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       Article # 6: "Hot line helps immigrants when agents knock"
                                          From North Jersey Media Group, June 6, 2005, by Elizabeth Llorente and Miguel Perez

                  
                 It was still pitch black outside on that February day when Maria Juega's phone rang shortly after 5 a.m.
                 The caller was a stranger, her voice nearly hysterical. She told Juega that someone was knocking on the
                 door and yelling "policia." That door, Juega learned, stood between the "policia" and seven illegal immigrants.

                 If the caller opened the door, like so many others around New Jersey had done in the past year, she would
                 see the home swarmed by immigration agents, and her friends and relatives hauled away in handcuffs and
                 deported.

                 In a half-hour, Juega was at the scene, in the role of negotiator.
                 After two hours, the agents left with only the person they had come to arrest - an immigrant who had ignored
                 a deportation order.

                 "We can't stop arrests of people with deportation orders when [agents] come knocking," said Juega, chairwoman
                 of the Princeton-based Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund. "But we should be able to limit the
                 enforcement to the specific target, the person that they come to arrest."

                 Now, Juega and other immigration advocates have set up a hot line - (877) 4-LALDEF - that immigrants can
                 call when agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau, or ICE, show up at their door.

                 Answering an appeal for hot-line volunteers, a dozen residents from the Mercer County area gathered at Princeton
                 Recreation Department on Saturday to learn how to do what Juega did so successfully - to handle immigrants'
                 calls and rush to the scene of an imminent arrest.

                 The instructor, immigration attorney Tatiana B. Durbak, told the volunteers that law enforcement officials, including
                 immigration agents, do not have a right to enter a home without permission, or a warrant.

                 "But immigration has more leeway because immigration is not criminal, it's civil," she told the group, all women.
                 "Anything that anyone says can and  will be held against them, but they don't get a warning. [Agents] don't
                 have to tell people their rights."

                 Durbak told the volunteers that the advice they can give the immigrants is limited. They can warn callers that what
                 they say to an agent can be used against them, she said. But the volunteers must make it clear that they are not
                 giving legal advice.

                 Ann Yasuhara, a volunteer from Princeton, was concerned about how far agents can go in arresting people besides
                 their intended target.

                 "If I have an arrest warrant for someone, I can arrest that person, but I don't have the right to search the house,"
                 Durbak said. "And in general, police are not supposed to be asking you about your documentation."

                 Juega, a Princeton resident who became active in the rights of undocumented immigrants after ICE raids grew more
                 frequent, recalled the moment when she made a difference earlier this year.

                 "When I got the call, and went to the scene, the end result was that people who probably would have been arrested -
                 about a half dozen - were not," Juega said. "That's our intent with this workshop, to be able to give more of that kind
                 of assistance to immigrants."

                 Juega said it is important to monitor such tense situations, where an immigrant's fear and language barrier can make
                 him vulnerable.

                 "We want to make sure that when ICE goes out to arrest someone who has an outstanding deportation order, that
                 they do not turn them into fishing  expeditions, and go overboard because of the lack of knowledge that immigrants
                 have about their rights."

                 The raids, usually conducted in pre-dawn hours, have been deeplycontroversial in Central Jersey, where large immigrant
                 communities have sprouted in the past decade.

                 Immigrants and their supporters complain that agents try to trick people into opening their doors by identifying
                 themselves as "policia," in a deliberate attempt to come off as local police. They also say that agents have often
                 conducted a sort of "witch hunt," arresting not only the person they were seeking, but anyone else who is around
                 and cannot produce proof that they're in the country legally.

                 ICE officials call those extra arrests "collateral," and they do not look too kindly upon groups such as LALDEF, or their
                 presence during a raid.

                 ICE supervisor Greg Kendrick, speaking a few weeks after the February raid, defended agents' use of the word "police"
                 as a means to protect them from "getting shot at."

                 "These advocacy groups chastise us for enforcing the law," Kendrick said. "They don't want us to arrest collateral.
                 They are against us identifying anyone else in the house as an illegal alien. They have an agenda. The aliens get due
                 process. They get an opportunity to see the judge, and they can get released on bond."

                 The raids are part of a national crackdown known as Operation Compliance, originally launched in December 2001 to
                 track down deportable foreign nationals from countries considered al-Qaida hubs. The foreign nationals, who numbered
                 6,000 at the time, had ignored court orders to leave the United States.

                 Operation Compliance, however, has evolved into a program that has netted mostly Latin Americans who have
                 overstayed deportation orders. They are known as "fugitive absconders."

                 The volunteers who gathered this weekend firmly believe the immigrants need a support system.

                 Claudia Espinosa, a Lawrenceville resident, joined to help other families avoid the confusion that her family
                 experienced when some of her relatives were arrested in a raid last year and deported to Guatemala.

                 "I wish we'd had the guidance and moral support that this group is ready  to offer," Espinosa said. "We knew nothing.
                 We didn't know what was happening, why they were arrested, where they were being taken, and if we had access to
                 them in the detention center. Now that I know the answers to all those things, I can enlighten other people who
                 might end up facing something like we did."

                 For her part, Yasuhara hopes to help immigrants, "who may or may not be illegal, feel that we care."

                 E-mail: llorente@northjersey.com <mailto:llorente@northjersey.com> and perez@northjersey.com
                 <mailto:perez@northjersey.com>

                 * * *
                 How they handle calls

                 A workshop sponsored by the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund offered training on how to monitor
                 its hot line, which immigrants  can call when facing enforcement action. Among other things, the volunteers learned:


                 * Begin their response to a call for help by saying: "I am not a lawyer, and therefore I am not qualified to give you
                    legal advice. I am a volunteer of LALDEF, and we can only help you find assistance."

                 * If they are asked to go to a residence to assist with an ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement or police
                    action, they should exercise caution, and always go with another volunteer.

                 * At the site, they should locate the closest law enforcement office and introduce themselves immediately as LALDEF
                    volunteers. If law enforcement agents are uncooperative, they should keep their "cool, no argue, and ask for
                    officers' names.

                 * They should remind the immigrants of their right to remain silent, and to not allow police into their home without
                    warrants.

                 * If the subjects of an arrest warrant are present in the house, they should recommend that the immigrants give
                    themselves up. If they refuse to do so, the volunteers should not assist the immigrants in making misleading
                    representations to law enforcement agents.

                - Elizabeth Llorente and Miguel Perez

 

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