Thread: Officials pledge better immigrant relations

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Officials pledge better immigrant relations
At a forum in Newport, members of the city's immigrant community tell of warrantless searches and harassment.


01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, July 12, 2006
BY KAREN LEE ZINER
Journal Staff Writer


NEWPORT -- City officials last night pledged better relations with the local immigrant community after hearing allegations of warrantless searches and threats by local police, possibly in conjunction with federal immigration agents, against Hispanic residents.

The forum at St. Joseph Church, a sequel to one held two weeks ago, drew Mayor John Trifero; Edward F. Lavallee, city manager and public safety director; state Rep. Russell Jackson; City Council members Charles Duncan and Mary C. Connolly, and Jim Winter, a Newport community police officer.

At least 50 residents, most of them Hispanic, attended. The forum was sponsored by the Immigrants in Action Committee of St. Teresa de Avila Church in Providence.

"It's clear to me that people are concerned, and if they're concerned, we need to be concerned," Mayor Trifero said at the end of the forum.

The mayor and Lavallee pledged to establish "a working relationship" with people in the Hispanic community, including setting up a liason within the Police Department and possibly printing Spanish-language booklets on police policy.

Juan Garcia, community organizer and head of the Immigrants in Action Committee, recounted for the public officials a story told by a Salvadoran man and legal resident three weeks ago of how he was questioned by six men at his home last month.

Garcia said, "we were worried they were trying to intimidate him" in a search for another man, by threatening the man's wife, taking a cell phone "and threatening to take away the kids."

Garcia said, "We are trying to get some answers as to procedures the police are using," and whether they are acting in conjunction with, or on behalf of agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Garcia said. "It is scaring legal immigrants in this case, and we want some answers."

The man who identified himself only as "Juan," recently spoke to a Journal reporter through an interpreter.

He alleged that the men conducted a warrantless search of his apartment, including demanding entry into a locked room; threatened that if he did not cooperate in their search for a man named "Edgardo," they would arrest Juan and his wife, take their children away, and seize his legal work permit.

The men also forced him to go with them in an unmarked van in the search for Edgardo. "Since I didn't know the actual address, they took me to go and show them where it was. Edgardo wasn't there."

Juan said he presumed that some of the men were Newport police and others were ICE agents, "but at no point did they show identification." Two of the men "had normal police uniforms," he said, and the others were wearing civilian clothes with "a badge around their necks," with photo IDs. At least two were armed, he said.

Juan alleged that one of the men physically forced him to sit in a chair and answer questions, another grabbed his wife's cell phone "right out of her hand" and began checking incoming calls.

"They were angry. The policeman, when asking me questions, was screaming a lot at me. He said, 'You have three seconds to tell me where Edgardo is, or I'm going to arrest you and your wife and your children will be taken away.' They said the [work] permit that I had, they could take it away."

"I was very afraid. I've never been in a similar situation," he said. "I understood only maybe half of what they were saying. That's also why I was even more afraid."

In her husband's absence, "Juan's" wife spoke at last night's forum.

"The person who came said he was a detective. He took away my cell phone," she said. "They went looking in my house, and went looking in my brother's [locked] room -- they gave me three to five minutes to open the door."

Once the door was open, they searched the room and took papers, including her husband's work permit, she said. "They were holding the document, and said if he didn't tell" the whereabouts of the man they were searching for, "they were going to make that document disappear."

Lavallee, who answered questions from some of the 50 people who attended last night's forum, said, "We are very proud of our Police Department," and explained that the department has invested money in Spanish-language tutoring for the police, and on cultural training for interactions with immigrants.

Paula Grenier, spokesperson for ICE in Boston, recently referred questions about the alleged incidents, and allegations of warrantless searches and harassment by ICE agents, to her supervisor. The supervisor never called The Journal back.

kziner@projo.com / (401) 277-7375

The immigrants awere outraged that people were not obeying the laws. After all they realize how important it is to respect the laws, the ones that they want enforced, that is.