Tag: Homeland Security official arrested

Brazilians Debate Whether Undocumented Housecleaner ‘Betrayed’ Her Boss

By Eduardo A. de Oliveira, EthnicNewz and FI2W reporter

The news on the local Portuguese-language newspaper Brazilian Times

The news on the local Portuguese-language newspaper Brazilian Times

The talk of the town within the “Brazilian corners” of Somerville and Framingham, Massachusetts is whether the Brazilian housecleaner employed by Homeland Security official Lorraine Henderson betrayed her boss by agreeing to record their conversations for immigration authorities. Henderson, the Boston area port director for the Customs and Border Protection Division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was arrested last Saturday for allegedly employing an undocumented Brazilian housecleaner at her home in Salem, Mass.

The controversy in the Brazilian community, which we reported earlier this week, has now made it to the airwaves on Portuguese-language radio in the Bay State.

“Three years ago my boss asked if I had Social Security. I said no. She fired me, but her neighbors kept my services. I would never record a conversation with somebody who gives me a job,” said a listener to a show on WSRO (650 AM), who declined to reveal her name.

“I simply asked my listeners: if a boss treated you well, gave you a job, would you do what this housecleaner did to Henderson?,” said Fausto da Rocha, host of “Brazilian Immigrant Center on the Air” a show broadcast every Monday morning on 1360 AM. (more…)

Brazilians in Massachusetts Shocked After Arrest of Homeland Security Official

By Eduardo A. de Oliveira, EthnicNewz and FI2W reporter

Members of the Brazilian community in Boston and the surrounding region are expressing concern following the arrest on Saturday of the federal official responsible for keeping undocumented immigrants and illegal drugs out of ports in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Lorraine Henderson, the Boston area port director for the Customs and Border Protection Division of the US Department of Homeland Security, was arrested for allegedly employing an undocumented Brazilian housecleaner at her home in Salem, Mass.

Henderson - Photo: Boston Globe.

“I don’t know if my boss will inquire about my immigration status next time I clean her home,” said a housecleaner from Somerville, Mass., who spoke under condition of anonymity.

Henderson hired the unnamed worker starting in 2004. According to a Boston Globe report, she was warned by a fellow Homeland Security employee in 2006 that she should terminate the services offered by the undocumented contractor, but she refused to do so.

Henderson, the Globe said, “was arrested at her home shortly before 8 a.m. (Saturday) after an eight-month undercover investigation during which a cleaner wore a wire.”

(more…)