Homeland Security in the Neighborhood:
Raid Underscores Unfair Immigration Policy
By J. Kirby
January 2005
Volume 41, Number 1
In the middle of the afternoon on June 23rd, 2004, law enforcement officers
took over an area of Columbia Road, NW and turned the street into a
surreal scene of fear and panic. According to witnesses, heavily armed
agents from several different law enforcement agencies suddenly piled
out of a large truck which was parked in the median of Columbia Road
near Adams Morgan. Swarming the block, they began to detain at random
young Latino men shopping, working, and walking on that part of the
street. Witnesses say that officers were detaining only Latino men in
the blocked off area and that people of other backgrounds were not stopped.
Law enforcement agents also reportedly forced some of these men to kneel
on the sidewalk for a long period of time in the hot sun. A section
of the normally busy street was reportedly blocked off by the Metropolitan
Police Department during the raid.
Behind the raid was the US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), purportedly acting
on behalf of an ongoing federal initiative directed at a fraudulent
document ring, known as "Operation Card Shark." In a press
release following the raid, DHS acknowledged MPD involvement in the
operation, which has spawned a controversy over the legality of such
an alliance. According to the Washington Lawyer's Committee for Civil
Rights and Urban Affairs, "MPD officers may… have violated
the prohibition of local involvement in immigration enforcement."
Witnesses claimed to recognize MPD officers, in plain clothes, accompanying
the federal officers and directing them to specific businesses, locations,
and certain individuals. Officer Fletcher of the Washington MPD's
Public Information Department contests this accusation. "The
only thing MPD did was shut down traffic," he claims. Community
members, however, have formally charged that four Third District police
officers in plain clothes made arrests along with federal officials;
two of them have even been identified by name: Officer Salas and Officer
Ragabani.
The Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs
is calling for an investigation of the raid. The Committee sent letters
sent to MPD and DHS's Officer of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties,
calling for their full participation in the investigation and a thorough
examination of MPD's involvement. DHS and MPD have not responded.
Denise Gilman of the Committee points out that perhaps as many as
ten people arrested during the raid were being held solely on immigration
charges, not criminal charges, and have subsequently been placed into
deportation proceedings. The Committee is focused on two major legal
concerns: the possibly illegal involvement of the Third District MPD
in an immigration raid, and the use of racial profiling during the
raid. More civil rights law organizations are now joining the Committee's
efforts around this case.
Many in the local Latino community are upset by the raid, especially
the role of the DHS in an immigration-enforcement operation. Theresa
Lopez, owner of a pool hall named 'Lorenzo's Corner' on Columbia Road
and a member of the Latino Merchants Association, described her experience
of the raid. "They [the Latino men being arrested] were entirely
surrounded… it looked like we were in a war," she says.
She also describes agents spreading out across the street and into
alleys, while terrified people on the street tried to run away. The
operation was not a new experience for Lopez, who says that the number
of "immigration enforcement" raids taking place in DC have
dramatically increased under the Bush administration, putting the
community on edge and wearing her patience thin.
Lopez voices a concern shared by many, namely that the creation
of DHS and the provisions of the PATRIOT Act have eliminated many
checks on the power of law enforcement agencies, allowing them to
routinely violate the due-process rights of minority citizens and
illegal immigrants. Lopez says that law enforcement agents walked
into her pool hall, arrested two of her Latino patrons, and thoroughly
searched the place. When she protested and asked for their warrant,
the agents told her to "calm down." She managed to convince
them to release a third patron, a friend whom she knew to be a permanent
resident. She has not since seen the other two patrons.
While law enforcement agencies have called "Card Shark"
an anti-crime operation, to those who did not commit any crimes and
yet ended up facing deportation proceedings, the June 23rd operation
looked like a blatant example of racially-targeted immigration enforcement.
Some of the many immigrants who live in DC without legal documents
were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time that day. Behind
the surface rationale given for the raid there seems to be a larger
issue that is unaddressed by government and law enforcement officials.
What is the root of this problem? Why is it that a false-document
trade flourishes in the District?
A brief examination of the US' immigration policy towards people
from El Salvador, (who make up DC's largest percentage of Latino immigrants),
may provide the answer. Most immigrants fleeing El Salvador during
the Reagan administration found grants of asylum denied to them, since
the US government at the time supported the repressive Salvadoran
government. Changes in immigration laws throughout the '80's and '90's
did little to ensure permanent status for Salvadorans.
Sentiments that were driving more immigrant-friendly legislative
proposals in early 2001 were lost in the xenophobic aftermath of September
11th. To make matters worse, a series of natural disasters have recently
wreaked havoc on El Salvador's infrastructure and economy, exacerbating
existing poverty and unemployment. These factors, combined with a
desire to reunite with family members already in the US, now drive
many Salvadorans to immigrate. Unfortunately for them, their legal
immigration status is still largely unattainable. Since the US government
has not granted permanent resident status to earlier waves of immigrants,
Salvadorans who want to immigrate now are unable to legally reunite
with their families. Instead, many are forced to live without legal
documents.
Salvadorans are only one of many immigrant groups that today are
faced with unfair US immigration policies. In light of the June 23rd
raid on Columbia Road, the question facing us becomes whether or not
we can protect these vulnerable immigrant communities from being targeted
in unfair law-enforcement operations. We should ask ourselves whether
or not law-enforcement agencies such as the DHS are masking racial-profiling
behind the banner of "fighting terrorism", and if so, if
this is the right way to 'fix' the immigration problem in America.