Search Results for: Camilla

Sad and disturbing news this morning, ICE agents in my area have begun staking out free clinics where undocumented farm workers go for urgent care, following the workers home and arresting them and members of their family. They have already driven these increasingly desperate people away from supermarkets, court houses,  and chain and convenience stories.

They are terrified, exchanging stories of seized friends and lovers, even children, warning one another of the perils of their already difficult lives. They have become expert at spotting ICE vans and stalkers, the people who are driving them into hiding.

A few months ago, I began writing about Camilla, (this is not her real name), an undocumented farm worker who has been living peacefully and working brutishly hard on nearby farms.  We have taken her to see a lawyer twice, and worried with her as she describes the harrowing nightmare that have slowly engulfed her life and the lives of her friends.

She is from Mexico, she has been working for more than a decade doing jobs that farmers could not fill with American labor, that American kids and adults did not want – cleaning eggs, shoveling pig manure, cleaning barns and washing cards.

Since the new immigration policies, her life has become increasingly fraught. She was driving near a nearby with a clinic this week  that Mexican farm workers go to when they are sick, it is the only clinic for many miles that will treat the undocumented farm workers for little money, or, if necessary, free of charge.

They do not have insurance and now avoid emergency services, hospitals and doctor’s offices.

As she neared the town, she got a Facebook message from a friend – ICE agents from immigration had been waiting in the clinic parking lot for sick Mexican farm workers to show up for treatment. They didn’t arrest them at the clinic but followed them home to the small house they lived in on a neighboring farm.

They raided the house and arrested a dozen farm workers they said were here illegally.. Many of these workers are believed to be sick but are now afraid to seek treatment. This is a massive and growing assault on the very neediest and most vulnerable people.

Camilla said the farm workers are already afraid to call the police, even when robbed or sexually assaulted. They are afraid to go to Wal-Mart or to nearby supermarkets, where ICE agents have been spotted hiding in surveillance vans. The list of places they are afraid to grow expands dramatically as stories of arrests and raids spread.

The Facebook messages of the farm workers are filled with sightings, reports of arrests and deportations, friends and co-workers who are seized and simply disappear into the vast government system of detention camps, prisons and holding facilities. Many  – close friends, fellow workers with whom the farm workers have been sharing their lives for years – are simply not heard from again.

Children are terrified to go to school for fear they may never see their parents again, fathers and mothers are torn from their children, one by one, these teams of agents are cutting off the avenues of normal life, and isolating people, many of whom have worked so hard for years in grinding jobs Americans have long stopped even applying for.

Although we did not discuss it, I doubt Camilla has legal papers or visas – she has applied a number of times, and paid taxes to the state every year – but she has lived and worked her for more than a decade, sending money home to her family in Mexico, supporting her grandchildren and great grand-children. She will not buy those heavy winter coats we all wear up here, she works outside in sweatshirts

Even thought she is in her sixties, she works in intensely physical jobs that would challenge a teenager, picking eggs in the freezing cold, helping farmers feed their animals, tend their crops, clean their barns.  She works in brutal heat and biting cold. She has ever had a vacation or a day off.

She makes very little money, and in a year or so, the farmers say, people will see the damage this has done in their supermarkets and food costs. Many simply cannot find workers to run their farms.

This is heartbreaking to me, the grandson of immigrants, and a  believer in America as a generous country.

For any person of Jewish descent, or for many other immigrants and refugees, the images evoked by ICE’s assault on these people are horrific. I have known Camilla for some years, she is a good friend, and it is wrenching to see her so frightened, she is so sweet and generous a person. She has sacrificed much of her life for her family, broken no laws while she is here, taken no vacations, stolen no jobs from local residents, committed no crimes.

I believe she deserves a chance to live and stay in America, but that is not my decision, and our elected officials seem unable to deal with the issue in a rational or compassionate way.

I have worked hard to understand the Trump experiment.

Simply put, Trump has, from the first, addressed people who feel silenced and marginalized by immigrants and minorities.

According to Justin Gest, author of “The New Minority: Working Class Politics in an Age Of Immigration and Inequality, a valuable new book, he validates the views of many working class and ordinary voters as he channels conspiracy theories and social resentments.

His off-color remarks about women and minorities, his frustration with “disgusting” people and his false assertions about Mexico’s deliberate exportation of rapists and other criminals across the border has given affirmation and credibility to a large subset of voters who justifiably feel sidelines.

He has also embraced white working class fears about displacement from immigrants – from Mexico – who they believe have taken their jobs and lowered their wages and standard of living, and refugees from the Middle East they believe pose a grave threat to then and their way of life.

Camilla told us this week for the first time that she is thinking of moving back to Mexico rather than face a life of fear and  hiding and  uncertainty.  She says she is not certain she can live in this way for another three or four years, assuming President Trump is not re-elected then.

I feel especially helpless when I hear this, other than to take her to legal counsel and support her in any arrest or court proceedings.  Beyond that, there is really nothing Maria and I can do or, that Camilla would permit us to do.  She won’t take money from anyone other than to work hard for it.

She is both ethical and independent, she does not want to draw anyone else into her now terrifying struggle. She is a good person, it is impossible not to love her.

Is this really my America? The America of my grandparents, who risked their lives to be here, a country whose generosity and spirit I owe my very life to?

I think all I can do is support the refugees and immigrants of RISSE, who have appeared out of this angry and dark mist to help me focus my feelings about liberty and justice in a constructive way. The ICE agents cannot follow them to their doctors or schools or stories or playing fields or bring more terror to them and their families.

They are here legally and can live freely.  And they need help too.

I fear Camilla’s dream of such a life is slipping away, she says she is already packing up her things and shipping them to Mexico in case she is arrested and has no time to pack. She dreads ending up in one of the awful prisons and detention centers where so many many thousands of her fellow farm workers languish, sometimes for years.

She is heartbroken to even think about leaving her long and fruitful life here, she is much loved and has many friends. The farmers here are devastated by cases like this, both for practical as well as emotional reasons. It will soon be clear to selfish and angry Americans what these workers have been doing for us, our economy, our food.

Is this really my country I am writing about? I turn to the idea if the Army of Good for comfort and thank you for the great support you have been giving these refugees and immigrants. If we can’t help others, we can at least help them. Doing good helps.

If you wish to donate to the Children’s Refugee Fund Scholarship I have started, you can do so by sending your donation to P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816 or by sending a donation through Paypal Friends and Family, my ID is [email protected] Thanks for listening.

I fear one day Camilla will simply  be gone, having fled to avoid being hunted or taken away to some jail awaiting deportation proceedings. She might be in jail or back in a poor village in Mexico where she must fear corrupt police and drug lords and  look in vain for work – that, after all, is why she came here. She worries about her family, her hard work has sustained them through very difficult times.

All this while federal officials gloat about how many lives they are destroying and disrupting, and offering thanks for the chance to do it.

I don’t know how to even think of it, other than to redouble my own mission to do good and commit small acts of kindness, wherever I can. We may not be able to save her, but we can support the refugee children working so hard to keep the American Dream alive.

So here is where we are with our friend Camillia, the undocumented agricultural worker we have been taking to see a lawyer in recent weeks as the circle of her life narrows, and her fear of arrest and deportation has grown.

She is in a better place than many undocumented agricultural workers. No one is looking for her, she has committed no crime, the growing army of federal immigration agents is not at the moment looking for people like her. That does not mean she is not in danger, or could not be deported at any time.

It means the odds are decent that if she lives a quiet life (which she does) and commits no crimes, she may weather or somehow outlast this new and latest witch hunt in the history of America and its often scape-goated immigrants and refugees. Unless the aways changing policy changes again. It is difficult for to not feel vulnerable. This week, she must pay hundreds of dollars to fix her car so that she will not draw the attention of the police.

She has raised the money.

We have arranged for her to retain a lawyer she can call in case of any emergency. I wanted to share with you the rights she has been told she had. There are some.

The lawyer gave Camilla a card which can read if she finds herself confronted by police or by immigration agents, of if either tries to enter her home or question her:

“I do not wish to speak with you, answer your questions, or sign or hand you any documents based on my 5th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution.”

In addition, her card says: “I do not give you permission to enter my home based on my 4th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution unless you have a warrant to enter, signed by a judge or magistrate with my name on it that you may slide under the door. I do not give you permission to search any of my belongings based on my 4th amendment rights. I choose to exercise my constitutional rights.”

If agents don’t respect her wishes, then the case against her could be thrown out.

The bad news is that if the government feels like it, Camilla could be arrested and deported instantly and without warning or what I would call just cause. The good news is that she has a lawyer to call, and a good one, and good lawyers can often find loopholes, mistakes or recent changes in-laws that might help her. With a lawyer, her odds go up a bit.

She also knows her rights now, which she didn’t know before. She did not know that she does not have to let ICE immigration agents into her home if they came knocking at the door at 5 a.m., which is when they like to come knocking, when people are still in bed and their kids are still at home.

She does not have to discuss her legal status or anything else with any police officer who stops to question her.

We also benefit from being in a region where farmers – they are closely linked to local police officers – desperately need Camilla and others like her to run their farms, milk their cows, plow and plant their fields. The lawyer said the ICE (U.S. Immigration And Customs Enforcement)  is not targeting people like Camilla, there are millions working still in the U.S., and may not ever have the resources to do that.

If she can remain lucky, there may be a change in the political environment and the government may choose to deal with immigration in a rational and humane way. I can’t really speak to how this will affect Camilla and her quality of life, or how she will deal with the fear and uncertainty, especially if it is prolonged for years.

She came to the U.S. to feed her family and sends almost everything she makes back home every week. She works seven days a week 365 days a year.

We hope to bring more agricultural workers to this lawyer, who is impressive and committed. She believes a great injustice is being done.

For some weeks now, I’ve been writing about our effort to help Camilla, who illegally entered the United States more than a decade ago and who is now, like so many undocumented immigrant workers, living in fear and uncertainty.

She came her to provide for her family, who could not find enough work In Mexico to provide for themselves, and at mid-life, she sacrificed everything to work seven days a week, often in grueling physical labor outdoors in summer and winter for little pay to send the money she earns home.

She lives in a tiny trailer with other farm workers, spends nothing on herself.

It would be devastating for her and her family to be forced out of America now, without any path for redemption or security, or even just punishment. And it would be cruel.

For many people – I hear from them every day – this is only just and fair.

Camilla came her illegally, they say, she should leave. Many people think she is a threat and a parasite deserving neither of sympathy or support. “You should not be doing this,” one woman messaged me from Montana, adding this is why she voted for the current President.

According to her Facebook page, this woman rescues stray cats whenever she can find them, but not people, and rejects the idea that this is a contradiction. And this is where we are in America now, so angry and divided, compassion and mercy considered almost traitorous.

I feel differently, obviously, and so does Maria. We have twice taken Camilla to lawyers, and she now has legal representation, should she need it. And she might well, there is no path open to her.  Things change, judges issue rulings, Congress passes laws, Presidents change their minds. I told  her not to give up hope, I certainly have not.

But the question remains, how can we help her now? She has a number to call, she knows her rights, she has been given the best available advice. Is the on her own now, or are their further steps to take on her behalf?

I’m uneasy with where the lawyers left it: lay low, be quiet, get lucky. Is this the best our country can do?

Every day in the twilight world of the undocumented, there are reports of raids, arrests, deportations. At grocery stories, in court houses, hospitals and on farms. Their world is shrinking in a cloud of fear, they have stopped going to doctors, emergency rooms, malls, they have stopped reporting abuse and rape and other crimes to the police. They are afraid to drive on major roads, get their cars repaired, visit their doctors for treatment, go to the post office, shop at Wal-Mart or visit their friends or families.

There is nothing for them to return to, no money, jobs, homes.

When I hear the rattle in her car or see the smoke coming out of the exhaust, I fear for Camilla. She might be a traffic stop away from having her live ruined and upended. She has a lover she has lived with for years, and dreads the idea of them being separated. He runs when he sees a police man having coffee in a convenience store.

Since November, I joined the ACLU’s Grassroots Resistance Movement, created in part to help organize local efforts to protect people like Camilla, and to communicate with local police departments about their policies and thoughts about how to handle the undocumented when they encounter them, or when ICE agents come looking for them. I am learning about rights, statues, and

I wish to legally help Camilla find a way through this. She is honest about her life and status, she never lies about it, denies responsibility, or asks others to bail her out. It was me who suggested seeing a lawyer. She is prepared to accept responsibility and do what needs to be done to gain some legal status, she has been paying taxes for years.

The ACLU asks us to meet with local police chiefs and ask them about their immigration policies, but I am not sure this is a good idea. There are three different police agencies operating in my area, which is typical in rural areas. State police, county sheriffs, and town and village police.

The state police in New York have said they will not take action against undocumented immigrants they encounter unless the people they stop are wanted for serious crimes. The sheriff and local police have no stated policy, and to my knowledge, no policy at all. Many of these people work on farms, and are essential to the agricultural economy here. The police and the farmers are close, they know each other and work together, their families are often entwined.

In my county we all know undocumented workers, know how important they are to our economy, how hard they work, how little problems they have ever caused. They take jobs local people do not want and do not even apply for and work in sometimes brutish labor. They are central to our agricultural system.

Police here are low key, they do not generally look for trouble beyond the obvious and the normal.  They have no desire to hurt farmers. The chief here is respected and approachable. The immigration police – the ICE – are something else, by all reports, they are being aggressive in unprecedented and unaccountable ways.

If I raise this issue with local chiefs, then they might feel forced to formulate a policy, or seek public discussion. And I might not be pleased with the results. A good friend suggested I let sleeping dogs lie, if they are not aggressively pursuing undocumented immigrants, or raiding farms, then why spark a discussion at all? The ACLU says the reason to let them know people care and are paying attention.

Otherwise, any single officer can do anything he or she wishes to do.

I was a police reporter for some years, I have respect for the police and have always been able to communicate with them. I do know that public attention matters. Like all of us, we behave differently if we know people care about what we do.

I’m not looking for trouble or making any demands, I’d like to let them know that there are people here who are concerned with this issue and would like to talk to them about it in a low-key way. Is such a thing possible in America any longer? I don’t really know.

In the meantime, I will go slowly,  think on it and look for ways I can think of to be helpful to Camilla. One way would be to help her get her car fixed before some alert young trooper hears the engine sound her old car makes.

I have to say I never once in my life imagined that I would be driving our friend, an undocumented immigrant from another country, to an immigration lawyer an hour away from the farm. The country is now bitterly divided on the question of immigration, and the humanitarian catastrophe that threatens millions of working people in our country if they are arrested, pulled from their jobs, jailed and sent away. Deported.

On some issues, it’s impossible to hide from the raging stream, you just have to take a stand, so I have taken mine. Maria too.

The descendant of immigrants myself, I will stand with the good and hard-working people caught in a raging storm between many forces they cannot control, seeking mostly to work hard and make enough money to care for their families and children and grandchildren back home.

I must work here, she says, there is no work back home, my family would go hungry.

Camilla (not her real name) is living like some Jew or gypsy or gay man or woman in Eastern Europe on the eve of World War II. She is frantic, living partly in hiding, working hard seven  days a week, sending her money home for her daughter and 10 grandchildren to live on in their impoverished village, driving on back roads to avoid the police, shopping in small grocery stories and convenience stores to avoid the big chains like Wal-Mart, where  everyone believes agents from the dreaded ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) hide in wait for people like her and spring on them and then, they simply disappear, their things left behind and are not seen again by their friends and family or the people they work for.

They are disappeared, she says. She worries about her boyfriend, they have never been apart. What if he is taken?

I heard these same stories from my grandmother, I am struggling to absorb it. Now I am hearing them again, and in my own country. Will this disheartening chapter be in someone else’s novel down the road?

In a few days, it is learned that the disappeared have been deported. What will they do for work?

The rumors are everywhere about everything. The ICE is hiding at the courthouse, at the police station, even in hospitals and nursing homes, anywhere people who work hard for low wages doing the jobs Americans don’t want might be. They are raiding the farms, staking out the Western Union portals where money is sent back home. Everybody has a story about someone who is gone. Everyone is afraid.

Camilla’s friend was beaten by her boyfriend, but she will no longer go to the police, they might surrender her to the ICE.  Another agricultural worker was robbed in her trailer, her money and cell phone stolen, but no one will report robberies any longer.

Everyone is afraid to drive, no one knows what the local police chief will do. Camilla’s care has a broken muffler, it makes an awful racket and she is terrified to drive it for fear of being stopped. Her boyfriend is trying to patch it up with duct tape.

Some farmers and I will take up a collection and figure out how to pay for it.  We all know Camilla and love her. She is gentle and honest and no one works harder.

I hear these stories as we drive to meet a new lawyer, an immigration lawyer I will call Susan,  and I wonder if we could possibly be talking about America when I hear these stories. It just doesn’t sound like my country.  But I suppose that’s what they say about all countries when they change. I hope the lawyer can help.

Susan  speaks Spanish, so she and Camilla can talk freely and openly. We are prepared to pay this lawyer a retainer, so that Camilla will have a lawyer to call if she is arrested – it can happen anytime, anywhere.

Camilla, who doesn’t speak much English, is mostly quiet on the way, thoughtful. She looks worried, no surprise.

She wants to buy lunch for Maria and me to help pay for our time, we decline, we say we are not hungry. We find a spot, park and go into the lawyer’s office, it’s a swanky new building.

We all like the new lawyer instantly, I will call her Susan, she welcomes Camilla, shakes hands, takes us to a conference room. She asks me to go over Camilla’s history and I do, with Maria’s help. I ask her a dozen questions about current immigration policy. She is patient, she explains the law carefully to me.

She turns to Camilla and they speak in Spanish for a half an hour, Susan taking note.

She goes through each of the shrinking options now open to agricultural workers and undocumented immigrants. They want the government to leave their workers alone.

She says some of the rumors are true – the ICE raided a Wal-Mart store in nearby Hudson where immigrant workers go to find day jobs and shop. Some of the big  dairy farms have been raided. Some of the South American workers have already fled for other farms or other countries. Some are slipping over the border into Canada.

Some of the farmers are already struggling to get help for spring planting. Susan shakes her head about how aggressive the ICE agents have become. She asks Camilla if there was a deportation order against her. Camilla says no. She asks Camilla if she was persecuted in her country, if it was dangerous for her to go back, she pursues this perhaps to claim asylum.

Camilla, who is honest, shakes her head no, no persecution. She asks Camilla if there was a husband or parents or children who would suffer hardship if she was deported. No, says Camella, no one like that. Just a boyfriend, they are not married.  Susan says some people are desperately getting married to seek grounds for admission, but that is fraud, she says, she cannot support it. Camilla laughs, no, she says, she is not going to get married or tell any lie.

Has she been the victim of any crime, sometimes that can  help, Susan asks?  No, says, Camilla, no one has ever bothered her or harmed her. Has she committed any crime in the United States, she asks? No, says Camilla, I have never committed a crime anywhere.  I am reminded of how honest and direct Camilla is. It would be devastating for her and her family if she were deported, but she will not lie to stay here.

She has worked every day of the more than 10 years she has been here, she pays taxes every year, she obeys every law.  She came her after she turned over factory job to her daughter, so her daughter could work. She then left her country to send moneh back. When she came into America, she was intercepted by border patrol agents who took her fingerprints but let her enter, she said.

Other than that, she has committed no crime or broken any laws. She describes the jobs she holds every day, and Susan shakes her head, how hard you must work,  how difficult she says. Camilla smiles.

But there are no good options  immediately open to her, Susan says, she is not eligible for any kind of visa or temporary work permit, and ICE agents are on a rampage all over the country, they are unleashed now and show up anywhere they want, and at any time. They are increasingly aggressive and confident.

It’s my turn and Susan and I talk for nearly another hour. I pepper her with questions about how the ICE works, what legal options Camilla might have now, or four or five years from now. What would happen in four years if a different president was elected, what are the best options for Camilla to stay out of trouble and away from federal agents and aggressive local police officers?

But I see hope for Camilla, more than before. If she can hang on for a few years, things might change.

I ask Susan if we can retain her to be available of Camilla is arrested, or if ICE agents try to question her or approach her home. Susan says she will represent Camilla, she will be there if needed and there may be new court orders or rulings or policy changes that might help her. I prefer for her to be on retainer, I said. She will get back to me. She understood, I think.

So far, she says, the government is not generally pursuing the young Dreamers, who were born here in the United States or who came when they were very young. Some have been arrested, but there is no serious  or sustained effort aimed at them. That is good news, she says, they would suffer terribly if they were forced out of their lives here, most have never been to Mexico or any other country.

She says there are no reports of ICE agents working in our immediate area, but that, of course could change at any time, she says.

Susan instructs Camilla on what to do if agents come to her home or stop her on the road. You don’t have to speak to them,  she says. You don’t have to tell ICE agents anything unless they have a warrant. Undocumented workers are often terrified when agents come to their doors, they are afraid to not co-operate. You don’t have to let them in without a warrant. You don’t have to answer their questions.  You can tell them you have a lawyer and won’t speak until the lawyer appears.

Do not open the door to them without a warrant, do not try to appease them  by speaking and offering information. If they do not have a warrant, they cannot hold you or arrest you or come into your home and search it. Do not show them any documents of any kind. Do not run from them or try to hide. Do not challenge or threaten them in any way.

Susan said her best advice was to lay low and live quietly.

In three or four years, the government might change, the terror might be over, she said They might run out of money, or clog the system so badly it can’t function. With luck, you will still be here and by then, there may be some sanity in the immigration system, Congress and the country might realize how desperately urgent it is for there to be some immigration reform.

I told Susan I was now working with RISSE, the refugee and immigrant center  in Albany, and with refugees and some other agricultural workers.  She was intereted in that, I felt we connected with one another. It was very sincere and real, but I hoped that might help Camilla as well. She wanted to get the URL for my block. I hope she is reading this.

We agreed to talk later about other ways I could help, and other ways she might eventually help Camilla.

When we left, all of our heads were spinning. It was a good meeting, Camilla left clutching Susan’s phone number – call anytime, day or night, she said – and a red card from the ACLU in Spanish listing her rights and things to say to the police of she was questioned or if they came to her home.

So now, I said, I know what to tell people about their rights, about what to do when and if the ICE comes.  I can advise others. I am surprised to know about that.

I felt relieved that Camilla had someone to call, a number to carry with her.

As a reporter, I often saw the miracles much-maligned lawyers could work. The best ones often do the impossible, they know every loophole there is. And laws are always changing, judges are always issuing new rules, Congress is often meddling in things.  Susan would know all about that, and she seemed to really care. Camilla might get the break she needs.

But still, said Susan, who is as honest as Camilla. It’s never been like this, it’s never been so grim. I hear you, I said.

Sometimes it matters to have a lawyer she says, sometimes it’s too late by the time the lawyer arrives. They are supposed to always wait for the lawyer, she says, they very often do not. They are getting more arrogant by the day.

It was still disorienting for me to be doing this  and hearing about this in my country, I felt like I had slipped into an old movie, that London was about to be bombed, or Poland invaded by the Germans. There was fear and confusion everywhere, there wasn’t much anyone could to help anyone. Could this be our lives in 2017? It was hard not to shake off the idea it was just a bad dream.

I shook off that creepiness and gloom.  She would make it, I told her, I feel good about it.

Camilla offered to buy us lunch as we passed a Dunkin Donuts, but we said no, remembering the last time when three older women were glaring at Camilla suspiciously and reaching for their cell phones. They were listening to our conversation, we were not used to being cautious in fast food franchises, and so we left early. I stopped and bought a tuna sandwich for lunch for me, Maria wasn’t hungry.

I bought a batch of daisies for Camilla and said she was the heroine of the hour, the star of the show.

Camilla was quite shocked by this. Was it a birthday present, she asked? Her birthday is Sunday.  She can’t take the whole day off, she will be gathering eggs and shoveling manure until noon. She will be 64.

She will not go out for dinner this year, they are eating at home, in the trailer they share with some others behind the old farmhouse in the woods.