ICE 101: Immigration on the Legal Front Line
26 March 2009
By STEVE SALDIVAR
Mission Local
On a recent Thursday evening, a new type of army began assembling in a nondescript Steuart Street conference room. The 24 men and women—most dressed in business attire—were to be part of a quick reaction force.
Their objective: set free the rising numbers of undocumented workers detained in federal immigration raids in neighborhoods like the Mission. These foot soldiers—all Bay Area lawyers by day—were about to learn their rules of engagement.
“You have to get to your client as soon as possible,” said Sin Yen Ling, an attorney who works closely with the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco
“There’s no policy. In many cases the law is still unwritten,” she said. “It’s balls to the wall.”
Ling is part of an effort lead by both by The Equal Justice Society and the San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Education Network, advocacy groups aimed at counseling new and settled immigrants, to develop and teach area lawyers to effectively counter the increase in immigration raids by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE.
Ling and Francisco Ugarte, a 5-year Mission District resident and immigration attorney for Dolores Street Community Services, have opened this crash course in immigration law to any interested lawyer with hopes of building a new Rapid Response Network- lawyers working pro bono for ICE detainees.
The two-hour boot camp was designed to give attorneys an introduction to navigating what can seem to be a bewildering bureaucracy of the federal immigration and detention system.
These training sessions come at a time when ICE activity is escalating. Last September, Fugitive Operations Teams arrested more than 1157, including 436 in northern California. 20 percent of those in custody had criminal histories and were in the country illegally, according to ICE.
http://missionlocal.org/2009/03/ice-101/
