Aliyya Swaby Photo
Activists press a point with mayoral aide Joseph Rodriguez.
Immigration activists knocked on their mayor’s and Congresswoman’s doors Monday to ask for help amid a wave of deportation raids — more than eight years after federal agents swept through Fair Haven snatching undocumented immigrants from their homes.
The Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA) activists asked New Haven to take a public stand as the Obama administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency begins a nationwide sweep of undocumented immigrants. Sunday saw the first reported raids, in Georgia, Maryland and Texas.
They asked Mayor Toni Harp and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro to appear at a rally on Three Kings Day Wednesday to reassure people that police and city leaders would defend at-risk immigrants from ICE, not cooperate with the agency’s raids. Several groups — including ULA, Junta for Progressive Action, and the Connecticut Immigration Rights Alliance — plan to gather at Grand Avenue and Ferry Street Wednesday at noon to denounce ICE’s plans.
“It’s not fair for people to be scared, to be indoors,” organizer Joseph Foran said, on his way to the mayor’s office Monday morning. Immigrants, especially those in other states, are worried about being deportation targets and looking to leaders in cities such as New Haven to set an example, he said.
Mayor Harp said the request was “consistent with what the policy has been” but that she will speak with Chief Dean Esserman before formally agreeing. (She later in the day agreed to appear at the rally.)
Foran also asked the mayor to arrange for a “Know Your Rights” advisory document to be distributed in local public schools. “Part of the ICE campaign is going after children. Children should be able to know how to respond,” Foran said
The Guatemalan community is especially vulnerable, “refugees of wars funded by the U.S.,” Foran said. Guatemalan immigrants founded ULA and have contributed positively in many other ways to the New Haven community, he said.
ULA helps immigrants get the requisite legal assistance and knowledge to be less vulnerable to the raids, organizer Rosario Caicedo said. But it’s impossible to get to everyone who needs the help.
Harp said she will get someone to translate the “Know Your Rights” document from Spanish to English for her, and then talk with Superintendent Garth Harries about distributing it in schools.
The translated document follows:
“1) Don’t panic.
“2) If you see an ICE agent or if you are detained by the police or ICE, stay calm and call us.
“3) If you arrived from Central America after Jan 1, 2014 and:
a) you don’t have immigration court dates or
b) the immigration judge gave you a deportation order or
c) you are going to immigration court now to fight deportation
Call us immediately for a free and confidential legal consult.
“4) If the police or ICE knocks on your door, don’t open the door. Ask them to pass the arrest warrant under the door. If they don’t have a warrant, don’t open the door. If they have a warrant, take a photo of it and send it to us by phone.
“5) If the police or ICE asks you a question, stay quiet. Tell them that you will only respond to questions in the presence of a lawyer. Don’t lie. Don’t give them any false documents. You have to tell them your name, but you don’t have to respond to any other question.
“6) If the police or ICE pressures you to sign any document, don’t sign it.
“7) Take photos and video of the officials. Take down the names and badges of the officials and call us.”
After getting face time with the mayor Monday morning, the activists headed around the corner to DeLauro’s offices on Elm Street and waited to give the representative the same speech. They delivered the message instead to her staff, who promised to pass it along.
In a press statement Monday, New Haven’s Unidad Latina en Acción urged the feds: “Don’t deport Central American women, men and children to their death.”
“ICE may round up approximately 200 women and children in Connecticut who fled violence in Central America. 155 of those women and children never had a lawyer to represent them, and they received a deportation order without any chance to present evidence to an immigration judge,” the release stated.
“The Guatemalan community in New Haven, many of who are indigenous Mayans, survived state-sponsored violence and genocide between 1960 and 1996, when over 200,000 Guatemalans were killed, 83 percent of them indigenous people. According to the UN-sponsored truth commission, 93 percent of atrocities were committed by the Guatemalan military, which was sponsored, trained and armed by the US government. Only a small fraction of the Central American families who sought refuge in the U.S. over the past two years were able to secure legal representation to argue on their behalf. These families’ claims for asylum are extremely credible. A recent study found that represented children have a 73 percent success rate in immigration court, as compared to only 15 percent of unrepresented children. Deporting them before they can make a proper case is an intolerable injustice.”
City Hall’s then-DeStefano Administration publicly criticized ICE on June 6, 2007, when the agency sprang surprise raids that led to the detention of 32 undocumented immigrants. The raids, which separated parents from their children, occurred just 36 hours after the city passed a landmark immigrant-friendly municipal ID program. City Hall worked with immigrant-rights groups and attorneys to help the families fight detention and deportation, some of whom won reprieves in court. Click here for a story about documenting revealing the feds’ preoccupation from stopping New Haven’s municipal ID program.