanish interpreter for federal courts, Erik Camayd-Freixas has spoken up in criminal trials many times, but the words he uttered were rarely his own.

Then he was summoned here by court officials to translate in the hearings for nearly 400 illegal immigrant workers arrested in a raid on May 12 at a meatpacking plant. Since then, Mr. Camayd-Freixas, a professor of Spanish at Florida International University, has taken the unusual step of breaking the code of confidentiality among legal interpreters about their work.

In a 14-page essay he circulated among two dozen other interpreters who worked here, Professor Camayd-Freixas wrote that the immigrant defendants whose words he translated, most of them villagers from Guatemala, did not fully understand the criminal charges they were facing or the rights most of them had waived.

In the essay and an interview, Professor Camayd-Freixas said he was taken aback by the rapid pace of the proceedings and the pressure prosecutors brought to bear on the defendants and their lawyers by pressing criminal charges instead of deporting the workers immediately for immigration violations.

He said defense lawyers had little time or privacy to meet with their court-assigned clients in the first hectic days after the raid. Most of the Guatemalans could not read or write, he said. Most did not understand that they were in criminal court.

"The questions they asked showed they did not understand what was going on," Professor Camayd-Freixas said in the interview. "The great majority were under the impression they were there because of being illegal in the country, not because of Social Security fraud."

NYT
(Article also contains a video interview with Dr Camayd-Freixas ..it's a must view)  

Last month I received a copy of the essay Dr Camayd-Freixas wrote detailing the raid.

It is published here in its entirety to document what went on behind closed doors at the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo Iowa where 390 migrants were subjected to kangaroo court proceedings that resulted in guilty pleas and mandatory jail sentences.  

Dr Camayd-Freixas will be testifying before Congress later this month at the Immigration Sub-Committee of the House of Representatives in regards to the raid.

He has asked that anyone moved by his account help the relief effort in any way possible;

"Finally, my new friends from Postville involved in the relief effort inform me that they are still dealing with a very tough humanitarian crisis. So, please, if you have any opportunity for fundraising, this is the address where donations can be sent:

St. Bridget's Hispanic Ministry Fund
c/o Sister Mary McCauley
PO Box 369
Postville, Iowa 52162"

What follows is the complete story of what happened after the Postville raid:

Go read Dr Camayd-Freixas's complete essay.