Hello all and welcome back! Holy moly has it been a crazy week around the office. Eric and I were running around like chickens with our heads cut off in an effort to prepare for our mentor training sessions which took place on Friday and Saturday. We prepared an extremely thick binder folder with over 50 pages worth of resources to help equip our mentors with what they need to be effective advocates for the students in our program. We also created a 20+ slide powerpoint which aided us in explaining in depth what the mentoring section of our program entails and the logistics of mentor-student meetings as well as an in depth look at the college application process as it relates to students of varying immigration statuses, a know your rights informational section, a crash course on Latino immigrant psychology, and immigration 101 in 2018. As you can tell, the training sessions were quite long but very needed as Eric and I’s top priority right now is to ensure that the mentors we have selected will be outstanding educational advocates who have a well rounded knowledge of who our students are and why this program is so important to our students, especially in 2018 (see 4th article linked at the bottom of this post). So you might be wondering: what does a know your rights lesson and immigration 101 have to do with a college prep mentoring program? Well, as the title of our program implies, almost all of our students are immigrants from Honduras, Guatemala, or Peru and thus have varying statuses within the US legal system. Because so many of our students have complicated statuses it is of the utmost importance for Eric and I to ensure that the identities of our students are concealed and their human rights upheld at all times. Thus, our mentors must know their personal rights as US citizens and the human rights of our students within the US in order to ensure that they are protected if a compromising situation of any kind were to arise. Now, though the likelihood is very low of any of our mentors and mentees encountering officials from USCIS, or even police that have taken upon themselves the role of ICE, it is still crucial that our mentors be aware of their rights and the rights of their students as they will sometimes be driving them to tutoring sessions. It has been frequently documented that many ICE arrests within the state of Ohio occur as a result of ICE or police pulling someone over on the road and questioning the individuals in the car about their place of birth or immigration status. While this may sound like it “makes sense” and is in the scope of duty for these officers this is more often than not untrue. Firstly, police officers are law enforcement official and are not legally supposed to work in conjunction with ICE or border patrol (except in rare cases). Thus, for police, questioning someone about their immigration status is outside of their scope of duty. For police officers pulling someone over for speeding or a traffic violation, they only have the right to question the driver of the car, requesting a driver's license and vehicle documentation, not their immigration status, as well as to ask the name and DOB of passengers. For ICE or border patrol officials, pulling someone over in order to question them about their immigration status is considered unconstitutional under the 4th amendment unless they have “reasonable suspicion” that the individuals in the car are undocumented (skin color, accent, and customs do not fall within this scope as that would permit racial profiling). Because police and USCIS officials do step outside of their scope of duty for the sake of immigration, thus infringing on the rights of those in question, it is crucial for our mentors to know their rights and the rights of their students so that they are both protected. In an attempt to provide an example of when knowing one’s rights is crucial, I have decided to share with you all my recent experiences with border patrol agents who overstep their legal role and infringe upon the rights of suspicion-less individuals just this past weekend. As you may have seen in the news, border patrol often board greyhound buses at scheduled stops in various cities across the country and begin questioning passengers asking either “Where were you born?” or “Are you a United States citizen?” As I am a frequent greyhound rider, I have seen these interactions many times. On my last trip this past weekend, by bus stopped in Toledo, OH and two or three BP agents boarded the bus. Starting at the back, they began to question everyone about their status, only requesting proof of citizenship or legal presence from people of color, especially those who appeared to be of Latin American or middle eastern descent. When he approached the area I was sitting in I asked him why he was questioning these people about their status to which he replied that it was a routine immigration checkup. I stated that he does not legally have the right to question anyone on the bus without reasonable suspicion that they are undocumented or have committed a crime. He replied “I don’t need reasonable suspicion on a bus,” which is false as the constitution applies whether you are on a bus, in a car, or on the ground. This is just one of many examples of USCIS officials using their position of power to unconstitutionally question people about their status within the United States. Because this is a real issue that some some of our students face, it is of the utmost importance for our mentors to know their rights and the rights of others. All in all, though it has been a frustrating, busy, and hectic week for Eric and I, we feel incredibly lucky to be able to do this work as we can confidently say that working in immigration advocacy is one of the most rewarding occupations/experiences. If you would like to know more about your legal rights or those of your neighbors, please check out this know-your-rights crash course:
https://cliniclegal.org/sites/default/files/resources/presidential-transition/Know-Your-Rights-Law-Enforcement.pdf If you would like to read a testimony about the fear and stress that undocumented students face as they attempt to get an education, please check out this article: https://mydocumentedlife.org/2018/05/29/navigating-higher-education-opportunities-series-1-surpassing-borders-and-barriers/ If you would like more information about border patrol on greyhound buses please check out this article: http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/380514-immigration-agents-do-not-belong-on-greyhound-buses If you would like additional information about border patrol stops and “100-mile” zones check out this article: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/9/16974510/border-patrol-greyhound-bus-amtrak-train
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