Christopher Peak Photos
Domar Shearer, Shaundrece Beckford at the People’s Center Thursday night. Below: ULA activists celebrate Shearer’s escape.
Six hours after hiding from federal agents, Domar Shearer savored his temporary freedom, marveled at the help he had received — and weighed his options as he headed into hiding.
It was Thursday evening. Shearer a 23-year-old from Jamaica who overstayed his visa after coming to America three years ago, was supposed to be in behind bars and destined for deportation, according to the plans of four plainclothes federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Instead, he was at the New Haven People’s Center on Howe Street with Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA) activists who had just helped him escape a trap ICE agents set for him at the Derby state courthouse after a dramatic six-hour standoff.
Badly shaken but safe for now, Shearer smoked a bummed cigarette as he told a reporter about how ULA foiled ICE’s plans and the emotions swirling around him.
Shearer, who used to live in Ansonia, said he’d seen the worst and the best of humanity throughout the day: Total strangers tried to capture him. Total strangers showed up to save him.
“This organization, I have to give them everything. Hands-down, this is the best experience I’ve had of someone looking out for me — not even, say, in America, but in my whole entire life,” Shearer said. “Normally, if it’s not my parents, it’s nobody; I always have to be there for myself to try to make things better.”
Shearer had had a long cry. He’d Face-Timed his mother. Inside the People’s Center, he sat at the head of a table in a plastic chair, sipping a Corona. Two large pizzas eventually showed up, and the stories flowed.
Rapid Response Team
John Lugo: Doing my job.
A public defender at the Derby courthouse Thursday morning discovered that ICE agents were looking to arrest someone who looks like Shearer, who was in court for an appearance on unrelated misdemeanor charges of third-degree assault, second-degree threatening, and breach of peace. Shearer hid in the public defender’s office while ICE agents waited outside. ULA’s Rapid Response Team from New Haven rushed to the courthouse to help Shearer avoid arrest.
As Shearer watched the clock tick down, he knew he wouldn’t be going home. That night, it was either a New Haven safe-house or a Massachusetts detention facility.
He’d be leaving with four plainclothes U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, who’d set a trap for Shearer at the one place that he’d thought he was protected, or with the Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA) activists, who’d rushed in to the tiny Elizabeth Street courthouse on a lawyer’s tip.
“I was watching the time,” Shearer said. “I wanted 5 o’clock to come, and I didn’t want 5 o’clock to come. At one point I wanted to leave, but I realized leaving here is not going home.”
Later, at the People’s Center, the dozen ULA activists who’d rescued Shearer gave him the play-by-play of how they’d done it, like veterans reliving war stories.
John Lugo, ULA’s lead organizer, recalled how they’d confronted the authorities, asking how it felt to make a career out of separating families. “Nothing personal,” he said he’d told them. “I’m just doing my job too.”
Shearer recalled that he didn’t realize the situation was so serious until he’d asked someone in the public defender’s office if he could go use the bathroom and gotten a firm denial.
“You’re lucky because they could have picked you up right outside the courthouse,” Lugo said.
“This could have played out very differently,” said C.J., an activist who works closely with ULA.
“They might have gotten in their cars and left, but it doesn’t mean they gave up,” another person added.
But ULA’s activists also got a laugh out of Lugo’s get-up: an official-looking windbreaker that had fooled Shearer into thinking Lugo was the one trying to apprehend him.
They passed around pictures of the actual ICE agents, “the fuckers,” whom they’d bested before and who’d taken their friends.
And they filmed a Facebook Live video, reveling in their victory as a community that could halt deportations. They ended it with a Spanish phrase they taught Shearer: “Chinga la migra.” Fuck immigration authorities.
New Reality: Life In Shadows
Domar Shearer: Missing home.
The vibe shifted when someone asked Shearer whether he planned to show up for work on Friday morning, at the Bridgeport restaurant where he’s known to pull 12-hour shifts.
A new reality, of a life that would have to be bound to the shadows, set in, and Shearer’s mind seemed to go elsewhere.
He went to the bathroom, and he paced around the room. He said he’d been planning to figure out a way to go to nursing school that fall. He asked if someone could buy him a smoke at the corner gas station. He said he needed some air.
Outside, while he lit up in a drizzling rain, Shearer told the Independent that he felt drained.
“That was detrimental to me as a person,” he said about finding out that ICE was after him. “It took so much from me. I cried so much when I got out. I still have to look over my shoulder, but I’m still free right now. It’s based on my actions that they can actually hold me again.”
Shearer said he was dreading what it would mean to go back to Jamaica, where he said it felt like the life expectancy for a man like him was 25 years old, two short years older than he is.
He said he’d considered going back, because his mother is very sick. After a couple of his friends had been killed, she told told him not to, after a couple of his friends had been killed.
Now facing misdemeanor charges for a domestic disturbance, Shearer said he didn’t think he’d done anything that would have alerted immigration authorities. He also denied the charges.
“They’re not willing to give me a trial to prove my innocence,” he said. “If I’m guilty, send me home.”
Shearer paused. He thought he’d spotted his wife’s car. He married Shaundrece Beckford this summer; they’re expecting a baby.
He tentatively walked down the driveway and rounded the corner, making this reporter nervous about how visible he was from the street.
Not her car, he reported as he returned.
Thanking ULA, Shearer said he felt safe in New Haven, even though just hours before he’d realized he’d put too too much trust in Connecticut’s Trust Act, which is supposed to limit state law enforcement from cooperating with ICE.
“I never thought there was such an organization, but I’ve always been thinking in my mind, to be illegal in Connecticut, the best place to be living right now is New Haven,” he added about ULA. “Because I’ve seen on the news a couple months ago, New Haven was granted the status of a safe haven. If there are crimes committed against you as an immigrant, you can do stuff to defend yourself, and you don’t have to be scared to show up at the stations.”
“Even with the Trust Act,” the state legislation that’s prohibits state law enforcement from asking about immigration status, “I wasn’t worried,” Shearer said. “I was like, ‘Okay, let me just go in and hear what the judge has to say.” But when I got there and heard ICE was there, I honestly wouldn’t have gone in. I would have had my lawyer show, unless it was a case where I had to come in.”
At that point, Beckford walked out of the door and into his arms.
After a long embrace with muffled sobs, Shearer murmured, “I love you too.”
Back inside, Lugo showed Shearer a statement that U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal had issued that evening, asking ICE to stand down. Shearers stared ahead, dumbfounded, as he listened to a senator writing about him.
His eyes watered again.
In desperation while he waited at the Derby courthouse Thursday, Shearer had been thinking about begging Derby’s mayor to intercede. Then a quick Google search showed that Richard Dziekan is a Republican and not likely to help. ULA’s activists had already worked their connections with federal office-holders, the governor and the attorney general.
Lugo said that blocking Shearer’s deportation was exactly what ULA was formed to do, “to be in the resistance to those who don’t want us in this country.”
“Right now, anybody who’s not legal in this country, we’re asking them to register with us,” Lugo said. “Because anybody who needs to go to court, we’re asking them not to go by themselves, because we don’t want to have this situation.”
(A spokesman with ICE’s Boston office released this statement Friday: “ICE ERO officers have been provided broad at-large arrest authority by Congress and may lawfully arrest removable aliens in courthouses, which is often necessitated by local policies that prevent law enforcement from cooperating with ICE efforts to arrange for a safe and orderly transfer of custody in the setting of a state or county prison or jail and put political rhetoric before public safety.
(“In this case, when it appeared that the activists’ disruptive activities created an unsafe environment, ICE officers departed. It is ironic that activists and even elected officials want to see policies in place to keep ICE out of courthouses, while caring little for laws enacted by Congress to keep criminal aliens out of our country. Despite attempts to prevent ICE officers from doing their jobs, ICE will continue to carry out its mission to uphold public safety and enforce immigration law, and consider carefully whether to refer those who obstruct our lawful enforcement efforts for criminal prosecution.”)
“Be Invisible”
C.J.: “Not today.”
But Lugo warned Shearer that Thursday’s victory was temporary.
“They will find you. This country, every bit of information they get online, they are monitoring everything,” he said. “Don’t get in trouble for anything.”
“Anything,” C.J. echoed.
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Shearer said.
“Walk away. Don’t do anything. Be invisible in this society,” Lugo said. “You at least have to stay like that for like a year, with the hope that this president will change.”
“You know what?” Beckford said. “I had faith today.”
She said she kept thinking about how easy it is to ignore another person’s plight, to say it’s not our business, as she thanked ULA for showing up.
“I didn’t want to believe that they were going to take him,” Beckford recalled. “He kept saying, ‘They’re going to take me, they’re going to take me.’ I said. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’”
‘Not today,” C.J. said.
Before he walked out of the comfort of the People’s Center, Shearer changed his jacket. Against the whipping winds, he walked down the front steps, paired by two ULA volunteers on each side. He took a seat in a car and slipped to an undisclosed location in the obscure night. His place to sleep. For now.
"Shearer, who used to live in Ansonia, said he'd seen the worst and the best of humanity throughout the day: Total strangers tried to capture him. Total strangers showed up to save him."