New Haven Independent

Almonte, 29, took over as executive director of JUNTA for Progressive Action on May 22, just before the city adopted a program that had been on JUNTA’s wish list for years — the municipal ID card, available to all city residents regardless of immigration status. JUNTA had helped push the plan as a way to help undocumented workers avoid getting robbed by enabling them to open bank accounts. The card, to be released in July, would also be a symbolic gesture for those who live and work here to be “named” as city residents.

Almonte rode the surging wave of hope among Fair Haven’s immigrants as the cards were approved; then weathered the harrowing crash as the feds swept through Fair Haven, arresting 29 to 33 residents for allegedly entering the U.S. without immigration papers.

“It’s been baptism by fire,” said Almonte, taking a coffee break one recent morning to meet with this reporter in her office on the second floor of JUNTA’s civil-war-era home. Out the window — Grand Avenue, Fair Haven’s main artery, pulsing with people and cars. At a big round table — a New York Yankees lunch box and a stack of work to be done. At 10 a.m., she had already been at work for three hours, compiling affidavits for detainees in anticipation of Wednesday’s bond hearing.

Almonte, a thin-framed New Yorker, speaks with calm conviction. After getting a Masters in Political Science, she began a career in civil rights. At Love Makes a Family, she did community organizing to push a gay marriage bill at the state Capitol. Most recently, she worked for the Hartford Gay and Lesbian Health Collective as a grant-writer.

Born in the Dominican Republic, Almonte said she always saw herself working for Latino advocacy groups, to get back to her roots. (Her father’s Dominican; her mother’s from Puerto Rico.) She grew up in Spanish Harlem, a diehard Yankees fan surrounded by a huge family with 46 cousins.

She was attracted to JUNTA in particular by the mission of “empowerment,” she said. JUNTA’s core mission, by her description, is not just to give handouts, but to give people tools to help themselves. It does so through classes in English, the GED, financial literacy, job readiness, and referrals to services such as mental health.

Its those tools for empowerment she hopes to return to focus on in the “downtime” after the federal raids, which federal authorities have “suspended” for the moment.

After the immigration raids, JUNTA has been battling a sense of fear in Fair Haven. People have been staying home from work and not picking up their kids from school. The organization has been in constant contact with the families of those detained — now that their bonds have been lowered, it hopes to raise the money to facilitate their release.

In the interim, Almonte said, her office has been a place of refuge for the families distraught over the sweep that picked up over two dozen illegal immigrants as random collateral in a fugitive warrant sweep.

“A lot of clients have been coming in” looking for a place to be outside home, she said. “They’ve sat around this table, sat here and just cried.” JUNTA, and Almonte’s job, is to “facilitate their healing process.”

“It’s been emotionally draining knowing people are suffering because of this,” said Almonte. But “the support from the community has been incredible.”

A picture on her wall shows a cat staring in the mirror, reflecting back a lion. Her attitude, as she sets to work picking up the pieces of fractured trust?

“We’ve gotten up before,” she said, now “let’s go forward with this. We’ve been knocked out, but let’s get up again.”