As the Trump administration ramps up its mass-deportation project, Squad leader Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional office held a webinar this week to educate fearful immigrants about their legal rights and how they can protect themselves from deportation.
The “Know Your Rights with ICE” webinar, held on Tuesday by Ocasio-Cortez’s office and lawyers with the Immigrant Defense Project, aimed to educate illegal immigrants at risk of deportation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement of their rights and how ICE gathers information and conducts enforcement. The webinar was first reported by Straight Arrow News.
“ICE raids are political tactics, and they’re often intended to create fear,” Genia Blaser, a lawyer with the Immigrant Defense Project, said on the nearly hour-long webinar.
“This is a time where there is a lot of fear. And in fear, it’s really important to have knowledge because knowledge is power,” said Blaser, who told viewers that ICE agents are “often very aggressive, and the encounters can happen really quickly.”
In addition to the webinar, Ocasio-Cortez’s office is providing information about immigrant rights on her website. She is also urging immigrants with an open order of removal or who are “worried about getting picked up by ICE” to complete a privacy release form so her office can intervene. However, the website notes that her office is generally only able to provide immigration casework assistance for asylum cases, Visa applications, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status cases.
A flyer on the New York congresswoman’s website notes that “You do not have to open the door” for ICE agents, and they don’t have the right to enter a home without a valid warrant signed by a judge. “You can ask them to slip the warrant under the door,” the flyer says.
Immigrants also have a Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and a right to an attorney, it says. Ocasio-Cortez’s website provides a list of pro-bono lawyers in New York.
The flyer also notes that immigrants confronted by ICE agents have no obligation to sign or provide documents without first talking to a lawyer and no obligation to provide any personal information. However, they “should not lie,” the flyer says.
Ocasio-Cortez, a far-left Democratic Socialist, has been a vocal opponent of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigrants. She also spoke out emotionally against the now-passed Laken Riley Act, which requires federal agents to detain and deport illegal immigrants arrested on charges of theft and other property crimes. In a House floor speech, she called the bill a “fundamental erosion of our civil rights.”
“If a person is so much accused of a crime, if someone wants to point a finger and accuse someone of shoplifting,” she said, “they will be rounded up and put into a private detention camp and signed and sent out for deportation without a day in court.”
Ocasio-Cortez is not the only member of the so-called Squad of House progressives offering guidance to illegal immigrants during Trump’s deportation efforts. Democratic congresswomen Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan offer similar “Know Your Rights” pages on their websites.
Last month, Omar reintroduced the Neighbors not Enemies Act, a long-shot effort to repeal the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows presidents to detain and deport foreign nationals deemed to be a threat to the country, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Trump has vowed to use the Alien Enemies Act to “use the full and immense power of the federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks.” Omar said the law could be used as pretext for targeting immigrants “based on their nationality, not based on their behavior.”