ICE arrests migrants with permits to be in the country legally

Two women who had applied and been approved under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that gives them permits to be in the country legally report being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, arrests that landed them in jail, in one case for an entire month.

Maria de Barrera was arrested in Los Angeles when ICE agents came to her house looking for people who no longer lived there.

“I showed the agents my worker’s permit and he said that was not enough and took it away,” said Barrera, 46. She was taken to an immigration detention center and was released several hours later after her lawyer showed ICE agents Barrera had been approved under VAWA.

Elvira Ayon, 26, who also was approved under VAWA, was arrested in Delano, Calif., and later taken to an immigration detention center in Arizona where she spent a month before a lawyer gained her released.

Jorge Mario Cabrera, spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), says such cases are common and calls them proof of the “racial profiling” practiced by ICE.   

“They [ICE] don’t go looking for people in Beverly Hills or West Hollywood. They go to our communities to conduct raids,” noted Cabrera.

But Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for ICE, denies any racial profiling and says those are isolated cases.

“We detain people from Asia, Europe and all over the world who have violated immigration laws,” she said.

She blames the arrests of migrants legally allowed to be in the country to the fact that ICE agents don’t have remote access to Department of Homeland Security databases to check whether someone has been approved for such permits or other immigration benefits. But she says those cases don’t occur very often.

Kice also says their enforcement actions are specifically targeted to individuals who have avoided detention and have deportation orders, but that sometimes these people have moved and they encounter “collateral violators” in those residences.

“If they can not provide legitimate documentation and identification to show us that they’re in the country legally, we take them to the office to check their status,” said Kice.

-- Paula Diaz/Hoy

To read the full story in Spanish, visit http://www.vivelohoy.com/losangeles

Comments

[santosaint]

ICE is no more than liars and thugs. Liars because they went to congress and asked for monies to finance specialized units to go after the murderers, drug traffickers, thieves, etc. Instead they went after the easy targets. You can tell this strategies failure by the criminal activity happening at our borders now. Thugs because of what this article claims they do and then you have the head of a region trying to explain it as "collateral violators" and make no mention of the FACT that they were granted legal status based on being violated bad enought to gain legal status in the U.S. only to have thugs appear at your door and arrest you and throw you in jail AND because that was what Nancy Pelosi called them, and I agree. I WOULD HOPE THAT THESE WERE ONLY ISOLATED INCIDENTS BUT THEY ARE NOT. YOU READ ABOUT ICE INFRACTIONS ON CIVIL RIGHTS EVERY SINGLE DAY. It will change once enough law suits are won but if they did their job right in the first place there would be less incidents of locking up legal residents and U.S. citizens. Yep, U.S. citizens are getting locked up even when immigration laws are not applicable to us! The injustice. They don't fix the problems we pay them to fix and only make it worse by violating our civil rights. Talk about over reaching...

[Tara]

it's called guilt by association. you should chose your associates wisely.

[Freedom1]

What do you mean field officers do not have access to Homeland Security databases?

How about a simple cell phone call to their headquarters to verify if the work permit that Maria showed them was still valid?

Come one, even in my small town where I live, the police cars have a laptop with access to State databases!

Is always the same, shoot first and ask questions later.