Markeshia Ricks Photo
Rev. Otero, right, gave impassioned remarks.
The city’s Latino community and leaders joined the mayor to reaffirm their commitment to maintain the Elm City’s sanctuary status and call on New Haveners of all stripes to stand together and not give in to divisive rhetoric.
Harp: We will protect each other.
Nearly 100 people packed out the upper atrium of City Hall Tuesday mainly in a show of support for the city’s undocumented immigrant community, and to push back against comments made by a prominent pastor and activist about immigration policy and his perception that harboring undocumented immigrants hurts the African-American community.
The pastor, Rev. Boise Kimber, explained his views, which deviate from New Haven’s popular views on immigration policy, during a recent appearance on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven” program. His position deviates from the sanctuary city position embraced by immigration-reform activists as well as members of the Board of Alders and Mayor Toni Harp.
Harp declared at Tuesday’s press conference that as long as she is mayor, New Haven will remain a sanctuary city, embracing immigrants regardless of their documentation status. She called the immigrant community one of the city’s “enduring and endearing features.” “We will protect one another,” she said.
Some of the crowd at City Hall.
“It seems very clear to me that immigration is the purview of the federal government so it falls that immigration enforcement is the responsibility of the federal government,” she said. “Beyond that, state and local officials can decide how much they want to cooperate with the federal government. In New Haven we choose not to. There are some 300 jurisdiction in the United States that enjoy sanctuary status. Please know that as long as I am mayor, New Haven will stand with these great cities like San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Baltimore and Boston.”
State Rep. Juan Candelaria called maintaining New Haven’s sanctuary city status in the face of threats of deportation and federal defunding a “moral obligation.”
“As one community, we’ve come together to express to immigrant families that there is a community behind them that supports them,” he said.
Matos: The bullseye is on us.
Kica Matos, director of immigrant rights and racial justice at the Center for Community Change, said that in five weeks, when President-Elect Donald Trump, is slated to take office the world for undocumented immigrants, “DREAMers,” and sanctuary cities will change. She said they will be under attack by a Trump administration that has promised to deport between 2.5 million and 3 million undocumented immigrants; repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects some 750,000 undocumented children brought to the country at very young ages; vowed to defund sanctuary cities; and put repeat border-crossers in jail for at least a year.
“Finally he wants to build — and if I weren’t at a press conference, I would use a curse word,” Matos said. “He wants to build that beeping wall.”
Matos asked the crowd if they remembered what happened in New Haven in 2007. Many in the crowd raised their hands. That was the year that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) came to the city, raided eight homes and took away 32 undocumented immigrants.
“By the time they were done our community was terrified,” Matos recalled. “But you know what we did? We stood up and we fought back. And that’s what we’re going to do. We fought and we won. They said they were going to come back and they never did. And the reason they did not do that is because this community came together — African-Americans Latinos, white folks, Asians.
“We all came together and said, ‘This is our New Haven, this is our community of immigrants, and we’re going to do everything we can to protect them,’” she added. “We have to be ready to fight again.”
Fair Haven Pentecostal Pastor Hector Luis Otero said that the pastors of churches that serve the Hispanic community have been meeting to develop a protocol for how they will respond in the even that ICE restarts its raids. He also called out Rev. Kimber by name for his previous remarks.
Candelaria
“It is preferred that the city of New Haven is a multi-ethnic community, enriched by the ethnic diversity,” Otero said in Spanish, which was translated into English by an interpreter. “The city of New Haven has been a refuge for many. The city of New Haven has been a sanctuary city and has allowed our immigrant brethren to have an environment that respects their dignity regardless or their origin, political affiliation, or the color of their skin. We’re once community comprised of Hispanics, African-Americans, Anglicans and Asians. We’re one community.”
He further added that the Hispanic community was “saddened and offended of the expressions that we received weeks ago of Rev. Boise Kimber.”
“We’ve had the opportunity to share with the African-American community, and I don’t believe that is the feeling of our African-American brethren,” Otero said. “The information which was provided, I don’t believe it corresponds to the reality of the Hispanic community. We’re the ones who least have jobs. We’re the ones who sometime have difficulty obtaining housing. We’re the ones that suffer not having medical coverage but that doesn’t dim our hope to continue the struggle.”
Reached after the rally, Kimber declined comment.