It was 6:30 a.m. on June 7, 2007 and someone was pounding on Florente Baranda’s back door. He opened it just a crack to see who it was. That’s when four Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers shoved the door open, stormed in, and arrested him without explanation.
Baranda, of 200 Peck St. in New Haven’s Fair Haven neighborhood, recounted his version of last summer’s ICE raids at an immigration hearing in Hartford on Monday morning. He was one of six respondents who took the stand to give their side of the story, testifying that ICE agents entered their homes without permission.
Lawyers representing immigrants swept up in the raids seek to prevent their clients’ deportation by proving that their constitutional rights were violated during the raids. The lawyers argue that their clients’ Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights were violated by ICE officers’ illegal entry into their homes, unlawful searches, and a lack of due process. (See previous coverage on the hearings here and here.)
During over three hours of testimony, Judge Michael Straus heard from residents of first and second-floor apartments at 200 Peck and from residents of 45 Barnes St. All testified that ICE officers had entered without permission.
Edinzon Fernando Yangua-Calva, wearing a black leather jacket and jeans, took the stand first. He said that he was sitting in his living room at 45 Barnes on the morning of June 6 waiting for a friend to pick him up and take him to work. Hearing a knock at the door, he got up to answer it and found that the door was already being opened by ICE officers. Yangua-Calva said the ICE agents entered his apartment without his permission and showed him a picture of someone he didn’t recognize.
“When I told them I didn’t know him they said, ‘You’re arrested’ and pushed me against the sofa,” testified Yangua-Calva, through an interpreter.
Florente Baranda, dressed in striped blue button-down shirt, said that after the ICE agents pushed their way into his house, he tried to ask them what was happening.
“They smiled and said nothing else,” Baranda said.
Baranda said that his 11-year-old daughter was taken from his side and told to call her mother at work and ask her to come home.
“I felt bad because my daughter was very small to witness what was going on,” Baranda said.
After his wife came home, Baranda was arrested and taken away along with his cousin, also living in the apartment.
Edilberto Cedeno-Trujillo answered the door in the apartment upstairs from Baranda’s. “I opened the door this much,” Cedeno-Trujillo said, holding his hands a few inches apart. The ICE officers pushed the door the rest of the way open and entered quickly.
“They didn’t ask permission,” Cedeno-Trujillo said. “They just came in.”
“Witness after witness said that they didn’t let them in the apartment,” summed up Attorney Mike Wishnie (pictured at top), contacted by phone after the hearing. Wishnie is the head of the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization, the Yale law clinic that is representing the immigrants.
“The government really couldn’t contest that,” he said.
“Our clients were very proud and pleased to tell their story before a judge,” said Yale law student Jane Lewis, one of the members of the Yale law clinic, in a phone conversation after the hearing.
“This is not a merely intellectual argument,” Lewis continued. She characterized the ICE officers’ conduct during the raids as “very abusive behavior.”
ICE attorneys Leigh Mapplebeck and John Marley declined to speak on the record after the hearing.
“Fishing Expedition”
Monday’s hearing was a continuation of a hearing on Oct. 19, which had stalled due to a disagreement between attorneys on each side over what questions would be permissible to ask given the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. The Yale lawyers were seeking to avoid a situation in which their clients would give testimony that might later be used against them. ICE lawyers argued that all questions should be answered in order to have a full account of the case.
The two sides had not reached a resolution by the start of Monday’s hearing. To the visible frustration of the judge and the ICE attorneys, testimony was characterized by frequent interruptions, as the Yale lawyers repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment on behalf of their clients.
The Yale lawyers consistently objected to questions about the birthplaces of their clients, how long they had lived in the U.S., the legal status of their family members. They suggested that the ICE attorneys were trying to gather evidence for future prosecution against the immigrants.
“Let’s take a look at the kinds of questions that have been asked,” said Attorney Chris Lasch, a supervising attorney with the Yale law clinic. He complained to the judge that the ICE attorneys were “using this hearing to go on a fishing expedition.”
The Yale attorneys also repeatedly objected on the grounds of relevance, pointing out that the matter at hand was the constitutionality of the ICE agents’ conduct, not the legal status of their clients.
Future prosecution against the immigrants could occur through the U.S. Attorney’s office. At the front row of the hearing, Assistant US Attorney Michelle Colson and Chief of the Civil Division for the Connecticut US Attorney’s Office John Hughes were taking copious notes on white legal pads. The two declined to be interviewed after the hearings.