Column — Know Your Rights: Voices from the Frontlines of Immigrant Communities

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan On Inauguration Day, President Trump launched his campaign of mass deportations. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested over 5,000 people. ICE raids have been launched with much hype and publicity across the country, including in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, Denver, Atlanta, Austin, Seattle, Houston, San Antonio, Tallahassee, Miami and Newark. CNN reported that ICE agents were told to be “camera-ready,” while Phil McGraw, the unlicensed psychologist and TV talk show host better known as “Dr. Phil,” “embedded” with ICE on a Chicago operation. Trump’s new Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem accompanied one arrest in New York City, live-tweeting it. In the midst of this, Trump signed his first bill into law, H.R. 29, the Laken Riley Act, named after the 22-year-old nursing student murdered in Georgia in 2024 by an undocumented immigrant who was subsequently arrested and prosecuted. The law allows DHS to arrest non-citizens who have been charged – not convicted but simply charged – with burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting. Trump has also said tens of thousands of arrested migrants will be imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In addition to the notorious U.S. prison there that houses 9-11 suspects (many of them never charged), now numbering at most 15, the base also has a migrant detention area. At the height of its use in the 1990s, as many as 30,000 people, mostly Haitian, were held there behind barbed-wire, without charge, in a squalid camp. But people aren’t just standing by amidst this intensifying, militarized attack on immigrants. Years of organizing, educating and empowering people to defend themselves from racist immigration policies are showing results. Trump’s so-called border czar Tom Homan appeared on CNN, lamenting the degree of organization among immigrant communities: “Sanctuary cities are making it very difficult to arrest the criminals. For instance, Chicago, very well educated. They’ve been educated how to defy ICE, how to hide from ICE. And I’ve seen many pamphlets from many NGOs. Here’s how you escape ice from arresting you, here’s what you need to do. They call it, ‘Know your rights.’ I call it ‘how to escape arrest.’ There’s a warrant for your arrest, and they tell you how to hide from ICE. Don’t open your door. Don’t answer questions.” Harold Solis is the legal director of one of those organizations that Homan bemoaned, Make the Road New York. Speaking on the Democracy Now! news hour this week, Solis explained, “There is no one single legal definition of what it means to be a sanctuary jurisdiction, but, essentially, many people agree that it means being a welcoming place, a place where the jurisdiction is not looking to do more harm, number one, to its residents.” Fernando García is founder and executive director of the El Paso,Texas-based Border Network for Human Rights. He said on Democracy Now! “We’re just reminding people that the Constitution of the United States still exists, that under the Fourth Amendment, they only have to allow somebody into their property or house or workplace with a search warrant or the permission of the owner. Or, if they are confronted and being asked questions by law enforcement, that they have the right to remain silent.” One of the first Trump raids took place in Newark, NJ. ICE did not have a warrant. One of the first people detained was an Army veteran from Puerto Rico–yes, a U.S. citizen. Amy Torres, executive director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, explained on Democracy Now!: “Unless an ICE officer produces a warrant with your name clearly and correctly spelled, and signed by a judge, you do not need to answer their questions. If you understand that, you can also develop an analysis that everything that ICE officers do outside of that warrant is a deception tactic, it’s manipulation, just like they use the theater of fear and panic to intimidate people into giving more information than they should.” The U.S. Secret Service attempted to enter an elementary school in Chicago, but was denied entry. While this nationwide, high-profile immigrant round-up is unfolding, Trump supporters convicted of participating in the January 6th, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol were pardoned by Trump on his first day in office, and now walk free. “If this really was about public safety and legality, we would not have seen the 1,500 pardons of people that stormed the Capitol and committed violent crimes on police officers,” Dulce Guzmán, executive director of Alianza Americas in Chicago and a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, said on Democracy Now! “I believe that this is a very high media strategy that’s being used to elevate what this administration is trying to push, which is a white supremacist agenda.”