Immigration agents in charge of the 2007 raid in New Haven can't keep their story straight
By Betsy Yagla
New Haven Advocate
Thursday, July 09, 2009
An internal investigation clears federal agents of any wrongdoing in the 2007 immigration raids in New Haven.
But what actually happened during the raid is called into question by contradictory reports, revealed in court documents, given by two agents.
In the early morning hours of June 6, 2007, undocumented immigrants in New Haven were startled awake by Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents barging into their homes and arresting them. The raids were widely viewed as retaliation for New Haven's bold immigrant-friendly stance — the city's first resident ID cards had been issued just days before.
The community was outraged and Yale Law School students swept in to take testimony from witnesses and those arrested. Those statements were consistent: Immigrants said the agents didn't knock on doors, didn't ask for permission to enter and didn't identify themselves before arresting 32 people. Those left behind were terrified and confused.
New Haven Mayor John DeStefano was livid, and he, along with U.S. Sens. Joe Lieberman and Chris Dodd and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, sent angry letters to Homeland Security complaining and demanding answers.
ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility responded by investigating — but didn't interview the arrested immigrants or witnesses.
"We made a common, straightforward request," says Mike Wishnie, a Yale law professor who is leading the school's legal clinic's defense team for the immigrants.
Wishnie asked that ICE not use witnesses' statements against them. "To our surprise they said 'Absolutely not, we never do that.' It appears they don't understand law enforcement investigation 101. If you want to get to the bottom of what happened and you're an independent investigator, why wouldn't you want our cooperation?"
The result, says Wishnie, is a one-sided report. And, it should be no surprise that the report clears ICE of any wrongdoing: "As a result of this investigation, no findings of misconduct were discovered," the report summarizes.
One by one, the 68-page report refutes 17 sworn statements given by the arrested immigrants fighting deportation. The report says all ICE officers involved "stated that officers clearly knocked and announced their presence at all locations; consent was obtained ..."
That report is partly based on sworn statements given by the agents involved in the raids.
But those statements, and the report, aren't consistent with other statements made by ICE agents. Two in particular — deportation officer David Hamilton and supervisory detention and deportation officer Richard McCaffrey — gave sworn affidavits in June 2008 for the internal report and sworn declarations in February, 2009 for the court case.
The 2008 statements and the internal report only came to light after a long Freedom of Information fight waged by two immigrants-rights groups, Unidad Latina en Accion and Junta for Progressive Action.
Those documents show ICE agents can't keep their story straight.
In the 2008 statements, Hamilton and McCaffrey repeatedly answer "I don't know" to several questions. In the 2009 statements, they suddenly remember.
In Hamilton's 2008 retelling, he says he "was assigned to perimeter security at each location," meaning he stayed outside the apartments. He was only in earshot once to hear an officer get consent to enter an apartment. He wasn't present, he says, for any initial questioning of the immigrants because he was outside.
In his new version of events, he's inside one apartment on Peck Street. He says he knocked on the door at 200 Peck St., entered the apartment and showed someone a picture of a "fugitive alien that we were looking for." Then, Hamilton says, McCaffrey arrived. They asked the immigrant for ID and followed him into his bedroom.
McCaffrey, too, contradicts himself. In 2008 he says he wasn't present for any interviews or arrests of the immigrants. But in 2009 McCaffrey now recalls interviewing the immigrant at 200 Peck St.
Wishnie says it seems as though the agents met with the ICE attorneys, "at which time the agents remember what they couldn't remember before, and seem to have seen things that, six months before, they didn't see."
The federal immigration judge who heard the deportation cases of those swept up in 2007 has sided sometimes with ICE (he's ordered 11 to be deported, and they are appealing that decision), and sometimes with the immigrants (four won their cases). When the judge sided with the immigrants it was because he believed ICE violated their rights by entering their homes without permission.
http://www.newhavenadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=13721
