Nationwide ICE raids stoke fear amongst nation’s immigrants
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested more than 680 people across the country Feb. 9 and 10.
ICE officials confirmed the arrests of 51 people in the Austin-San Antonio area over the two-day period.
Spontaneous protests sprang up across the country in response to what some protesters saw as a retaliation by the Trump administration against so-called sanctuary cities.
“ICE conducts these kind of targeted enforcement operations regularly and has for many years,” said Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly in a press release responding to the accusations.
Dubbed “Operation Cross Check,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) routinely conducts operations under that moniker. In 2011, during the first operation, ICE agents arrested 2,900 people they dubbed “criminal aliens.” ICE also carried out the operation in 2012 netting 3,100 arrests and in 2015 netting 2,059 arrests.
Secretary Kelly said the operation targeted “public safety threats” convicted of crimes such as homicide, assault and drug trafficking. Twenty-three of the 51 people arrested in the Austin-San Antonio area have criminal records.
Unquelled by claims from ICE that the arrests focused on criminals, protesters nationwide organized a mass action called “A Day Without an Immigrant.” Participants were encouraged not to shop and to skip work and school Feb. 16. Austin ISD said that 20,008, or about a quarter of all students in the district, were absent that day, up from 4,216 the day before.
Adding to the tensions are reports that immigration officials arrested and deported Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, a mother of two U.S. citizens, from Phoenix, Arizona. She was brought by her parents to America illegally at the age of 14 and charged with felony criminal impersonation after getting caught using another person’s Social Security number to get a job.
ICE agents arrested another woman, Irvin Gonzalez, inside an El Paso County courthouse where she sought a protective order against her boyfriend for abuse.
A week after the nationwide ICE action, rumors of raids in Houston began to appear on social media. People reported seeing ICE agents throughout the city; however, to date, no raids have occurred in Houston.
“All rumors of raids and checkpoints [in Houston] are false,” said ICE representative Greg Palmore in response to KHOU 11 reporter Adam Bennett. “We do not discuss pending or proposed law enforcement activities for security reasons.”
Immigrant communities across the Houston area remain on edge despite the lack of sweeps. Many view it as only a matter of time until the raids come to Houston as the Trump administration works to fulfill Trump’s campaign promise to be tougher on immigration.
“The door is open for families to be ripped apart, separating hardworking parents from their children,” said U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro in a press statement responding to a Feb. 17 DHS memo that calls for the arrest of any immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, regardless of criminal history. “In targeting an exponentially larger segment of the immigrant population, the president’s extreme orders make our country less safe.”
Jorge, an undocumented indigenous person living in the Houston area who asked to withhold his last name, came to America from Mexico when he was only five years old. He remembers seeing someone die from heat and lack of water while crossing the desert to get into America. Jorge remembers being detained by government officials when he was five years old. If deported, Jorge doesn’t know what he would do in Mexico because he knows only the American way of life.
“The hardest thing for us is the emotional damage that it does to us,” said Jorge. “It can be very deep and discouraging. The emotional damage and trauma is something that people need to start addressing as a nation. We’re not addressing the issue of undocumented people as a humanitarian issue and, instead, we just look at it as a legal issue or a financial issue, anything besides the fact that there is a human being put in a very rough situation.”
Texas State Representatives seek to assist Trump’s efforts by proposing HB 52 requiring police to check the immigration status of people they arrest or detain. Texas State Senators proposed a similar bill, SB 4.
“What this bill actually does is forbid cities from forcing our police officers to ignore the law and potentially put their lives at risk,” said state Rep. Briscoe Cain, co-author of HB 52.
Critics of HB 52 say it promotes distrust of law-enforcement officers in immigrant communities. Critics believe the proposed bill would make immigrants targets of victimization and exploitation as they would fear being deported for reporting crimes.
“The bill only applies to those who have been arrested, not those that report crimes,” Cain said. “This narrative is a desperate and convoluted attempt by the left to derail commonsense public policy.”
In spite of assurances to the contrary, distrust of law enforcement officers is common within communities of immigrants living in the United States illegally.
“If you’re an unlawful immigrant in the United States you’re less encouraged to go ahead and report crimes whether it be a misdemeanor or a felony,” said Marcelo Gallardo, a UHCL geography major and former senior paralegal at an immigration law firm.
