Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents attempted to enter a Brooklyn homeless shelter this week and were turned away after failing to produce a warrant, according to Christine Quinn, the former mayoral candidate and the director of the shelter network. The agents came to the East New York WIN shelter on Tuesday night and showed guards a photo of someone they were trying to detain. The agents said they had a warrant, but when guards asked them to show it, the agents failed to produce it and left.
“They showed nothing except for a picture of an individual,” Quinn said. “The guards kept saying, ‘Show us a warrant signed by a judge.’ They wouldn’t show a warrant.” A spokesperson for ICE denied they sent a team to the shelter. The head of security for the shelter said he spoke to guards who were there during the standoff, and the eight people who arrived were wearing ICE insignia and identified themselves as agents. If the agents had produced a warrant, the shelter guards would have had to send a photo of it to lawyers with the Department of Homeless Services, who would have provided guidance on whether or not to let the agents in.
ICE has traditionally stayed away from trusted community institutions like schools, churches and hospitals, as they’re “sensitive locations.” The sanctuary movement has been able to use this policy to protect immigrants from deportation all over the nation by keeping immigrants fearful of being deported in churches. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) introduced a bill called the Protecting Sensitive Locations Act in 2017 to codify the informal policy and add homeless shelters to the sensitive locations list, but the bill has yet to build any momentum. New York Daily News
Hello, this is Max Siegelbaum and Mazin Sidahmed with today’s edition of Early Arrival. You can email us at max.siegelbaum@documentedny.com or mazin.sidahmed@documentedny.com.
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Local
TLC Votes to Extend For-Hire Vehicle Cap
New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission voted unanimously to extend the cap on licenses that can be issued to for-hire vehicles. For years, app-based taxi services including Lyft and Uber have expanded rapidly in NYC, drowning the traditional yellow-cab market and destroying the market for taxi medallions. There are currently about 120,000 for-hire vehicle licenses currently in use, more than double the amount that was issued five years ago. The city council passed a temporary cap on for-hire vehicles last August, which came as a momentous victory for advocates, who have been fighting for the cap for years. Curbed
Fight of SHSAT Continues
The fight between the Asian-American community and the Department of Education continued this week as demonstrators confronted New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza at a community meeting in Brooklyn over changes to admissions policies at the city’s elite public high schools. Carranza was attending an invite-only meeting at IS 31 in Bay Ridge with representatives from five area school districts. “All I know is that no Asian members of our CEC were in this meeting. We were not represented,” said Yifang Chen, a plaintiff in an anti-Asian discrimination suit against the DOE and member of Community Education Council 20 in Dyker Heights. Carranza supports the plan to nix the specialized admissions test for high schools like Bronx Science and Stuyvesant. The New York Post
Orange is the New Black Actors Visit New Jersey Detention Center
Two actors from the longrunning Netflix series “Orange is the New Black” paid a visit to the Hudson County Jail to meet with two woman immigrant detainees from Jamaica on Thursday. The final season of the show explores immigration detention and how immigration issues intersect with the criminal justice system. Netflix and GoFundMe created a fund related to the show that will benefit several immigrant rights groups, including some in the New York area. The two actors were accompanied by representatives of First Friends of New Jersey and New York and Freedom for Immigrants. North Jersey Record
National
ICE Conducts one of its Largest Worksite Raids in a Decade
680 people were arrested at a meatpacking plant in Mississippi following an ICE raid Wednesday in one of the largest worksite operations ever conducted by the agency. Several people arrested had children who were starting school that day, prompting a local elementary school to set up a shelter for children whose parents were taken away. A local pastor said he saw ICE agents surround the plant and that “it looked like an invasion of war,” with dozens of agents buses and helicopters roaming the air. The arrests were conducted in partnership with the local US attorney’s office. BuzzFeed News
Irish Man Held In Detention Over 14-Year-Old Cannabis Charge
An Irish man is being held in detention over a 14-year-old charge from Ireland for possessing cannabis. Keith Byrne was arrested by ICE last month and has spent two weeks in detention. He overstayed his visa when he entered the country in 2007 and married his American wife Keren two years later. The father of three is planning on using the argument that John Lennon, the musician, was threatened with deportation in the 1970s over the same charge. After three years in the courts, a panel of judges found Lennon’s conviction in Britain didn’t meet American standards of justice. Byrne’s lawyers will argue the same. Irish Times
Cubans Make Mexico Feel Like Home While They Wait for Asylum
Thousands of Cubans are waiting in Northern Mexico for a decision on their requests for asylum to the United States. They have stayed in cheap hotels and apartments in Juárez, a Mexican city with a violent reputation. Yet the Cubans are also making the city home by opening a restaurant, hanging Cuban flags and finding jobs. As they wait longer and the Trump administration’s crackdown on asylum seekers continues, some have realized that the city might be the last stop in their journey and are starting to settle in. The New York Times
Detroit Man Who Has Never Lived in Iraq Dies After Being Deported There
A 41-year-old Detroit man died Tuesday after being deported to Iraq, according to the American Civil Liberties Union and two people close to his family. Jimmy Aldaoud was born to Iraqi parents in Greece and came to the U.S. before he turned a year old. He never lived in Iraq and did not speak Arabic, according to his lawyer. Aldaoud is a diabetic and his attorney said his death appeared to be linked to his inability to obtain insulin in Baghdad. The Trump administration has sought to deport over 1,000 Iraqis, including Chaldean Catholics, a community Aldaoud belonged to. Politico
Climate Change Could Lead to More Migration
Climate change will lead to more cross-border migration, the authors of a new United Nations report on climate change warned on Thursday. The world’s food supply is in danger due to climate change, the report, completed by 100 experts from 52 countries, found. And with food shortages more likely to affect poorer parts of the world, migration could increase migration to North America and Europe. A fivefold increase in Central Americans coming to the U.S. between 2010 and 2015 coincided with a dry period that left many without enough food. The New York Times
Washington — Trump’s El Paso Visit, Pelosi Heads to Guatemala, State Official Resigns
Trump returned to El Paso, Texas on Wednesday after centering a lot of his anti-immigration rhetoric on the border city for the past several years. He made the trip in the wake of Saturday’s mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso that left 22 people dead. The alleged shooter seems to have posted an anti-immigrant manifesto declaring his attack was retribution for the “Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
Protestors gathered outside Trump’s visits with family members, while city officials attempted to balancing rejecting the president’s rhetoric with welcoming his attempt to recognize this city’s grief. Rep. Veronica Escobar who represents El Paso in Congress rejected the White House’s invitation to join the president during his visit and said that he has a responsibility to acknowledge the role his rhetoric played in motivating the attacker. The New York Times
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) arrived in Guatemala with a congressional delegation on Thursday as the first stop on a Central American trip to explore the root causes behind increased migration to the U.S. Two separate planes of 200 Guatemalans deported from the U.S. arrived shortly after Pelosi did. The Associated Press
Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Kimberly Breier, the top diplomat for Latin America, has reportedly resigned due to disputes with the administration over immigration policy. She specifically took issue with the recent “safe third country” agreement signed with Guatemala, which would force migrants to seek asylum there before traveling to the U.S. White House aide Stephen Miller had reportedly chastised Breier on a recent email chain for not adequately supporting the measure. Others dispute those assertions and argue she quit for personal reasons. The Washington PostBorder patrol arrested 72,000 migrants at the southwestern border in July, CBP announced on Thursday, a 24 percent drop from June. Politico