On Friday, Elisa Villa, a public defender in Bristol, was arrested for attempting to stop federal ICE agents from taking a client, Anselmo Antonio-Valerian, into custody who had come to court to face a motor vehicle charge.
I’m not going to waste more than a sentence on the people who think that Elisa’s arrest this a good thing: hard working people who come to this country so that they can make a life for themselves and their families are in my view more entitled to be called “citizens” than the scumbag UTC executive and his wife who are squabbling over how to divide up their millions in a divorce battle.
But as I read this very short article about Elisa’s arrest and Anselmo’s seizure by ICE, I could clearly picture the two different-but-the-same reactions that many of my friends in the immigrant rights movement will have:
One group – the liberals – will tut-tut and shake their heads and say something like “I agree with the sentiment, but none of us can take the law into our own hands!”
The other group – the radicals – will turn red in the face and blurt out “Her arrest is an outrage, but individual actions won’t change things, we need organized protest!”
What it seems no one will say is the uncomfortable truth: We, the well-meaning people who make up the backbone of the immigrant rights movement here in Connecticut, both the liberals and the radicals, both the activists who organize and the supporters who turn out and write letters and sign petitions, have failed Elisa and Anselmo.
Liberal immigration activists are nodding politely over tea with our congressional representatives – the ones who will tell us privately how deeply moved they are by the stories of suffering of immigrants, while publicly putting “Secure the border” at the top of their immigration policy wishlists, as if immigrants were an evil, invading army.
Radical immigration activists are organizing yet another picket line. Because if we can get 25 people to a picket today, then we can have a public meeting denouncing ICE next week and get 50 people there. And maybe next time we can get 50 people to a picket and then 100 people to the next public meeting.
Meanwhile, in virtually every discussion with people in Connecticut who are undocumented, I hear the same litany of needs recited:
1. I need identification, and especially I need to be able to get a driver’s license. In Connecticut, you have to be able to drive to work, and if I drive, then the police can stop me and arrest me. That’s how a lot of people end up being detained by ICE.
2. I’m afraid of the police because they stop us and question us even when we’re not doing anything wrong, and that’s when people end up getting arrested for minor charges, and then are turned over to ICE in court or in jail.
3. My employer and my landlord take advantage of me because they say that if I complain about not getting paid for my work or if I insist that they do something about the heat not working in the winter, then they will report me to ICE, or they will call the police on me and when they find out I have no papers, they will turn me over to ICE.
It would be wonderful to build a movement that could force elected officials to take up the issue of federal immigration reform. It would be wonderful to have a movement strong enough to demand that ICE raids stop. And we can do those things. But I say we can do them only if we first build a movement, made up of both immigrants and non-immigrant supporters, that fights for the needs of the people here and now.
The rudiments of this movement exist. In New Haven and Hartford, activists have passed ordinances that help to protect immigrants from police harassment, that open the doors for them to bring their concerns to local government agencies and local officials. We need to organize to pass similar ordinances in Waterbury and Stamford and Bridgeport, as well as smaller cities like Meriden and New London and New Britain. And when we have fought those battles and raised more public consciousness about who Connecticut’s undocumented immigrants are and what they need, then there’s the big fight for access to state drivers licenses.
Similarly, there are people working in Stamford and New Haven and Hartford and Bridgeport to help immigrant workers get paid for their work when their employers cheat them, and to target sleazy landlords who rent rat–infested and unsafe apartments to people who are undocumented. But we need to take these fights out of the courtrooms and out of the health department offices and housing offices and into the streets. When an employer tells a group of ten workers that he isn’t going to pay them for the last month’s work, there should be one hundred people picketing his house and his jobsite the next day.
On some level, we all know that these things are needed. But breaking out of the pattern of politely urging reforms or loudly demanding change is hard. Better to keep on doing what we’re comfortable with or good at, right? But in the meantime, people like Anselmo will be detained and deported for minor traffic violations, and courageous people like Elisa will put themselves on the line to fight for them. And things will not change.
Filed under: Fighting oppression, Immigrant rights
