Home Madison Forum Grapples With Fallout from ICE Raids

Forum Grapples With Fallout from ICE Raids

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ICE exists solely to terrorize families.

That was the feeling and impression expressed Tuesday at a community forum hosted by Centro Hispano to discuss the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that swept across Wisconsin September 21-24 that resulted in 83 arrests, including 20 in Dane County.

The forum seemed the serve the dual purpose of discussing how the community can be prepared for the next round of ICE raids and keeping the community aware of the trauma ICE caused here, before we move on to the next scandal in the news.

When all of the politics, procedures, rhetoric and media coverage are stripped away that’s the only thing that organization accomplishes. Stalking and harassing and demeaning and terrorizing of families. Behind the veneer of Left and Right, who is or isn’t racist, or who is or isn’t really American, terror is what you’re left with if you are part of a family that has been ripped apart ICE’s tactics, several families affected said Tuesday.

The trauma and hurt experienced by members of this community and their loved ones was still palpable and on full display at the Pyle Center on the University of Wisconsin Campus Tuesday night during a community forum about the experience and aftermath of the ICE assault, and the ones likely to come.

The Alumni Lounge was packed with approximately 100 people, most of whom were students, as members of the community told their stories of how their families have been impacted by the recent actions of ICE and the racist commentary of President Trump.

“It was all such a blur,” said Centro Hispano Executive Director Karen Menendez Coller of the ICE actions in Dane County. “The impact has been really long term. There was a significant amount of terror. People didn’t want to leave their homes. People didn’t want to go to the grocery store or risk driving down the street in case they were pulled over. One of my biggest issues is we weren’t prepared. ICE is a rogue organization. We can’t have this happening again without being prepared.”

Coller said that there wasn’t enough information out in the community about what to do if someone encounters ICE and that the media wasn’t helpful because of bad information and rumors being circulated online and in news outlets.

Making sure families know their rights and who to call and where to go is going to be paramount when this happens again. Because it will. But the cost of preparation is already bothering some, like Centro Hispano Board President Mario Garcia Sierra.

“We have to take our children’s innocence away,” Sierra said when talking about the choice parents may have to face about letting their children know when and when not to let someone in their home. “For young kids, the message was ‘don’t open the door’. Who’s gonna protect us? We have to do it ourselves.”

Both Menendez Coller and Garcia Sierra sat on a panel that included Kazbaug Vas, the co-executive director of Freedom Inc., and immigration attorney Aissa Olivarez-Garcia.

The four of them joined the packed room in listening to harrowing stories of the terror inflicted upon families by ICE’s tactics.

One women said that on a random Friday night her brother was taken away from her family. She said that three unidentified men came into their house dressed in regular clothes and demanding to know his green card status.

She said it had been scary because the three men had been lingering outside the family home for some time, just standing there looking towards their home. After a while, they came inside and took her brother away without telling the family where he was going.

“I was so afraid,” she told the audience while breaking into tears. “That whole day I was crying. It was very very hard for me.”

Sadly, the concept of shady and unidentified officials skulking around outside or even entering homes was a familiar refrain during the community testimonials.

Another Madison resident, who spoke through an interpreter, said she had to force herself to come to this panel event and hold back her tears for long enough to tell her story. She said that ICE came and took her son away. They claimed they just wanted to ask him about his green card status. But they only said that so they could get inside the home and take her son away.

“They just took him away. There was no one to help us,” she told the audience. “I told myself not to cry so I could come and tell you all about this. I am very worried. I love my son very much. When they took him away, I forgot to ask him ‘Son, where are you going?’ I forgot to ask him where they were taking him because I was crying so hard.  This is all I can say to you because the more I talk about it, I can’t hold back the tears.”

There was no one to help us.

One of the worst aspects, eloquently addressed by Olivarez-Garcia, is the fact that for families who can’t afford an attorney, the government will not provide one in this circumstance. The government is represented by a United States Attorney, who for the most part would be an elite scholar of law and extremely experienced in these types of proceedings. Immigration Judges oversee the proceedings and determine whether the person’s actions or lack of immigration status make them eligible for removal from the United States.

Olivarez-Garcia said it’s a stacked deck if the person doesn’t have an attorney capable of arguing their case to stay and navigating the ins and outs of the proceedings with them. At first, she tried to act as a sort of public defender, taking on whoever needed representation. But the amounts of people being targeted made that impossible and more attorneys are needed.

A quick rundown of immigration court proceedings can be found here.

The Madison Police Department and Dane County Sheriff’s office were concerned during the September ICE raids that they were not notified in advance that ICE would be conducting such exercises in the community. Sheriff Dave Mahoney said that his office received 911 calls saying there were groups of armed individuals in communities and spoke about the obvious safety concerns he had about his officers responding to those calls, just to find out it was a group of armed federal workers.

In some cases, residents said that ICE seemed to be pretending to be local police officers. Impersonating an officer is a felony but also raises the stakes in an already tense relationship between police departments and communities of color.

Kazbaug Vaj told the audience that the criminalization of immigrants is a major part of the strategy ICE uses. Vaj has worked with immigrants who do have criminal pasts, some with serious crimes on their records. But that hasn’t stopped her from defending their rights to be here, pursuing a better life for their families.

Currently, the rhetoric coming from the Trump Administration is that the immigrants are all criminals. But ICE said barely more than half of those arrested in September — 44 of its 83 arrests in Wisconsin — were criminals.

At the end of the panel the notion that ICE is a rogue, terrorizing organization seemed obvious. Broken families were left all across Wisconsin in September. But what comes next?

The big takeaway for the audience and the panel is that Madison and Wisconsin as a whole needs to be prepared. Prepared to stand together with neighbors, friends, bosses, employees, students, teachers, and children. All the walks of life immigrants fill in our community.

People who have been affected by ICE arrests should call Dane County Immigration Affairs Coordinator Fabiola Hamdan at 608-242-6260. To report ICE activities, call Centro Hispano at 608-255-3018.