What to do if ICE comes knocking: Know your rights & family preparedness video

Sunday is usually a time for church, family get-togethers, and perhaps time to play a little soccer, but this Sunday will be different.

Lots of people will on short vacations, missing church, visiting relatives or all closeted up together this weekend in anticipation of the ICE raids expected to rain down on immigrant communities.

Immigrant advocacy groups and legal aid lawyers will be spread out around the country ready to jump into action when and if they get that dreaded call from someone who is being detained for deportation.

“More than one hundred years ago, the Supreme Court decided that immigrants could not be deported without due process. These vulnerable refugees deserve that basic protection,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, senior counsel at the ACLU in Southern California in a public statement. The ACLU is one of the four legal aid organizations suing the administration.

ICE authorities said they would focus on these 10 cities: New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Denver, Miami, New Orleans, Baltimore, Chicago and Atlanta, It should be remembered that this includes the cities' suburbs. Just because one lives in San Jose doesn't mean one will be immune to the raids.

There are already reports of ICE arrests being made before the announced "raids." About 36 Cambodians were deported a week before and landed in Cambodia on July 4th.

If you are afraid of a visit from ICE, or you know someone who might be afraid of an ICE officer knocking on their door, here's some suggestions from the ACLU to help you prepare yourself and your family.I

If ICE goes to your home:

How to stay reduce risk to yourself

• Stay calm and keep the door closed. Opening the door does not give them permission to come inside, but it is safer to speak to ICE through the door.

Your rights

• You have the right to remain silent, even if officer has a warrant.
• You do not have to let police or immigration agents into your home unless they have certain kinds of warrants.
• If police have an arrest warrant, they are legally allowed to enter the home of the person on the warrant if they believe that person is inside. But a warrant of removal/deportation (Form I-205) does not allow officers to enter a home without consent.

What to do when the police or ICE arrive  

• Ask if they are immigration agents and what they are there for.
• Ask the agent or officer to show you a badge or identification through the window or peephole.
• Ask if they have a warrant signed by a judge. If they say they do, ask them to slide it under the door or hold it up to a window so you can inspect it.
• Don’t lie or produce any false documents. Don’t sign anything without speaking with a lawyer first.
• Do not open your door unless ICE shows you a judicial search or arrest warrant naming a person in your residence and/or areas to be searched at your address. If they don’t produce a warrant, keep the door closed. State: “I do not consent to your entry.”
• If agents force their way in, do not resist. If you wish to exercise your rights, state: “I do not consent to your entry or to your search of these premises. I am exercising my right to remain silent. I wish to speak with a lawyer as soon as possible.”
• If you are on probation with a search condition, law enforcement is allowed to enter your home.

Watch this video for more tips that might be helpful:

All people in the United States, regardless of immigration status, have certain rights and protections under the U.S. Constitution. The Red Cards, provided by Immigration Legal Resource Center, help people assert their rights and defend themselves in many situations, such as when ICE agents go to a home.

Ordering Red Cards

1. Print Your Own: The artwork for printing your own cards is available at the bottom of this page. These are formatted as standard 3.5” by 2” business cards. Any print or copy shop should be able to work from these files. We strongly recommend printing these with rounded corners and a coated finish for durability. You can also print them on your own personal printer.
2. Businesses, Private Attorneys, and Orders of 1000+: Order from www.RedCardOrders.com. This is a union-run printer set up to accept your order, print, and ship the cards directly to you. You will have to pay the printer for your order.
3. Nonprofits: If you are an immigrant-serving organization based anywhere in the United States, or if you are a public defender, librarian, educator, or are otherwise employed by a public institution, the ILRC can arrange to order and ship cards to you for free. Complete the order form here

Using Your Red Cards

Please see here for further information on how to use your Red Cards.

Files

 Artwork for Printing Your Own Red Cards - Arabic

 Artwork for Printing Your Own Red Cards - Chinese

 Artwork for Printing Your Own Red Cards - English

 Artwork for Printing Your Own Red Cards - French

 Artwork for Printing Your Own Red Cards - Hmong

 Artwork for Printing Your Own Red Cards - Korean

 Artwork for Printing Your Own Red Cards - Spanish

 Artwork for Printing Your Own Red Cards - Vietnamese

More than just Sunday

ICE plans to do these raids beyond Sunday. For the next two weeks it will pay to be alert, cautious and be prepared.

Print out this flyer and post by the door.

Be safe and be prepared, my friends.

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ICE raids to start Sunday

Heads up, everybody! It's confirmed that ICE intends to conduct raids in select cities early Sunday morning (July 14) to round up unauthorized immigrant targets and take them into custody. These raids are being done on Donald Trump's orders and are expected to take place in the predawn hours of major U.S. cities, according to a Washington Post report.

“They’re absolutely going to happen,” said US Citizenship and Immigration Services director Ken Cuccinelli, according to CNN on Thursday (July 11).

The “family op,” as the roundup of unauthorized immigrants is referred to at ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, is slated to target up to 2,000 families in as many as 10 U.S. cities, and other major immigration destinations, said immigration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the law enforcement operation.

Immigration attorney Ronald Cabanayan said there are fears there will be collateral arrests.“That there’s going to be this very broad dragnet that’s going to capture them. Even though they don’t have any, um, removal orders,” he said.

Added Sameena Usman, a spokeswoman for CAIR SF Bay Area, “It’s creating panic in the community and fear of the separation of families of people who want to ah, pursue a better life in this country. And now that’s gonna be stripped away from them.”

The ten cities targeted are San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Denver, Miami, New Orleans, Baltimore, Chicago and Atlanta. The mayors of San Francisco, L.A. New York and Houston has said that local law enforcement will be aiding ICE agents during the raids.

Especially vulnerable and easy pickings for ICE agents are the Cambodians, Vietnamese and Lao refugees, who sought refuge in the US because they fought for the US in the Vietnam War, and are already in ICE custody awaiting their deportation.

In an ongoing campaign, hundreds of Southeast Asians have already been deported.

Since 1998, over 16,000 community members have received final orders of deportation, and more than 13,000 of these were based on old criminal records (80% of total SEAA deportation orders, compared to 29% of all immigrants with deportation orders).iii Of these individuals, over 14,000 continue to live day-to-day in the country, not knowing if or when they will be deported, according to Southeast Asian Resource Action Center.

Trying to avoid the appearance of a Gestapo-like police action, Acting DHS secretary Kevin McAleenan has been urging ICE, an agency within his department, to conduct a narrower, more targeted operation that would seek to detain a group of about 150 families that were provided with attorneys but dropped out of the legal process and absconded.

McAleenan has warned that an indiscriminate operation to arrest migrants in their homes and at work sites risks separating children from their parents in cases where the children are at day care, summer camp or friend’s houses. He also has maintained that ICE should not devote major resources to carrying out a mass interior sweep while telling lawmakers it needs emergency funding to address the crisis at the U.S. border.Any families rounded up will reportedly be detained together at detention centers in Texas and Pennsylvania. Others will be held temporarily in hotels until travel documents can be prepared, according to The Times.

The Trump administration credits its escalating series of threats and new policies for the slowdown, although border crossing traditionally declines in the heat of summer.

"This is not a 'rule of law' operation," Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, tweeted Thursday. "The goal is to terrorize immigrant communities so immigrants do not seek protection in the US."

National and local immigration advocates have been preparing for what they expected to occur, considering Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies. Rallies are being planned beginning today (July 12), Check with local activist organizations to learn details.

ASAM NEWS contributed to this report.
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Expect massive ICE raids after July 4th, says Trump; deportations of Cambodians already started

USCIS

Thousands of immigrants became Americans citizens this July 4th. This naturalization ceremony took place Southport, North Carolina.

This July 4th, as the United States celebrates it's Independence Day, and as thousands of new American citizens are sworn in on aircraft carriers, auditoriums, in courtrooms,museums, gyms and sporting events around the country, the Trump administration is readying a massive effort to deport thousands of other immigrants, refugees and visitors.

Donald Trump, stung by his quest to include a citizenship question on the Census form and the increasing pressure to improve conditions at detention centers near the Mexican border, swore that there will be a hike in ICE raids to deport "millions" of people after the July 4th holiday.

“We will be removing large numbers of people… starting sometime after July 4,” Trump said, having earlier noted that the deportations would begin “unless we do something pretty miraculous.”

U.S.  Immigration authorities, under orders from Trump, had earlier announced plans to launch a sweeping effort to deport recently arrived undocumented families.

“Even among the legal Asian immigrant population, anxiety levels are going up,” Karthick Ramakrishnan, chair of California’s Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs (APIA), told Public Radio International last month. “You have policies that are targeting even legal permanent residents now.”

For many Asian American immigrants, the deportation drive has already begun.

Indeed, as to signal the insincerity of the administration's intentions, A planeload of Cambodian American deportees landed in Pnnom Penh, Cambodia's capitol, as the US began Independence Day festivities.

Thirty-eight Cambodian refugees were deported back to Cambodia on July 3. Most of them were brought to this country by their families who sought asylum in the United States decades ago, fleeing the Khmer Rouge or because they fought for the U.S. in the Vietnam War.

The Acting Director of ICE, Mark Morgan, said the agency would target for deportation families that have received a removal order from a US immigration court.

Morgan said ICE wanted to deport undocumented families who had recently arrived in the U.S. to discourage more Central Americans from arriving. 

Trump had tweeted, before the formal kickoff of his 2020 re-election campaign, that ICE would begin removing “the millions” of undocumented immigrants in the US. 

The Cambodian Americans were easy pickings for Homeland Security. Most of them had been in detention since March.

All but two off the deportees had long ago served time for criminal convictions in the United States. They are part of a crackdown by the Trump administration to curb immigration to the United States from mostly non-White nations.

“It’s very detrimental to the community. It perpetuates this cycle of displacement and this cycle of breaking up families that has been going on since the Vietnam War and the conflicts (in Southeast Asia) that had U.S. involvement throughout the 1960s and 70s,” Bunthay Cheam, a Cambodian refugee affiliated with the Khmer Anti-Deportation Advocacy Group, said to The News Tribune.

“The barriers to reopening a case after deportation are high,” Kevin Lo of the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco told the News Tribune.

1,900 Cambodians in the United States are facing the same fate. ICE says 1,400 have broken the law and have served their time. Many of the convictions were minor offenses, such as possession of small amounts of drugs, being part of a criminal gang as youngsters, or driving under the influence.

The number of deported Cambodian immigrants has increased 279 percent from 2017 to 2018.

Khmer veterans protest the deportation of fellow refugees.

According to Reuters, Trump sees his immigration crackdown as a cornerstone of his reelection bid.

Although the mainstream perception of people subject to deportation are from south of the border, the fastest growing group of undocumented immigrants come from Asian countries, according to the Pew Research Center.

More than tripling in 15 years, Asians make up for the fastest-growing undocumented group in the United States. Mexicans, in comparison, grew by only 21% in the same period.

To put that figure into perspective, undocumented Asians make 16% of all illegal aliens in the country. Additionally, this means one of every seven Asian immigrants is undocumented, according to AAPI Data.

The operation is expected to target up to 2,000 families facing deportation orders in as many as 10 U.S. cities, including Houston, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles, according to a media report.

A spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) declined to comment, saying: “Due to law-enforcement sensitivities and the safety and security of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, the agency will not offer specific details related to enforcement operations before the conclusion of those actions.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the country’s top Democrat, responded, saying, “The president’s new threat of a mass deportation dragnet is an act of utter malice and bigotry, designed solely to inject fear in our communities.”

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