With ICE raids looming, immigrants worry: ‘Every time someone knocks, you get scared’

All week, Veronica had distracted herself from a constant barrage of news about a series of coordinated immigration raids the Trump administration planned to begin this weekend in cities across the country.

>> Caitlin Dickerson, Jose A Del Real and Julie BosmanThe New York Times
Published : 13 July 2019, 05:26 PM
Updated : 13 July 2019, 05:27 PM

She worked late every night, preparing for a weeklong family vacation to Florida to visit Disney World and go fishing. She booked a three-bedroom apartment for herself and 13 family members. She packed her 4-year-old daughter’s Mickey Mouse backpack and “Frozen”-themed suitcase with clothes, stuffed animals and a blanket to sleep with.

But then, the woman who cleans Veronica’s home, who is living in the country illegally, showed her mobile phone videos of immigration arrests happening in Miami. The woman warned that Freddie, Veronica’s husband and partner of 15 years, who also does not have legal standing and faces deportation, could be swept up. Other family members and friends started to call, saying the same.

Hours before the family was scheduled pile into cars for the long drive to Florida from their home in Prince George’s County, Maryland, Veronica called her immigration lawyer for advice. The lawyer told her to cancel.

A “Lights for Liberty” rally at Plaza Fiesta, a mall with many businesses catering to the immigrant community in Atlanta, July 12, 2019. Word of the weekend's immigration raids seems to have struck fear across undocumented communities, including among people who have been living here for years. (Kevin D. Liles/The New York Times)

“It’s a disaster because my daughter was happy that we were taking this trip. She’s only 4 years old but she knows a lot things,” Veronica said. “Now we don’t know how we are going to explain to her that we’re not going to be able to go on vacation anymore.”

She requested that she be identified only by her first name for fear of increasing the likelihood that they could be targeted in the raids.

President Donald Trump’s promises Friday that the administration would execute a series of immigration arrests nationwide added to fears that have been growing among immigrant communities for more than a month, as the raids have been debated, scheduled and then rescheduled.

The operation will target some 2,000 immigrants who crossed the border illegally recently, in groups of family units. That is a departure from what is typical for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who tend to focus on deporting adults who entered the country alone. But word of the operation seems to have struck fear across targeted immigrant communities, including among people who have been living here for years.

Now, a number of immigrants — particularly those in the dozen or so cities that are rumoured to be a focus of the event — are making plans to evade arrest. Some have fled their homes, choosing to get as far as possible from the addresses the government has on file for them. Others are hunkering down with reserves of food, planning to shut themselves inside until the operation ends.

They are helped by the fact that ICE agents cannot forcibly enter the homes of their targets under the law. But if past tactics are any measure, agents are likely to come to the operation armed with ruses to coax people outside. They will likely have new strategies that might help to counteract the preparations immigrants who are here illegally have been making with the help of their lawyers.

Anticipating that they will not manage to block all the arrests through preventive strategies, immigration lawyers and advocates across the country have been working swiftly to distribute contingency plans for those who are captured.

Shannon Camacho, a coordinator of the Los Angeles Raids Rapid Response Network for immigrants, said the organisation is urging immigrant parents with children who are US citizens or legal permanent residents to sign caregiver affidavits, so that if the parents are deported, the children will not be left without legal guardians.

“When people are arrested, their children can’t be picked up from school, or if they’re caring for the elderly, no one will be around to give them their medicine. We tell them to have designated people in their friends or family networks to respond,” Camacho said.

Mony Ruiz-Velasco, director of PASO-West Suburban Action Project, a community group in Melrose Park, Illinois, said her staff and volunteers were advising families to memorise at least one phone number so that they can call for help if they are detained.

Win, the largest nonprofit provider of shelters for families with children in New York, notified families with undocumented members to be cautious and to leave over the weekend, if necessary, a person familiar with the instructions confirmed. The nonprofit operates 11 shelters and houses about 10% of the nearly 12,000 families in the city living in shelters.

A 17-year-old girl, who lives in one of the shelters and who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said a shelter employee used coded language to warn her family to go into hiding and to return Monday. “They said, ‘Your room is going to be very hot this weekend. Come back Monday when things cool off,’” she said.

Meanwhile, immigrants’ rights lawyers were preparing to file court motions to reopen the immigration cases of people who are arrested in the operation before they can be deported. Doing so will require that the lawyers get access to the detention centres where the migrants will be held, and it is unclear whether federal officials will make such access available, lawyers said.

“We have a library at this point of different kinds of motions that we can file,” said Judy London, directing attorney of Public Counsel’s Immigrants’ Rights Project in Los Angeles. She added: “The access issue is what we are most concerned about.”

London’s organisation is party to a lawsuit filed this week in New York to prevent the operation. In the lawsuit, the lawyers, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, claim that many of the migrants who are being targeted failed to appear in immigration court — a common reason for a deportation order — because the Trump administration did not inform them of their court dates.

Demonstrators hold photos of children who have died in detention during a rally outside of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Chicago, July 12, 2019. Word of the weekend's immigration raids seems to have struck fear across undocumented communities, including among people who have been living here for years. (Brittany Greeson/The New York Times)

Across the country, news of the operation sparked fear, even among immigrants who were unlikely to be affected — such as those who had never had an encounter with federal authorities and were therefore unknown to the government, according to lawyers who were making preparations Friday.

That afternoon, Atlanta immigration lawyer Charles Kuck took audience questions from inside the Univision 34 studio for a Facebook Live interview. Some in the audience said they had work permits or pending green card applications, or had been granted permission by authorities to voluntarily leave the United States but had not yet reached the deadline before which they must do so. They asked if they should be worried. In each case, his answer was no.

“There are people worrying who shouldn’t be worrying,” Kuck said in a phone interview afterward.

After a brief stop at a Chick-fil-A, Kuck planned to meet with more clients, conduct a second Facebook Live interview, and attend a “Lights for Liberty” rally at Plaza Fiesta, a sprawling strip mall along Buford Highway, a corridor that is home to many Atlanta-area immigrants. As he continued to arm immigrants with information about their legal rights, he hoped to tame the panic that had spread throughout the region’s Latino communities.

“ICE isn’t driving up and down Buford Highway,” Kuck said. “They’re going to do targeted raids. I’d be shocked if Atlanta took more than a couple hundred people.”

Veronica, the woman from Maryland who cancelled her trip to Florida, is more uneasy. “Every time someone knocks, you get scared of who’s going to be behind the door,” she said. “Especially when you’re not expecting anyone.”

© 2019 New York Times News Service