Feds Return For Immigration Raid (New Haven Independent)

Feds Return For Immigration Raid

by Melissa Bailey | February 3, 2009 10:30 AM

Two local pastors were on their way out the door to pray with a family when they heard a knock.

Minutes later, they found themselves caught in an immigration raid, their family torn apart.

The raid a couple of weeks ago at the home of Juan Sil and Julia Morales appears to be the first in the city since June 2007, when federal agents swept up 32 alleged illegal immigrants, sending waves of terror through the Fair Haven neighborhood.

In the latest raid, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents targeted Julia Morales, a 44-year-old pentecostal pastor who has been living in the New York-New Haven area for a quarter century. The raid netted four people: Julia, her husband Juan, and two other men living in their home.

The feds described the arrests as “routine.”

“ICE is mandated by Congress to enforce a wide range of immigration and customs laws we will continue to enforce those laws in Connecticut and throughout the U.S.,” stated ICE spokeswoman Paula Grenier.

Agents went to the home to serve a warrant for deportation on Julia Morales, she said. During the process, they came across the three other men and charged them with immigration violations, she confirmed.

Now Julia Morales sits behind bars in a detention in a facility in Maine, pending deportation.

Kica Matos, City Hall’s point person on immigration matters, fumed over why ICE would target a woman who by the agency’s own protocol, ranks as the lowest priority for deportation. ICE’s stated goals are to collect illegal immigrants in this order: those who pose a threat to national security, those who are a threat to the community, those who have a criminal record, and lastly, non-criminal fugitives.

“This woman has not received so much as a traffic ticket,” said Matos. “She was a contributing member of the community. She was spreading the word of God in New Haven.”

“When is it an act of terror to preach about God?” asked Matos. “She clearly wasn’t a
priority.” In arresting a pastor, she said the raid has had an impact not just on one family, but on a whole church community.

Phony Lawyer

What is particularly tragic, Matos said, is the way the woman ended up on the feds’ wanted list.

Julia’s deportation order appears to have stemmed from when she sought help from a phony New York lawyer who later pleaded guilty to defrauding immigrants.

“She was trying to do the right thing,” said Matos. “She was trying to get proper status. She got duped by a lawyer—and now she’s paying the price.”

Juan, who’s 54, has better prospects at remaining in the country: He’s eligible to have his two adult U.S. citizen children (Priscilla and Jimmy, pictured with him above) petition for a change in his immigration status. He remains home with his family pending his next date in court. Julia’s brother, Gustavo Morales, remains in ICE custody pending a hearing; the fourth arrestee, Hernán Rivera, was released on a bond, Grenier said.

Two local pastors were on their way out the door to pray with a family when they heard a knock.

Minutes later, they found themselves caught in an immigration raid, their family torn apart.

The raid a couple of weeks ago at the home of Juan Sil and Julia Morales appears to be the first in the city since June 2007, when federal agents swept up 32 alleged illegal immigrants, sending waves of terror through the Fair Haven neighborhood.

In the latest raid, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents targeted Julia Morales, a 44-year-old pentecostal pastor who has been living in the New York-New Haven area for a quarter century. The raid netted four people: Julia, her husband Juan, and two other men living in their home.

The feds described the arrests as “routine.”

“ICE is mandated by Congress to enforce a wide range of immigration and customs laws we will continue to enforce those laws in Connecticut and throughout the U.S.,” stated ICE spokeswoman Paula Grenier.

Agents went to the home to serve a warrant for deportation on Julia Morales, she said. During the process, they came across the three other men and charged them with immigration violations, she confirmed.

Now Julia Morales sits behind bars in a detention in a facility in Maine, pending deportation.

Kica Matos, City Hall’s point person on immigration matters, fumed over why ICE would target a woman who by the agency’s own protocol, ranks as the lowest priority for deportation. ICE’s stated goals are to collect illegal immigrants in this order: those who pose a threat to national security, those who are a threat to the community, those who have a criminal record, and lastly, non-criminal fugitives.

“This woman has not received so much as a traffic ticket,” said Matos. “She was a contributing member of the community. She was spreading the word of God in New Haven.”

“When is it an act of terror to preach about God?” asked Matos. “She clearly wasn’t a
priority.” In arresting a pastor, she said the raid has had an impact not just on one family, but on a whole church community.

Phony Lawyer

What is particularly tragic, Matos said, is the way the woman ended up on the feds’ wanted list.

Julia’s deportation order appears to have stemmed from when she sought help from a phony New York lawyer who later pleaded guilty to defrauding immigrants.

“She was trying to do the right thing,” said Matos. “She was trying to get proper status. She got duped by a lawyer—and now she’s paying the price.”

Juan, who’s 54, has better prospects at remaining in the country: He’s eligible to have his two adult U.S. citizen children (Priscilla and Jimmy, pictured with him above) petition for a change in his immigration status. He remains home with his family pending his next date in court. Julia’s brother, Gustavo Morales, remains in ICE custody pending a hearing; the fourth arrestee, Hernán Rivera, was released on a bond, Grenier said.

The Raid

Sitting on a few couches at a cozy apartment Saturday, heaped with climbing children and two pet dogs, the Sil-Moraleses recounted the day that the feds took their “motor,” their matriarch, away.

It was about 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 14. Juan and Julia were at home at 525 East St., where they live with one of their three grown kids in a highway-bordered neighborhood between East Rock and Fair Haven.

Jimmy Sil-Morales, who’s 23, was watching a movie with his uncle on the couch. His 4 year-old daughter was playing on the floor. Julia and Juan, pastors at a Pentecostal church on Howe Street, had an appointment at a parishioner’s house. As was their nightly routine, they were going to pray with a family in need of support. Julia put her coat on.

Then she heard a knock. Jimmy got up and answered the door with his mom. On the other side, there were several men in vests. The visitors didn’t identify themselves, according to Jimmy. (Grenier declined to give details on the raid, but said that ICE agents do identify themselves as law enforcement officers, police or ICE when making arrests. Local police were notified beforehand, she contended.)

“Are you Julia Morales?” the visitors asked, according to Jimmy. She replied yes, he said. They came in and announced that they had a warrant for her arrest.

Upon learning who she was, eight men “burst” into the house, said Jimmy. They asked everyone for identification. They checked upstairs, under the bed and in the closets, he said.

When the agents came across Juan Sil, he produced a driver’s license as identification. The license was valid, Sil said. ICE agents checked his record in a database.

Before they could pull up the record, Juan volunteered what they might find. He admitted to having a bad record long ago, including a drunken driving offense. But he told them, in the past 15 years, “my record has been clean.”

“God changed me,” he told them.

Until 15 years ago, Juan lived at the bottom of society. He was homeless, unemployed, drunk. Then he found God, and has been clean ever since, he said, working as an upholsterer and devoting his life to his church.

The story didn’t sway ICE officials from slapping him with an arrest warrant.

Juan got the warrant when he appeared the following morning in immigration court, as officials ordered him to do.

“You are not a citizen” of the U.S., the warrant claimed. “You are a native of Guatemala.” The warrant charged Juan with immigrating into the country illegally.

A U.S. citizen born in New York City, Jimmy escaped the wrath of ICE. His uncle, Gustavo Morales, wasn’t so lucky. Neither was the uncle’s roommate, Hernán Rivera. The two men, along with Julia Morales, were arrested for allegedly entering the U.S. without permission.

Agents took their fingerprints in the kitchen. Meanwhile, Jimmy’s 4 year-old daughter sat on the living room floor.

When the feds moved to take the suspects away, Jimmy pleaded with them to protect his daughter from seeing her grandma hauled away like a criminal. Jimmy’s daughter is “attached at the hip” to her grandmother, he explained.

“You’re not going to handcuff my mother in front of my daughter!” he cried. The agents agreed to let Julia hug his daughter goodbye. The agents waited until Julia was outside to put on the handcuffs.

The next day, Jimmy and his sister Priscilla trekked up to Hartford for their father’s court date. They saw their mom one last time before she was taken to a detention camp in Maine. Juan was told to return on a regular basis as his case was heard.

“The Motor of the Family”

Meanwhile, the family has struggled to get by without its babysitter, cook and spiritual leader. When they went to work, Julia’s three children relied on her to take care of their four little ones. When she wasn’t babysitting or helping out at church, Julia would cook Guatemalan specialties like tamales and cheesecake, and sell them to pay the bills.

In her absence, Juan has been trying to take over some of the child-minding duties.

The other day, Juan said he tried to change a diaper on one of his grandkids. “I couldn’t do it,” he said.

“My wife is the motor of my house,” said Juan, who’s 54 years old.

“She makes everything move,” chimed in Jimmy.

A Church Rises

The family said Julia’s detention has been a blow to the church community, too.

After he turned his life around 15 years ago, Juan was possessed by a fever to help others.

When the family moved to the New Haven area about 15 years ago, he and his wife started thinking about preaching.

They found an abandoned auto mechanic’s garage on Davenport Avenue and turned it into a church. The parish grew to about 200 — until the ICE raids hit in 2007, and churchgoers were afraid to leave the house. Juan left the parish and started a new church in West Haven, this one in and old antique shop.

When he wasn’t working at his job, upholstering boats and homes, he devoted all his time to his parish, he said. When a parishioner fell on hard times, he and his wife would reach out to the church community and try to find help. That meant serving as a marriage counselor, helping women in abusive relationships, feeding people with bare cupboards, and visiting the sick at the hospital. People seek his help, he said, because he understand where they’re coming from.

“I’ve been through everything,” he said.

After the West Haven building was condemned, the Sil-Moraleses didn’t give up on the church. They found someone to rent out a church on Howe Street and kept on preaching. Today, the Iglesia de Diós, Puerta a Canaan has a parish of about 60-80 people, they said.

“She’s not a criminal,” said Julia’s daughter Julie, as the family finished rattling off a list of benevolent acts. “She’s just trying to give us a future.”

Three times, Juan has driven the five hours to the Maine detention camp to visit his wife. He finds her in an orange jumpsuit on the other side of a glass wall. They talk for one to two hours, and then he drives back home.

Priscilla, who’s 21, accompanied him on one of the trips. She said her mom tells her how much she worries about them.

“I tell her everything is going to be fine,” said Priscilla. To honor her mother’s longtime wishes, she just enrolled herself in college.

The family has not decided whether they will fight the deportation order. They do know one thing for sure, said Priscilla: “We don’t want her in there [the detention center], lonely, cooped up like an animal.”

Juan said he would like to stay around to raise his grandkids.

If the couple does get deported, however, their kids have vowed to support them.

“We’re going to have to work for them,” said Jimmy, “like they did for us.”