Immigrants Take Plea To The Top

On Day One of a new federal program that has reignited fears in Fair Haven, immigrants converged on the Capitol to plead with the governor to protect them.

Dozens of janitors; day laborers from Grand Avenue, the commercial center of New Haven’s Latino community; and union and immigrant advocates made a trip to the Capitol Wednesday morning, the day the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was set to launch its ​“Secure Communities” (S‑COMM) program in New Haven.

“There is a fear” in Fair Haven, the heart of New Haven’s Latino community, said activist Latrina Kelly.

S‑COMM launched statewide in Connecticut, New Jersey and Maryland Wednesday, according to ICE spokesman Ross Feinstein.

ICE notified New Haven of the program’s impending launch in an email Tuesday. Click here to read it. ICE addressed it to Frank Limon, who used to be New Haven’s police chief.

S‑COMM aims to deport dangerous criminals by running fingerprints of immigrants arrested in local police stations and asking local authorities to detain them if they are deemed a threat. But a September 2011 Homeland Security report on the program, which is already in place in various parts of the country, found that it has resulted in the deportation of minor offenders who were never convicted of a crime. It also found the program may thwart community policing, which New Haven is working to revive. 

Under the program, fingerprints of arrestees that local police forward to the FBI will now be forwarded to ICE, which will compare them to its database of people allegedly in the U.S. without permission. ICE can then request that those arrestees remain in jail until the agency can come pick them up. Whether ICE can compel local governments to do that remains an open question.

As of 2 p.m. Wednesday New Haven had received no detention requests (aka ​“detainers”) from ICE, according to mayoral spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton.

Also Wednesday, Yale Law School’s Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic filed an emergency legal challenge to S‑COMM. ​“Secure Communities forces every state, local, and tribal police officer to become an immigration officer, commandeering local resources in service of federal immigration policy and undermining the commitments of local police departments to community policing,” the clinic argued in this press release.

The New Haven immigrant coalition arrived at the state Capitol at 11 a.m. Wednesday to deliver a letter to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy expressing ​“alarm” with the program, and asking him to ​“demand” that the federal government ​“delay activating S‑COMM until Connecticut can develop strict parameters to clarify our participation in the program.”

Click here to read the letter, which is signed by 24 groups across the state.

Mike Lawlor, the under secretary for criminal justice policy and planning for the state Office of Policy and Management, accepted the letter on behalf of Malloy, who he said was busy. Lawlor said the governor agrees with the activists’ criticisms of the program and will work on a case-by-case basis on whether to honor requests from the federal government to detain people arrested of local crimes.

The event came on the heels of a Monday press conference in New Haven at which Mayor John DeStefano issued a similar call for Malloy to to create a system for participation that clearly distinguishes between low-level offenders and serious criminals.

The New Haven contingent arrived at the Capitol Wednesday with a sense of urgency.

Latrina Kelly (pictured), the interim head of JUNTA for Progressive Action, a New Haven-based Latino advocacy group, said undocumented immigrants have been popping into her office asking about the impending launch of the program. People ask her: ​“Is it going to look like the raids in 2007?”

She was referring to the June 2007 raids, when ICE swept up 31 immigrants in Fair Haven and kept hundreds of fearful laborers and students and parents behind closed doors for days. Eleven of those people last week won a $350,000 settlement with the federal government for trampling on their Constitutional rights.

Kelly said JUNTA wants to ensure the program is targeting only dangerous criminals, not low-level offenders.

As the program launches, she said, fear is rising in Fair Haven about what it will look like on the ground.

The fear ​“is about families being torn apart; it’s about not being able to walk down the street without being asked for papers.” After so much progress since the 2007 raids in building up trust between the community and police, Kelly said, ​“We fear people will go back into the shadows” — that undocumented immigrants will stop going to church, attending school and patronizing local businesses for fear of deportation.

Otoniel Perez (at left in photo), a Mexican-born man who lives on Grand Avenue, said he fears the program will target the wrong people — people like him.

“I don’t do crack. I don’t do marijuana. I go to church,” he said. He said the federal government should leave people like him alone. Perez joined a group of 30 New Haveners who headed to Hartford along with Unidad Latina en Acción.

“We pay taxes,” added Gabriel Acosta, a Hartford janitor who arrived with a group from SEIU Local 32BJ. He said the program will make immigrants afraid to call police when crimes take place.

New Haven Alderwoman Dolores Colon showed up with two UNITE HERE activists to support undocumented immigrants like Perez and Acosta. She said the federal government should be focusing on getting illegal drugs and guns out of city neighborhoods — not everyday immigrants. She called on the governor to ​“be brave and stand up to the feds.”

The group in the Capitol quickly exceeded 50 people and was too cumbersome to cram into the governor’s office. Activists instead delivered that message to Lawlor (pictured) before TV cameras in the more spacious Hall of Flags.

Lorella Praeli, an undocumented Peruvian immigrant who made her name spearheading a successful push for the statewide college-tuition DREAM Act, spoke on behalf of the coalition. She asked Malloy to ​“resist implementation of this harmful program in our state which would encourage racial profiling, decrease the trust between community and police and create a culture of fear in our communities.”

ICE piloted the program in Fairfield County in 2010. Praeli urged Malloy not to honor detainers from the program and to publicly denounce Secure Communities.

Lawlor acknowledged the ​“dangers of racial profiling” of immigrants in the state. However, he said, ​“we have no direct control over what ICE is doing.” If ICE abides by the recommendations of its own task force — and constricts the program to focus only on dangerous offenders — then there won’t be a problem, he said.

He vowed to monitor the program to make sure it does not stray from its stated goals.

“At the end of the day, the real losers are the front-line police officers who will lose the trust of the immigrants in their communities, and that will affect public safety for everybody.”

Lawlor later added that the state believes that a federal request to detain a prisoner is merely a request. The state will review the circumstances, but if the prisoner has not committed a dangerous crime, the state will have the right to refuse that request, he said.

He said the state plans to monitor the detainer requests and respond to them on a case-by-case basis.

New Haven is unique in the state in that its local lockup is run by the state’s judicial branch, which has stated it would obey all requests from ICE to detain prisoners. Lawlor said the executive branch has no control over the lockup there.

Reached later Wednesday, ICE spokesman Feinstein said the program is succeeding.

“As of Dec. 31, 2011, more than 119,900 immigrants convicted of crimes, including more than 43,400 convicted of aggravated felony offenses like murder, rape and the sexual abuse of children were removed from the United States after identification through Secure Communities.

“Approximately 94 percent of the total Secure Communities removals fall within ICE’s civil enforcement priorities including convicted criminals, recent illegal border entrants and those who game the immigration system: immigration fugitives and repeat immigration law violators such as individuals who illegally re-enter the country after having been removed, a federal felony offense.”

“We will honor any detainer from any authorized legal agency” to hold a prisoner, said O’Donovan Murphy, director of judicial marshal services.