Illegal immigrant's case motivates advocates in Kalamazoo (Kalamazoo Gazette)

Illegal immigrant's case motivates advocates in Kalamazoo
Published: Saturday, October 23, 2010, 6:58 PM
Chris Killian | Special to the Kalamazoo Gazette

KALAMAZOO — Just moments after a jury declared Sergio Vargas-Rodriguez guilty of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, the 44-year-old victim of the crime stood outside the courtroom, trembling with nerves.

“Justice was done,” she said through an interpreter. “That’s what I was looking for. I did this not for just myself, but for any woman who might go through this in the future. I did it so that others can have justice, too.”

In many ways, the woman, who the Kalamazoo Gazette is not naming because she is the victim of a sex crime, is unique in her reporting of the assault, according to area law-enforcement and immigrant-advocacy agencies.

The reason: She is an undocumented immigrant, and in coming forward to authorities in March to report the crime, which Vargas-Rodriguez — a former co-worker of hers at Elzinga & Hoeksema Greenhouse in Portage — committed at her Kalamazoo home in July 2008, she made her illegal immigration status known, opening herself to potential deportation back to her native Mexico.

Suffering in silence

It’s rare for undocumented immigrants to step out of the shadows and report crimes against them, immigrant advocates say. It’s even more rare for them to get a conviction.

The woman, a mother of three who has lived in Kalamazoo for about five years, did both.

Now the woman’s story has prompted several area worker and civil rights advocacy groups to band together to form a coalition to provide resources and assistance to other undocumented immigrants who have been harassed at work or have had crimes committed against them.

“We are going to stand united,” said Lori Mercedes, interim director of the Hispanic American Council, at a meeting last Tuesday of participating groups. “We are standing and saying that we are not going to stand for these violations of human rights.”

Mercedes said it was the responsibility of the groups that comprise the fledgling coalition, which includes the council, YWCA, Kalamazoo chapter of the NAACP, Interfaith Strategy for Advocacy & Action in the Community (ISAAC), Michigan Organizing Project and others, to follow their “duty to advocate for those who can’t. This woman’s case just scratches the surface.”

Members of the groups were to head to local churches today to let those in the undocumented immigrant community know of a meeting scheduled for Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at the council, where they will be educated about their rights and given information about the resources that are available to them.

The local push to advocate for undocumented immigrants’ civil rights comes as a majority of Americans favor the deportation of all those in the country illegally.

A nationwide survey performed earlier this year by polling firm Zogby International that sought opinions on illegal immigration found that 60 percent of respondents support “cracking down on illegal immigration by toughening the enforcement of existing laws, deporting illegal immigrants and prosecuting the employers who illegally employ workers,” according to the survey.

There were 10.8 million undocumented immigrants in the United States as of January 2009, 300,000 more than in 2005, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Overcoming the fear

The woman who was assaulted said she waited years to report it because she feared being deported.

In the time between the assault and when she filed a report with the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office, she said she endured frequent harassment from Vargas-Rodriguez while on the job.

In July 2008, Vargas-Rodriguez, 35, came to the woman’s Kalamazoo home, where he exposed himself, touched her breasts, tried to kiss her and grabbed her hand, placing it on his exposed self.

The woman managed to get Vargas-Rodriguez off her and out of her home, but not before he told her that she shouldn’t bother calling the police because she is an undocumented immigrant and they would deport her.

Over the course of the remaining 2008 growing season at the greenhouse, through the 2009 season and into the 2010 season, Vargas-Rodriguez harassed the woman at work, she testified at his trial, sometimes grabbing himself as he walked past her and saying to her “this is what you want.”

Fear kept her from reporting the assault for two years.

That fear, although real, should not be an impediment to illegal immigrants in reporting a crime or injustice, whether it’s harassment at work, domestic violence in the home or other wrongdoing against them, said Phillip Cruz, program coordinator for the council.

“The focus should not be on someone’s status, the focus should be on what’s being done to another human being,” Cruz said. “This is about someone’s civil rights.”

The woman’s bravery in coming forward should not be under-emphasized, many at the meeting said. In a best-case scenario, her story could serve as a springboard for more undocumented immigrants who are victims of abuse, harassment or other crimes to come forward, too.

“This was a one-in-a-thousand example,” said John Musik, director of the Michigan Organizing Project. “She was willing to stand up and fight. This population is so vulnerable and so powerless that they aren’t going to come forward until they find out it’s with impunity. I hope and pray that what she did is an example to others and we get a lot more to do the same.”

“We need to capitalize on this story,” Mercedes added. “This could be just the beginning.”

Legal options

One possible pathway to ease the anxiety that undocumented immigrants have is a U-Visa, a program through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that provides undocumented immigrants who are the victims of violent crimes, such as sexual assaults, with a four-year temporary status card.

After three years, the immigrant can apply for citizenship. About 10,000 U-Visas are granted annually.

The U-Visa, which the woman has not applied for, is “kind of like a tool” law enforcement can use to get an undocumented immigrant to cooperate with crime investigations, said Susan Reed, an immigration attorney with the Michigan Poverty Law Program’s Immigration Law Task Force.

Reed said most employment laws have protections for workers regardless of legal status. But with undocumented immigrants so wary of coming forward to report violations of those protections — which range from personal health and safety to harassment — those protections are essentially voided because reporting them is so unlikely among that population.

“No matter what choice you made about crossing the border, you shouldn’t have to worry about being sexually harassed at work,” Reed said. “When there’s a segment of our population that is vulnerable, it makes everyone vulnerable because it lowers the standard of working conditions for all workers. It’s not them vs. us because they are us.”
Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Fink said his office rarely sees cases involving undocumented immigrants.

But if an undocumented immigrant does come forward to report a crime, the person’s immigration status takes a back seat to the main objective: Research the allegations, file charges if evidence of wrongdoing is found and then prosecute the case.

“The two issues are separate,” Fink said. “When you are looking at a criminal case, the whole community is involved and someone needs to be held to account. Citizen or non-citizen, we represent the victim because they are part of the community.”

Fink said it’s hard to determine how prevalent harassment and abuse of the area’s undocumented immigrant population is because most of the population keeps such a low profile.

“If you don’t see it, how do you know?” he said. “It’s like trying to prove a negative. How often it happens, we just don’t know.”

Fink said he didn’t know if Vargas-Rodriguez, who is from Mexico, is in the country legally. He did say that, since his office is not certain of his legal status, his case would be sent to federal immigration officials for review.

The policy at the prosecutor’s office is to inform U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials when a non-citizen is found guilty of a felony, he said. Vargas-Rodriguez was convicted of a “high-court misdemeanor,” considered a serious misdemeanor that is tried in circuit court, which prompted Fink’s office to decide to file the case with federal authorities after he is sentenced on Nov. 29.

A widespread problem

The National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, performed a survey of Latinos in Davidson County in Tennessee to find out, among other things, what the likelihood was for the Latino community there to report crime given the cloud of potential deportation hanging over them.

In the report, released this month, 42 percent of respondents said they knew of crime that had not been reported to police and 54 percent said that if they knew of crime in the future, they would not report it.

“… the survey indicated that much of the apprehension reported by Latino survey participants was related to immigration enforcement and fear of possible deportation,” according to the report.

“This is just a tiny snapshot of what we know is happening all over the country,” said Laura Vazquez, immigration legislative analyst for La Raza. “What is clear is that it is in the interest of a community that police have the ability to investigate crime and protect the community.”

The potential for deportation creates a chilling effect on undocumented workers, Vazquez said, which is frustrating for victims and law enforcement alike, especially public-safety agencies that have worked hard to develop good relationships with groups that work with immigrant communities, like the Hispanic American Council.

Moreover, when an undocumented worker does come forward to report a crime, like the woman did, it can have a negative ripple effect across a community’s entire undocumented immigrant population, making them head deeper into the shadows.
Anxieties are high locally that a raid by federal immigration agents is a possibility, Mercedes said.

“Word spreads quickly,” Vazquez said. “It can have a ripple effect that makes others not come forward.”

But that’s exactly what the newly formed local advocacy group is trying to stem.

“They need to know that they have a place to go,” Mercedes said. “When it comes to immigration law, there’s nothing we can do. But we can advocate for their civil rights.”

Those involved suggest that the discussion on bringing more victims out of the shadows would not be happening with as much intensity as it is now had the woman not taken the steps she did, overcoming her fear to make an injustice known.

“Those who don’t speak sometimes have the loudest voices,” Reed said.