Don’t Let ICE’s Legal Abuses Stop You From Asserting Your Rights, Advocates Say

In July, agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, approached a group of children playing baseball in Manhattan’s Riverside Park. The agents began asking the kids where they’re from and who their parents are, their coach, Youman Wilder, told the local ABC News affiliate.

Wilder, the founder of the Harlem Baseball Hitting Academy, decided to intervene.

“I told my kids to walk to the back of the [batting] cages, right here, and I said they’re going to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights, they’re not going to say anything,” Wilder told the news outlet. An ICE officer “called [me] a YouTube lawyer, and I said, ‘No, I just know how the Constitution works.’”

Immigration officers, many of them masked, are encroaching on more and more facets of everyday life, including in places that were once off-limits. In January, Trump rescinded a federal policy that barred immigration enforcement actions in or around “Sensitive Locations,” such as healthcare facilities, houses of worship, schools, demonstrations, places where children gather and shelters. Without these protections in place, federal agents are sowing terror throughout the country — and communities are fighting back.

Community members have formed rapid response teams to document and publicize ICE activity. In New York City, NYC ICE Watch sends out volunteers, when possible, to scenes of ICE sightings, which are reported through private direct messages to the group’s Instagram page.

When federal officers raided a warehouse in Edison, New Jersey, advocates arrived on the scene. Seth Kaper-Dale, a pastor at the Reformed Church of Highland Park, livestreamed the raid on Facebook. He and another advocate can be heard asking officers if they had a judicial warrant, which the officers did not produce. More than a dozen workers were zip-tied and taken to immigration jails. Several officers had their faces covered.

In addition to documenting and publicizing ICE activity, advocates are also holding Know Your Rights trainings. Dante Apaestegui of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, which holds workshops in New Jersey, says they teach people about their constitutional rights, as well as how to invoke them.

“You can say, ‘I wish to remain silent. I wish to invoke my Fifth Amendment right or I don’t wish to speak with you,’” Apaestegui told Truthout. “A lot of folks may think that that Fifth Amendment right just means you’re not engaging with them at all and not saying anything. Literally remaining silent doesn’t tell them that you’re actually invoking that right.”

Asserting Your Rights Won’t Prevent Violations, But It May Help Later

Immigration officers rely on intimidation, trickery, and violence to enter non-public areas without a judicial warrant, which is a warrant signed by a judge. To counter their tactics, advocates encourage employers and school administrators to plan ahead and create a written policy that protects workers and the people they serve.

The National Immigration Law Center has published a guide for employers which advises them to train staff “to NOT allow ICE agents to enter your workplace.”

“A worker can say, ‘I can’t give you permission to enter. You must speak with my employer,’” the guide says.

The group says an employer should demand to see a warrant signed by a judge and warns that officers have tricked people into allowing them entry by presenting administrative warrants. Unlike judicial warrants, administrative warrants do not give the agents the right to enter private spaces, such as the kitchen of a restaurant or the breakroom of a store. Administrative warrants are often on Forms I-200 or I-205, which say “Department of Homeland Security.”

Proper training can help protect community members from potentially catastrophic events, such as arrest, incarceration, and deportation.

In April, Los Angeles elementary school administrators denied entry to federal officers who were attempting to speak with students in the first through sixth grades. Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said that the plain clothes officers did not have a judicial warrant and lied to the school principals, stating they had the parents’ permission to speak with the students.

“I am proud of these principals,” Carvalho said at a news conference. “I am proud of our workforce. I am proud of the clerical staff in the front office for they did exactly what we trained them to do.”

The Los Angeles public school district has conducted mandatory trainings for staff about what to do if immigration officers attempt to enter their schools, and launched a website for families that explains their rights and relevant school policies.

In another case, also in California, staff at a surgical medical center demanded to see a warrant when a masked ICE officer attempted to arrest a landscaper, Dennis Guillen, who worked on the premises. A video of the incident shows staff ordered the officer to leave and told him he was on private property.

“Get your hands off of him. You don’t even have a warrant,” one staff member said. “Let him go. You need to get out.”

Despite their attempts to protect him, the officers arrested and detained Guillen. A local immigrant rights’ organization, the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, says clinic staff called their rapid response team as the incident was occurring. According to the group, there was no warrant out for Guillen’s arrest and he does not have a criminal record. The group says Guillen has been working to help support his mother in Honduras, who is on dialysis.

Apaestegui of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice says it’s important to exercise our constitutional rights even though the Trump administration seems to defy, disregard, or change the law to suit their purposes. While it may not prevent unlawful behavior from occurring, it could “have a huge impact in court.”

“Just because we have these rights, there’s nothing to say ICE will respect them,” said Apaestegui. “We’re living in times where it feels like the law won’t save us, but we need to use every tool at our disposal to protect and empower our communities.”