Recent reports have found that ICE arrests have spiked more than 350 percent in Virginia, with Fairfax County seeing about twice as many arrests as any other Virginia county. We spoke with Fairfax-based immigration lawyer Ofelia Calderón to get her perspective on the current situation.
Drastic Situations Due to ICE Enforcement
Calderón says that since Donald Trump took office for his second presidential term in January, she has had about the same number of clients but she’s getting a lot more calls from clients in “drastic situations.”
“Lots of people who are in the system, who’ve been complying with their check-ins, have been put in ankle bracelets,” Calderón says. “Lots of people have been detained [by ICE], even though they’ve been, up until this point, complying with all the requirements and the conditions placed upon them at the time of their entry.”
She says clients are being arrested at their regular check-ins at immigration court. But that’s not all. “One of my clients was arrested in a parking lot outside of a general district court. He doesn’t have any convictions. He was there for a traffic ticket.”
She says she’s currently handling a case where the prosecutor said her client was in New Mexico, but Calderón says that was not the case. She was forced to refile a motion in New Mexico based on the judge’s confidence that the prosecutor was telling the truth. She was then told by New Mexico authorities that her client indeed wasn’t there.
“The audacity,” Calderón says. “If you’re in the right, you don’t have to lie about it, and you don’t have to falsify. And so we’re in a whole new place.”
“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do in the face of that type of behavior from our own government, right? I mean, I’m a lawyer. I only know how to lawyer. And I do that inside the confines of our laws. Laws are there to protect us, but they only protect us if they’re being executed legally and lawfully.”
‘The Real Sense of Fear’
She’s also struck by the number of American citizens calling her with fears about their spouses, who are either naturalized citizens or green card holders. “I’m struck by the real sense of fear.”
She says she’s sad and angry to say that that fear is justified. If you’re a citizen or a green card holder, Calderón says, “I want to tell you that you have nothing to worry about. But obviously that’s not accurate. We’ve all seen the reports of U.S. citizens being accidentally taken into [ICE] custody, accidentally having things happen to them.”
“Most LPRs (lawful permanent residents) are very fearful about traveling right now,” she says. They’re scared. They don’t know what’s going to happen. They’re concerned about any sort of retroactive change in the rules. The rules are changing underneath us, and we can’t keep up. They can’t keep up. I can’t believe that this is a place that we want to be. Is this how we want to be? It’s shocking to me.”
What Can You Do?
Her advice for people who see ICE agents in their streets or neighborhoods — or, at least, people who appear to be ICE agents — is simple: Document everything.
“Take pictures and video it. There’s nothing else [you] can do if you’re one person. … The thing that people can do most is witness and document. And everyone’s got a phone. … There’s nothing illegal about recording what you see on the street.”
If ICE agents come to your home or place of business and say they have a warrant to search the premises, Calderón says, tell them to put it in your hands. And it’s important to know the difference between a judicial warrant and an agency or administrative warrant. Essentially, an administrative warrant isn’t a warrant at all.
“The most important thing is, is it signed by a judge? An agency warrant … usually has ‘Department of Homeland Security’ on it,” she says. “It needs to have a signature of some sort, but usually there’s the name and the title of the person that is signing that document. And if it isn’t ‘Judge blank,’ or ‘U.S. magistrate blank’, then it’s not a judicial warrant. And you don’t need to comply with that.”
She also advises contributing to legal defense organizations such as Virginia Legal Aid, Legal Aid Justice Center, the ACLU, Amicus Project, and the National Immigration Project. “They do a ton of work in this space, and they do it with very little funding.”
They don’t just defend people on a case-by-case basis, Calderón says. They also do the kind of class-action work that can make change going forward.
“Sometimes they’re doing larger-scale impact litigation that — you know, I’m a trench trial lawyer. I can’t always jump into federal court and start a class action. I don’t have the funds. I don’t have the support. I don’t have the infrastructure that would allow me to do that. But these larger orgs do that.”
‘It’s Going to Be Something Else’
Calderón recently returned from a trip to California and was stunned by the different perspectives people had [about ICE arrests]. For example, “people weren’t really concerned” about the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, which has become widely known in this area.
“And I thought to myself, you should be concerned about this. … You should care about the fact that the United States Supreme Court issued an order and the United States executive branch chose not to follow that order. That’s something you should care about. Because that’s not just about immigration.”
“It’s easy to choose these issues and these claims, because people care less about immigrants, and so we can look the other way. But the next issue isn’t going to be immigration. It’s going to be something else, and then you’re going to care.”
Feature image courtesy Studio East/stock.adobe.com
