LABOR LAW
Defending Deportees at Hofstra Law: A Conversation with DDC Director Emily Torstveit Ngara by Gregory DeFreitas
Long Island has figured prominently in the nation’s volatile immigration debates since the first sizeable numbers of refugees fleeing the Central American wars began arriving in the early 1980s. Then in the spring of 2017, the new administration in Washington spotlighted the region in trying to make its case that unauthorized immigration posed a growing crime threat that justified unprecedented increases in deportations. First, Attorney General Jeff Sessions held an April press conference in Suffolk County, followed by a July 28th presidential visit. Having earlier characterized the country’s cities as “bloodstained killing fields” overrun with undocumented immigrants, Mr. Trump told a small community college audience in Brentwood: “I never thought I’d be standing up here talking about liberating towns on Long Island where I grew up.” By year end, arrests of undocumented migrants had jumped sharply since the previous year.
A few weeks after the January inauguration, Judge Gail Prudenti, dean of the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, announced the formation of the Deportation Defense Clinic. Since it began operations in June 2017, the DDC has provided direct representation for individuals at imminent risk of deportation as well as law reform advocacy and education in communities near its Long Island base. Its legal team has represented clients from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Haiti, British Virgin Islands, Cote D’Ivoire, Brazil, and Peru.
Emily Torstveit Ngara is the director of the DDC. Before joining the clinical law faculty at Hofstra, Professor Torstveit Ngara was a Clinical Fellow in the University of Baltimore Immigrant Rights Clinic and the University of the District of Columbia Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, where she supervised students in
the representation of indigent noncitizens in a variety of immigration matters. She also clerked on the New Jersey Superior Court Appellate Division and served as a post-graduate fellow at Nationalities Service Center where she represented low-income individuals in immigration matters. Professor Torstveit Ngara earned her undergraduate BA in business at the University of Washington, then completed her J.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. While at the Toll Public Interest Center at Penn Law, she provided pro bono counseling for students and supported public interest programming at the law school. In early May at her Hofstra office she spoke with Greg DeFreitas.
Q: It’s now just about a year since the Deportation Defense Law Clinic went into operation. The Trump Administration came into office in January of 2017 – after a campaign full of fierce claims about immigration -and just a few weeks later Hofstra Law School’s Dean, Judge Gail Prudenti, announced the formation of this center. Was the timing coincidental? EN: No, it was not. The Hofstra Law Clinics have a long history of working with immigrant populations on Long Island. There were already three clinics doing immigration work here at the law school: The Asylum Clinic, the Youth Advocacy Clinic, and an Immigration Clinic that’s run out of CARECEN. But after the change in the administration, the directors of those clinics realized that they had already doubled their capacity, their caseloads, but they weren’t sure that they would be able to respond in the event of the return of large-scale
raids like had been seen during the George W. Bush administration, and realizing that we were facing a huge uptick in the number of detained immigrants and people who have final orders of removal being targeted, they didn’t have the capacity to help all the people who were in need of help. So they designed this clinic to specifically respond to the issues that were being caused by changes in enforcement policy and the law by this administration. Q: And could you say a little bit about the basic operations of the clinic? First, where does the funding mainly come from? EN: We are funded by generous donations from several different donors. Q: Private donors? EN: Yes. Foundations and individuals. Q: Was there any groundwork before the November 2016 election or was this really, as you were mentioning, a response once the other clinics saw what the policies of the Trump Administration were likely to be? EN: My understanding is that this was post-election. I was not here at the time. I was not hired until April of last year, so I joined the faculty in June of 2017. A lot of that is sort of what I’ve been told about the genesis of the clinic. Q: Could you say a little bit about where you came from? How did you get involved with legal work on immigration issues? EN: I have an undergraduate degree in International Business and I went to law school with the intention of becoming an international trade attorney, but I had had an experience as an exchange student in Norway working with asylum seekers, and it got me interested. When I got to law school, I sought out opportunities to get involved with immigration work. I went on a trip to the Arizona/Mexico border with the International Human Rights Advocates, a student group. And I did a summer internship at an immigration nonprofit in Philadelphia. I took the Transnational Legal Clinic and did immigration work there. The more I interacted with the clients, the more I knew that that was what I wanted to do with my life.
So after law school I had a fellowship working part time in the public interest office at my law school at Penn Law and half time at an immigration nonprofit. From there I clerked for a year in New Jersey on the State Court Appellate Division, and then I went to the University of the District of Columbia and did a LL.M. Program, so I have now a Master’s of Law in Clinical Education, Social Justice and Systems Changes. I was teaching in the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic there. After that I went to the University of Baltimore and was a Clinical Fellow in the Immigrant Rights Clinic there for three years. When that fellowship ended I came up to Hofstra.
Emily Torstveit Ngara
Q: Backing up a little bit -- how did you get interested in law? Were your parents involved with law?
EN: No. Actually, I was told most of my life that I should think about law school, and it was something that I really resisted. Q: What did your parents do for a living? EN: My mother has her MFA in Costume Design, and my father has a PhD in Physics. He used to translate Russian physics journals. He worked for the American Institute of Physics for many years. Q: And when you were at Penn, did you work with a particular professor or two that got you interested in Immigration Law? EN: Absolutely. Sarah Paoletti was my clinical professor. And Fernando Chang-Muy. Q: Do they have a fairly active Immigration Clinic there? EN: Yes. The Transnational Legal Clinic does immigration work, it also does international human rights work, including trips to refugee camps in Ghana to interview Liberian refugees as part of the truth and reconciliation process, and my experience in the clinic was on two separate immigration cases. So that’s what I was assigned to do. One was an asylum case and one was what’s called cancellation of removal for certain non-permanent residents. Q: What is that? EN: So the Spanish speakers may have heard it referred to as la ley diez años, or the law of ten years. It’s a little more complicated than that. It’s a form of relief that’s available for someone who has been here in the United States for at least ten years who has been a person of good moral character during that time. Doesn’t have certain convictions which are bars to that form of relief, and the biggest hurdle is you have to show that your removal from the United States would cause exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to a qualifying U.S. Citizen or lawful permanent resident, spouse, parent, or child. It was set up back when the last comprehensive immigration reform went through in ’97. There’s only 4,000 grants that can be given every year nationwide. So now there’s quite a backlog for those. At the time that I was in the clinic, that was not the case and we were able to get our client her green card that day in court, which was pretty wonderful.
Q: Why don’t we talk a little bit about the clinic as it is now, at the end of its first year. First, how do clients know to know about you and come here and get your services? EN: Well, there are a variety of ways. I think some people have seen media coverage and have called based on reading about the clinic. We get most of our cases from referrals from other organizations, so whether that be Legal Aid or some of the other immigration non-profits in the area. Q: In terms of the cases you had in the last year, how many have you represented who were threatened with deportation? EN: So far, the clinic has served 21 people. We have also done 33 consultations. We’ve represented them on a variety of matters, some more involved than others. Q: And is there an average case, or are they all really idiosyncratic? EN: They’re all fairly different. However, we have been focusing recently on motions to reopen. That is, if someone has been in removal proceedings and has either missed their court date for whatever reason -- perhaps they didn’t know about it, perhaps they were too afraid to go, or if they’ve been through their removal proceedings and lost their case and were ordered removed, they are, in certain circumstances, they can file a request to reopen the case and have another opportunity to present an application for status or relief from removal. So we’ve been focusing on that this semester. Q: OK, could you just take us through the basic process -- for someone who knows nothing about how this is working under the administration. Say somebody gets picked up for whatever trivial or serious reason by ICE or by the local cops, and then what happens if ICE gets a hold of them? I know there’s a whole issue in terms of the sheriff’s department detaining them. But if ICE decides to deport them, what are the steps and where do you get involved? EN: Well, it depends a little. For many people, being picked up by ICE now is not their first contact with immigration, and that’s where the main issue is, and those are the people that we work with the most. So perhaps someone entered the United States back in the early 2000s, they were caught by immigration, they were served what’s called a notice to appear -- it’s the document that sort of starts the
immigration proceedings going, and then they were released, and for whatever reason didn’t attend their removal hearing. Q: Is that what’s called the “run document?” The notice to appear? I’ve heard this lingo thrown around in immigration research circles. They give you the notice to appear but then they let you go. EN: Right, they release you. Q: That means you’re in trouble, right? EN: Well, that means you’re in removal proceedings. That means the government is trying to order you deported, which now, after ’97, it’s called removal. Q: And is there any move on to not let people, after the notice to appear is served, can they legally hang on to you? EN: Yes. Absolutely. And they are, certainly more often, down at the border, doing that. And what we’re seeing here is when people are picked up, if they don’t have any prior contact with immigration they may be issued a notice to appear here, and those people are almost across the board being sent to immigration detention, as far as the information that I have, and what I’ve been seeing. So it used to be that when someone was picked up, ICE could either release them on their own recognizance, or they could set a bond amount. They could say, pay us 4,000, 5,000, 7,000 dollars, and we’ll release you and you can go through your removal proceedings at the non-detained court at 26 Federal Plaza. We are not seeing them do that anymore. Now they’re holding people. They are not setting bond, which means that they have to wait in detention until they are able to go before an immigration judge. And that is taking up to two months in some cases, maybe longer, for people to get a hearing before an immigration judge. At that point, if they are eligible for bond, they can request it. And it’s their burden to show, to prove to the immigration judge, that they are not a flight risk, meaning that they will show up for all of their hearings, and if they lose their case and are ordered to show up to be deported, they’ll show up for that as well. Q: And how do you prove that?
EN: Good question. If you have a strong case for relief, say you have a strong asylum case or a strong other type of case, the theory is that if you have a way to get status, you’re more likely to show up to your court hearing. Q: So would you guys potentially get involved at that point and maybe even bring in the asylum clinic people or something? EN: Sometimes. We generally are trying not to do a lot of merits representation, so things like asylum applications. It happens sometimes, but we have the other clinics that do that work, and because we are trying to stay flexible to respond in the event of raids or anything that might happen, we’re trying not to get our docket too full so that we’re able to do that. We have some flexibility. The New York Immigrant Family Unity Project is a wonderful collaboration between Legal Aid, the Brooklyn Defenders, the Bronx Defenders and it’s administered by the Vera Institute, I believe. And they offer representation at no charge to people who can’t afford an attorney and who have not been previously represented for anyone who is appearing at the detained court at 201 Varick St. So that’s a really amazing program, and we have worked with them in the past where they were providing representation on the merits and we did the bond piece of things. And we’re hoping to continue doing that. Q: Is 201 Varick the court for the entire region? Long Island and the city? EN: Yes. Anyone who is under the jurisdiction of the New York Enforcement and Removal Operations office. So they see people there who are detained at Bergen County Jail in Hackensack, New Jersey, people who are detained at the Hudson County Jail in Kearny, New Jersey, people who are detained at the Orange County Jail in New York, and I think there are a couple other facilities, but those are the ones that we’ve dealt with. Q: So if someone, for example, manages to prove they’re not a flight risk -EN: They also have to prove that they’re not a danger to the community. Q: So then they’re released, typically, on bond, if they do that? EN: Yes, if they can prove to the judge’s satisfaction that they’re not a danger to the community and not a flight risk, the judge can either release them on their own recognizance, so with no bond -- that’s not something that we’re seeing very often now -- but they can also order them released on a bond. The minimum bond is
$1,500. We are seeing bonds that are not that low anymore, though. Between probably $4,000 and $10,000 is more normal. If they get a bond then their case will be transferred to the non-detained court at 26 Federal Plaza. They’ll get a new judge there and they will continue with their removal proceedings at that court. So if they have an asylum application or cancellation of removal application, those sorts of things would be adjudicated at the 26 Federal Plaza Court. If they’re denied bond or their bond is in an amount that they can’t pay, they will remain detained and they will go through their removal proceedings at 201 Varick. So generally they’ll be set for what’s called an individual hearing where they will have an opportunity to testify, present evidence, call witnesses, and try to prove that they are eligible for some form of relief from removal. Q: And is that typically where you or the DDC would get involved? EN: Yes. And sometimes we work with people who have already been ordered removed, trying to get their proceedings reopened. Q: So somebody who has already been removed -- you mean somebody the judge has ruled against them, that they have to be deported -EN: Right. And that can happen in their absence. Say they miss a court date, they’ll generally be ordered removed in their absence. Some people don’t even know they have these prior orders of removal because they didn’t get a notice of a hearing, and so they don’t learn about it until they come in to talk to an immigration attorney. The problem is that the administration is really targeting people who have prior orders. And if you’ve been ordered removed and you get picked up, you don’t have a right to go back before an immigration judge unless you can get your case reopened, or if you express a fear of removal, you might be able to -- we are obligated not to send someone to a country where it’s more likely than not that they would be persecuted on account of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
Q: That’s a lot of countries, isn’t it? Which ones, in your experience, have been on that list in the view of judges? EN: Well, there are obviously a lot of people from the Northern Triangle, so El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala who are afraid of returning. Depending on what exactly their fear is and the grounds that they’re afraid will cause them to be harmed, they may have a strong asylum claim. One thing we have seen this administration do is go after the asylum process. So people have the right legally to present themselves at the border and request asylum. However, they’re being described in the media as breaking the law and entering without inspection, which is not accurate. For many years, there was a fight for many years about asylum for people who were the victims of inter-family violence, domestic violence. That was a fight fought from about 1996 until the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a decision in 2014 saying that yes, this is a particular social group that can be defined as someone who is in a domestic relationship that they’re unable to leave. So recently the Attorney General has certified a domestic violence case to himself and he can take cases from a Board of Immigration Appeals and make decisions, which are binding on the board. Q: Without any kind of hearing or anything? EN: Correct. Q: Just sitting in his office, he can individually decide. EN: And he has requested briefing from interested parties. I know that there’s a group of law professors that submitted a brief that I signed on to, but his question that he has certified to himself is whether or not persecution by a private actor can qualify someone for asylum, or whether it’s just private criminal activity. That’s huge, because generally -- and the circuit courts have pretty consistently held that if it’s someone that the government is either unwilling or unable to control, then that is sufficient for purposes of asylum. So there are a lot of people who may not be persecuted directly by the government, but who the government is not doing anything to protect. Domestic violence victims being one large group of people. But historically that has been well-settled law.
I mean, they’ve classified asylum as a loophole and called attorneys who were assisting clients in applying for protection dirty immigration lawyers, teaching their clients magic words to avoid deportation. So it’s coming from all sides. We’ve got people being locked up for much longer than they were previously, far more people being locked up while they go through their immigration proceedings. We’re seeing people picked up who would not have been picked up under prior administrations, people who have been checking in with ICE for many, many years are suddenly being detained and removed, and we’re seeing attacks on the asylum process, we’re seeing families ripped apart at the border, so parents coming in with small children being separated and detained separately. Q: Well isn’t that in the news right now? There’s talk that Trump is angry with ICE? The director of ICE? EN: Kirstjen Nielsen? Q: That she’s not breaking up families fast enough? EN: Yeah, something like -- I don’t know. They’re doing it certainly. We’ve been hearing about it. Q: And this is consistent with his rejection of DACA, would you say? EN: I think they’re two separate issues, and it actually, I think, goes back to the Obama Administration. The Obama Administration was at one point using detention as a deterrent. So if these asylum seekers know that we’re going to lock them up, they won’t come here. Which didn’t work, because the reason they’re coming here is they’re afraid for their lives. And actually a court told him you’re not allowed to use immigration detention as a deterrent. But I think that idea is behind -- if moms know that we’re going to take their two-month-old away from them for months when they come here, they’re not going to come. Q: Since you were working on immigration under the Obama administration when there were lots of deportations until his last couple of years, how would you contrast what the Trump Administration is doing with the deportation policy under Obama? EN: There were certainly things that I did not agree with that the Obama Administration did, but there’s no question that it’s much, much worse now.
People are being treated much less like human beings. The protections that the Obama Administration tried to put in place for, for example, transgender noncitizens in immigration detention have been thrown out. They were not detaining pregnant women, which I think went back even before the Obama administration, but the Trump Administration has just decided, oh, no, we’ll detain pregnant women. Q: What about the change in the policy in terms of focusing on criminal aliens versus deporting everybody? EN: I think, you know, absolutely. There were people who were not priorities under the Obama Administration and they had their cases administratively closed much of the time, so basically, the government can say we’re going to put your case on a shelf and we aren’t actively going to try and remove you. The Trump Administration is going through and reopening those cases and saying, oh, no, we do want to remove you. The backlogs at the immigration courts are going to grow. People will be waiting for many years for their hearings. They’re trying, in ways, to move things along that are going to threaten due process. They’re trying to give judges performance reviews based on the number of cases that they’ve closed, which is going to encourage them to not thoroughly hear cases and to protect the due process rights of people who are in removal proceedings. So there’s a lot that’s really alarming that’s been happening and they just seem to be dreaming up new ways to make life miserable for immigrants and advocates as well. Q: Could you talk about this big lawsuit that the DDC is involved with and CARECEN. It's my understanding that the arrest case of Dennis Guara Guara initiated it? EN: Well, he is not a plaintiff, but what happened to him sort of inspired us to challenge this policy. Currently Nassau County has a policy of when they arrest someone who is not born in the United States they contact ICE and they ask ICE if they are interested in this person. And ICE will then come back and say yes we are, here’s what’s called a detainer request, and possibly also an administrative warrant, which it’s important to understand that an administrative warrant is very different from a judicial warrant, the warrant that you always see on Law & Order where they have to go to a judge and find a neutral judge to sign off and show them the probable cause that they have to believe that a crime has been committed.
An administrative warrant is very different. An administrative warrant is signed by an ICE officer. There’s specific ICE officers who are authorized to sign them, but it’s signed by someone at ICE, and it says we have probable cause, or reason to believe, that this person is removable from the United States, which is not alleging any criminal acts or grounds. Someone who’s here and enters on a visa and overstays the visa is removable from the United States but has committed no crime. Someone who enters without inspection, that’s technically a misdemeanor, but this document is not alleging that we want to prosecute them for illegal entry. It’s just purely saying, as a matter of civil immigration law, this person is removable from the United States. Or we think they are. And when Nassau County gets those, they are not releasing people when maybe their charges are dropped, maybe they served their sentence, maybe they post their bail. They should then be released from criminal custody, but they’re holding them for up to 48 hours not including weekends or holidays so that ICE can come take custody of these individuals. Q: This is after Nassau County gets an administrative warrant. Is that correct? EN: Correct. And a request from ICE that they hold them. Q: And is that a new policy since Trump came in? EN: No. No. The policy that we found when we did a Freedom of Information Law Request, the policy is from, I believe, 2007. Having not been here on Long Island before June of last year, I can’t say how frequently the detainers were being issued by ICE and how frequently they were being honored. I do know that shortly after Trump came in to office, they published what was called a sanctuary list. A list of jurisdictions that were not complying with detainer requests, and Nassau County was on that list, and they very quickly said no, no, no -- we’re complying. And so my information is, having spoken with other people who work with people in criminal custody, that those detainers are being honored pretty much 100 percent of the time. Q: So is it true that on Long Island now there are no sanctuary towns, villages, cities, counties? Some people have thought, for a while at least, that maybe Suffolk or part of Suffolk was kind of a so-called sanctuary area.
EN: I don’t know whether places with their own police force have different policies, but my information is that currently anyone who is in the custody of Suffolk County Sheriff is being handed over to ICE when a detainer request is being lodged, and also that’s happening in Nassau as well. Q: But not in New York City? EN: Correct. New York is not honoring detainer requests. Q: So back to the lawsuit. Does it have a name? The lawsuit? EN: I guess it’s CARECEN and Jane Doe v. Nassau County. Q: So what are the grounds on which you’re challenging this policy? EN: New York State Law is very clear on when police officers have the power to make an arrest. And the law gives them the authority to make an arrest when they have probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed or a crime was committed in their presence. Our argument is also under New York State Law, detaining someone- refusing to release them after you have no further grounds to hold them on a criminal matter, is a re-arrest. And doing that on the basis of an ICE detainer or warrant is not in compliance with New York State Law, because it doesn’t give you probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed. It’s purely a civil document, talking about civil immigration proceedings. Q: And do you have confidence from other cases? Are there other cases somewhere else in the country where people have said, based on state law, this is wrong? EN: Yes. Our lawsuit was also inspired by a case called Lunn v. Commonwealth out of Massachusetts from last summer where the Supreme Court of Massachusetts held that Massachusetts state law did not allow local law enforcement to honor ICE detainers. Q: OK. And what is the state of the lawsuit now? EN: We filed in November. The County in December, so before this current administration took office, filed a motion to dismiss, and we have not gotten a decision on that yet. It will be in Nassau County Supreme Court.
Q: So you’re trying under existing law to challenge the new federal policy as it were under New York State. Are there other policies, or is their legislation, proposals, anything in the works that you know about that the DDC feels would be helpful going forward? EN: Absolutely. I think the legislature could, if they chose to, very easily settle the argument as far as state law not authorizing law enforcement to honor ICE detainers. There’s local policy, local ordinances. Westchester County has an immigrant protection local law. It says undocumented immigrants [audio is interrupted] [00:42:24] that they have. So something similar to that at the local level would be very helpful. Q: Anything else at the national level? EN: I’m not super confident in things being passed at the national level anymore, but I do think that there is bipartisan support for some solution for the Dreamers. Those are the people who were brought here as children who have completed high school or are currently in college, have served in the military, who are currently covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the DACA. I think there’s also quite a bit of sympathy for people who have TPS, many of whom have been here for more than 20 years who have been working lawfully, who have businesses, who own homes, who have U.S. Citizen children who are now facing losing their status. Q: And that’s temporary protected status, TPS, right? EN: Correct. TPS is for people who were here already when something happened in the home country that made it so it was not safe for them to return. Often times, it’s a natural disaster. In the case of El Salvador and Honduras, there are hurricanes and earthquakes. Haiti, obviously, was the earthquake in 2010, so those folks are here, they renew every 18 months, they have to show that they have not been convicted of crimes. It’s pretty devastating. And the issue with TPS, which is a little bit different than DACA, is that everyone’s status is going to expire at the same time. So everyone on the island who has TPS from El Salvador, their status is going to expire on the same day.
With DACA, it’s not as abrupt and obvious because everyone’s DACA is expiring at different times. But it’s going to have a huge impact economically on the island. Q: Immigration is very controversial on Long Island for a long time -- certainly at least since the early 80s when Salvadoran and other Central American refugees were coming here. When people ask what you do, what do you say to well-intentioned people who feel that: “Well, those people, they broke the law, they came here without documents. I’m sorry if they’re experiencing problems with their family and so on staying here, but it’s just not right that we should let people who don’t play by the rules -- undocumented immigrants -- come here. So why are you defending them?” What would you say to that argument? EN: Well, I think first of all there’s a lot of misinformation out there. I had a good friend of mine call me and say, I just listened to this radio story where they said the people pay the same amount that they would pay an immigration attorney to a coyote to be brought here, so is it really expensive? Why are people not doing things the “right” way? And the answer to that is, for a lot of people, there is no pathway for them to come here. If you don’t have a job and your employer is not one of the lucky people who wins the lottery for -Q: Diversity. EN: Diversity, that’s a different thing, but the temporary worker visas. If you don’t have a skill that you’re going to get a work visa for, if you don’t have certain family members here -- only certain close family members can petition for others. For a U.S. Citizen, you can petition for your minor children, your adult children, your married adult children, your parents if you’re over 21, and your brothers and sisters. So if you have an uncle here, that’s not going to do you any good. Or if you come to the border and you present yourself and seek asylum, that’s a way to enter. But for most people, there really isn't a pathway. And if you are sitting in Central America watching the gangs come after your children, threaten your children, threaten your family, you don’t have many options. Similarly, if you are sitting somewhere where you can’t feed your family, you’re going to find a way to take care of your family.
Q: You mention gangs. Both Attorney General Sessions and President Trump himself have come to Long Island in the past year and held big media events and talked about gangs here and the alleged connection between undocumented immigration and crime. What has been your view of all that? EN: So first there have been many studies that have shown there is no link between immigration, whether documented or undocumented, and crime. In fact, in places where there are larger immigrant populations, crime is lower. Second, I would certainly never want to diminish or downplay the danger that MS13 plays. So many of my clients have been subjected to horrific violence in Central America at the hands of both the MS13 and the M18 gangs. However, I think that fear is being capitalized on, and it’s being used to justify huge sweeps with very broad categories. You know, if you are wearing blue or purposefully not wearing blue, you might be a gang member. If you’re talking to someone who is a gang member, whether that's your neighbor or not, then you are suspected of being a gang member. And they’re using the fear to really undermine due process for people. And when people are picked up on suspicion of being a gang member, they use that information to try to prevent them from getting bond, claiming that they’re dangerous if they’re associated with one of these dangerous gangs. I saw some numbers, it looks like there are fewer than a thousand gang members, MS13 members, in Nassau and same in Suffolk. When you compare that to the number of people from Central America, it’s obviously a small percentage of people who are actually gang-affiliated who are here. The very people that they’re accusing of being gang members are the people who fled the gangs and the people who are most at risk of violence by the gangs. And so it’s dangerous. It's discouraging people from going to the police when they know something, and I think it’s doing a lot of harm to a lot of people who are innocent and are being swept up in this gang frenzy. There’s actually a report coming out tomorrow or sometime later this week by the New York Immigration Coalition about the gang allegations. Q: In terms of the public’s concerns about immigration, one of the common arguments made obviously is that too many immigrants contribute to competition for jobs in the local economy, and until 20 or so years ago, a
number of unions were among the most vociferous critics of immigration. That began to change in the 1990s, and I wonder if you could say a little bit about the extent to which you’ve gotten support for the DDC’s work from community groups like Make the Road, CARECEN, but also from the labor movement. I understand Jobs with Justice is one of those that’s -- could you say a little bit about any particular unions? EN: I was at a DACA rally last fall and one of the unions, I’m terribly sorry, I don’t remember which one, was one of the organizers of the rally. We work with Long Island Jobs with Justice, we’re part of the RAID rapid response network that they organize -Q: What is that, by the way? EN: It’s a way of mobilizing the community and legal resources to respond to raids by ICE. So there’s a hotline that people can call, there are volunteers available who can come if someone is at your door, you can call and if someone’s available they can come ask to see a warrant, ask to see the documentation so that you don’t have to open the door, because once you do open the door to ICE, there’s very little that can be done to prevent you being arrested. Q: So the person is like a witness and also they’re advising them of their rights? If ICE has one of their administrative warrants, can they demand to come in? EN: Yes. They can’t break down the door. They don’t have the right to enter like you would with a judicial warrant. But they can and will tell you that you have to open up, I have a warrant. But they do need your permission to enter your home. Q: So if you say no, they just go away? EN: Well, yeah. They may wait down the block and wait for you there, but yeah. If they do come into your home without your permission, that may be grounds to suppress any evidence that they might find. Q: But if they hide out on the street, can they scoop you up on the street with an administrative warrant? EN: Yes. You do not have to talk to them, you don’t have to tell them your name and your immigration status. In fact I would advise you don’t because that will most often be used against you, but they certainly have a right to come up to you and ask you who you are and where you’re from and what your status is. Q: So that’s the Long Island rapid response network. OK. And who organized that? Was it a coalition group?
EN: It’s being headed up by Victoria Daza at Long Island Jobs with Justice. But there is a coalition of people who are involved. But she’s been the person leading it. Q: So DDC also has been conducting know your rights clinics. Is that something you intend to continue? EN: Yes. That’s one of our three projects. We have the impact litigation project that has the litigation against Nassau County. We have the know-your-rights project which is going out into the community for various groups and informing them what their rights are in an interaction with ICE, and then we have legislative and administrative advocacy projects. So monitoring the federal register for new proposed regulations on the federal level, and we’re hoping to be able to get involved in New York legislative advocacy as well. Q: Human Rights Watch in December released a 109-page report on the new administration’s immigration policy after nearly one year of it and they titled the report “Deportations Undercut Fundamental Rights”. Would you agree with that characterization? EN: In many cases, yes. I think they do. The due process rights the people have in removal proceedings exist. They are less than you would have in a criminal proceeding, for example, because they are considered civil in nature, but the changes that we’re seeing here, the changes in policy, all of them are serving to undercut what limited due process rights people have. And people are being treated in ways that are inhumane and degrading and, I think, violate their human rights to be free of cruel and unusual degrading treatment. Q: OK. One last question -- has the clinic gotten much pushback? Have folks called you, emailed you, threatened either the clinic or individuals? Have they contacted Hofstra’s administration or the law school that you kno of? EN: I’m not aware of anyone contacting the administration. I do know that we have received a phone calls here at the clinic saying that they’re very disappointed in us for doing the work that we’re doing, particularly in regards to the Nassau County litigation. There have been some pretty terrible comments on news articles, but we try not to read those. ____________________ Gregory DeFreitas is a Professor of Economics at Hofstra University, Director of its Labor Studies Program, and Director, Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy (CLD). REGIONAL LABOR REVIEW, vol. 20, no.2 (Spring/Summer 2018). © 2018 Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy, Hofstra University