By Danny Katch

Protesters blockade New York City streets to demand an end to ICE raids against refugees

More than 100 people came to a press conference and rally in New York City on January 8 to protest the New Year’s home raids ordered by the Obama administration against Central American refugees–and to condemn all raids and deportations.

The protest, organized by members of Families for Freedom and others who have been active in the ICE Free NYC campaign, was followed by a civil disobedience in which activists blocked the busy intersection of Houston and Varick Streets in front of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center. Police arrested seven people.

At the press conference, Janet Hernandez spoke about the trauma of enduring the ICE raid that took her brother:

[ICE agents] came to my home saying they were police. They asked my 15-year-old daughter questions and said they were looking for someone who was not my brother–someone who was robbing banks. My daughter, wanting to help, called her uncle at six in the morning. When my brother came down to meet with police, they put him in handcuffs…

It is completely unjust that they come into our homes under false pretenses. We are not bank robbers. We came here to work and contribute to this county. They’re not only tearing apart families, they are teaching our children to fear the police.

Abraham Paulos of Families for Freedom declared: “We are here because of home raids that happen without a warrant to enter our homes. There’s a Gestapo going around the city. They’re not crime fighters. They’re paper police. They wake up our daughters and our sons between five and eight in the morning to check our papers, loaded with weapons and ammunition.”

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THREE DAYS before the rally in New York City, lawyers fighting for those seized in the recent raids won a victory when the Board of Immigration Appeals granted stays of deportation so that families could appeal their cases to the Board.

As McClatchy D.C. news service reported, the ruling not only delays the deportations but “raises questions about Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson’s assurances to the public earlier this week that those being deported had exhausted all their legal options.”

In fact, Johnson’s false claim that ICE is only targeting Central American immigrants who are out of legal options is merely the outermost layer of an onion that, when peeled, reveals lie after lie by Homeland Security and the Obama administration.

As the New York Times explained in a recent article meant to sympathize with a president whose immigration policy is being “complicated” by refugees fleeing desperate violence, since the numbers of migrating Central Americans soared in 2014, ICE and the Border Patrol have erected a series of hasty policies that are less about complying with the law than sending a message that “illegal crossers would be caught and sent back.”

First, refugee children and their parents were put in detention centers, where conditions are so awful that dozens of female detainees have launched hunger strikes in protest. As detainees faced removal proceedings in court, most didn’t even have a lawyer to represent them.

Meanwhile, Obama has been doing his best to “outsource” the problem, as Sonia Nazario reported for the New York Times last November, paying Mexico tens of millions of dollars to detain and deport tens of thousands of Central American children before they can reach the U.S.

But a federal court recently ruled that Obama’s detention centers must release children and their parents within 20 days so they can pursue their asylum cases in courts across the country.

As the Times reports, the New Year’s raids were a response to this ruling, “an alternative way to send a discouraging message to potential migrants in Central America.”

But the message many refugees are taking is very different. As Roberto Lovato reported in the Guardian, one mother in Georgia who is eligible to apply for asylum responded to news of the raids by going underground, because she now fears that asylum could be a trap to get her and her children in custody for deportation.

The ICE raids on Central American refugees are only the most recent chapter in the outrageous efforts of the Obama administration to avoid its legal responsibilities for handling refugees fleeing violence that U.S. policy has played a major role in creating.

But around the country, from the streets of Manhattan to detention centers in Texas, immigrants and their supporters have been showing that they will fight the government on its inhumane policies every step of the way. As Paulos shouted in the conclusion of his speech: “We are here to let [ICE] know that if they want us out of New York City, the feeling is mutual! We want you out of New York City! ICE free NYC!”