Don’t Let ICE’s Legal Abuses Stop You From Asserting Your Rights, Advocates Say

“We need to use every tool at our disposal to protect and empower our communities,” one immigrant justice advocate said.

By Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg , TruthOut

In July, agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, approached a group of children playing baseball in Manhattan’s Riverside Park. The agents began asking the kids where they’re from and who their parents are, their coach, Youman Wilder, told the local ABC News affiliate.

Wilder, the founder of the Harlem Baseball Hitting Academy, decided to intervene.

“I told my kids to walk to the back of the [batting] cages, right here, and I said they’re going to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights, they’re not going to say anything,” Wilder told the news outlet. An ICE officer “called [me] a YouTube lawyer, and I said, ‘No, I just know how the Constitution works.’”

Immigration officers, many of them masked, are encroaching on more and more facets of everyday life, including in places that were once off-limits. In January, Trump rescinded a federal policy that barred immigration enforcement actions in or around “Sensitive Locations,” such as healthcare facilities, houses of worship, schools, demonstrations, places where children gather and shelters. Without these protections in place, federal agents are sowing terror throughout the country — and communities are fighting back.

Community members have formed rapid response teams to document and publicize ICE activity. In New York City, NYC ICE Watch sends out volunteers, when possible, to scenes of ICE sightings, which are reported through private direct messages to the group’s Instagram page.