|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Drops in school attendance. A fear of calling the police for help. Threats of family separation. These are some of the issues that undocumented immigrants are facing locally, according to officials who participated in a panel discussion Monday evening at the Mountain View Community Center.
The forum, titled “What’s Really Happening in Our Cities: Supporting Our Immigrant Neighbors Under Duress,” was part of Compassion Week, an annual event that brings volunteers together to help people in need.
More than 50 people attended the event to learn about some of the challenges undocumented residents are facing as a result of heightened immigration enforcement activities
Immigration raids have been reported locally this year, including in Mountain View, Sunnyvale and East Palo Alto. In August, an East Palo Alto woman was taken to Stanford hospital after suffering a medical emergency during her arrest by ICE officers.
The panel discussion addressed community members’ concerns largely from the perspective of law enforcement, social service providers and legal professionals.
The Mountain View Police Department has a long-standing policy to not assist with federal immigration enforcement, except in cases involving serious crimes, according to Mountain View Police Chief Mike Canfield, one of the forum panelists.
The policy has not changed but people have become increasingly afraid to interact with local law enforcement because of federal policies targeting undocumented immigrants, Canfield said. People are less likely to report crimes as witnesses or victims when they are scared, he added.
“We have to have trust, and we have to have engagement,” Canfield said. “And where there is that fear, it makes it harder to connect, harder for people to come forward and want to engage with us to feel comfortable and safe.”
Panelist Lisset Téllez, a school and community engagement facilitator at Theuerkauf Elementary School, described similar trends in the Mountain View Whisman School District. Parents are worried about dropping their children off at school, especially when they hear about reported ICE raids in the news or on social media. Students also are anxious that their parents will go to work and not come back, Téllez said.
Téllez described drops in attendance at local schools even though school districts are not allowed to ask about the immigration status of a student or their family. There also are fewer students applying for federal assistance programs like free school lunches, she said.
“What happens is the most vulnerable get hit first, and they get hit the hardest,” said panelist Rachel Bennion, an immigration attorney who works with children and their parents after they have been separated.
Last week, the Trump administration told legal service providers that it plans to target immigrant children as part of its enforcement activities, starting with detained kids and those in youth shelters, Bennion said.
“We’re on high alert that this is going to be coming and it’s hard to know, is this another kind of fear tactic?” she said.
The panelists, while describing a lot of fear in immigrant communities, also noted that there are ways to support vulnerable community members. Téllez emphasized the importance of connecting with neighbors.
“The more you know your neighbors, the more you know your community,” she said.
The message resonated with audience members, as several noted that they were trying to arrange support systems that could help neighbors with school carpools, shopping and laundry, especially for those feeling worried about being detained by ICE.
Bennion also noted that it is helpful to connect people to legal service providers like the National Immigration Legal Services Directory. Even without a legal background, community members can accompany undocumented immigrants to ICE check-ins and court hearings if they are scared to attend on their own, she said.
In the event of an ICE arrest, Canfield stressed the importance of community members staying safe by observing the incident but not getting directly involved.
“Don’t interfere physically, don’t interfere verbally in a way that doesn’t allow the officers to do their job, regardless of how you feel about their job,” Canfield said. He noted that it is possible to record a person being detained or arrested from an adequate distance.
Bennion also emphasized the need for people to continue living their lives and resist a campaign of fear. “I encourage all my clients regardless of legal status to continue to obey the law, to live their life, to go forward, to go to work, go to school, go to church,” she said.
“I think it’s really easy to watch these arrests and these incidents on the news and think everyone around me is next, but… truly with the numbers of undocumented people in the United States, it’s literally an impossible task,” she said.
More information about Compassion Week and volunteer activities is available at siliconvalleyvolunteers.org. A second community forum addressing the personal experiences of immigrants is scheduled for 6-8 p.m. Oct. 8 at Creekside Center, 655 Magdalena Ave., Los Altos.
