New ICE Age Response Team: Prepare, Don’t Panic

by Paul Bass, Feb 18, New Haven Independent

[The following are excerpts. To read the entire article, please go to http://bit.ly/41dh0aA]

If an ICE (federal Immigration & Customs Enforcement) agent is indeed at the door: “I don’t wish to speak with you, answer your questions, or sign or hand you any documents based on my 5th Amendment rights under the United Stations Constitution … I do not give you permission to enter my home based on my 4th Amendment rights … unless you have a warrant to enter, signed by a judge or magistrate with my name on it that you slide under the door …”

A coalition of 60 agencies and nonprofit groups is spreading those red cards, and that calm-but-ready message, to the heart of New Haven’s immigrant community, which is bracing for ICE mass deportation raids promised by the newly installed Trump administration. …

“Exactly what the Trump administration wants is just fear, to incite fear and panic and chaos,” Yenimar Cortes, New Haven organizer for CT Students For A Dream, said during a New ICE Age conversation Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.” She was joined by fellow organizers Fatima Rojas of Semilla Collective, Junta case worker Jacqueline Gonzalez, and high school youth organizer Ambar Santiago-Rojas.

An estimated 100,000 undocumented people live in Connecticut.
You can call the rapid response hotline at 220-666-4472. Rojas said people can call her at 203-747-4309 for information on attending the coalition’s Saturday community engagement meetings. Cortes invited people to contact her group at 203-787-0191 for information on Know Your Rights workshops.