MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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KNOW YOUR RIGHTS: If You Encounter ICE

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And so it has come to pass, well into the 21 st Century, that whole communities are being terrorized by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on American soil in search of people who “look like immigrants” so the new administration of Donald Trump can throw them out of the country and/or into detention camps.

Immigrants, even undocumented migrants, have rights and here are some precautions you should take:

Do’s & Don’ts

  • You are not obligated to open your door to ICE agents so don’t open the door.
  • Ask to see a warrant and ask them to slip it under your door so you can examine it.
  • The officers need to show you the right type of warrant, which is a judicial warrant signed by a judge.
  • A judicial warrant authorizes ICE officers to enter a home, question people and, potentially, detain them.
  • An ICE warrant, which is usually signed by the officers, does not authorize the officers to enter your place of residence.
  • Ask the agents to get a judicial warrant signed by a judge.
  • Non-citizens such as green card holders and people with Employment Authorization Document (EAD) are required to carry identification.
  • If you don’t have identification (or you don’t have legal status), remember:

YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT!!!

  • You are not required to answer questions from agents who approach you.
    Do not speak to anyone until you are provided with an immigration lawyer.
  • If you have a case in progress, carry copies of receipts of the case around with you.
    While the receipts won’t stop you from getting detained, they will help your attorney get you out of detention.
  • If you’re a U.S. citizen, especially if you look ethnic, get in the habit of carrying your passport on you in case you get swept up in a raid and being detained. It is not unheard of!!!

TRAVEL WITHIN THE U.S.

  • Be very careful and don’t travel if you don’t have to.
  • Remember, you’re liable to be pulled over by law enforcement at any time while driving.
  • There could be checkpoints while trying to board a bus or train.

INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL

  • Again, be very careful. Don’t travel if you can help it.
  • Green card holders, and people with advance parole travel document that allows certain noncitizens to leave the United States and return without applying for a visa and those Employment Authorization Document (EAD) cards should refrain from traveling during Trump’s term in office.
  • Green card holders who encounter problems returning to the U.S. should ask the official that they wish to see an immigration judge and want to be placed in proceedings.
  • That should allow you to see a judge where you could get a chance to enter the U.S.

FINALLY,

  • If you have any criminal history, even if you were just charged but not convicted, refrain from driving or traveling.

RESOURCES:

February 1, 2025
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The Company We Keep

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greece_3402538bMy son asked me a question the other day that still cuts very deep.

“How are you comfortable being in league with racists, xenophobes and reactionaries?” he asked.

What prompted the question was my support for Brexit.

I’ll admit it is true that the likes of Boris Johnson, the idiotic and racist former London mayor, and Nigel Farage who leads the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a right-wing political party, stoked anti-immigrant fervor to sell their successful campaign to get Britain out of the European Union.

And, let’s not forget our own resident bigot, one Donald Trump, the next president of the United States, was ecstatic at the outcome. Just yesterday, Marine Le Pen of the French racist National Front political party wrote an Op-Ed in The New York Times praising the Brits’ courage for their Brexit vote.

The reactions to Brexit, especially in the media, have been hyperbolic. In a highly emotional editorial yesterday, the Times castigated Brexit proponents for “backing away from the false claims and dubious promises that they made in the run-up to the referendum to take Britain out of the European Union.”

I know the financial markets have been tantrumy since the vote but everything is going to be all right. The world on Friday and since has been no different than it was on Wednesday, the day before the Brexit vote. Despite corporations and the markets behaving the way they are, nothing is really being lost.

Let me rephrase that. Read More

June 29, 2016
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A Plug for Unions

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The New York Times published a story yesterday about a study (done at Harvard and elsewhere involving income data from millions of people) that found In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters. If you’re born in the bottom 20 percent in New York City, for instance, you’ll wind up on average around the 40th percentile. People in places like Chicago, Atlanta and Charlotte are not so lucky. Brian Lehrer of WNYC invited listeners today to phone in to tell their upward mobility stories. He asked his listeners to tell him what personal factors and what outside factors made their rise in socio-economic class possible. If you grew up poor but made it to the middle class, how did you do it?

AUDIO:

Callers cited the usual—family, education, mass transit, (public) housing, “hard work”—in their rise to the middle class. Dorothy, 94, from Croton-on-Hudson, was the last caller:

Dorothy:     I was going to mention something that nobody has talked about and that is the role
that unions played in raising people from poverty to less poverty. That’s what
happened with my father. He came to this country . . . he and my mother both were
immigrants. I’m a first generation American. My father was lucky to get a job in a
factory . . . in a mill . . . a shop, I should say.

Brian:         Where did he come from?
Read More

July 23, 2013
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TRACK WORKERS UNDER SCRUTINY; REGULATORS VOW BETTER CHECKING

By Homepage, The RecordNo Comments

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Thursday, November 21, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | 5 Star | NEWS | Page B03

The New Jersey Racing Commission plans to meet with state and federal agencies in a effort to tighten up its worker licensing procedures, after 70 Meadowlands Racetrack stable hands were taken into custody Tuesday as illegal aliens.

Bruno Verducci, assistant director of the commission, said Wednesday that except in obvious cases, Racing Commission workers cannot determine the authenticity of immigration papers presented by the workers.

Allen Kampel, a supervisory special agent for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said most of the workers taken into custody obtained licenses from the commission by using false immigration papers. The workers need the state licenses before they can be hired by trainers.

The INS investigation has now shifted to the trainers, Kampel said. The agency will try to determine whether they knowingly hired illegal aliens.

Verducci said that he would meet with immigration officials and state police to talk about teaching commission workers how to do a better job of spotting bogus documents.

Describing the current procedure, Verducci said: “If there is ever a question as to the identity of the individual seeking a license, or the credentials that he presents, that person is refered to the state police racetrack unit that is lodged at the backstretch of the track. So, that is the safety valve. If they don’t come back, then you know.”

Although the state’s five racetracks check workers commission licenses, horse trainers like small businesses are responsible for ensuring that the stable hands they hire are authorized to work, Verducci said.

The INS recognizes that it is hard for employers to determine the authenticity of resident-alien ards ndth orkthiauments that people present to them, Kampel said. The INS would not hold them responsible if they could show they made good-faith efforts to determine whether the employees are legal.

In the next phase of the investigation, Kampel said, the INS will check whether the trainers knowingly hired illegal workers or checked their documentation. The 1986 Immigration Reform Control Act mandated that employers fill out a special form verifying that each worker is authorized to work in this country.

If it can be proved that the employers either knowingly hired illegal workers or did not fill out the form, the employers could be fined, Kampel said. Fines could range from a minimum of $250 per illegal worker in a first offense by an employer to a maximum of $10,000 per employee, he said.

Meanwhile, the 70 stable hands detained Tuesday by the INS, with assistance from the Bergen County Sheriff’s Department and state police, were released pending deportation hearings.

Most of the stable hands are Mexican.

ID: 17361670 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)

November 21, 1991
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RAID AT RACETRACK; 70 SEIZED AS ILLEGAL WORKERS

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By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Wednesday, November 20, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page B08

Federal immigration officials on Tuesday seized 70 workers in a sweep of The Meadowlands Racetrack for illegal aliens, authorities said.

Immigration and Naturalization Service agents, working on a tip and after surveillance of the stable area, took 64 men and six women into custody during the 90-minute raid, INS Supervisory Special Agent Allen Kampel said.

The workers mostly grooms and walkers were finishing their workday, which started about 5 a.m., when the sweep began in the stalls and dormitories at 11:30 a.m. They were taken to the INS field office in Jersey City for processing.

Most of the 70 had false immigration papers that they had presented to the New Jersey Racing Commission, which then licensed them to work at the track, Kampel said.

Stable hands are employed by horse trainers, not The Meadowlands Racetrack or the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, said racetrack spokeswoman Ellen Harvey.

Those taken into custody Tuesday face detention and an administrative hearing to determine whether they will be deported, Kampel said.

“If a person does not have the authorization to live and work in the United States, we are mandated to enforce the law,” he said. “The main point of all of this is that we have the hope that American citizens and other people authorized to work here would be hired to do these jobs.”

Kampel said six of the workers had papers allowing them to be in the country but not to work. Four are juveniles, ages 14 to 16. A majority 64 are from Mexico, with two from Peru, two from Guatemala, and one each from Chile and the Dominican Republic, he said.

Workers who were checked and found to have legal papers milled around the stables Tuesday, watching warily as officers led friends and relatives away in plastic handcuffs. Many either could not speak English or said they couldn’t.

Johnny Ortiz, a 24-year-old groom, said fear of being turned in to the INS is a constant in the lives of the stable hands.

Ortiz, a U.S. citizen, said the workers have little or no education and often work seven days a week for $175 to $325 per week, depending on the trainer who hires them.

Almost all live in dormitories at the track, sometimes three or four to a room, Ortiz said. The rent-free, dormitory-style housing is provided by the sports authority for hundreds of stable hands.

Most of them send the money they earn home to the countries from which they came, Ortiz said.

“It’s a shame for me to see this happen to them, just for the simple reason that these people, they struggle so much,” he said. “I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a lot of people from other countries here.”

The agents were assisted in the raid by state police, Bergen County Sheriff’s Department officers, and U.S. Labor Department officials.

ID: 17361491 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)

November 20, 1991
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