Families in Fear: The Atlanta Immigration Raids

Before daybreak on Jan. 2, 2016, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began sweeping into homes in the Atlanta area as part of a multistate operation that ended with the detention of 121 immigrants, apparently all women and children.

The raids in Georgia, Texas and North Carolina signaled a new and alarming development by a federal government with a history of abusive immigration enforcement that is now only being made worse by its failure to effectively address the humanitarian crisis in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Rather than fulfill its commitment to protect and provide refuge to families fleeing violence and persecution in these countries, the Obama administration has taken the same fatally flawed approach to law enforcement that has led to our nation’s mass incarceration crisis. Under President Obama, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has pursued needlessly aggressive – and potentially unconstitutional – law enforcement action against vulnerable immigrants. The result has been the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, including the families swept up in these raids, over the last eight years.

As this investigation by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights demonstrates, it’s an approach that has trampled legal rights, subjected mothers and children to terrifying and unnecessary police encounters, and torn families apart. This report provides direct accounts from survivors and witnesses of the ICE raids in the Atlanta area.

As these stories show, the Atlanta raids raise grave constitutional concerns:

• The raids appear to have been conducted without warrants. ICE agents did not show residents copies of warrants, which are required regardless of a person’s immigration status. When asked for copies of warrants or orders to enter a home, ICE agents ignored the requests, threatened residents or simply ordered them to “be quiet.”

• ICE agents entered homes without obtaining lawful and voluntary consent. Officers used the threat of arrest and illegal coercion to obtain it. They frequently deceived residents by saying they were police officers searching for a criminal (even showing a photo of an African-American man in some instances), or by saying the women would only be gone for a few hours to allow ICE to examine their electronic ankle shackles.

• ICE agents denied women access to lawyers. Although immigration matters are typically regarded as civil matters, which do not require the appointment of an attorney at government expense, individuals still have a constitutional right to counsel as long as it is at no cost to the government.

  ICE officials, however, would not allow the women swept up in the raids to contact their lawyers until after their removal to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas – often telling them that they had no further legal options. They also failed to notify them of a free, nonprofit legal organization at the detention center.

• Women were instructed to sign legal documents they did not understand. On multiple occasions, ICE agents instructed detainees to sign documents that were written only in English. This is especially troubling since many women were denied access to lawyers.

• Mothers and children with valid claims to immigration relief were detained before exhausting their legal options. Despite ICE’s assertion that all of the targeted individuals had been issued final orders of removal by an immigration court, a subsequent legal review of cases led the Board of Immigration Appeals to grant reprieves from deportation because these families had not, in fact, exhausted their legal options.

• ICE had granted many of the detained women permission to remain in the United States. These women had complied with orders of supervision by ICE, which permit them to remain in the United States subject to certain conditions, including regular check-in appointments with ICE or wearing electronic ankle shackles that allow ICE to track their location. Some women even had upcoming ICE appointments when they were swept up in the raids.

• ICE focused these raids in jurisdictions with weak due process protections. Individuals appearing before Atlanta immigration courts have one of the lowest rates of legal representation of any large city in the country. Judges in Atlanta’s immigration courts have among the highest asylum denial rates in the nation. Women and children with valid immigration claims in these jurisdictions are particularly unlikely to have full access to justice.

• ICE has refused to release children and their mothers from immigration detention – a violation of a national settlement. As of this writing, the government has now held immigrant children in detention centers for more than 20 days, which is prohibited under a settlement agreement in Flores v. Johnson. Children in DHS custody have the right to be released to a parent, including their accompanying parent, regardless of the parent’s immigration status. DHS must release children with their mothers unless the mother poses a significant flight risk or public safety threat.

While the focus of this report is Atlanta, this investigation revealed that these issues are not confined to this area. Victims of raids from Virginia and Texas reported questionable tactics that were remarkably similar. Quite simply, Atlanta is not an aberration. This disturbing pattern of raids that have traumatized communities and potentially violated constitutional protections is ample evidence to halt future raids by ICE, the nation’s largest law enforcement agency.

With the raids halted, Congress should investigate not only the apparent constitutional violations committed by ICE agents during these raids but misconduct in other aspects of immigration enforcement as well. The federal government must adopt a practical, comprehensive response to the Central American refugee crisis and improve access to counsel for immigrants. It must offer alternatives to punitive detention practices and shutter the family detention centers holding these immigrants. We must uphold our constitutional values as we address this humanitarian crisis. It is time to ensure that immigrant families no longer live in fear.

Detailed recommendations are contained at the end of this report.

Lesly is a 26-year-old mother who fled Honduras with her twin 9-year-old sons to escape her abusive partner in June 2014. ICE raided Lesly’s home in the Atlanta metropolitan area on the morning of Jan. 2.

Lesly and her sons were locked in a cell with other women and children.

Many of the women were crying, apparently swept up in the ICE raids like Lesly and her two children. But it didn’t make sense. She regularly met with ICE for check-in appointments and wore an ankle shackle with a GPS device that reported her location to them.

She was even wearing it earlier that morning when she answered her front door to discover what she believed were police officers outside her home. They said they were looking for a man named “David.”

Lesly told them no one named David lived there.

They were undeterred. They said they needed to search her apartment, because they had been told that David lived at her address. They showed her a picture of an African-American man. She again said that no one named David lived in her apartment.

The officers insisted, so she let them in.

Once they were in her home, the officers said that they were from ICE. They told her that she had an order of deportation and that she and her children had to come with them. They wouldn’t even allow Lesley to call her immigration attorney.

“My children were crying,” she said. “They asked me what was going on. They asked me what I had done wrong, and why the police had come to our house. I told them, ‘nothing,’ and that we hadn’t done anything.”

They were taken to a detention facility and placed in the cell with the other women and children. There were metal benches and a toilet that sat in the middle of the cell. There was no privacy.

Lesly and the children were ultimately taken to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. She was told they would be deported and to sign a document that was in English, which she couldn’t read. She refused. Ultimately, Lesly and two other women who refused to sign the documents were told that they would not be deported.

“I have asked my family to pray for me,” said Lesly, who after several weeks at Dilley was just transferred to another family detention center in Berks County, Pennsylvania. She has requested to be released on bond, but the government has opposed her motion. “When I was in Atlanta, I was working, learning, and building a life. My kids were learning English quickly, and doing well. I was working hard … earning money to support us. … [My children] are my biggest blessing. I am afraid to go back to Honduras, and if we return, there will be nowhere safe for us to go.”

Gabriela* fled El Salvador with her daughter to escape violence. She lived in Atlanta with relatives and worked as a housekeeper at a local hotel when she and her daughter were caught in the immigration raids on Jan. 2.

When Gabriela took the call at work, her daughter was on the other end of the phone crying.

ICE agents had surrounded the family home and questioned family members about her whereabouts. They had even searched the house, and accused her family of hiding her. She could tell her 13-year-old daughter, Mayra^*, was scared.

“After I received the call I was worried and confused,” Gabriela said. “I didn’t know what was happening, but I had to keep working.”

She was working in the hotel laundry room when two ICE officers surprised her. She left with the officers, who would not even let her gather her belongings or change out of her work uniform.

As she was led away, she saw her boss and the hotel manager.

“They looked concerned about what was happening,” she said. “I don’t know what the officials said to them, but I was very worried about the whole situation. I felt ashamed to have those people watching me while I was taken outside without even being allowed to change clothes.”

Gabriela then saw her sister, Rosa Diaz, and Mayra outside. They had driven to the hotel after the raid at home. Mayra was still in her pajamas. The officers probably followed them to the hotel, according to Gabriela.

The officers told Rosa that they would leave with the mother and daughter, but return in two hours. It was a similar story they had given at their home. They just needed to put an electronic ankle shackle on Gabriela – she’d be back in two hours.

That wasn’t what happened.

The officers made Mayra leave her cell phone. They took them to an immigration office filled with crying women and children. They were not allowed to call anyone as they waited. The mother and daughter were then taken far from Atlanta – to a family detention center in Dilley, Texas.

This was far more than a two-hour trip.

And no one asked Gabriela about the details of her case until after she was in Texas. That’s where she was told she had no other option except deportation, and had to sign a document that ICE put in front of her. She spoke to her consular officer, who advised her to get legal help.

Gabriela has since been allowed to meet with lawyers at the detention center. The lawyers submitted an application for a stay in her case and it was granted. As for now, Gabriela and her daughter remain in the detention center – roughly 1,000 miles from their home, family and friends.

Susana is a young mother of two young children who fled violence in El Salvador and joined her mother, who was living in Atlanta. When Susana was taken from her home by ICE agents on Jan. 2, she was under an order of supervision with ICE and had been wearing an ankle shackle that monitored her location. She even attended regular check-in appointments with ICE.

When Susana and her children left their home with ICE agents, she wasn’t worried.

She had an appointment with ICE in two days. She thought they had shown up to check on her electronic ankle shackle. Her mother thought the same thing, opening the door for the agents when they showed up that morning. An ICE agent even told Susana’s mother that her daughter would be back later that day.

Susana and her children were taken to an immigration office, and she saw other women and children. The ICE agents took her upstairs and told her she was being deported.

“I got really worried because I am afraid for my life and that of my children if I am returned to El Salvador,” Susana said. “My children had also gotten upset because they could see that I was visibly upset. I was so nervous and scared that I felt my blood pressure drop, I was crying and I couldn’t breathe. At that point, I felt dizzy and I suffered a seizure.”

But it was her 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son who were on her mind during this emergency.

“I started begging the officials to call my mother because my children weren’t being put in the ambulance to go with me,” she said. “So, I wanted to make sure they would be safe and taken care of by a family member.”

Her mother never received a call.

She was released from the hospital later that night. Susana and her children were taken by ICE to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, the next day. Her health worsened. She suffered an epileptic seizure that evening, and two more over the next three days.

ICE officials told Susana they were putting her on a plane back to El Salvador. An agent threatened her and told her that if she didn’t leave, things would be worse for her. She insisted on calling her attorney and was finally able to reach someone with the legal service organization at the detention center.

But it appeared to be too late.

Susana and her children found themselves on a plane bound for the country and the violence she had hoped to escape. But shortly before the plane took off, ICE officials removed them from the flight – the Board of Immigration Appeals ordered the government to let her stay in the United States to fight her case.

Despite this reprieve, Susana and her family still face obstacles and uncertainty.

She believes she’s suffering more seizures as a result of this experience. She has suffered at least six since she has been in ICE custody. She has an appointment with a neurologist to evaluate her for surgery in Atlanta – surgery she may now never receive. Her son is developmentally disabled and is not receiving treatment in detention.

More than anything, Susana, who is still detained in Dilley with her children, is also worried about her children and the future.

“We are afraid we will be killed in El Salvador,” she said. “I’m so nervous after the raids. The only place we feel safe [at the detention center] is in the legal trailer, where our lawyers are, because at least we know we will not be deported from there.”

As this report makes clear, these immigration raids have traumatized families and terrorized communities. The tactics employed by ICE agents also raise serious legal questions. The United States must address the humanitarian crisis in Central America, not resort to unconstitutional tactics that punish those we are bound by law to protect. The following recommendations describe how the government can comprehensively address this crisis while strengthening due process protections and access to justice for immigrants, ensuring transparency of law enforcement, and respecting everyone’s right to be safe and secure in their own homes.

Congress

• Conduct hearings and investigations into possible constitutional violations by ICE agents in immigration raids, and in immigration enforcement more broadly

Department of Homeland Security

• Stop the raids immediately.
• Assure communities that DHS does not endorse the use of unconstitutional law enforcement tactics and that agents who violated the law will be held accountable.
• Adopt a practical, comprehensive response to the Central American refugee crisis. This response includes refugee screening and resettlement, the granting of Temporary Protected Status for individuals in the United States, and other necessary humanitarian remedies.
• Stop detaining children and close family detention centers. DHS must adopt permanent alternatives to detention, because it is costly, unnecessary and inhumane.
• Implement the recommendations of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing by decoupling federal immigration enforcement from routine local policing. ICE should discontinue its use of immigration detainers and routine notification requests to local law enforcement agencies, which have raised serious concerns about due process violations and racial profiling of immigrant communities.

Department of Justice
Executive Office for Immigration Review

• Due process protections for immigrant detainees must be improved to ensure they have access to justice. This includes providing government-appointed counsel to immigrants in detention. A protocol should be adopted to improve access to legal counsel and legal orientation programs. This protocol should also ensure that adequate legal notice is provided to asylum seekers.
• The inconsistent adjudication of asylum claims by the immigration courts must be addressed. This means identifying immigration judges whose asylum decisions are highly discrepant from their peers across the nation. They should receive supplemental training and supervisory oversight on asylum decisions. Board of Immigration Appeals funding and the number of immigration judges and support staff must all be increased as well.

Local Government

• Decline to hold individuals on the basis of ICE detainers. Local governments should also decline to honor routine notification requests. Immigration detainers and notification requests are voluntary. They are not warrants, and raise serious constitutional concerns. They do not provide probable cause for arrest to place these individuals in ICE custody.
• Invest in free and accessible legal representation for asylum seekers and immigrants without representation.

For the full PDF, click here. 

COVER IMAGE: AP Images/LM Otero

PHOTOS: Robin Henson, Carmen Martinez and the families of profiled individuals, Steve Eberhardt/Demotix/Corbis