With the Republican Party winning the White House and both houses of Congress, local immigration attorneys and the nonprofit Organizacion Latino-Americana (OLA) of Eastern Long Island are preparing for the potential of major changes to immigration policy.
There are fears of mass deportation of undocumented individuals, travel bans on certain countries, restrictions on certain visa types, and restrictive policies with harsher enforcement efforts. While the issue of immigration has always been a centerpiece of President-elect Donald Trump’s campaigns, the reality he has been hinting at this time around could be very different from that in his first administration.
“I believe it is of utmost importance to find out what is a real threat versus what are just fearful rumors,” Johanna Sanchez of Bilingual Law Practice in East Hampton said by email on Friday. “And the way I practice is by seeing what actually transpires through new regulations and executive actions.”
“Right now he’s saying he’s going to use a state of emergency and use the military to do everything he wants to do,” said Sandra Melendez, who spoke by phone last Thursday in her personal capacity as an immigration attorney at SM Law Group in East Hampton. She also noted that many “people are living with fear, saying he’s going to kick everybody out.” (Ms. Melendez is also an East Hampton Village Board member.)
Operating under the assumption that changes will happen within the first 100 days of Mr. Trump’s presidency, OLA is already running a workshop on how to do paperwork if someone is detained without notice.
“We must figure out what we can do as people to stand together and make sure that the very basic human rights of the people of East Hampton aren’t cracked in half,” said Minerva Perez, the executive director of OLA.
“The big issue for us is how do we make sure that people’s access as human beings doesn’t start falling through the cracks,” she said. OLA has added two attorneys and expanded its mental health care offerings in recent years.
Ms. Perez said the organization is concerned with ensuring workers are paid what they’re owed, with protecting access to public education, with seeing that people can get to and from medical appointments and that they don’t feel afraid to call law enforcement, either as victims or as witnesses.
Melinda Rubin, an immigration attorney with an office in Riverhead, reminds people that “even if you’re not a U.S. citizen, you are still covered under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.” This includes the right to have a case heard and the right to a trial.
To that, Ms. Sanchez added “the right to remain silent and refuse to speak to an ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agent; the right to demand a warrant that is signed by an actual judge and not an ICE officer; the right to speak to an attorney and, if detained, make a phone call to speak to counsel, and the right to refuse to sign documents before speaking to an attorney.”
Ms. Perez, however, warns that in certain circumstances those rights can be circumvented, including in a situation where someone on their way to work is stopped and detained by an unmarked vehicle. “Even if detained unlawfully, even if they have a legal process that’s started, it’s close to impossible to get them out of detention,” she said.
For immigrants concerned about their own situation, Ms. Sanchez recommends “consulting with a credible immigration attorney, attending Know Your Rights Workshops, or following credible immigration organizations such as Immigration Legal Resource Center.”
The mass deportation of some 11 million undocumented immigrants will have unintended consequences, Ms. Rubin and Ms. Melendez both said.
“You can’t cut taxes for the wealthy and then deport a bunch of people so you don’t have the income coming in,” Ms. Rubin said, noting that many immigrants pay into Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, without being able to access those programs themselves. “If you’re trying to deport millions of people who pay taxes there’s lost revenues to the federal government.”
“Labor will be more expensive and companies will be paying much more for it,” Ms. Melendez said, “or no one will be doing the jobs.”
Ms. Rubin said she has been “trying to talk to companies about fixing their I-9s and making sure they don’t accrue penalties from the Department Of Labor.” I-9s are employment verification forms that all U.S. companies are required to complete for their employees, whether they are citizens or noncitizens.
Ms. Melendez’s advice to immigrants who may be out of status is “be prepared. If you have a U.S. citizen child, if you pay taxes, it shows that you are a good person and that someone here in the U.S. needs you.”
With Reporting by Christine Sampson
