Mass deportations. It’s become the catchphrase for the terror, cruelty, heartlessness and chaos many associate with the pending Donald Trump redux administration. As Trump’s leading day one promise, it has captured most of the headlines — that is, until a cabinet of clowns began being nominated.
The terror comes from the fear that we will get Trump unleashed from the norms and normies that harnessed his first administration — a Donald J. Trump schooled in the federal levers of power and fueled by a hyper-inflated sense of a mandate. The rapidity and rapaciousness with which Trump is acting has bedazzled and blinded us all, as it’s meant to.
But what I hadn’t focused on is that those who were blighted by the tantrums of the first administrations have learned lessons of their own.
And so it is that I came away from a conversation with OLA Executive Director Minerva Perez with a sober but moderately sanguine sense that the onslaught will be challenged with battle-hardened tactics.
OLA is the East End’s leading Latino advocacy group.
Fear, Perez tells me, is the prevailing sense in our Latino community.
Over a green juice she’s sipping at Sagtown Coffee, I asked Perez how she knows. She cites the buzz across the robust social media infrastructure OLA has built over the last eight years: Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs and a direct texting service are among the many ways OLA hears directly from the community it serves.
The first Trump administration, Perez goes on, quickly disabused folks that the remoteness of the East End would offer safety against its harsh immigration policies. By 2017, there was an uptick in Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. Latinos were getting pulled over for driving without a license without even a pretext of an excuse, like a burned-out taillight, raising concerns about racial profiling.
And then there was the cooperation that arose between law enforcement and ICE, led by the Suffolk County sheriff. Under this arrangement, people who had been detained for, say, an aggravated traffic violation could be held and handed over to ICE, pursuant to an ICE administrative — not judicial — warrant.
Municipalities across the East End followed the sheriff’s lead. A traffic stop could lead to being torn from your children, shipped off to detention and eventually deported.
As a result of a lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union, the practice was found unconstitutional under New York State law in 2018. But for as great a victory as that was for the immigrant community, the damage had been done — and that period of blunt enforcement broke a lot of stuff.
It broke the trust of many in the Latino community for local law enforcement, such that some became afraid to report crimes to the police. Instead, they would turn to OLA, which had to weigh the risk of reporting against the risk of deporting. After internal soul searching, OLA essentially decided to draw the line at violent crimes, which OLA urged victims to report.
It broke some individual police officers, who would call Perez to report unmarked white vans stopping people on their way to work. The officers were “disgusted” by the people with “police” emblazoned on their vests, making it look like it was local law enforcement doing it. “Trust was broken,” with the public safety mission of law enforcement losing more than it gained, Perez opined.
Bad begot worse. Fear racked children. In a vicious cycle, an adolescent might turn to “cutting” due to the anxiety that her parents could be deported. In turn, the parent couldn’t seek help from a school counselor, for fear it might be perceived that the parent had done something wrong. That, in turn, might lead to an obligation to a call Child Protective Services — getting the family involved in an administrative system that could lead to fulfilling the child’s nightmare of a parental deportation. Circular. Vicious.
Perez also felt the limits of politics. Despite their moral instinct to support, some local officials were intimidated by the prospect of being labeled a “sanctuary city” if they formally adopted a stance against cooperating with ICE. Even faith-based organizations had their limits.
But Perez found solace in surprising places: the law, and relationships with law enforcement. And this perhaps is the key lesson from that period: forging relationships with key local institutions.
These institutions comprise an arcane and complex web across the vast expanse of the East End that OLA serves. Some 24 school districts, 10 courts, 10 law enforcement agencies and 14 municipalities (including villages), each needing to be tended.
In this regard, even COVID got converted into an opportunity to, for example, forge relationships with the multiple court systems across the region as a result of New York’s moratorium on evictions.
When I first met Perez in 2016, she had just taken over the reins at OLA. She was essentially alone. I acted as a bit of a consigliere. Now, the OLA website lists 20 team members whose work ranges from advocacy to legal services to crisis intervention to health care.
In other words, when the first of Trump’s immigration-related executive orders comes barreling down in January, there’s infrastructure in place to respond, backed by gut-wrenching experience.
In some cases, the tactic will be practical and defensive, such as refinements on documents whereby a parent awards temporary custody of their child to a U.S. citizen neighbor or friend in event of a sudden ICE apprehension. The old documents were too broad, Perez explains, as she chokes up remembering the scene of a child playing a few feet away while the mother contemplated the harsh reality of a possible separation.
Some young people who were around for the first Trump encounter were so traumatized that OLA started Youth Connect to provide confidential mental health counseling via a hotline or text.
On the institutional and legal levels, the organization has developed a strategy of acting as a resource hub. Staff is already anticipating in broad strokes what may be coming starting January 20.
When specific orders are issued, they will tap into national resources, such as the well-organized networks of immigration lawyers. OLA will then “start translating that into what does it mean for our East End” and relay their findings to the schools, courts, law enforcement agencies, faith-based organizations and municipalities with whom they have been working since 2016. And, of course, there is the team experienced in legal representation.
As we wrap up our conversation, my sense is that if Perez had to distill the lessons of the past eight years into one word, it would be “community.”
We on the East End pride ourselves on our natural beauty. We pride ourselves on our sense of place. We pride ourselves on the bonds that comprise the fragile thing that is our home. “If you take away a certain group,” Perez reflects, “our entire community is crippled.”
It’s a sort of “for whom the bell tolls” insight, perhaps a little obvious and even self-serving, but it’s battle-scarred and hard-earned. It strikes me as real.
As we gather around holiday tables, let’s reflect on the fact that the bell will soon be tolling for all of us. It is that collective “we” that can best protect us from the coming onslaught if we want our community to emerge healthy and intact.
With a 50 percent Latino student body across 24 school districts, our future depends on it.
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