Georgia Police Arrest Farmworkers — Then Get Warrants From DHS

On a muggy evening in mid-May Lorenzo Sarabia Morales was driving home with his co-worker from a -hour shift at a poultry farm when the lights of a Georgia State Patrol car flashed behind him Sarabia and his co-worker Abraham Mendez Luna were both concerned about latest rumors of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Moultrie an agricultural town in southwest Georgia s Colquitt County But as they pulled over to the side of the road they didn t sense any immediate danger These seemed to be police officers not federal agents and Sarabia hadn t been speeding What the men didn t know was that they were about to be swept up in a stunning wave of targeted yet imprecise immigration enforcement At the time the Trump administration claimed it was after violent criminals who posed serious threats so the men who had no criminal records were shocked when they were arrested and transferred to Stewart Detention Center a privately owned ICE facility notorious for accusations of abuse and neglect The Colquitt County Sheriff s Office presented the night s arrests as a triumphant collaboration between the sheriff s investigations unit the Department of Homeland Protection and the Georgia State Police The operation s primary goal as the sheriff s office put it in a May press release posted on Facebook was to serve warrants against people for crimes against children Through interviews press statements and emails concerning Sarabia and Mendez s development The Intercept discovered a gulf between how the Colquitt County Sheriff s Office presented the operation to the population and what definitely happened Rather than serving existing criminal warrants local administration conducted traffic stops arrested people without licenses and sent information about the detainees to DHS Only then after the men were in custody did the federal agency issue warrants for their arrest Ronald Jordan a lieutenant at the Colquitt County Sheriff s Office explained The Intercept in a report that people were arrested across Moultrie on the night of May and that DHS placed immigration detainers on of them The detainers issued by DHS were received after the subjects were taken into custody Jordan wrote Georgia State Patrol and DHS did not respond to a request for comment The people we ve spoken with so far were randomly pulled over or profiled and just arrested on the spot either for not having a driver s license or for no charge at all announced Meredyth Yoon an attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta who has been exploring the May operation That s not a targeted operation based on people having outstanding warrants The detainers issued by DHS were received after the subjects were taken into custody There was particular effort to serve existing warrants from DHS the sheriff s office wrote in its release But the operation hit a snag when information regarding the presence of DHS personnel began circulating on social media forcing DHS to end the operation early Rather than abandon their efforts entirely the sheriff s office wrote officers shifted to a concentrated patrol throughout Colquitt County during which they arrested people with charges ranging from child molestation to false imprisonment and methamphetamine possession Sarabia and Mendez did not have any such charges nor did at least three more men arrested and transferred to ICE custody Yoon commented According to Jordan Only one person on the original target list wound up being detained during the operation The May operation was mired in secrecy and confusion Yoon recounted The Intercept she tried to obtain the Colquitt County Sheriff s occurrence reports from that night but a records clerk explained there weren t any They didn t write any reports in cases that day where ICE was involved even in cases where the person was arrested by local police and charged locally with a traffic offense Yoon commented Sarabia and Mendez s arrest bore the classic signs of a pretextual traffic stop Yoon reported The state troopers cycled through a series of reasons for pulling the car over all of which Sarabia denies he had been swerving he was on his cellphone he wasn t wearing a seatbelt then decisively arrested him on a charge of driving without a license and failure to maintain lane Though neither man had a criminal warrant and Mendez was never charged with a crime the cops detained both men that night at the crowded Colquitt County Jail At the briefing before the operation all deputies and troopers were informed that any traffic stop made as part of the operation would have to be based upon probable cause Jordan wrote in an email to The Intercept Abrahama Mendez-Luna sic had no criminal charges which make be sic believe he was a voyager in the van Sarabia s family paid a bond but instead of being distributed he was placed on an ICE hold Yoon sent a letter with two National Immigration Project lawyers urging the local sheriff to release Mendez Neither Georgia nor federal law nor the Constitution provides any authority to hold an individual for DHS who has no detainer and is not charged with any offense they wrote It was too late By the time Colquitt County Sheriff Rod Howell received the letter Sarabia and Mendez were already in ICE custody en trail to Stewart Detention Center Read Our Complete Coverage The War on Immigrants In the days following Sarabia and Mendez s arrests videos of other farmworkers arrested on their way home from work in Moultrie spread across social media But at the United Farm Workers Foundation Sarabia s arrest in particular raised red flags Sarabia has been a leader on farmworker advocacy campaigns for the past two years speaking out about extreme heat conditions on south Georgia farms In he submitted testimony to the Department of Labor as part of the UFW Foundation s comment on a proposed to improve working conditions for laborers on temporary agricultural visas That rule went into effect last year but the Trump administration suspended enforcement of all its provisions on June We ve had other leaders that have been vocal in the past but none like Lorenzo Lorenzo has been our most of known and visible leader so far commented Alma Salazar Young Georgia state director at the UFW Foundation the nonprofit arm of the United Farm Workers Union I wouldn t put it past them to target labor leaders and especially with Lorenzo being front and center of a campaign for heat regulations Related They Genuinely Had a List ICE Arrests Workers Involved in Landmark Labor Rights Occurrence Young pointed to other immigration enforcement actions this year that have targeted farmworkers and UFW leaders such as the Frontier Patrol raids in California s agricultural Central Valley in January That operation sparked a Fourth Amendment lawsuit against DHS and Dividing line Patrol filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the UFW and five Kern County residents In April a judge granted the ACLU s motion for a preliminary injunction and barred Edge Patrol from conducting warrantless immigration arrests in the region In May The Intercept revealed that ICE had arrested farmworkers in western New York several of whom had been involved in prominent UFW organizing efforts We ve seen a sharp increase this year in immigration enforcement operations that have targeted immigrant workers especially in rural areas declared Zenaida Huerta governing body affairs coordinator at the UFW Foundation The backlash against that increase latest polling shows that less than a quarter of Americans aid deporting immigrants who haven t committed any crimes appeared to have specific effect on the administration s priorities On June Trump vowed to stop dragnet roundups of farmworkers Whether the administration adheres to that promise remains to be seen but it didn t arrive in time for Abraham Mendez Luna At an immigration court hearing on June Mendez requested voluntary departure to Mexico where he ll be reunited with his wife and children Since he didn t receive a deportation order Mendez hopes his choice will allow him to return to the U S one day Sarabia a husband and father of two who has been in the U S for nearly a decade is fighting his deportation At a contemporary hearing the judge agreed to postpone Sarabia s pleadings until August to allow him more time to find a lawyer Even though he s not a citizen of the U S I do consider him to be a model citizen explained UFW Foundation s Young He works hard takes care of his family and we think he has a pretty good chance of winning his circumstance But we don t really know The events in Colquitt County underscore the risks of deputizing state and local police officers to act as immigration enforcement agents legal advocates explained The Intercept The g initiative which has become increasingly widespread as the Trump administration enacts its mass deportation agenda offers states and municipalities three models for empowering local law enforcement to carry out immigration operations Georgia is among the states that have emerged as g hotspots Regime watchdogs have long warned that the g operation lacks oversight policies making it ripe for abuse Last year after an undocumented immigrant killed -year-old Laken Riley in Athens Georgia Republican Gov Brian Kemp signed a law mandating that local police departments enter into memorandums of agreement with DHS including through the g plan The Georgia Department of Corrections has held an agreement with DHS since under the activity s Jail Enforcement Model which deputizes corrections officers in local jails to identify undocumented immigrants and turn them over to ICE custody In March Kemp expanded the state s collaboration to the Department of Populace Safety this time under the Task Force Model which allows Georgia State Patrol officers to act as force multipliers for ICE Jordan the lieutenant mentioned the Colquitt County Sheriff does not have its own g agreement with DHS but it acts in accordance with state and federal law As those agreements have come into effect arrests of undocumented immigrants have surged Being undocumented in the U S doesn t make you a criminal It s a civil violation It s no different than getting a traffic ticket The Task Force Model is different from jail-based enforcement because they literally deputize officers to go out into the streets and make arrests stated Yoon the Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta attorney We re still looking into what the training entails but we ve been recounted that it s a kind of online-based expedited undertaking so a little concerning to be deputizing officers to go make immigration arrests with just an online subject Tracy Gonzalez Georgia state director of American Families United mentioned that the uptick in local law enforcement programs in collaboration with ICE has pushed communities into hiding Related Documenting ICE Agents Brutal Use of Force in LA Immigration Raids Being undocumented in the U S doesn t make you a criminal It s a civil violation It s no different than getting a traffic ticket Gonzalez mentioned You have hardworking people that deserve a path to citizenship and it s time Colquitt County is in Georgia s top region for agricultural production The estimated laborers in the area harvesting food for the rest of Georgia and the United States working out in the open are easy targets for ICE raids From California to Georgia local police departments are increasingly coordinating with DHS and ICE and funneling people into detention through everyday traffic stops or license checkpoints reported Huerta the UFW Foundation coordinator What we see in this affair mirrors what we re seeing across the country where farmworkers are being caught in the crosshairs of a system that offers them no protection no matter how essential they are The post Georgia Police Arrest Farmworkers Then Get Warrants From DHS appeared first on The Intercept