Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America’s Children
undocumented immigrants are ineligible for most federal and state-funded programs – such as the Food Stamp Program and TANF. In many families, U.S.-born citizen children were eligible for public assistance, but families were afraid to ask for assistance from Nebraska DHS for fear of losing their children to the child welfare system. The Mexican Consulate in Omaha was involved in coordinating and delivering some of the services. Consular officials were the first to interview arrestees detained in Iowa the day after the raid, and the first to get detailed information about children of arrestees. Consular officials linked detainees and family members via phone and also set up connections with immigration attorneys, as attorneys had difficulty gaining access to the Iowa detainees for several days. The Consulate provided a small amount – about one week’s worth of cash assistance – to Mexican families following the raid. The Mexican Consulate also put some detainees from other countries of origin in contact with their families and with lawyers. However, arrested immigrants from other countries of origin did not receive a similar level of consular services because they did not have consulates in the area. For instance, the nearest Guatemalan consulate was in Chicago. The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) represented most of the workers arrested at the plant and provided some cash assistance and relief as well. The union hired an attorney out of Omaha to help with about a dozen immigration cases. UFCW also provided assistance to families in obtaining the arrested workers’ last paychecks and receiving compensation for unused vacation and other leave. Nebraska Appleseed, based out of Lincoln, and another nonprofit in Omaha offered some free legal assistance as well. However, Grand Island itself had no trustworthy immigration attorneys or accredited Board of Immigration Appeals representatives, i.e., people who could represent clients before immigration judges. St. Mary’s Cathedral was in the process of training two people to become accredited representatives and setting up a legal assistance program at the time of the raid. The lack of legal resources in Grand Island and generally across Nebraska limited avenues for arrested immigrants to appeal their deportation, and in some cases they used untrustworthy lawyers or legal consultants and lost substantial sums of money for legal fees. Greeley, Colorado. The response effort in Greeley was the least centralized of the three sites, and public agencies played the smallest role there. There was no single coalition or organizational structure that formally coordinated relief, although efforts were informally coordinated through Our Lady of Peace, a local Catholic Church that served as the central distribution point for most assistance. Congregations Building Communities (CBC), a
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