As Supreme Court battle looms, undocumented immigrants seek truce
LORAIN, Ohio — Police Chief Cel Rivera recalls his first meeting with undocumented Mexican immigrants in 2013, when he learned that minor traffic infractions were leading to federal detention, deportation proceedings and the risk of broken families.
He was struck by the story of Anabel Barron, a single mother who was picked up for driving 6 miles per hour over the speed limit and wound up in a federal detention center for seven hours, fretting over the future of her four children if she was deported.
Rivera awoke at 4 a.m. the next morning and wrote out a new policy that forbids officers from detaining or arresting anyone just because they lack the proper papers. The response, amid scattered opposition voiced in e-mails and on the radio, has been a kind of immigration truce in this city of 63,000, which is 25% Hispanic.
"We wanted them to know that they could feel as protected as anyone in the city," says Rivera, whose Puerto Rican heritage is shared by many in Lorain. "When they come this far, they're just looking to work on the farms for $7 an hour. They're not committing crimes here."
As the Supreme Court prepares Monday to hear the Obama administration's final plea to resurrect a 2014 policy offering a temporary reprieve to more than 4 million undocumented immigrants, Lorain offers a glimpse of a community coming to terms with an intractable problem.
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On a national scale, the problem is what to do with more than 11 million undocumented immigrants. Legally, the issue is whether President Obama can do for parents what he did in 2012 for more than 700,000 young people brought to the country as children — offer them temporary relief from deportation and make them eligible for work authorization.
Here in Lorain, an informal version of that effort is well under way. Through a series of meetings and negotiations, fundraisers and letter-writing campaigns, a fledgling immigration rights movement has won support not only from the police chief but the mayor and City Council, school officials and church leaders. Even as the Obama administration continues to deport more undocumented immigrants than any of its predecessors, Lorain has become an unofficial sanctuary.
"I end up writing letters for people a lot," says Rev. Bill Thaden, who leads Sacred Heart Church, an Hispanic Catholic congregation at the center of the immigration crisis. "I can't change the legal system, but we try to find any way that we can."
Seeking political power
That isn't always easy or politically popular. The economy here has been in the tank since the hulking U.S. Steel plant and a Ford auto plant closed down. A new Border Patrol station in nearby Sandusky has increased federal oversight. The presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have given rise to anti-immigration forces. Ohio, led by Republican Gov. John Kasich, also a presidential candidate, has joined with 25 other states in Texas' lawsuit against the federal government.
Even in relatively tolerant Lorain, not everyone believes undocumented immigrants — many of whom drive without driver's licenses — should be allowed to stay.
"I feel for the people, but then there's laws. It's a tough call," says Jani Oehlke, 56, who sells antiques and collectibles at The 530 Shop on Broadway. "I can't imagine being the person who has to make that choice."
National immigrant rights groups say the battle over undocumented immigrants will be a potent political issue in the fall. "The mobilization of our community is going to happen, with or without a victory at the Supreme Court," says Ben Monterroso, executive director of Mi Familia Vota, which promotes civic participation by Latinos. “For each undocumented person who might benefit, there are definitely family members who can vote."
But getting them to the polls is difficult, immigrant rights leaders here say. "That community doesn't vote," says Victor Leandry, executive director of El Centro de Servicios Sociales, a local non-profit that provides social, educational and cultural services to the Hispanic community. "They have been so much in the shadows that they're afraid."
Rather than mass mobilizations, groups like El Centro and the Lorain Ohio Immigrant Rights Association operate at a granular level, seeking assurances from federal and local law enforcement officials and rallying behind each undocumented immigrant who gets ensnared in a deportation proceeding.
They have history and demographics on their side. Mexicans began coming to Lorain in the 1920s and Puerto Ricans in the late 1940s in search of jobs. The steel plant once employed more than 10,000 people. Ford had about half that many, and a couple thousand more worked at a local shipyard on Lake Erie.
The jobs left, but the Hispanic population remains. Every year, this so-called "International City" that once housed more than 50 ethnic groups holds an international festival. Businesses post signs reading "Se Habla Espanol." Watering holes along East 28th Street boast names such as Royal Corona Lounge and Cantina Sports Bar.
'All my paper prepared'
Despite two federal court rulings thus far against Obama's deferred-action program, the Mexican community here is cautiously optimistic that the Supreme Court will give it a green light.
Last Wednesday night, as local school officials urged parents through translators to get more involved in their children's education, volunteers manned a table set up to help undocumented residents with the paperwork for a program that remains blocked in court.
"I've got all my papers prepared. I'm ready to go," said Salvador Calderon, 44, who earns $12 an hour picking peaches, strawberries and tomatoes to support his wife and five children. The three youngest kids are U.S. citizens; the two teenagers qualified for the earlier deferred-action program. Only Calderon and his wife, Maria, risk being deported.
The next day, immigration activists and community organizers traveled to Cleveland to meet with regional Border Patrol officials. Their goal was typically granular — to win assurances that they would be contacted if a local resident was arrested and detained.
Among those at Thursday's meeting was Barron, the young woman stopped three years ago for driving 6 miles per hour over the speed limit. Still in legal limbo because she crossed the Mexican border not once but twice — the second time after attending her mother's funeral in 2001 — she nonetheless has been granted a driver's license and work permit, which she uses to help other undocumented immigrants as an El Centro caseworker.
"I'm proud to say that I've become an activist, an immigration activist," Barron says. "I'm not American, but I feel like one."