"The unstated goal of these raids is to gain access to constitutionally protected areas in the hope of seizing as many undocumented persons as possible." - Class-action lawsuit in New York on behalf of families whose homes have been raided by ICE

The Record newspaper in northern New Jersey yesterday took a comprehensive look at the immigration raids that have happened in that area and the questions of constitutionality that surround actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers enforcing the agency's so-called Fugitive Operations Program. The above quote from the New York complaint seems to sum up the experiences of the families featured in the article.

Salih Hot said immigration officers came to his house, asking about a man he didn't know. But Hot said he noticed that the agents carried a file with his photo and information in it. They asked the Hots for ID and proof that they were legal residents. Then they arrested them when they could not produce it.

 

Brenda Cumsille of Cliffside Park said more than a dozen ICE agents entered her home in April, asking about "Luis Borges." They ended up arresting her husband, who had an outstanding deportation order, and deporting him in May. Cumsille said an unscrupulous "immigration consultant" they hired never told her husband that he faced deportation.

 

Cumsille believes ICE agents, who she initially thought were local police, used "Luis Borges" as a ruse to gain permission to enter. "It was a lie," said Cumsille, who stayed behind with two U.S.-born daughters. "They didn't come looking for Luis Borges. They were looking for my husband."

 

In Newark that same month, Susana Vasquez awakened at 4:30 a.m. to find ICE agents in her bedroom. She said they had gained entry into the multifamily home by telling her landlord they were looking for a certain man.

 

"We didn't know who this was," she said. "It was no one we'd ever seen."

 

The agents arrested Vasquez and others who couldn't prove legal status. Vasquez said that agents, who she stressed were polite to her, conducted a raid on another site while she and other detainees waited in ICE vehicles.

 

"The other people they picked up and I talked among ourselves about our arrest, and how ICE had come into our apartments showing photos of people we'd never seen," Vasquez said. "I wasn't worried because I thought they were looking for the man in the photo. I answered their questions because they didn't indicate that they were investigating me and could arrest me."

The arrests described in the Record article show a critical difference between rules for criminal arrests and immigration arrests:

ICE officials often note that unlike guidelines governing criminal arrests, those for immigration enforcement do not require a judicial warrant to enter a private residence, only a person's consent. They dismiss the assertion that ICE agents use deception in identifying themselves simply as "police" instead of immigration agents. They say they are police -- federal police.

These types of arrests, referred to as "collateral arrests" by ICE, have become common across the country. They take advantage of immigrant families' trust of law enforcement officials and deprive their targets of basic legal rights. The question of the constitutionality of these practices is an important one. The assertion by some anti-immigrant groups, who were also interviewed for the article, that certain groups in the United States are not protected by the Constitution is alarming. Eroding the constitutional rights of one group of people is un-American and puts us all at risk.

Photo: The Record