[blind-democracy] Bracing for More to Come
- From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2017 14:53:51 -0500
Devereaux writes: "For some, the operations recalled the darkest days and
worst practices of immigration enforcement under past administrations. For
others, it felt like a chilling preview of the years to come. For many, it
was both."
ICE agents. (photo: Charles Reed/U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement/AP)
<https://theintercept.com/2017/02/14/ice-arrested-nearly-700-people-last-wee
k-advocates-are-bracing-for-more-to-come/>
ALSO SEE:
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/12/04/will-the
-justice-department-expeditiously-investigate-the-eric-garner-case-or-the-mi
ke-brown-case/> Immigration Agents Illegally
Detain Obama Program 'Dreamer', Lawsuit Says
ICE Arrested Nearly 700 People Last Week, Advocates Are Bracing for More to
Come
By Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept
15 February 17
Immigrant communities across the country are coping with the fallout from
the Trump administration's first immigration crackdown - a series of
operations last week in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and San
Antonio that led to more than 680 arrests, according to figures
<https://www.ice.gov/doclib/news/library/factsheets/pdf/factsheet-fugops.pdf
released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In a press release Monday afternoon, John Kelly, secretary of the Department
of Homeland Security, applauded "the heroic efforts" of his agents in
conducting the raids.
Critics of the operations took a different view. In interviews with The
Intercept, immigration attorneys and advocates said conflicting and
incomplete information provided by the government, as well as alarming,
sometimes panicked reports from community members, resulted in a weekend
marked by confusion, despair, and dread.
"The level of terror and fear in the community is very real," Cristina
Jimenez, executive director of United We Dream, one the nation's leading
immigrant advocacy organizations, told The Intercept.
For some, the operations recalled the darkest days and worst practices of
immigration enforcement under past administrations. For others, it felt like
a chilling preview of the years to come. For many, it was both.
ICE's so-called targeted enforcement operations are not new; both the Bush
and Obama administrations relied on such operations to deport thousands of
people over the last decade. What is new, advocates say, is that the raids
are now taking place under a Trump administration that has placed the
removal of undocumented people at the center of its domestic policy agenda,
while radically expanding
<
https://theintercept.com/2017/02/09/trump-administration-prepares-to-execut
e-vicious-executive-order-on-deportations/> the universe of individuals
prioritized for deportation.
"The narrative of this administration, and unfortunately even prior
administrations, has been this narrative of criminalizing the entire
community and using that as a path to deport people, to not allow these
people due process, to not respect people's basic human rights," Jimenez
said. "Certainly, under this administration, things are going to get a lot
worse than they were under the Obama administration and we're already seeing
that."
When reports of mass arrests in Southern California first began to break
late last week, ICE initially refused to confirm or deny them, describing
<
http://www.attn.com/stories/14887/activists-say-trumps-deportation-plans-ar
e-unfolding-la> claims of more than 100 people taken into custody on
Thursday as "grossly exaggerated." On Friday, however, the agency reversed
course
<
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/federal-agents-conduct-sweeping-imm
igration-enforcement-raids-in-at-least-6-states/2017/02/10/4b9f443a-efc8-11e
6-b4ff-ac2cf509efe5_story.html?utm_term=.7a1a18e40658> , confirming that it
had in fact arrested 160 people in the Los Angeles area, in addition to
hundreds of others swept up in multiple southern states. Confirmation of
arrests in New York and other states trickled out in the days that followed.
In fact sheets circulated among journalists and lawyers, ICE described its
operations as a weeklong initiative aimed at "immigration fugitives,"
"re-entrants," and "at-large criminal aliens." In his statement Monday, DHS
Secretary Kelly stressed that ICE's operations took dangerous individuals
off the street. At the same time, however, the DHS chief also revealed that
a quarter of those arrested in the targeted operations had no criminal
record, and immigration attorneys were quick to stress that the category of
"criminal alien" is extremely broad and can include people whose only
offenses are immigration violations.
"Of those arrested, approximately 75 percent were criminal aliens, convicted
of crimes including, but not limited to, homicide, aggravated sexual abuse,
sexual assault of a minor, lewd and lascivious acts with a child, indecent
liberties with a minor, drug trafficking, battery, assault, DUI and weapons
charges," Kelly said.
News of the raids prompted widespread concern that ICE was kicking off the
Trump administration's ultra-hardline vision of domestic immigration
enforcement.
Executive orders signed by the president have dramatically expanded the
range of individuals prioritized for enforcement and deportation, putting
millions of undocumented immigrants in the government's crosshairs,
including longtime residents of the U.S. with no criminal records. In order
to see those directives enforced, Trump has appointed Thomas Homan, a man
who has built his career
<
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/25/meet-the-man-th
e-white-house-has-honored-for-deporting-illegal-immigrants/?utm_term=.32e30d
04a39d> around executing deportations in large numbers, as the acting head
of ICE. Testifying before lawmakers last week as the raids began, Kelly said
Homan's agents had felt unable to do their jobs in recent years - "hobbled,"
he said
<
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/51f798218f5f4254aa64f0bc7fca3c90/ap-fact-che
ck-are-immigration-raids-result-trump-policy> , with "hands tied behind
their back" - and predicted that Trump's aggressive orders would improve
"morale" at the agency.
"President Trump has been clear in affirming the critical mission of DHS in
protecting the nation and directed our department to focus on removing
illegal aliens who have violated our immigration laws, with a specific focus
on those who pose a threat to public safety, have been charged with criminal
offenses, have committed immigration violations, or have been deported and
re-entered the country illegally," Kelly said Monday.
ICE has brushed off suggestions of political or White House-linked
motivations behind the recent raids, describing last week's operations as
business as usual and entirely "routine" and pointing to multiple weeklong
enforcement operations under the Obama administration that each led to
thousands of arrests. But while ICE has indeed conducted similar operations
for years, the president himself suggested last week's raids were not
entirely apolitical.
"The crackdown on illegal criminals is merely the keeping of my campaign
promise," Trump tweeted Sunday morning. "Gang members, drug dealers & others
are being removed!"
In an effort to determine what role Trump's recent executive order may have
played in the raids, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus sent a letter to
Homan on Sunday requesting a meeting with the acting ICE director, as well
as a copy of an ICE memo providing agents guidance on enforcement of the
president's directives.
"Our constituents have contacted us requesting information and clarity
regarding these enforcement activities as well as ICE's interpretation of
the enforcement priorities as listed in the Executive Order," the letter
read
<
http://congressionalhispaniccaucus-lujangrisham.house.gov/media-center/pres
s-releases/congressional-hispanic-caucus-chairwoman-lujan-grisham-demands-im
mediate> . "As you are well aware, these priorities are vast enough to label
any undocumented individual as a 'priority' for removal. We understand that
ICE has provided clarifying guidance on this Order in the form of a memo. It
is critical that our constituents have clarity on ICE operations and we
request a copy of this memo. Without this guidance, our communities will be
paralyzed as students will remain home from school, parents will be afraid
to leave children alone and our local economies will be irreparably
damaged."
A spokesperson for the caucus confirmed to The Intercept that ICE responded
to the letter and that a meeting with Homan has been scheduled for Tuesday.
The guidance memo, however, has not yet been released to lawmakers.
According to advocates, the majority of last week's arrests occurred in or
around homes. In a phone call with reporters over the weekend, Carlos
Vargas, a member of the legal team for the immigrant advocacy group Make the
Road New York, detailed five arrests that took place on Staten Island.
One of the arrests, Vargas said, involved a father leaving for work at 5:30
a.m. "He was approached by two plainclothes officers. They asked him for his
ID and they showed him a few pictures of people they were looking for,"
Vargas said. "Once he gave his ID, they identified themselves as ICE and he
was detained." A second arrest Vargas described occurred at a home at 4 a.m.
"A family was sleeping, the kids were woken up by a loud noise," he said.
According to Vargas, the ICE agents at the door falsely identified
themselves as police. "Once the door was open, they rushed in," he said.
It was not immediately clear if all of the arrests Vargas described were
part of ICE's targeted enforcement operations - at least one of the arrests
appears to have occurred ahead of the broader set of raids. The tactics
Vargas described, however, including the use of photo line-ups, false
identification as other branches of law enforcement, and early morning
initiation, are consistent with past ICE operations.
The modern incarnation of ICE raids began more than a decade ago, with the
post-9/11 establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. Across two
administrations, immigration attorneys and advocates have tracked and
challenged the immigration agency's domestic enforcement operations.
Last month, the New York City-based Immigrant Defense Project, in
partnership with the Center for Constitutional Rights, published an
expansive report <
http://www.immdefense.org/raids-toolkit/> detailing
patterns and practices of ICE raids revealed through years of litigation and
freedom of information requests. Described as a "toolkit" intended to "help
advocates prepare for fighting back against ICE raids under a Trump
administration," the more than 200-page document traces the bipartisan
history of ICE's controversial operations, revealing who ICE agents have
historically targeted, how they find their targets, and the tactics agents
use to make arrests, including the agency's well-documented reliance on
deception, surveillance, and physical force.
Mizue Aizeki, deputy director of the Immigrant Defense Project and a
co-author of the report, told The Intercept that "While previous
administrations have modified ICE tactics in response to litigation and
political pressure, ICE has consistently demonstrated an indifference to
constitutional rights and disinterest in internal accountability for
misconduct."
"Typically ICE will go to people's homes in the early hours of the morning,
using SWAT-like tactics," Aizeki explained. "They refuse to identify
themselves or use deception, like claiming to be 'police,' in order to get
into people's homes or find the person they are looking for. They also
conduct widespread surveillance to target the individual, sometimes
arresting people on the street or at courthouses." Under the Trump
administration, Aizeki said she and her colleagues "expect ICE to continue
or even increase its past abusive tactics - including excessive use of
force, disregard for the presence of children, large-scale raids, and
increased federal prosecutions."
The raids themselves, Aizeki added, are part of a broader expansion of
militarized policing in the name of homeland security that has
disproportionately targeted certain communities more than others. That,
combined with the administration's willingness to describe wide-ranging
groups as criminals, makes for a dangerous combination, she argued.
"By throwing around the label of 'criminal,' the Trump administration will
continue to exacerbate the harms caused by the extensive criminalization of
communities of color - including racialized policing, discriminatory
prosecution, ruthless sentencing, and mass imprisonment," she said.
ICE operations last week left many advocates scrambling to discern facts
from rumors, and to educate rattled communities without fanning fear or
hysteria. Fahd Ahmed, executive director of Desis Rising Up and Moving, a
grassroots New York City-based immigrant advocacy organization, said the
uncertainty that accompanies such operations often has lasting effects in
the communities they target.
"There's day laborers who don't go to work, who are barely sort of living
day to day, and if they don't go to work for two days, they are going to
take on riskier jobs the following days in order to make up for the money
they lost," Ahmed told The Intercept.
Still, advocates were careful to point out that any anxiety created by the
raids was squarely the result of actions taken by ICE. "We are not inducing
panic. ICE is inducing panic," Jimenez, of United We Dream, explained.
"Community organizers like myself, we would rather not be in rapid response
responding to calls of people in fear and desperation that they're seeing
ICE vans around their neighborhood, but we are having to respond to this."
"For us, it's much better for people to be prepared rather than not knowing
their rights when they're faced with ICE, because we know that they're going
to show up," she said. "We know that they're going to come. If it wasn't
this week, it could be next week."
<
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize>
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
ICE agents. (photo: Charles Reed/U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement/AP)
https://theintercept.com/2017/02/14/ice-arrested-nearly-700-people-last-week
-advocates-are-bracing-for-more-to-come/
https://theintercept.com/2017/02/14/
ice-arrested-nearly-700-people-last-week-advocates-are-bracing-for-more-to-c
ome/
ALSO SEE: Immigration Agents Illegally
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/12/04/will-the
-justice-department-expeditiously-investigate-the-eric-garner-case-or-the-mi
ke-brown-case/>
Detain Obama Program 'Dreamer', Lawsuit Says
ICE Arrested Nearly 700 People Last Week, Advocates Are Bracing for More to
Come
By Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept
15 February 17
mmigrant communities across the country are coping with the fallout from the
Trump administration's first immigration crackdown - a series of operations
last week in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and San Antonio that
led to more than 680 arrests, according to figures
<
https://www.ice.gov/doclib/news/library/factsheets/pdf/factsheet-fugops.pdf
released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In a press release Monday afternoon, John Kelly, secretary of the Department
of Homeland Security, applauded "the heroic efforts" of his agents in
conducting the raids.
Critics of the operations took a different view. In interviews with The
Intercept, immigration attorneys and advocates said conflicting and
incomplete information provided by the government, as well as alarming,
sometimes panicked reports from community members, resulted in a weekend
marked by confusion, despair, and dread.
"The level of terror and fear in the community is very real," Cristina
Jimenez, executive director of United We Dream, one the nation's leading
immigrant advocacy organizations, told The Intercept.
For some, the operations recalled the darkest days and worst practices of
immigration enforcement under past administrations. For others, it felt like
a chilling preview of the years to come. For many, it was both.
ICE's so-called targeted enforcement operations are not new; both the Bush
and Obama administrations relied on such operations to deport thousands of
people over the last decade. What is new, advocates say, is that the raids
are now taking place under a Trump administration that has placed the
removal of undocumented people at the center of its domestic policy agenda,
while radically expanding
<
https://theintercept.com/2017/02/09/trump-administration-prepares-to-execut
e-vicious-executive-order-on-deportations/> the universe of individuals
prioritized for deportation.
"The narrative of this administration, and unfortunately even prior
administrations, has been this narrative of criminalizing the entire
community and using that as a path to deport people, to not allow these
people due process, to not respect people's basic human rights," Jimenez
said. "Certainly, under this administration, things are going to get a lot
worse than they were under the Obama administration and we're already seeing
that."
When reports of mass arrests in Southern California first began to break
late last week, ICE initially refused to confirm or deny them, describing
<
http://www.attn.com/stories/14887/activists-say-trumps-deportation-plans-ar
e-unfolding-la> claims of more than 100 people taken into custody on
Thursday as "grossly exaggerated." On Friday, however, the agency reversed
course
<
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/federal-agents-conduct-sweeping-imm
igration-enforcement-raids-in-at-least-6-states/2017/02/10/4b9f443a-efc8-11e
6-b4ff-ac2cf509efe5_story.html?utm_term=.7a1a18e40658> , confirming that it
had in fact arrested 160 people in the Los Angeles area, in addition to
hundreds of others swept up in multiple southern states. Confirmation of
arrests in New York and other states trickled out in the days that followed.
In fact sheets circulated among journalists and lawyers, ICE described its
operations as a weeklong initiative aimed at "immigration fugitives,"
"re-entrants," and "at-large criminal aliens." In his statement Monday, DHS
Secretary Kelly stressed that ICE's operations took dangerous individuals
off the street. At the same time, however, the DHS chief also revealed that
a quarter of those arrested in the targeted operations had no criminal
record, and immigration attorneys were quick to stress that the category of
"criminal alien" is extremely broad and can include people whose only
offenses are immigration violations.
"Of those arrested, approximately 75 percent were criminal aliens, convicted
of crimes including, but not limited to, homicide, aggravated sexual abuse,
sexual assault of a minor, lewd and lascivious acts with a child, indecent
liberties with a minor, drug trafficking, battery, assault, DUI and weapons
charges," Kelly said.
News of the raids prompted widespread concern that ICE was kicking off the
Trump administration's ultra-hardline vision of domestic immigration
enforcement.
Executive orders signed by the president have dramatically expanded the
range of individuals prioritized for enforcement and deportation, putting
millions of undocumented immigrants in the government's crosshairs,
including longtime residents of the U.S. with no criminal records. In order
to see those directives enforced, Trump has appointed Thomas Homan, a man
who has built his career
<
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/25/meet-the-man-th
e-white-house-has-honored-for-deporting-illegal-immigrants/?utm_term=.32e30d
04a39d> around executing deportations in large numbers, as the acting head
of ICE. Testifying before lawmakers last week as the raids began, Kelly said
Homan's agents had felt unable to do their jobs in recent years - "hobbled,"
he said
<
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/51f798218f5f4254aa64f0bc7fca3c90/ap-fact-che
ck-are-immigration-raids-result-trump-policy> , with "hands tied behind
their back" - and predicted that Trump's aggressive orders would improve
"morale" at the agency.
"President Trump has been clear in affirming the critical mission of DHS in
protecting the nation and directed our department to focus on removing
illegal aliens who have violated our immigration laws, with a specific focus
on those who pose a threat to public safety, have been charged with criminal
offenses, have committed immigration violations, or have been deported and
re-entered the country illegally," Kelly said Monday.
ICE has brushed off suggestions of political or White House-linked
motivations behind the recent raids, describing last week's operations as
business as usual and entirely "routine" and pointing to multiple weeklong
enforcement operations under the Obama administration that each led to
thousands of arrests. But while ICE has indeed conducted similar operations
for years, the president himself suggested last week's raids were not
entirely apolitical.
"The crackdown on illegal criminals is merely the keeping of my campaign
promise," Trump tweeted Sunday morning. "Gang members, drug dealers & others
are being removed!"
In an effort to determine what role Trump's recent executive order may have
played in the raids, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus sent a letter to
Homan on Sunday requesting a meeting with the acting ICE director, as well
as a copy of an ICE memo providing agents guidance on enforcement of the
president's directives.
"Our constituents have contacted us requesting information and clarity
regarding these enforcement activities as well as ICE's interpretation of
the enforcement priorities as listed in the Executive Order," the letter
read
<
http://congressionalhispaniccaucus-lujangrisham.house.gov/media-center/pres
s-releases/congressional-hispanic-caucus-chairwoman-lujan-grisham-demands-im
mediate> . "As you are well aware, these priorities are vast enough to label
any undocumented individual as a 'priority' for removal. We understand that
ICE has provided clarifying guidance on this Order in the form of a memo. It
is critical that our constituents have clarity on ICE operations and we
request a copy of this memo. Without this guidance, our communities will be
paralyzed as students will remain home from school, parents will be afraid
to leave children alone and our local economies will be irreparably
damaged."
A spokesperson for the caucus confirmed to The Intercept that ICE responded
to the letter and that a meeting with Homan has been scheduled for Tuesday.
The guidance memo, however, has not yet been released to lawmakers.
According to advocates, the majority of last week's arrests occurred in or
around homes. In a phone call with reporters over the weekend, Carlos
Vargas, a member of the legal team for the immigrant advocacy group Make the
Road New York, detailed five arrests that took place on Staten Island.
One of the arrests, Vargas said, involved a father leaving for work at 5:30
a.m. "He was approached by two plainclothes officers. They asked him for his
ID and they showed him a few pictures of people they were looking for,"
Vargas said. "Once he gave his ID, they identified themselves as ICE and he
was detained." A second arrest Vargas described occurred at a home at 4 a.m.
"A family was sleeping, the kids were woken up by a loud noise," he said.
According to Vargas, the ICE agents at the door falsely identified
themselves as police. "Once the door was open, they rushed in," he said.
It was not immediately clear if all of the arrests Vargas described were
part of ICE's targeted enforcement operations - at least one of the arrests
appears to have occurred ahead of the broader set of raids. The tactics
Vargas described, however, including the use of photo line-ups, false
identification as other branches of law enforcement, and early morning
initiation, are consistent with past ICE operations.
The modern incarnation of ICE raids began more than a decade ago, with the
post-9/11 establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. Across two
administrations, immigration attorneys and advocates have tracked and
challenged the immigration agency's domestic enforcement operations.
Last month, the New York City-based Immigrant Defense Project, in
partnership with the Center for Constitutional Rights, published an
expansive report <
http://www.immdefense.org/raids-toolkit/> detailing
patterns and practices of ICE raids revealed through years of litigation and
freedom of information requests. Described as a "toolkit" intended to "help
advocates prepare for fighting back against ICE raids under a Trump
administration," the more than 200-page document traces the bipartisan
history of ICE's controversial operations, revealing who ICE agents have
historically targeted, how they find their targets, and the tactics agents
use to make arrests, including the agency's well-documented reliance on
deception, surveillance, and physical force.
Mizue Aizeki, deputy director of the Immigrant Defense Project and a
co-author of the report, told The Intercept that "While previous
administrations have modified ICE tactics in response to litigation and
political pressure, ICE has consistently demonstrated an indifference to
constitutional rights and disinterest in internal accountability for
misconduct."
"Typically ICE will go to people's homes in the early hours of the morning,
using SWAT-like tactics," Aizeki explained. "They refuse to identify
themselves or use deception, like claiming to be 'police,' in order to get
into people's homes or find the person they are looking for. They also
conduct widespread surveillance to target the individual, sometimes
arresting people on the street or at courthouses." Under the Trump
administration, Aizeki said she and her colleagues "expect ICE to continue
or even increase its past abusive tactics - including excessive use of
force, disregard for the presence of children, large-scale raids, and
increased federal prosecutions."
The raids themselves, Aizeki added, are part of a broader expansion of
militarized policing in the name of homeland security that has
disproportionately targeted certain communities more than others. That,
combined with the administration's willingness to describe wide-ranging
groups as criminals, makes for a dangerous combination, she argued.
"By throwing around the label of 'criminal,' the Trump administration will
continue to exacerbate the harms caused by the extensive criminalization of
communities of color - including racialized policing, discriminatory
prosecution, ruthless sentencing, and mass imprisonment," she said.
ICE operations last week left many advocates scrambling to discern facts
from rumors, and to educate rattled communities without fanning fear or
hysteria. Fahd Ahmed, executive director of Desis Rising Up and Moving, a
grassroots New York City-based immigrant advocacy organization, said the
uncertainty that accompanies such operations often has lasting effects in
the communities they target.
"There's day laborers who don't go to work, who are barely sort of living
day to day, and if they don't go to work for two days, they are going to
take on riskier jobs the following days in order to make up for the money
they lost," Ahmed told The Intercept.
Still, advocates were careful to point out that any anxiety created by the
raids was squarely the result of actions taken by ICE. "We are not inducing
panic. ICE is inducing panic," Jimenez, of United We Dream, explained.
"Community organizers like myself, we would rather not be in rapid response
responding to calls of people in fear and desperation that they're seeing
ICE vans around their neighborhood, but we are having to respond to this."
"For us, it's much better for people to be prepared rather than not knowing
their rights when they're faced with ICE, because we know that they're going
to show up," she said. "We know that they're going to come. If it wasn't
this week, it could be next week."
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socializehttp://e-max.it/posizioname
nto-siti-web/socialize
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