DEARBORN — The complex topic of immigration law was the focus of a Monday, November 29 forum hosted by the Michigan Civil Rights Commission and moderated by commissioner Nabih Ayad at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn.
|
| Michigan Civil Rights Commissioner Nabih Ayad hosted a panel discussion about immigration concerns featuring immigration department officials, community leaders, social services workers, and others on Monday, Dec. 29 at the Arab American National Museum. PHOTO: Tariq Wahid/TAAN |
Rashida Tlaib, a state representative in the Michigan’s 12th district, which covers southwest Detroit, gave her take on the system from the audience after speaking about many of the problems her residents have faced.
“For about 20 years, we have had a broken immigration system,” she said. Tlaib has taken issue with the practices of removing only the illegal workers and not those who offer them the jobs.
“Why don’t we go after the employers? That’s who you need to focus on, they’re working for employers who are exploiting them,” she said.
Laura Sanders of the Washtenaw County Interfaith Coalition for Immigration Rights also spoke from the audience, speaking of numerous documented cases by her group of people driving on an expired license and then having the case dismissed or put on hold before being turned over to immigration officials. She highlighted concerns that federal employees are working through local law enforcement channels to hunt down immigrants for deportation even though in many cases their permanent statuses may be pending.
“Local law enforcement enforcing federal roles is a serious problem that we have come across, especially in this area,” Ayad said.
Concerns over local police asking about citizenship status were addressed by Dearborn Police Chief Ronald Haddad, who was a panelist at the event, after publisher of The Arab American News and panelist Osama Siblani asked whether or not undocumented people are obligated to tell police of their status when pulled over.
“It’s not part of the policy,” Haddad said. “An officer can ask you a question to determine what happened but we never ask about citizenship status and we’ve had complaints or reports indicating that question has been asked by this department.”
The topic of civil rights was also touched on by ACLU attorney Michael Steinberg.
“If police ask you whether or not you are a citizen, you do not have to answer that question, and the only time a person has to show his or her immigration papers is when a federal officer asks that question,” he said.
“You don’t have to speak but you do have to show documents if you are not a citizen.”
Sanders also highlighted further concerns that the ICE gency has not been upholding its stated priorities of removing serious criminals.
“In a total of 210 documented cases, many of the people removed have absolutely no criminal history or have mild histories and are nothing near serious criminals,” she said.
She told of incidents at local IHOP and Chili’s Restaurants where ICE agents have allegedly rounded up workers and asked for their green cards before removing them, which she said is not in line with their policies.
Siblani also brought up a recent study called Global Detroit by former state representative Steve Tobocman highlighting the immense contributions of immigrants to the economies in which they work and suggesting that immigration could be the solution to economic problems.
Hassan Jaber, the executive director of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, which works on numerous immigration cases, called for more understanding in the process.
“We tend to see immigration as being part of a national threat, in fact this is an issue,” he said.
“This is an economic issue and a human rights issue as well; 20 percent of labor worldwide is from migrant workers, it’s not just ours, it’s all over the world.
“We need to start putting some sanity in terms of what is this discussion all about and to bring it back to how we frame and understand the issue. The 20 million undocumented workers are only going to grow and in many cases their only crime is being undocumented which is obviously not a crime here.”
The goal of the event according to Ayad was to give a wide variety of panelists from all segments of the process, including those who typically enforce immigration laws such as ICE officials, U.S. Attorneys and police officials, to get a chance to hear concerns and personal stories from those the laws and practices have affected. The public forum was also recorded for future use by the Civil Rights Commission and all were welcome to speak and their stories and concerns were documented.
American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Regional Director Imad Hamad was disappointed in the way the event was planned, however.
He spoke from the audience during the event, but Hamad had hoped more concerns could be voiced to the Civil Rights Commission in person. Some members had to leave early following their formal meeting prior to the public forum.
In addition, his organization and the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Michigan (CAIR-MI) were not included as panelists.
“Immigration is everyone’s problem, but with all due respect to the panelists, these are the two organizations that deal with daily affairs regarding this matter, it does not make sense to not have ADC and CAIR in this debate; you cannot expect a full circle of effective and productive discussion without them,” Hamad said.
Meanwhile on the ground, as more and more undocumented people have entered the United States seeking work, mistakes have continued to occur, although ICE officials have said they’ve been working to correct them.
One audience member, Olga Gonzalez, testified on behalf of a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent who had been deported twice but was unable to make the meeting, first in his home state of California and later in Michigan.
“He was quickly sent to Mexico City where he didn’t know anyone and had never lived by himself before,” she said.
Later on, the same U.S. citizen was picked up in southwest Detroit despite not driving erratically according to Gonzalez and deported yet again.
“Both times, border patrol made a snap judgment and deported a U.S. citizen in his own community,” she said.
“We need to convince the civil rights commission and others to take a hard look at the practices of border patrol and ICE.”
Leave a Reply