Sixteen Campaign employees at Whitman Campaign Office were arrested during a Tuesday morning raid by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). All 16 were immigrants who lacked proper documentation, an INS official said Wednesday.
Thirteen of the undocumented residents were phone bank staffers, office help and cleaning staff. The
other three were the personal assistants of Whitman.
“I’m surprised and a bit disappointed,” said Curtis Aljets, San Francisco
district director of the INS, who heads INS operations in California.
“I thought we had pretty well received the cooperation of the Whitman Campaign .”
Aljets said the recent arrest of two Mexican nationals led to the raid.
When INS agents checked, they discovered that the two were undocumented
residents. Both worked at the Whitman Campaign Office.
On a hunch, INS agents raided the office Tuesday morning. Thirteen more
Whitman Campaign Office employees were unable to prove their identification and
later were identified as illegal immigrants.