Local sweeps jail many undocumented immigrants with no criminal records

By Oliver Ortega
The Columbus Dispatch Monday July 15, 2013 6:04 AM

It was just before sunrise when federal immigration agents cut off Alejandro Ibarra on the West Side as he drove to work.

After the undocumented immigrant from Mexico was arrested, his 7-year-old stepdaughter, Evelyn, was sick for a week and stayed home from school. His 3-year-old son, Kevin, wouldn’t stop asking about his father; and Dennis, his 9-year-old stepson, started talking about an “immigration phantom” that took Ibarra away.

“It’s been really hard,” said his wife, Yolanda. She is also an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, but their three children are citizens. “Only people who have lived it know what it’s like.”

Ibarra, a 31-year-old carpenter, is in the U.S. illegally, having been deported four times, most recently in 2003, since he first came here as an 11-year-old in search of work.
(What kind of work was he looking for when he was 11? JD2 )

He was released last month on bail from the Butler County Correctional Complex, one of four Ohio jails in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement houses detainees. Now, the family awaits the decision of an immigration court in Cleveland — the only one in the state — on whether he can stay.

At a time when Congress is debating how to reform the immigration system and ICE says it is focusing on undocumented immigrants accused of crimes, deportations are hitting some local families hard. Since October, there have been more than 140 deportations in Franklin County, including at least 19 people with no criminal records, according to ICE records.

Some local activists and immigration lawyers say deportations have increased in the past few months, possibly in an effort by President Barack Obama’s administration to look tough on enforcement as it seeks to pass an immigration-reform bill. They said ICE agents sweep immigrant communities for undocumented residents very late or early, when there are few witnesses to their operations.

“The Columbus ICE office is one of the most-aggressive in the U.S.,” immigration lawyer Dennis Muchnicki said.
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Gloria Schanely, an American citizen, has been fighting to keep her undocumented husband, whom she married in August, from being deported. Saul Martinez, 29, owns a small roofing business and has no criminal history. ICE agents stopped him early one morning last November as he drove to work from their Hilltop home. He was released on bail from the Butler County jail after 40 days.

“Because the rest of the population doesn’t see it, they don’t believe us,” said Schanely, a self-employed court interpreter.

Ibarra was approached by immigration agents who said they were looking for a fugitive before asking for his driver’s license, a tactic frequently used to single out Latinos, local activist Ruben Herrera said.

But agency officials said they focus on detaining criminals and do not make random stops.

“ICE is focused on sensible, effective immigration enforcement that prioritizes efforts first on those serious criminal aliens who present the greatest risks to the security of our communities, not sweeps, patrols or raids to target undocumented immigrants indiscriminately,” spokesman Khaalid Walls wrote in an email.
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Ibarra and his attorneys say his case could go either way because of his history.

Besides having been deported previously, he was charged with felony drunken driving in 2005 after accumulating three DUIs, at a time when he drank to deal with his problems, he said.

Ibarra, who worked in construction in Texas before moving to Columbus seven years ago, kept coming back to the U.S. because his family in Mexico was too poor to support him, he said. He moved to Columbus to live with a brother shortly after his release from prison, joined a church and later settled down with Yolanda and her two children from a previous marriage, raising them alongside the son they had together.

Because he is the family’s sole breadwinner and the father of a U.S. citizen, authorities might allow him to stay.
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Along with law-enforcement agencies in Ohio’s 87 other counties, the Franklin County sheriff’s office and Columbus Division of Police participate in ICE’s Secure Communities program, a collaboration between ICE and local agencies to identify undocumented immigrants by sharing fingerprints and criminal histories, Walls said.

But in the past few years, major cities such as Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., have curbed the initiative, citing practices by ICE that go after noncriminals and generate a lack of trust in law enforcement among immigrants.

Though recent policy changes instruct immigration agents and prosecutors to focus on foreigners who committed serious crimes or are national security threats, it isn’t always followed, and a record number have been deported under the Obama administration, Herrera said.

Columbus has made efforts to be more inclusive as its immigrant population has grown, said Guadalupe Velasquez, the coordinator of the city’s New American Initiative. Recent census figures show that about 9 percent of Franklin County’s population in 2011 was foreign-born, and the Ohio Hispanic Coalition estimates that central Ohio has about 30,000 undocumented residents.

Mayor Michael B. Coleman launched the initiative in 2004 to help immigrants access social services and adapt to life here.

However, it doesn’t address deportations. Many are unaware of their rights and resources, such as obtaining the legal documents they qualify for, said Kyla Snow, an immigration counselor at the Vineyard Church’s community center near Westerville.

oortega@dispatch.com

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