Immigrant community braces for possible raid
At 6 a.m. Wednesday, 24 hours after federal immigration agents descended on their neighborhood, residents of a near-West Side Central American immigrant community went about the business of going to work and taking children to school.
The pre-dawn presence Tuesday of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers sent ripples of fear not just through the Westmont Drive apartment complex in East Price Hill but through the city's entire Central American immigrant community.
The fear, advocates said, is that Cincinnati could be among the next sites of newly stated deportation raids.
On Wednesday, though, the community exhaled, even as its advocates planned an education session that would reinforce their rights.
"We don't know of anyone who was detained," said Don Sherman, retired executive director of the Interfaith Workers Center in Over-the-Rhine. "It appears to be a fugitive warrant."
An ICE spokeswoman on Wednesday would not confirm the purpose of Tuesday's presence in East Price Hill but detailed the enforcement policy outlined late this past year by Jeh Johnson, Secretary of Homeland Security.
"ICE focuses its enforcement resources on individuals who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security," Jennifer Elzea, ICE deputy press secretary, wrote in an email to The Enquirer. "This includes individuals, whether alone or with family members, who have been apprehended while attempting to unlawfully enter the United States, recent border crossers, and individuals who have received a final order of removal on or after Jan. 1, 2014."
An unspecified number of ICE agents, clearly identifiable by their yellow jackets, stopped several women beginning at 6 Tuesday morning in and near the sprawling Westmont complex. Witnesses said agents stopped only women who were outside, asked for identification and were clearly looking for two or three women, including one woman whom agents referred to as "Blanca."
Several people of Hispanic heritage live in the complex. They have been on greater psychological edge since the Obama administration announced its plan to begin deporting immigrants who had arrived after May 2014, were detained at the Southern border and lost asylum appeals. ICE agents then made removal raids in early January in North Carolina, Georgia and Texas.
An estimated 100,000 families – most of them consisting of women with young children – have fled Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador since the start of 2014.
ICE reported on Dec. 23 that it had arrested or deported 235,413 people in fiscal year 2015, 98 percent of whom fell into one or more of its enforcement priorities, Elzea said.
An unknown number of Central American immigrants, many of whom entered the United States illegally, live in East Price Hill, South and North Fairmount and other lower-income areas of Cincinnati in which housing is least expensive.
These families, almost exclusively Catholic, frequently attend Mass and enroll their children in both Catholic and Cincinnati Public Schools. Pope Francis and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have called for changes to U.S. immigration law to accommodate immigrants seeking safety or economic opportunity.
The Rev. Len Wenke, pastor of Holy Family Parish, East Price Hill, said some of his school's students are children of immigrants and live in and near the Westmont Drive apartments. He drove to the complex Tuesday to check on families who are parish members. Holy Family School officials checked attendance records and accounted for all of its Central American immigrant students who live in the complex.
"As a priest who serves the Price Hill area, it's one of my responsibilities to serve this community," Wenke said.
Advocates for Central American immigrants from the Interfaith Workers Center and the Interfaith Justice and Peace Center are among those who have been planning a rally to protest ICE's latest removal policy. It could be held March 12 at Holy Family, one organizer said,
Nancy Sullivan, who lives in the Eco Village in East Price Hill and is a member of social justice nonprofit, Transformations CDC, said her concern is that reality and perception among immigrant families blur easily.
"Rumors can spread quickly because of the fear, and before we know it people are not going to work and not sending their children to school," she said.
Women and children have fled Central America, which has some of the world's most violent countries, because of aggressive gang activity that involves recruitment of new members, extortion and murder of people who do not comply with gang demands.