[News] ICE Repression against fire evacuees in San Diego

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Inhumane Treatment of Evacuees by San Diego City Officials
by NaNa

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/10/26/18456262.php


Friday Oct 26th, 2007 3:59 PM


This is an email that I received today from the San Diego Immigrant 
Rights Consortium. It goes in to great detail about how the City of 
San Diego has been treating evacuees at Qualcomm Stadium.

BORDER PATROL PRESENCE AT QUALCOMM:

City officials in charge of the evacuation site at Qualcomm invited a 
Border Patrol information unit to drive in a van and set up a tent 
next to FEMA and Red Cross inside the stadium. Although the unit is 
present to provide map information for burn areas, the presence of a 
BP van and uniformed BP officers has intimidated a number of 
immigrant families seeking refuge. The presence of BP led a volunteer 
today who was registering evacuees to turn away undocumented 
individuals because the volunteer presumed that the evacuees would be 
in danger of apprehension, especially following an incident yesterday 
(described below). She did not communicate this to those turned away. 
She simply turned them away from the only open evacuation center in 
the county.

POLICE VIOLATION OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT POLICY:

Yesterday (Wednesday), the police initiated an immigration 
enforcement action that was contrary to their policy of not calling 
in Border Patrol / ICE unless and until they file a formal criminal 
charge against a person. Police detained approximately 12 evacuees 
(at least four were children) who they alleged were "looting" donated 
blankets, food, and toys for the children. The detained evacuees and 
witnesses reported to us that volunteers were urging all evacuees, 
some of whom were preparing to return home after two days, to take as 
much as they could because the evacuees might find their home damaged 
and might not be able to access food and other important items due to 
the evacuation and destruction of stores in the area. Taking this to 
heart, the evacuees in question who were part of the same family, 
gathered multiple blankets and as much food as they could carry in 
preparation of returning home. There have been no shortage of donated 
goods and in fact, the city has asked the good people of the city to 
stop donating items.

The evacuees were detained by the police for three hours on site 
without being charged. The police asked the evacuees for their 
documents. When they presented none, the police called in an outside 
unit of Border Patrol to conduct an "immigration inspection". The 
police never brought any charges against the evacuees. Prior to the 
arrival of the BP, a Channel 8 cameraman attempted to film the police 
interaction with the evacuees. One of the officers covered the camera 
with his hand, pushed it and the cameraman away, and took the 
microphone from the reporter. When a Spanish-speaking volunteer 
attempted to intervene to assist the family, one of the officers took 
her picture with his cell phone to intimidate her. When BP, came they 
asked the detained evacuees for documents and six of them (plus a 
2-year old U.S. citizen child of one of the evacuees) were taken 
away, held for several hours without food, and deported. They are 
needless to say devastated.

Yesterday and this morning, both SDPD and BP reported out that the 
detained evacuees had confessed to "looting" for the purposes of 
selling the merchandise. AFSC spoke to the evacuees in Tijuana today 
and they say emphatically that they never confessed to this. There 
are no witnesses to this alleged confession. Piolin, a national radio 
personality from LA paraded through the stadium after the incident 
and congratulated law enforcement for getting rid of looters. All of 
the local media outlets regurgitated the law enforcement line about 
looting, despite being advised by witnesses that they had seen 
something to the contrary. Lots of comments about how we don't want 
those people in our country. I heard one BP officer say in defense of 
the deportation, "Immigrants don't want these kind of people here 
representing them."

After the incident, Kevin Keenan from ACLU spoke to Chief Lansdowne 
about our concerns about the improper police pass off. He assured 
Kevin and then later the public in a press statement that the police 
were not interested in immigration enforcement. Later that night, 
around midnight, police walked around the stadium from family to 
family asking for identification and proof of residency in an 
evacuated zone. One ID was sufficient for a family. The problem of 
course was that lots of individuals and families could not produce 
IDs or the ID addresses did not correspond to an evacuated zone and 
some folks were just plain homeless and had come in for shelter from 
the air. Those who could not produce the proper IDs were escorted out 
in the middle of the night. Those who remained were given wrist bands.

CLIMATE OF INTIMIDATION:

This morning, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis congratulated law 
enforcement for eradicating freeloaders from the stadium and stated 
that no evacuees would be allowed into the stadium without 
identification. Pursuant to an agreement between Kevin and Lansdowne, 
the SDIRC was allowed to set up a table inside the stadium between 
FEMA and BP. Half a dozen families approached the table stating that 
they had slept in the parking lot during the night as they had for 
several nights and when they attempted to enter, they were asked for 
their IDs. At least one family member in each family was undocumented 
and were intimidated. One evacuee, after failing to produce an ID, 
was asked what his immigration status was by a volunteer, then 
threatened that he might be arrested if immigration officials 
approached. The undocumented members were let in only because they 
had other family members who could show a license, a "green card", a 
consular ID card, or an address. All homeless persons were turned 
away. No address, no service. All persons who failed to show any of 
the above and did not have a documented family member were turned away.

Another half dozen individuals informed us that they had been 
detained and questioned by police in the parking lot or while exiting 
the stadium for allegedly looting or taking more than their fair 
share of free donated items. Families were asked to count heads for 
all the blankets in their possession. Some families were taking items 
back to family members who were too scared to come in. In one 
instance, police put orange cones around a car until it was 
"cleared." Towards the end of the day, families with undocumented 
members were afraid to leave or afraid to take any food or blankets 
with them for fear of being detained and deported, since they were 
doing no different than the family deported yesterday. We escorted 
some of them out.

It should be noted that it was not just immigrants, but other persons 
of color who were harassed and suspected of looting. An African 
American woman was harassed for making two trips with a baby stroller 
filled with items (I witnessed this one). She attempted to register a 
complaint with the police officer in charge who treated her poorly 
and refused to process a complaint. We took a written statement. She 
was so upset by the end of the day and afraid to leave with anything 
else, that she told me she was headed back to Oklahoma (she had only 
recently moved). A Filipino volunteer who had been helping people day 
and night was thrown out for making two trips out to cars, both times 
to assist people to their cars. The officer threatened to tazer him 
and charge him with trespassing. When the volunteer coordinator tried 
to intervene on behalf of the star volunteer, he was pushed out of 
the way. After the incident he was told not to talk to anyone. We 
filmed the incident and tried to talk to the volunteer coordinator, 
but he had recently survived deportation proceedings and was so 
scared (in part because he did not have his green card on him) that 
he considered walking away from his job right then and there. Another 
Latina woman was denied diapers for her baby because she was told 
there were none. She stepped aside and then watched as a White woman 
asked for the same size of diapers and was given them. The woman was 
upset and only successfully acquired diapers when Pedro from AFSC 
went with her to ask. When I left today, there was a mountain 
(possibly 1,000 bags) of diapers. There was also a mountain of 
donated items that could have served 10 times the number of people 
left in the stadium. The whole afternoon, we watched White evacuees 
take cases of water and other large loads to their cars without being 
questioned.

WHAT NOW:

SDIRC will continue to observe potential abuses of immigrants at the 
evacuation centers. We talked to the media a lot today to draw their 
attention to the disparate treatment. We have been in communication 
with the Chief of Police and with politicians to press for services 
and a welcoming climate for immigrants and other people of color 
(regardless of status). We are helped by our many allies. We are 
preparing to launch a multilingual hotline for immigrants, and hope 
to do much more.




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
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