San Juan, Puerto Rico – The Reverend Nalka Mariro will dismantle her hand on the table, raise her voice, and if necessary, shake her diocese while playing the role of a federal agent.
Many of its diocese of illegal immigrants, and believes that playing roles with them can help them prepare them to threaten the detention while the authorities intensify immigration raids into an unprecedented scale in Portoresto.
“They appear and kidnap people,” said Mariro.
For decades, immigrants who are not documented in the American region have lived without fear of arrest. They are allowed to open bank accounts and obtain a special driver’s license. Many felt safe enough to open their own business.
Then, on January 26, widespread arrests began.
Dominican community and enforcement agents have raided the Dominican community known in reference to a new policy of US President Donald Trump, who pledged to deport millions of people who entered the United States illegally.
The arrests of Portoresto officials and civil leaders who created programs to help illegal immigrants on the island, and many of them from the Dominican Republic.
Arrests and questions
An estimated 55,000 dominican lives in Portoresto, although some experts believe that the number may be higher. The number of notaries is not clear, although about 20,000 have a special driver’s license.
More than 200 people have been arrested since January 26, almost all men. Among their arrest, 149 are the Dominican, according to ICE data and provided the Associated Press.
Sandra Kulon, a spokeswoman for the US Department of Internal Security in Portoresto, said the agency focuses on those who have a criminal record or who have received a final judgment in the court that they should leave the country. But she said she did not immediately have how many detainees had criminal records.
Ante Martinez, director of ACLU in Portorico. “We are concerned about the various methods that ICE uses to detain,” she said.
Silence of a garden
On the morning of the last days of the capital of Puerto Rico, speakers played an educational haircut for the English language, where two Dominican immigrants who were studying to become American citizens listened closely.
The work faces a park where the Dominican community has long gathered. It is now silent and empty. MereGue music, enthusiastic gossip, domino slap.
An undocumented immigrant asked to be recognized only by his title, “Al -Sayyad”, because he was afraid to endanger his case in the Federal Court, that he was arrested near the garden.
In 2014, he had entered Puerto Rico in 2014 to request more income because his wife in the homeland had breast cancer and could not bear her treatment as a hunter in the Domininist coastal town of Samana.
He said, “I needed to earn a living.”
His wife died, but the man decided to stay in Portorico. His son also came to the island. The hunter worked for the first time in construction, but after falling from the second floor and breaking the pelvis, he resumed hunting as soon as he recovered.
He sold fish in the park until January 26. On that day, he was sitting in a car while his son had bought lunch.
He recalls, “Three agents have brought me out.”
They arrested seven people at that moment, including his son.
The man said that they slept on the floor of many prisons and were given only bread and water while they were transferred to the town of Agodella Portorico, then Miami and finally Texas.
The authorities sent the man to Puerto Rico for judicial procedures, where he remains outside Bond with the ankle screen. His son is in Miami prison.
“We were torn,” he said while his voice was cracked.
Inflation
Every day, Mariro is monitoring white trucks that may be circulated near her church.
Inside, more than ten volunteers folded the donor clothes and prepare free meals for unconventional immigrants who are afraid to leave their homes.
“They feel panic,” said Jose Rodriguez, head of the Dominican Human Rights Committee. “They are afraid to go out; they fear that their children are taking to school.”
In February, the Portorico Education Department indicated that schools that have a large number of domainic students have witnessed absent rates of 70 %. Since then, school administrators have ordered the closure of their doors and not to open them to federal agents unless they had something.
The mayor of San Juan, Miguel Romero, said that the municipal police do not work or help federal agents, and that the city provides legal assistance and other assistance.
Meanwhile, Julio Roldan Konipsion, mayor of Agodella, a north -west coastal town where many immigrants not documented by boat arrived to sympathy.
He said: “Any non -documentary immigrant can come to the city hall if they need help.” “I will not ask to see the papers to give them … We are all brothers here.”
Portorico’s health officials also provided illegal immigrants. Carlos Diaz Velez, president of the Medical Surgeons Association, announced that uncomfortable immigrants will receive medical care online “in light of the raids that condemned thousands of immigrants to imprisonment.”
The governor of Jennifer Gonzalez, a Republican who supports Trump, said at the beginning that the president’s initiative would not affect migrants in Puerto Rico. Since then, she said that the island “cannot” ignore Trump’s directives on immigrant arrests, noting that federal funds are at risk.
Shortly after the arrest of January, the Portorico’s Episcopal Church announced a new program that introduces migrant food as well as legal, psychological and spiritual assistance. Bishop Rafael Morales Maldonado said more than 100 people had asked for help.
He said: “The church will never be against the law, but it opposes its effects.”
“A return to the honorable and honorable”
Rodriguez said that the federal agents initially targeted the neighborhoods in San Juan, but they have since launched across the island and to work sites.
A man who refused to identify him said that the case of the suspended court said he was arrested on February 26. He arrived for the first time in Portoresto in 2003, but was arrested upon arrival at the beach. After deporting him, try again in February 2007. He got a construction job and then opened his own company.
He said: “I never felt insecure.”
But one afternoon, a woman who was working on his work complained. The next day, the federal agents and his employees arrested him as soon as they arrived at the work site. This is when he discovered that the woman had taken a picture of his truck and informed him.
“How can people harm someone a lot?” He said.
His lawyer said he has a date for the court on April 1. The man said that he had applied for years to establish the United States, but he never received a response. His wife is a naturalized American citizen and his daughter is legally lived in Orlando, Florida.
As the arrests continue, Mariro, the priest, continues to educate uncomfortable immigrants. If they have children born in Puerto Rico, they urge to ensure that their children’s passports and nursery are obtained in order and within reach.
She says that she asks them to repeat the responses that they must give the agents depending on what was said to them, noting that many do not know how to read, write or do it badly.
She said, “We have prepared them for a dignitary supervisor.”
