Thread: Despite Deferred Action, ICE Snatches City Resident From His Home

Despite Deferred Action, ICE Snatches City Resident From His Home

Federal Agents Broke Down Door of Lawrence Street Home and Took 21-Year-Old NBHS Grad, He Committed No Crime and Had Been Granted "Deferred Action"

ARTICLE | JANUARY 11, 2016 - 12:47PM | BY CHARLIE KRATOVIL


Surveillance footage shows armed federal agents taking German Nieto into custody at 6:40am on January 5. Surveillance Footage

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ—German Nieto was taken into custody by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after they broke into his home pointing guns at his family on the morning of January 5.

According to Nieto's family, who has lived on Lawrence Street for more than a decade, the authorities were looking for someone else when they arrived, but ultimately decided to take Nieto to jail after the botched 6am raid.

In the course of the raid, agents allegedly stepped on the head of a young man and a 14-year-old child, who happens to be a US citizen, and handcuffed a 62-year-old man.

The raid comes amid rumors and policy discussion surrounding massive immigration raids throughout the country, two days before ICE publicly denied they were forcing their way into homes in New Jersey.

Nieto, a 21-year-old graduate of New Brunswick High School is currently being held in Essex County Jail, and has a lawyer prepared to represent him in federal immigration court.

He has not been charged with any crimes, did not have an "order of removal," and was recently granted "deferred action," a step towards legal residency under President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Nieto arrived in New Brunswick as a three-year-old, when his family immigrated from Mexico.

"It seems like ICE is actively trying to take away what the President has done," said Oscar Barbosa, an immigration attorney representing Nieto.


But the Department of Homeland Security defended the raids in general, saying they "must enforce the law."

"I know there are many who loudly condemn our enforcement efforts as far too harsh, while there will be others who say these actions don't go far enough. I also recognize the reality of the pain that deportations do in fact cause. But, we must enforce the law consistent with our priorities," said Jeh Johnson, a New Jersey resident who serves as Obama's Director of Homeland Security.

But it's not clear what law it was that the ICE agents were on Lawrence Street that day.

The agents started by banging on the doors to the home, saying they were there for a person named "Rodriguez."

But no one with that name lives in the home, so the residents declined to open up. Shortly thereafter, agents entered the backyard, took down the back door to the home, and forced their way in with guns drawn, pointing them directly at the family, including little children.

The ICE agents threw Nieto's older brother and young niece on the floor, the family said. And to the surprise of everyone, they took German with them.

"They told him they wanted to question about gangs," said Barbosa, who believes Nieto was profiled because he has religious tattoos.

"He's not a gang member," said Barbosa, who told reporters Nieto was a good family man who worked at a tire shop.

"The case of German and his family highlights the level abuse and injustice that exists within the culture of detention and deportation being carried out by ICE in NJ and across the country," said Carlos Rojas, an Organizer with Faith in New Jersey. "

"The advocates will continue to work with immigrant communities to expose these violations of constitutional rights. No human being should be treated this way."



"ICE agents broke down the door after being denied entrance," said Rojas, "entered the family's home with military weapons, kicked German's brother in the face after he tried to comfort his crying daughter and took German who has been given work authorization by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services to remain legally in the country."

According to the family, nearly a dozen armed agents were involved in the raid, but the agency denied "kicking down doors" the following day.

NJ.com's Fausto Giovanny Pinto documented ICE's public denial on January 7:

Alvin Phillips, the New Jersey spokesperson for ICE, said Thursday afternoon those stories were false.

"There have been no raids in New Jersey, no doors have been kicked down," Phillips said. "In Freehold people were stopped and let go."

Across the nation more than 100 undocumented immigrants, mainly from Georgia, Texas and North Carolina were targeted for deportation this past weekend, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh C. Johnson confirmed in a statement on Monday.

"As I have said repeatedly, our borders are not open to illegal migration," Johnson said in the statement.

"If you come here illegally, we will send you back consistent with our laws and values."

ICE said in a statement it's targeting the influx of families with minors who fled violence from Central America in the spring/summer of 2014 and have since lost their cases to stay in the country.

Advocates for the Mexican community said they were concerned that what happened to Nieto could happen to others in New Brunswick and elsewhere.

Teresa Vivar, a Mexican immigrant and founder of the non-profit Lazos America Unida, said, "We, as a community, we worry about what is going to come next."

http://newbrunswicktoday.com/article...ident-his-home

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Despite Deferred Action, ICE Snatches City Resident From His Home


"The advocates will continue to work with immigrant communities to expose these violations of constitutional rights. No human being should be treated this way."

To all the advocates, constitutional rights are only granted to US. Citizens, not illegal aliens! To get the record straight, American citizen's are human being and should
not be treated this way.

Nieto arrived in New Brunswick as a three-year-old, when his family immigrated from Mexico.

One key word is missing from the above sentence. Can anyone guess what it is?

Now let's add the missing word and see if it doesn't change the whole context of the sentence:

Nieto arrived in New Brunswick as a three-year-old, when his family illegally immigrated from Mexico.

The liberal writer and/or editor knew exactly what they were doing. This repeated obfuscation of the facts through omission is really getting exasperating.

ICE Lied To Get Inside Immigrants' Homes During Raids, Lawyers Say

The Southern Poverty Law Center is investigating possible constitutional violations.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers tricked several people in Atlanta into opening their doors so they could enter without a search warrant and detain people slated for deportation in a series of controversial raids earlier this month, immigrants and lawyers told The Huffington Post.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is investigating what it describes as possible violations of the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against illegal search and seizure. ICE agents need consent to enter a home unless they've obtained a search warrant.

"Our review of the cases suggests that ICE used tactics during the raids that potentially are illegal and violate the constitution and that in several of these cases it appears that proper consent was not obtained to enter the houses," SPLC attorney Eunice Cho wrote in an email to HuffPost.

René Morales says he didn't answer when ICE agents banged on his door around 7 a.m. on Jan. 2 looking for his sister, Rosa. Both siblings were undocumented immigrants, but Morales, 30, had obtained a temporary reprieve from deportation, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. His sister hadn't. She and her three children fled their home country of Guatemala in 2014 after witnessing a homicide and fearing retribution.

Tens of thousands of Central American migrants have entered the U.S. over the last two years, often asking for asylum or other forms of deportation relief.

Morales left the house a few hours after the ICE agents appeared to have left. When he returned, he says, two agents approached him and told him he would be arrested for obstruction of justice if he refused to open the door and let them search his house for a criminal named Miguel Soto -- a man Morales said he didn’t know.

Once inside the home, the agents instead detained Rosa, along with her 17-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter. They did not detain Rosa’s oldest daughter, 19, whose child was born in the U.S.

“They weren’t looking for any Miguel Soto,” Morales said. “They were looking for my family.”

The family's attorney, Sherly Zambrano, told HuffPost she thought Rosa wouldn't be detained because she had obtained an order of supervision valid through June. ICE often issues such orders, which allow immigrants facing deportation to live and work legally in the U.S. if they regularly check in with authorities, as a form of humanitarian relief.

“I was very much in shock when they called me because she was on an order of supervision," Zambrano said. “ICE was not supposed to execute that order.”

In another case, ICE agents knocked on the door of Susana Arévalo's parents, Arévalo told HuffPost last week from the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley. Arévalo said agents told her they were taking her to do paperwork, but said later that her asylum application had been rejected. They sent her and her two children to the family detention center to be deported to Honduras without allowing her to speak to her attorney.

Bryan Cox, a spokesman for ICE, said the agency doesn’t discuss its tactics as a matter of policy. But in an email, he also disputed that Georgia agents had violated the law, writing that everyone detained “was the subject of a targeted enforcement action based upon a final order of removal issued by an immigration judge and the operation was conducted in accordance with ICE policy.”

Lawyers and activists, however, say several other immigrants detained in the Atlanta area were deceived by ICE during the raids that began earlier this month.

“We have a hotline here and we have received a bunch of complaints about how ICE has lied to people to get inside their house,” said Adelina Nicholls, the executive director of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights.

Charles Kuck, an Atlanta attorney who has worked on immigration cases for more than two decades, said ICE agents showed one of his clients a picture of a black man who they said was a criminal they needed help finding. Then agents detained his client. Other lawyers in the area encountered the same thing, Kuck said.

“The three cases that I’m aware of -- in every instance, they showed this image of some terrible guy they said they were looking for and they used that to get into the house,” Kuck said. “One of them was my client and two of them were clients of other lawyers.”

“This is nothing new,” he added. “They’ve used this tactic for decades to get around the warrant.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b086bc1cd4e03f