nothin Lugo Details Protest Shove | New Haven Independent

Lugo Details Protest Shove

IMG_1476.jpgExplaining to a state panel why immigrant activists are scared” to release personal information, John Jairo Lugo (pictured) told how opponents of New Haven’s immigrant-friendly municipal ID card pushed a woman with a baby at a protest and came to his house to watch him.

The people they feel threatened; they feel intimidated,” Lugo said of the members of his immigrant advocacy group, Unidad Latina in Acción. At a hearing Friday before the state Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC), Lugo told how his group has been followed, harassed and insulted by anti-immigrant watchdogs.

The commission has been holding hearings on requests to release the names, addresses and photos of people who have signed up for the Elm City Resident Card. Opponents of New Haven’s immigrant-friendly ID are seeking the release in the interest of hampering the program.

A Clash Outside City Hall

Lugo described in his testimony before the FOIC Friday how, at a June 4 demonstration outside City Hall, a man leapt out into a safe zone” dividing proponents and opponents of the card and pushed a woman with a child.

Ted Pechinski, a vociferous man often spotted with construction hat and megaphone heckling passersby, stood among the opponents of the card. A woman, ULA member Fatima Rojas, stood among the proponents. She was carrying a baby strapped to her front side.

First, Lugo said, a woman from Pechinski’s camp came across the safe space and came really close to us, screaming all sorts of things.” Then Pechinski followed her.

He jumped in front of our group” and pushed the woman and her child, Lugo testified. Lugo said the baby was in clear view and was hurt by the impact.

In the hall, Pechinski denied he had pushed her. Do I look like a fool who would run down in front of 20, 30 people and push a pregnant woman?” he asked, before listing his physical ailments. (Click on the play arrow to watch.)

Meanwhile in the hearing room, a second person, ULA activist Khalil Iskarous, was corroborating Lugo’s story under oath.

A Drive-By

Lugo detailed a second incident that heightened a sense of intimidation spawned by opponents of the card.

Lugo said he was walking out of his house one morning when I saw Dustin Gold (pictured) driving his car really slow. He saw me and waved,” Lugo said. I interpreted it like he was waiting for me to leave the house.”

IMG_1439.jpgGold’s attorney tried to discredit the story by saying Gold was at a funeral that morning. But since Lugo had said he couldn’t remember what day the incident had taken place, the cross-examination went nowhere.

Lugo said the incident heightened feelings of intimidation and fear that had been building as the watchdogs followed his group around, taking pictures of them, videotaping them and posting disparaging remarks on the Community Watchdog Project web site. The watchdogs had already started branching out past immigration-specific events to other demonstrations that Lugo’s group was involved with.

At a protest last summer, which concerned allegations of immigrant harassment at an Outback Steakhouse restaurant, Gold’s group popped up with videocameras, Lugo said. The people they feel threatened, they feel intimidated.”

This is the kind of person who has been following us all the time, publishing things on us in a very unrespectable way,” Lugo said. Gold’s group has repeatedly videotaped, photographed and published materials on ULA on the watchdog web site. When I saw that person who follows me, videotapes me and takes pictures of me… when I see him in front of my house,” far from where the protests took place, of course I was concerned and I was scared,” Lugo said.

The point of his testimony was to show that releasing the names, addresses and photos of those who have Elm City Resident Cards would put them at similar risk.

The incidents above have put card-holders at ill ease, Lugo said. After they found out they were in front of my house, they don’t want the same thing to happen to them,” he told the commissioners. They don’t want the information to be released because they don’t want these people to be outside of their house.” Next time, Lugo said, it might not be grinning Gold; it could be someone who intends to do physical harm.

In cross-examination, Gold’s attorney pushed the point that Lugo has already made himself public through numerous media interviews.

Lugo, who is a political asylee from Colombia, countered that having his personal whereabouts broadcast could cause trouble for his family back home. Moreover, he said he feared for New Haven’s larger immigrant community that signed up for the card with the expectation of privacy, and who might be subject to threats, harassment or violence if their personal information is released.


Expert” Crumbles

Earlier in the day, Gold rolled out an expert to undercut the credibility of ID-related threats — an expert who admitted he had no knowledge of New Haven’s specific situation, and had only been to Connecticut once.

IMG_1461.jpgJames Johnston (pictured), a large man with a light Southern accent and a leather folder reading ICE” in block letters, told the board that this was his second visit to the state. A former assistant special agent in charge of New Orleans ICE (Immigration and Customs enforcement), he put in 29 years in federal immigration enforcement in that area before retiring; now he’s a consultant for Omega Security Solutions, which paid him to testify Friday.

Johnston was put on the stand to discredit the mass of materials the city has presented as evidence that opponents of the card posed a real public safety threat. Evidence included radio broadcasts advocating blowing up City Hall and an emailed death threat to city immigration point-person Kica Matos (“she should be killed”).

I don’t consider those as really credible threats,” Johnston testified.

In the 462 pages of city-provided testimony, did Johnston see anything that might constitute a physical risk to a person holding a municipal ID card?

Johnston downplayed the evidence as venomous mail” that typically emerges when communities try to change immigration law. These people are usually cowards who write that kind of letter; they’re looking for an outlet and the Internet gives them an outlet.” The anonymous complaints rarely” result in an act of violence, Johnston testified.

In cross-examination, Johnston revealed he had never been to New Haven, had never spoken with any member of the New Haven police department, had no specific knowledge of New Haven’s specific public safety challenges, and was not familiar with an FBI-NHPD investigation that probed some of the threatening messages.

IMG_1447.jpgEven FOI Commissioner Sherman London (pictured) said he was puzzled at the witness’s relevance to the case. I don’t know that his experience down South would have any connection with his lack of experience in the city of New Haven,” London interjected at one point.

Pushed by state and city attorneys, Johnston’s usefulness as a witness appeared to crumble when he admitted that he thought the city’s police chief would be in a better position” than he was to assess how much of a public safety threat ID-opponents posed to New Haven.

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