In Barrio Obrero, a predominantly Dominican neighborhood in Puerto Rico, the chilling impact of unprecedented immigration raids within the U.S. territory has been paralyzing.
With houses and companies desolate, a truck with audio system has been cruising by means of the streets of the working-class neighborhood with a message.
“Immediately, in that darkness, they heard: ‘Immigrants, you have got rights,’” Ariadna Godreau, a human rights lawyer in Puerto Rico, advised NBC Information.
The authorized nonprofit she leads, Ayuda Authorized Puerto Rico, employed the truck, referred to as a “tumba coco,” to make individuals conscious of their rights and announce the launch of a brand new hotline, the primary in Puerto Rico offering authorized assist to immigrants, Godreau mentioned.
Over 300 households have already referred to as the hotline and spoken with attorneys freed from cost as they work out their authorized choices within the face of a altering immigration panorama, Godreau mentioned.
Residents in Puerto Rico now worry that President Donald Trump’s efforts to hold out mass deportations will essentially change how immigration insurance policies are enforced in a U.S. territory that had lengthy been perceived as a sanctuary for immigrants.
That notion was first shattered on Jan. 27, the identical week Trump took workplace. Immigration authorities raided Barrio Obrero and arrested greater than 40 individuals. Witnesses advised Telemundo Puerto Rico, NBC’s sister station on the island, that they noticed brokers break down the doorways of a number of houses and companies. Detainees have been handcuffed, positioned in vans and brought away, they mentioned.
In his 40 years dwelling in Puerto Rico, Ramón Muñoz, a Dominican immigrant, had seen authorities sporadically detain undocumented individuals however by no means “with the aggressiveness” displayed throughout that raid.
Complicating issues for immigrants in Puerto Rico, these detained are transferred to the mainland U.S. — an ocean away from their households and attorneys managing their immigration instances — as a result of there aren’t any everlasting detention facilities on the island that may maintain detainees for extended durations, in response to Rebecca González-Ramos, the particular agent in control of Homeland Safety Investigations in San Juan.
A ‘nightmare’ amid racial profiling issues
Aracely Terrero, one of many at least 732 immigrants arrested by federal immigration authorities in Puerto Rico to date this yr, spent a month being bounced round three totally different detention facilities within the States earlier than she was launched final week after an immigration decide decided she ought to have by no means been detained within the first place.
An area police officer within the coastal city of Cabo Rojo alerted federal immigration authorities about Terrero after the officer discovered her promoting ice cream on the seashore with out enterprise permits, Telemundo Puerto Rico reported.
Terrero had a visa and was within the strategy of acquiring a inexperienced card when she was taken into immigration custody, her lawyer Ángel Robles and Annette Martínez, the manager director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Puerto Rico, advised NBC Information.
Native insurance policies in Puerto Rico restrict coordination between native legislation enforcement and federal immigration authorities, Martínez mentioned.
But the ACLU in Puerto Rico is seeing extra instances during which native police are suspected of racially profiling Dominican immigrants with the needs of alerting federal immigration authorities, reigniting issues in regards to the revival of “discriminatory policing practices” that led to police reforms in Puerto Rico a decade in the past, Martínez mentioned.
Terrero’s case additionally spotlighted how troublesome it’s for households and attorneys to maintain observe of detainees as soon as they’re despatched to the States, Martínez added.
“It was a nightmare,” Terrero advised Telemundo Puerto Rico following her launch. “It was a really troublesome journey as a result of I’d by no means been arrested in my life. I’d by no means seen myself like this, with handcuffs, like a legal.”
A raid modifications all the things
González-Ramos, the HSI particular agent, mentioned in a neighborhood radio interview final week that her workplace had been getting ready to ramp up immigration enforcement efforts in Puerto Rico since November. She mentioned they began “reorganizing” assets and “shifting priorities” after Trump’s win.
But the large raid on Jan. 27 got here as a shock to most individuals. Puerto Rico Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón had reassured immigrants in an interview with Telemundo Puerto Rico that very same week that Trump was solely “targeted on what’s taking place in Mexico and in the US, on that border.”
It helped create a “false sense of safety,” Godreau mentioned. “These consecutive raids then start in areas traditionally inhabited by the Dominican inhabitants.”
As immigration authorities escalate their efforts in Puerto Rico by raiding lodges, development websites and neighborhoods, greater than 500 of the immigrants arrested to date are from the Dominican Republic.
Dominicans make up the largest share of Puerto Rico’s immigrant inhabitants. Over 100,000 Dominicans are estimated to dwell in Puerto Rico. A few third are considered undocumented. Lots of them are enterprise homeowners or work hospitality, development and elder care jobs, the final two being industries grappling with labor shortages, Godreau and Martínez mentioned.
González-Ramos had mentioned her workplace could be detaining individuals illegally current in Puerto Rico, “particularly these whose legal information pose a risk to our communities and nationwide safety.”
However solely 13% of the 732 immigrants arrested this yr have a legal document, in response to knowledge from Homeland Safety Investigations in San Juan.
Following a subpoena from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the administration of González-Colón, a Republican who helps Trump, just lately handed over the names and addresses of 6,000 individuals who received driver’s licenses underneath an immigrant-friendly legislation from 2013 that allowed individuals with out authorized immigration standing to get them.
González-Colón has mentioned she received’t problem Trump’s immigration insurance policies in order to not threat dropping federal funding.
“The governor’s attitudes and expressions have been fairly deceptive,” Martínez mentioned, including that native jurisdictions continuously problem and oppose federal insurance policies in an effort to guard native residents.
Nowhere to be detained
A spokesperson for Homeland Safety Investigations in San Juan advised NBC Information that González-Ramos was not accessible for an interview this week. However in her native radio interview final week, González-Ramos mentioned immigration brokers periodically perform “every day interventions” in an effort to search out over 1,200 individuals who have remaining deportation orders “that we should execute.”
Everybody arrested in raids, no matter whether or not they have remaining orders of deportation or not, “should be detained, it doesn’t matter what,” González-Ramos mentioned in Spanish. “Proper now, these are the directions.”
The ACLU’s Martínez mentioned that in Puerto Rico, immigration arrests have an “aggravating issue”: These immigrants arrested are placed on a aircraft and despatched away to detention facilities within the mainland U.S.
For greater than a decade, the island has lacked a working immigration detention middle that may completely home detainees.
As immigration arrests ramp up, “short-term detention facilities” have sprouted throughout Puerto Rico, in response to González-Ramos.
Certainly one of them is in a federal Common Providers Administration constructing in Guaynabo. Outfitted with virtually 20 beds, it’s been nicknamed “la neverita,” or the icebox, by immigrants who’ve hung out there earlier than being transferred to the U.S.
An previous ICE facility in Aguadilla that shuttered in 2012 was just lately reopened to quickly maintain detainees, in response to Godreau and Martínez, who’ve heard from immigrants taken there.
Earlier than its closure over a decade in the past, “complaints have been made on the time in regards to the inhumane and insufficient circumstances during which detainees in that middle have been held,” Martínez mentioned in Spanish.
Mayor Julio Roldán accredited an ordinance Thursday to declare Aguadilla a “sanctuary metropolis” for immigrants in response to escalated enforcement efforts within the space.
When no less than two dozen detainees are on the short-term holding amenities, ICE planes come to Puerto Rico to move them to everlasting detention facilities in numerous states, in response to González-Ramos.
Lots of them are positioned in immigration detention facilities in Florida and Texas. However detainees from Puerto Rico have additionally been present in amenities in Louisiana and New Mexico.
“We’re seeing a sample of disappearances,” Martínez mentioned, declaring that in Terrero’s case, it took the ACLU and her lawyer weeks to search out out the place she was being held.
The state of affairs raises issues over “a number of violations of human rights and civil rights,” Martínez mentioned, including that the ACLU is persevering with to observe these instances and name for modifications in native insurance policies to make sure immigrants’ rights are protected.
