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News > July 19, 2007

Despite Raids, IDs For All

New Haven takes the lead in recognizing undocumented immigrants’ rights to carry identification

By Melinda Tuhus

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrest an illegal immigrant during an early morning operation.

On June 4, New Haven, Conn., became the first city in the country to authorize a municipal identity card for use by both citizens and undocumented immigrants. Thirty-six hours after the city council approved the card, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) staged a citywide raid that led to the arrest of 31 people. In some cases, ICE agents, entering apartments without warrants, took parents away in front of their children. City officials and community activists charge that ICE is retaliating for the city’s immigrant-friendly policies, although the feds deny that. New Haven has vowed to roll out the new IDs sometime in late July.

The Board of Aldermen approved the measure by a vote of 25 to 1, but required that the program’s expenses be covered by outside funds. The cards will cost $10 and be good for five years. Applicants must show proof of identity and proof of residence, but for those who have no documentation, the city will accept an affidavit from a social service agency vouching for that person.

The sole Republican board member voted no, saying she feared creating the ID would bring even more illegal immigrants into the city of 125,000 and strain the city’s finances.

Opposition has also come from two of the people opposing Mayor John DeStefano as he seeks an eighth two-year term as mayor. One of them, James Newton, an economic and political consultant, says the cards are a cruel hoax.

“When people get that card they feel redeemed,” he says. “The problem is, New Haven is not a country unto itself. New Haven cannot be a municipality-type government that supercedes the federal government.” He says the raids were proof of that.

The card can be used in a variety of ways—as a debit card at businesses, drawing down on the money card holders put in their bank accounts, a library card, a card to pay the city’s parking meters and as proof of residency for admission to city parks. City officials, Latino service organizations and members of the faith community all agreed that such a card would help protect immigrants from robbery and violence. Without a social security number to open a bank account, undocumented workers often carry a week’s pay in cash, making them vulnerable to attack. Two major banks—First City Bank and Sovereign—have already agreed to honor the cards, and 50 retail businesses, mini-marts and restaurants are lined up to accept payment from the cards. The city expects many legal citizens to get the cards for the convenience they offer, and others have already signed up to apply for the cards as an act of solidarity with the undocumented.

The arrests by ICE have provoked widespread condemnation among New Haven residents, like Puerto Rican Hector Santiago. “We are all Latino,” he said as he visited with several Peruvian men on their porch one recent evening. “I feel for them. I don’t agree with the raids. They are not criminals; they’re just workers who are trying to support their families.”

Most of the opposition to the IDs has come from outside the city, as anti-immigrant groups have hailed the ICE crackdown as necessary. Jerry Kristafer, a local talk show host, referred to immigrants as “raping us financially.”

After being jailed in various out-of-state prisons for a week, the arrested immigrants received a bond hearing in Hartford on June 14.

Fátima Rojas, of Unidad Latina en Acción, a group which pushed for the municipal ID, says many people in Fair Haven, the heavily Latino section of the city where the raids took place, have been calling, afraid to go to work or send their kids to school.

A spokeswoman for the northeast regional office of ICE says the raid was a routine operation targeting specific individuals. She denied it was in response to the creation of the municipal IDs.

However, of the 31 arrested, only four had outstanding warrants. The rest were picked up after they were found in the targeted apartments or on the street and were unable to produce immigration documents.

Meanwhile, city officials are working with community agencies, grassroots organizations and churches to let people know exactly what the card can and cannot do. Yet in the wake of the raids, it remains to be seen how many undocumented residents will take advantage of the program.



More information about Melinda Tuhus

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  • Reader Comments

    There was a time when being a liberal meant you had a proud tradition of protecting the wages, benefits, and rights of working citizens of all races and creeds.

    Today’s liberalism is more concerned with Mexicans than our own citizens.  No matter the depression of wages and benefits.  We can’t get health care for our own citizens, yet all the Democratic Presidential candidates were quick to claim their health care reform plan would cover illegal immigrants.

    The Latino groups are quick to brand anyone who dares question the unfettered access to our country by this human flood as being racist.  Even someone like myself who would rather that job go to a Mexican-American citizen than a Mexican citizen, I’m still a racist.  That’s because there’s no logical argument to support this human flood other than they’re Latino, we’re Latino, and we Latinos are sticking together, the good of the nation be damned.

    Few in the so-called liberal opinion-shaping community have ever had to raise a family of four on what a roofer, a mason, or a meat packer makes.  They see the human side of extending compassion to the poor people of Mexico, but they always fail to have any compassion left for the poor folks here who have no one to speak up for them.

    Instead of passing out IDs to illegal immigrants, we need to be shutting down the places they work and putting the people who hire them in prison as is provided for in current law.

    -------------

    When they came for the farm workers’ jobs,
    I remained silent;
    I was not a farm worker.

    When they came for the meat packers’ jobs,
    I remained silent;
    I was not a butcher.

    When they came for the bricklayers’ jobs,
    I did not speak out;
    I was not a mason.

    When they came for the help desk jobs,
    I did not speak out;
    I was not a technician.

    When they came for the design jobs,
    I did not speak out;
    I was not an engineer.

    So when they came for my job,
    there was no one willing to speak out for me.

    adapted from a poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)

    Posted by trippin on Jul 28, 2007 at 3:23 PM

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