Riverhead has fostered a “climate of fear” in the local Hispanic community, further discouraging members of an already isolated and often exploited population from reaching out for help from local authorities, town board members were told today.
The advocates, community leaders and residents who expressed this message today at Riverhead Town Hall were referring to recent comments made by town board members to RiverheadLOCAL about changing town policy toward undocumented immigrants, which were described by panelists this morning as “misinformed, anti-immigrant rhetoric.”
“People don’t want to hear that they’re going to get deported for making a phone call to the police,” said Daniela Guillen, a representative from a local human services organization who is herself an immigrant.
Last month, several town board members said the town’s policies toward undocumented immigrants are too similar to policies governing so-called “sanctuary cities” and that they needed to be changed.
That includes the town police department’s refusal to detain someone solely on the request of a federal immigration agency and without a judicial warrant – a policy that is no different from other police departments on Long Island or even in New York, according to Amol Sinha, director of Suffolk’s NYCLU chapter.
Councilwoman Jodi Giglio has even said that town police should consider taking action when someone is pulled over without a driver’s license and without any other documentation to prove immigration status.
“We shouldn’t be seeking out undocumented immigrants, but if we happen to find out someone is not abiding by the law, we should hold them accountable,” Giglio said in an interview earlier this month.
But Sinha told the town board today that such a policy would violate federal law, which prohibits police from detaining an individual or prolonging a traffic stop solely based on the suspicion that the person has committed a civil immigration infraction.
“A lack of lawful immigration status is a civil, not criminal, violation,” Sinha told town board members today. “This has recently been reaffirmed by the Supreme Court.”
He added that “all people in the United States, regardless of immigration status, are entitled to constitutional rights,” which include the right to privacy and the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.
Not only would the policies discussed by town board members lead to civil rights violations and racial profiling by police officers, but they would also destroy the trust between the local Hispanic community and law enforcement necessary for police officers to do their job, Sinha said.
“We’re talking about the public safety of all the residents of our community,” Sinha told town board members this morning. “It doesn’t benefit anybody if significant portions of our community are fearful and untrusting of the institutions that are designed to serve and protect them.”
Advocates and residents at Town Hall today said that trust has already been eroded in the wake of those recent comments.
“How can you expect someone to come in front of a group of people and ask for help when those people are saying really ugly things about them and their families?” said Laura Lemus, special projects coordinator for immigrant advocacy organization Long Island Wins.
Lemus, who is herself an immigrant and a Southampton resident, said she has friends in Riverhead who have “a very ugly image” of the town board members that makes them reluctant to participate in public forums such as the one at Town Hall today.
“They wouldn’t dare come here,” she said. “They’re U.S. born and they wouldn’t.”
‘Living in fear’
Daniela Guillen was 11 years old when her father, a banker in Honduras, decided it was no longer safe for her family to live there.
Gangs fought openly on the streets, and armed guards were a frequent sight at local stores. Guillen’s family had to leave “everything” behind to make the long, grueling trip to the United States.
“It wasn’t easy,” she told the town board today. “We left behind all our family, our friends. Everything was different here. We had to learn a new language. It was very hard.”
Her father got a job cleaning horse stables – a “difficult” adjustment from working as a banker, she said. Guillen and her three sisters attended school in the Port Jefferson School District.
“We lived in constant fear of deportation all the time,” she said. “It’s not easy thinking every day that one day your parents might be gone, and you’ll have to stay here by yourself, and you don’t know what’s going to happen to you.”
When she graduated high school, she had to watch her friends go to college, a luxury she could not afford. She could not work legally or get a driver’s license until the Obama administration implemented the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy in 2012.
“Things took a turn for me then,” she said. “It was liberating. I was able to work legally and drive, which are simple things for people my age that, for me, were a big deal.”
Guillen is now working at Pathmore in Riverhead, a human services organization that primarily serves impoverished members of the Hispanic and black community. With help from her parents, she is now attending Suffolk County Community College, where she will graduate this fall.
“[My parents] have worked very, very hard to give me everything I have,” she said. “I have worked hard my whole life. I am a law-abiding young woman. I am not a criminal.
“I am familiar with living in fear,” she told town board members, “and no one else should be going through that.”
Making Riverhead stronger
The local Hispanic community faces a litany of challenges today, according to Sister Margaret Smyth of the North Fork Spanish Apostolate, and it currently has no voice to express them to local authorities.
Immigrants are exploited by local employers who refuse to pay them on the books, or even pay them at all. Employers who won’t pay their immigrant employees with checks make it more difficult for immigrants to file their taxes.
“It’s a myth that people don’t pay taxes,” Smyth said. “Immigrants are as intelligent as anyone else on the face of the earth. And if you’re planning for your future, and your intention and hope is to live in this country, you’re going to pay your taxes.”
Lack of local housing crams immigrants into homes with make-shift bedrooms, where they often live with four or five other families in a house that was designed for only one.
“No family that I know wants to live jammed up in a house,” Smyth said. “They want to have privacy and the ability to live as a family, but there is no housing to do that.”
These issues are made worse, Smyth says, by a local government that drives away those affected by them.
Lack of representation of the Hispanic community in town government was bemoaned by Town Supervisor Sean Walter today, who said the town board has done “everything possible” to conduct outreach.
“I’ve been asking for at least two years for the leaders of the immigration community to step up, and they have not come forward for reasons that are not so obvious to us,” Walter said.
But Smyth argued that it was the town board’s own fault that people are afraid to come to their meetings.
“They’re very aware of what the town board has said in some of their statements,” Smyth said. “It’s the climate that’s been created by the board. I always look forward to the day that the board is going to reflect the community,” she added, to some applause from the audience.
The town reinstated its Anti-Bias Task Force last summer following a string of violent muggings of Hispanic men, but Chairperson Connie Lassandro said the task force has had trouble recruiting members of the Hispanic community.
And the Guardian Angels, a neighborhood watch organization that began patrols in Riverhead this summer, has done little to recruit local members, according to Smyth.
“I’ve never been approached by them or asked if they can talk to the community,” Smyth said. Attendance at her Apostolate’s Sunday night Mass can regularly total anywhere from 600 to 1,000 people, she said, so their lack of presence in her church confuses her. “Nobody knows they exist, if you want to tell the truth.”
Pastor Enrique Lebron of the Riverhead United Methodist Church said that the town’s Anti-Bias Task Force is an “opportunity to make the whole community of Riverhead stronger.”
“We’re all different,” said Lebron, who announced today that he is volunteering for the task force. “We all have different backgrounds, spirits, profiles. Together, we can build up the community of Riverhead.”
Editor’s note: This article has been amended post-publication to correct an error in the reported date of the adoption of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy.
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