Immigration arrests scared, confused family (News Gazette)

Immigration arrests scared, confused family

By Steve Bauer

Sunday, March 30, 2008 9:47 AM CDT

A series of arrests last month by immigration officials at a Champaign mobile-home park had a family – including three children – afraid, confused and without electricity.

Federal agency officials, immigration advocates and an immigration attorney all agree that immigrants need to know their rights in such a situation.

Very few immigrants know what to do when confronted by immigration agents, said Pedro Gaytan, a paralegal with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago.

"There are always newcomers," Gaytan said. "They are very nervous. They don't know who they are dealing with. People get confused (about) what will happen to them."

The Feb. 20 arrest of a 30-year-old illegal immigrant, Fernando Delgado-Cruz, had the local Latino community concerned, according to Alejandra Coronel, chair of the Latino Partnership, a local advocacy group.

"When I came, everybody was in a panic, asking, 'What should we do?'" Coronel said.

The arrest of Delgado-Cruz, also known as Fernando Lopez, was one of a dozen that day by agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. Most were taken into custody as illegal aliens wanted on criminal warrants, said spokeswoman Gail Montenegro. Immigration agents discovered the true identity of Delgado-Cruz, who now faces federal criminal charges for illegal re-entry to the U.S.

Coronel said that when Delgado-Cruz was arrested, family members were not sure what was happening or who was involved. The family claimed that agents did not identify themselves or show warrants, only pictures of unknown people, she said. At one point, agents shut off the power to the mobile home – on a day when the high was 22 degrees.

Montenegro said the agents had civil warrants for all the people they took into custody, including Delgado-Cruz.

Delgado-Cruz was awakened by the commotion after working a night shift at a local restaurant, his wife said. Agents handcuffed him and took him away – without his shoes or jacket, she said.

The men later turned off the power to the mobile home and deactivated the wife's cell phone, she said through Coronel, acting as interpreter.

It was when agents returned to the trailer looking for a brother that they turned off the power for the safety of the officers, Montenegro said.

Coronel, who has worked with Champaign police, said family members called her because they thought the men were local police, she said. Coronel then found out that no local law enforcement agencies had participated in the raid.

"We needed to find out who was in this mystery," Coronel said. "She wanted to know where they took her husband."

She said that in her previous encounters with police, local officers have always been polite and respectful. They always identify themselves.

Many Latino residents come from countries where police are brutal or corrupt, so the immigrants are fearful of police, she said.

"People are here because they want to help their family," Coronel said. "They sacrifice so much."

Champaign police Deputy Chief John Murphy said he and Lt. John Swenson, commander of the north police district, responded to a call to the family's home from Coronel.

"We are always looking for a way to reach out to the Hispanic community," Murphy said.

Murphy said he and Swenson discovered that an electric switch between the power pole and home had been shut off.

"So we flipped it back on," he said.

Murphy said he contacted the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency about the lack of notice to local police about their raid.

"We had no idea they were going to be here," Murphy said. "We let them know we did not do business here that way."

Murphy said it's rare that local police would shut off power in any raid. Such circumstances might include a Special Weapons and Tactics raid, where police had information of possible danger or other more serious situations.

"We would not be turning the power off in a run-of-the-mill arrest," he said. "It's not where we would shut the power off to a trailer occupied by a woman and children in the middle of winter."

Montenegro said the operation targeted criminal aliens – illegals in Champaign and Macon counties with criminal convictions. The warrants were administrative charging documents that put them in deportation proceedings.

When the agents went back to the mobile home looking for the brother of Delgado-Cruz, there were four ICE agents – two each in the front and back of the mobile home – Montenegro said. The agents identified themselves and repeatedly knocked on the door, but there was a washing machine or something running in the mobile home.

"Our agents couldn't hear what was going on in the trailer," Montenegro said. "For officer safety reasons, they shut off power so they could hear."

When the agents left, they "inadvertently forgot to restore the power," she said. "We regret any inconvenience that may have caused."

The agents were at the mobile home less than five minutes, she said.

In all, Montenegro said, the agency made four civil arrests on administrative warrants at that mobile home, including two brothers of Delgado-Cruz, and all four were illegal aliens with criminal convictions.

Matt Kuenning, a Champaign attorney whose practice includes immigration law, said immigrants have the same constitutional rights as anyone in the U.S. Kuenning is also an adjunct professor teaching immigration law at the University of Illinois College of Law.

"Any person accused of a crime in this country enjoys the same rights as any other," he said. "That includes an alien, legal or illegal."

Those rights include the right to remain silent, right to due process, right to protect against unreasonable search or seizure and the right to an appointed attorney if there is a financial need, Kuenning said.

Marti Jones, executive director of the Immigration Project based in Granite City, said immigrants, like U.S. citizens, are sometimes hard-pressed by authorities and are persuaded to talk to police without an attorney or let police in their homes without a warrant.

"Law enforcement officers can make insisting on the exercise of one's constitutional rights a very time-consuming and expensive process," Jones said. "It's usually easier to just give them whatever they want."

"Unfortunately, that basic human fact has led us all to assume as a practical matter that someone who does insist on exercising his or her legal, constitutional rights, must have something to hide – thus turning the common law maxim of 'innocent until proven guilty' completely on it's head," Jones said.

Gaytan said many of the migrant workers in the Champaign County area come from Texas. The first advice he has for immigrants dealing with ICE agents is to ask to speak to a lawyer.

"If somebody gets arrested by ICE, they shouldn't sign anything," he said. "Sometimes they sign for their own deportation."

Legal advice on immigration or deportation issues is available through the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago at 800-824-4050.

Diego Bonesatti, downstate organizer for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said in a phone interview that the ICE agents come to Champaign every three or four months.

"People think ICE will net most people in a workplace raid," he said. "Those are the most public of kinds of things, but it seems like more of the day-to-day stuff is much more individual."

He said immigrants have rights: "Our position, as an organization, is that people do have a right to ask for a warrant."

ICE agents should show an arrest warrant or search warrant, he said, but if the residents let the agents in to the home – giving consent to enter or search – a warrant may not be needed.

In cases involving felony criminal charges, immigrants have a right to an attorney, including an appointed attorney if they cannot afford one. But if the agents are not talking about a criminal matter, but only talking about deportation, which is a civil process, immigrants have to pay for their own attorney.

Montenegro said the advice to immigrants dealing with ICE or any other law enforcement agents is to cooperate fully – or face criminal charges.

"Provide true and inaccurate information," she said. "Don't lie to law enforcement officers."