More than a dozen area faith groups and immigrant-rights organizations are urging a moratorium on raids and deportation of undocumented immigrant workers until a comprehensive reform bill can be passed.

And they want family reunification to be a part of the bill.

The groups include the Rochester Alliance for Immigration Rights, Interfaith Alliance of Rochester, Ibero-American Action League, Downtown United Presbyterian Church, St. Michael's Church, and Wayne County Catholic Charities.

There are thousands of undocumented workers in Western New York, representatives of the immigration-rights groups said at a press conference last week. Immigration officials have been conducting raids on area farms, they said, and there is a fear that the raids will intensify as farming and construction work resumes in the spring.

The activists want to create an emergency response team to film and document the raids.

"We want the public to see what is happening in these raids," said Roberto Resto of the Rochester Alliance for Immigration Rights. "There has been a dramatic increase in the number of raids ever since the marches last summer. And it is creating fear and panic. These are poor and innocent people who are working here under extremely hard conditions, and they are suffering. We want to create this emergency response so these agents know they are being watched."

There have been raids in Monroe, Wayne, and Ontario Counties, said Resto. Last September, officers from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency raided a farm in Wayne County and took away more than 20 men and women.

"They were taken away to a detention center, where they were processed for deportation," said Sister Luci Romero of the Catholic Migrant Ministry. "They left behind nine children, some as young as 2 years old."

The raids make it hard for people to organize for immigration reform, said Resto, because even farmers are worried about a punitive response from the immigration agency.