Cristian Comes Home

After a whirlwind day in court in Hartford, raising bail in New Haven, then heading back up to a detention center in Massachusetts, immigration reform activists welcomed Cristian Coyazatl Sampedro home Wednesday night and vowed to continue helping other local people facing deportation.

Sampedro arrived Wednesday night at the New Haven People’s Center, where 80 friends, family and supporters gathered with community members, activists, and Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA) representatives to welcome him home at a ​“potluck dinner with families facing deportation.”

Sampedro, who is 29, arrived in New Haven from Mexico in 2003 and has remained undocumented for 14 years.On June 9, Sampedro was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and detained at the Franklin County Correctional facility in Greenfield, Mass., according to court testimony, after state troopers questioned him following a traffic accident on Route 91. Until Wednesday, he was held with Greenfield without bond.

Gov. Dannel Malloy earlier this year advised troopers not to comply with the president’s immigration orders about helping to round up immigrants. Asked Wednesday if this arrest contradicts that order, State Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection Chief of Staff Arielle Reich responded: ​“This incident has just come to our attention, and we are looking into it. With that said, the CSP is committed to adhering to the Trust Act in full, and will take every step necessary to rectify the matter, should any action be warranted.”

After a bond hearing Wednesday morning, family members and local immigration advocates raised the $7,000 set by an immigration judge to get him out.

Around 11:30 a.m., Sampedro’s niece Jeraldy Reyes, immigrant rights activist Jesus Morales-Sanchez, and aspiring journalist Karina Xie, covering the bond hearing as a final assignment for a journalism class at Yale, headed to Hartford with Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance (CIRA) activist Alok Bhatt, the designated obligor for the bond. After posting bond in Hartford, the group headed to Greenfield. By 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sampedro was on his way back to New Haven.

A little after 7 p.m., Sampedro rolled into the People’s Center. There, several individuals and families facing deportation hearings — and activists who want to help them — introduced themselves in both English and Spanish to the room. While the potluck had been planned before Sampedro’s bond hearing and release Wednesday, it took on added degrees of celebration and urgency as he showed up, and family members spoke on his importance in their family.

On the center’s front lawn, Sampedro played with his young nieces and nephews as daylight turned to dusk. 

“I felt bad to be inside” the jail, he said, Xie at his side as a translator. ​“I wanted to be outside, with my family. My family means a lot to me … Thanks to their support, to everyone’s support, I’m here. Right now, I’m content, happy to be here.”

“We’re building friendships, we’re building community,” said ULA organizer Megan Fountain at Wednesday night’s event. ​“ICE is tearing that apart and trying to divide our community … we won’t let ICE do violence to our community and our families.”

“My hope is that people don’t feel alone,” she added, pointing to the importance of connecting immigrant families with activists willing to give rides, write letters of support, and show up at bond and deportation hearings. ​“If you have to go to court, you shouldn’t have to go to court alone. You should get to go with a community. If we come together as a community — with lawyers, with advocates, with activists — then we can win.”

But he’s also preparing for what may come in the next weeks and months, with a deportation hearing still looming in the distance.

“Well, whatever is in store for me in the future, I’ll take it,” Sampedro said. ​“Whether it’s more hearings, more cases, I’m just going to take it one step at a time.”

Skyping In

Sampedro’s case landed in federal immigration court in Hartford Wednesday, where a bond hearing was planned for 8:30 a.m. Federal Immigration Judge Michael W. Straus ordered Sampedro held on $7,000 bond.

As the hearing began, a handful of immigrant rights organizers and 14 of Sampedro’s cousins, nephews and nieces filled four small rows at the back of the courtroom, sitting silently before the case was called. Immigrant rights organizers drove members of Sampedro’s family from New Haven’s Hill neighborhood to the courthouse. 

As Straus stepped momentarily into his chambers to review the bond application, Sampedro’s nieces and nephews crowded into a corner of the courtroom, waving at a widescreen monitor where Sampedro was Skyping in from Mass. Filing back to their places as the judge returned, cousin Antonia Sampedro and niece Jeraldy Reyes held each other tightly, tears streaming down their faces. 

Throughout the hearing, Sampedro’s immigration status — and the number of years he could prove being in the U.S. — remained at the forefront of the case. Sampedro has filed an application for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). His attorney, Elyssa Williams, a partner at New Haven based firm Formica Williams, said the application was found incomplete earlier this year and is therefore still pending.

Straus first turned his attention to Sampedro’s son, who will turn 8 this July. If Sampedro is the biological father, Straus asked, why is his name not on the birth certificate?

Answering over Skype through a translator, Sampedro said that the child’s mother and he ​“had problems” at the time of the birth, but that the child lives close to him, and he sees him on a weekly basis. Williams added that Sampedro is willing to do a DNA test to prove that he is the child’s father.

While Sampedro has not claimed him as a dependent — his son’s mother has — ​“I give him whatever he wants,” Sampedro said later in the hearing. 

Straus then asked whether Sampedro, who was 15 when he arrived in the U.S., has attended school and has education records reaching back to his arrival. Sampedro first answered yes; he was a part-time student at New Haven’s Adult and Continuing Education Center in 2004. But he added that he had not been able to continue his education with the demands of a job. He told Straus that he had begun English as a second language (ESL) classes at that time to better understand what was happening around him, but was forced to stop when work became too time-consuming. He said he currently works at Galleria Stone and Tile, where he said he has been employed for the past 11 years. 

Then the hearing turned toward the day of the accident itself, and the Hyundai that Sampedro was driving.

Sampedro has never had a legal driver’s license in the U.S., he said; the car was on loan from a friend, who owns a company and keeps the car in that company’s name. At the time of the accident, he had already applied for a drive-only license with the state, he said. Williams said that members of ULA have volunteered to ferry him to and from work and appointments in the meantime, if he is out on bail.

Following Sampedro’s statement that the accident took place ​“around 1 p.m.,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attorney John Marley followed with further questions, leading back to Sampedro’s education. In the last year, Sampedro has re-registered for weekly ESL and GED classes.

“Sir are you signing up to these classes to learn English or get immigration” approval? he asked.

To those questions, Williams spoke in Sampedro’s defense, painting him as an active member of the New Haven community, where she said he is a member of ULA, vice-president of the Commission of the Virgin of Santa Apolonia for St. Rose of Lima Church, and a financial provider for his son, nieces, and nephews.

“It’s part of why the courtroom here is packed,” she said, asking that bond be set at $1,500. Marley called that amount ​“a little low.” After consideration, Straus set bond at $7,000.

Outside the courtroom, immigrant rights organizer John Lugo said that that was the closest immigration detention center to New Haven. pronounced the hearing ​“a victory for us.” Family members milled around him, chatting in a mix of English and Spanish.

“I’m feeling a lot of emotions,” said Sampedro’s 12-year-old nephew Leonel Sampedro, a student in West Haven. ​“Like I wanna cry, but I don’t wanna cry in front of everyone.”

“He used to go to our home and hang out with us,” chimed his 13-year-old nephew Bruce Sampedro, a rising freshman at Wilbur Cross High School. ​“It never stopped until he got into the event with the police.” 

Just an hour after they had left the hearing, family members had raised the $7,000 with help from the Immigrant Bail Fund. While Lugo went to collect $3,000 in cash from family members (from which he cut a check), Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance (CIRA) member Jesus Morales-Sanchez went to collect $4,000 from Brett Davidson, who runs the Immigrant Bail Fund out of a Church Street office.

Morales-Sanchez gave Davidson a big hug as he took the check. Then he, ULA member Karina Xie, and Sampedro’s niece Jeraldy piled into his car, and headed toward their next stop: Hartford to post bond, en route to Greenfield, Mass., to bail out Sampedro. He’s expected to be back in New Haven by 6 p.m. Wednesday. 

“I’m going because he’s my uncle, and when his son comes over we play a lot” Jeraldy said as she stepped into the backseat. ​“He’s kind. Very kind.”