ICE, Conn. AG Tried to Stop City's ID Cards for Immigrants

That’s the story revealed in a newly-released batch of internal emails among officials of the Connecticut U.S. Attorney’s Office and the federal Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) unit.

The story adds a new twist to a controversy sparked by “Operation Return to Sender,” the June 6, 2007, ICE raids that led to the arrests of 31 immigrants allegedly living in New Haven without legal permission.

City officials blasted the raids in part because they called them retaliatory: They accused the feds of rounding up immigrants in response to New Haven’s decision to issue the landmark ID cards, which offer people in town access to city services and secondary identification to open bank accounts.

While available to all citizens, the cards were largely designed to incorporate New Haven’s growing immigrant community, including families here illegally, into civic life.

The raid took place two days after New Haven’s Board of Aldermen voted to approve the ID plan. It was the first ICE raid of its kind in New Haven.

Federal officials defended the raids and adamantly denied that they had anything to do with the ID cards. Reached Friday [Sept. 30, 2008], U.S. Attorney spokesman Tom Carson declined comment for this article.

The preoccupation with stopping the ID program was unmistakable in a review of the newly-released batch of emails.

Hundreds of pages of the documents were made available this week to two immigrants-rights groups on the heels of federal and state rulings in Freedom of Information Act cases. (Read Mary O’Leary’s New Haven Register story on those rulings here.)

The two groups, Unidad Latino en Acción and Junta for Progressive Action, have sought information on the raids from state and federal agencies.

A question growing out of the released documents: How closely did the U.S. Attorney’s Office coordinate efforts against the card with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security?

It’s clear here that well before the raids, officials from the agencies were in communication about efforts to stop the city from issuing the cards. But no document definitively states the the raids would take place because of the cards.

Much information remains missing. The hundreds of pages released this week include dozens of fully blacked-out pages and many more with partially-redacted information. (In one case, the government censors blacked out the last four digits of the mayor’s public phone number, which appears elsewhere in the files.)

The pro-immigrant groups’ attorneys, from Yale Law School, are continuing to press for further releases.

Beginning on March 28, 2007, continuing to the days before and then immediately after the raids, the feds coordinated an effort to “discourage” Mayor John DeStefano from proceeding with the ID cards and making New Haven “a sanctuary city.”

Officials sought to make DeStefano “understand the consequences of what he is doing” “earlier rather than later.”

The information visible in the partially redacted files “horrified” city Community Services administrator Kica Matos (pictured at the top of this story), who designed the ID card program.

“They couldn’t find a legal way to stop this. So they brought in the strong arm of the law,” Matos said Friday.

She also noted that the files reveal that the feds from the outset classified 22 of those arrested as “non-fugitive aliens” with no criminal history.

At the time of the raids, the feds had claimed they came to town to execute warrants on known criminals and fugitives. City officials and immigrants’ activists accused them of sweeping through Fair Haven, busting into the homes of sleeping families, and terrorizing children, all in a random act of opposition to the ID plan.

The feds have consistently denied that they launched the raids in retaliation to the ID card. In the newly released files, a top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official called the charge “outrageous.”

The official, DHS deputy chief of staff Adam Isles, was reacting to two critical letters about the raid which were sent to President Bush by two national Latino organizations.

“[T]he only thing that’s outrageous here is the accusation that the operation was retaliatory in nature (i.e., for New Haven’s ID card initiative),” Isles wrote.

"* First of all, the operation was apparently approved in early May, a month BEFORE the ID card initiative was blessed.

"* More importantly, while the ID card initiative was not the basis for ICE operation, nor should we tolerate the notion that it should serve as a shield from otherwise duly authorized Federal law enforcement operations.”

 

source and full article at:  NewHavenIndependent.org

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