San Juan, Puerto Rico (AP) – Pastor Nilka Marrero will hit her hand on the table, raise her voice and shake your community members if necessary while playing the role of a federal agent.
Many of their community members are immigrants without papers, and they believe that the role -playing game can aid prepare them for the threat from the arrest, since the authorities reinforce immigration attacks on a scale that has never been seen in Puerto Rico.
“They appear and snap people,” said Marrero.
For decades, immigrants have been living in the US territory without fear of arrest. You can open bank accounts and receive a special driver’s license. Many have felt enough to open their own business.
Then great arrests began on January 26th.
US immigration and special beginners have searched a well-known Dominican community in a fresh policy of US President Donald Trump, who has undertaken to deport millions of people who have illegally joined the United States.
Puertorican civil servants and civil leaders who created the programs to aid the undocumented immigrants of the island, many of whom come from the Dominican Republic, have created the arrests.
Arrests and questions
An estimated 55,000 Dominicans live in Puerto Rico, although some experts believe that the number could be even higher. It is unclear how many are undocumented, although around 20,000 have the special driver’s license.
Since January 26, almost all men have been arrested since January 26th. Of the arrested, 149 Dominicans, according to data, are ice cream that the Associated Press provided.
Sandra Colón, spokeswoman for the US Ministry of Homeland Security in Puerto Rico, said that the agency focuses on those with a criminal register or a final court decision that they have to leave the country. But she said she did not immediately have how many of the arrested criminal records have.
Annette Martínez, the Aclu director of Puerto Rico, said it was not known where the arrested were taken or whether they were deported. “We are concerned about the various methods that use ice cream for imprisonment,” she said.
A park is mute
On a recent morning in Puerto Rico’s capital, the spokesman for a hairdressing salon played an English tutorial when a few Dominican migrants who studied us to become US citizens exactly listened.
The business faces a park in which the Dominican community had gathered for a long time. It is now largely peaceful and empty. Gone is the lively Merengue music, the excited chatter, the blow of the domino stones.
A migrant without papers who asked to be identified only by his nickname “The Fisherman” because he feared that he was endangered his case before a federal court, said he was arrested near the park.
He had illegally entered Puerto Rico in 2014 to look for more income because his wife had breast cancer at home and he could not afford her treatment as a fisherman in the Dominican coastal city of Samaná.
“I had to make a living,” he said.
His wife died, but the man decided to stay in Puerto Rico. His son also came to the island. The fisherman worked under construction for the first time after he fell from a floor on the second floor and smashed his pelvis, he resumed after his healing fish.
He sold fish in the park until January 26th. That day he was sitting in a van while his son bought lunch for them.
“Three agents pulled me out,” he recalled.
At that moment they arrested seven people, including his son.
The man said they had slept on the ground on the ground and only gave bread and water when they were brought to the Puertorican city of Aguadilla, then in Miami and finally in Texas.
The authorities sent the man back to Puerto Rico for judicial proceedings, where he stays on the bond with a ankle monitor. His son is in a Miami prison.
“We are torn apart,” he said when his voice cracked.
An attachment of support
Every day, Marrero is looking for white vans, which could circulate near her church.
Inside folds more than a dozen voluntary donated clothes and prepare free meals for undocumented immigrants who are afraid to leave their houses.
“She panic,” said José Rodríguez, President of the Dominican Committee on Human Rights. “You are afraid of going out; you are afraid to bring your children to school.”
In February, Puerto Rico’s educational department found that schools with a high number of Dominican students recorded an absence of up to 70%. Since then, officials have ordered headmaster to keep their goals closed and not to open them to federal agents unless they have an arrest warrant.
The Mayor of San Juan, Miguel Romero, said the city police did not work for federal agents or helps the city offer legal assistance and other support.
In the meantime, Julio Roldán Concepción, Mayor of Aguadilla, a northwestern coastal city in which many migrants arrive without papers arrive by boat.
“Every undocumented migrant can come to the town hall if he needs help,” he said. “I will not ask to see papers to give them. … We are all brothers here.”
Officials from Puerto Rico’s health sector have also offered to aid and aid migrants. Carlos Díaz Velez, President of the Association of Medical Surgeons, announced that undocumented migrants have “sentenced the medical online care” in view of the raids that sentenced thousands of immigrants to limit it “.
Governor Jenniffer González, a Republican who supports Trump, first said that the president’s initiative would not influence immigrants in Puerto Rico. Since then she has said that the island cannot afford to ignore Trump’s guidelines for arrests from migrants and found that federal funds are at risk.
Shortly after the arrests in January, the Episcopal Church in Puerto Rico announced a fresh program that offers migrant food as well as legal, psychological and spiritual aid. More than 100 people have been looking for aid, said Bishop Rafael Morales Maldonado.
“The church will never be against a law, but it will oppose its effects,” he said.
“An honorable, worthy return”
Federal agents initially targeted San Juan Viertel, but since then they have been distributed on the whole island and to work locations, said Rodríguez.
A man who refused to be identified because his legal proceedings are pending said he was arrested on February 26. He arrived in Puerto Rico for the first time in 2003, but was arrested after the coast. After he was deported, he tried again in February 2007. He got a building job and then opened his own company.
“I never felt unsafe,” he said.
But one afternoon, a woman he worked complained about his work. The following day arrested him and his employees as soon as they arrived at the construction site. Then he found out that the woman had taken a photo of his van and reported him.
“How can people hurt someone so much?” he said.
His lawyer said he had a court date on April 1. The man said that he retained himself for the US residence years ago, but never received an answer. His wife is a nasty US citizen and his daughter lives legally in Orlando, Florida.
While the arrests go on, Marrero, the pastor, is building up again and again undocumented migrants. If you have born children in Puerto Rico, she calls on ensuring that your children’s passports and custody documents are in order and hand.
She says she asks her to repeat the answers that you should give agents, depending on what you do, and notices that many do not know how to read or write or so bad.
“We prepared her for an honorary, worthy return,” she said.
