When Congress failed in 2007 to pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (USICE) reacted by markedly escalating the frequency of its raids. Consistently, USICE has maintained that raids are carried out to find and deport non-citizen criminals, but the reality has been different. In New Jersey, federal agents generally conduct pre-dawn raids, seeking to arrest non-criminal non-citizens who have outstanding orders of deportation. As a result of this policy, they often end up terrorizing families.

In the Mercer County area, many of the persons targeted by USICE are past asylum applicants, who fled their homelands because of a fear of persecution and who followed US law by applying for asylum. Because of a lack of education and/or sufficient guidance, some of the applicants did not understand and follow the very specific and sometimes complicated change of address notice requirements and thus did not receive notification of their interviews or court dates. Others received court notification, but did not appear, without understanding that a non-appearance would result in an automatic order of deportation. Still others went to court and were told by a judge that they were required to leave the country by a certain date. Some did not leave, because they had jobs and thought that as long as they did not run afoul of any criminal laws, they could remain in the country. Others no longer had homes to which they could return. All of these people genuinely believed that if one works hard, pay taxes, and stays out of trouble, one will be permitted to raise one’s children in what they consider to be the greatest country in the world. Regrettably, that is not how our immigration system works.

It is not clear how USICE agents choose the targets of raids. What is clear is that because of faulty information, they often go to an outdated or wrong address, not infrequently to the home of a US citizen or resident. They rarely show an arrest warrant or attempt to find out if the person for whom they are looking actually resides in the home. Instead, around 4 AM, the agents, armed and in bullet-proof vests, bang on a door, yelling “police.” Half-asleep tenants open the door, worried that a crime has been committed in the neighborhood. The agents take the opened door as permission to enter and barge in, yelling at those in the house, opening bedroom doors, shining flashlights at sleeping children’s faces, and forcefully awakening elderly people. They herd all the residents of the house into one room and, shouting, demand to see immigration documents. Frightened people scurry to comply and the agents are quickly able to ascertain whether anyone in the house is present in the US without authorization. Even if such persons have no deportation order, the agents handcuff (and sometimes shackle) the individuals and lead them into a waiting van that takes the detainees to the local USICE office for processing. During that processing, those detained are often pressured into signing documents and into waiving their right to have an attorney present at questioning. After that, they are taken to jail to await an appearance before an immigration judge, a transfer to another jail, or deportation. Sometimes, the wait takes months.

Needless to say, these raids cause severe disruption in the lives of the US-citizen children and spouses of the people who are arrested. Often, the sole breadwinner of a family is taken away, and the US-citizen children and spouse are forced to turn to public assistance. Families are broken up, as children lose parents, and wives or husbands lose their mates. If the mother is the one deported, US citizen children may end up going with her, often to a country whose language and customs are strange to them. The relatives who are left behind after such raids suffer from nightmares, fears, and other post-traumatic stress symptoms.

There must be a better way to address the problem of the undocumented.