Northwest Indiana attorneys are facing a trail of unresolved cases and vanished clients following Operation Midway Blitz’s sweep across state lines.
Attorney Ferdinand Alvarez of Campbell Law, a public defender in Lake County courts, said some of his clients have effectively disappeared — with no contact or known location — leaving local cases stuck in limbo.
“They’re just, they’re gone…” Alvarez said. “It’s very abnormal because usually the law process runs on the fact that it’s such an orderly process. Without having your client there, the whole process just becomes kind of turned upside down. I’m noticing a lot more cases involving immigrants who are unable to resolve their cases because they’ve been taken, and frankly, we don’t know where they’re at.”
“And all we can do is continue to file for continuances and ask for more time in the hope that some news will come up or that we’ll find out where they’re at, but it’s often very hard to do so,” he said.
Alvarez said his clients who are in the U.S. legally are too afraid to attend basic court hearings because they worry they will be taken into custody by federal agents “and held without knowing when they’ll be released.”
“We, as defense attorneys, are tasked with protecting due process rights, which are afforded to immigrants as well, but, at the same time, we find ourselves being counselors to grieving families,” Alvarez said. “As a public defender in the Lake County courts, I am seeing the effects of what happens when a family gets split up. Defense attorneys in Northwest Indiana often find themselves on the front lines when it comes to the immigration issue. We are usually the first ones called when something happens to an individual or their family.”
Alvarez said one day, Attorney Michael A. Campbell received a panicked call from a client who said agents were banging on his door. Campbell told the client to wait inside the house and drove to the man’s residence, where he found ICE agents driving up and down the block.
“He said, ‘Look my client lives in this house, and unless you have an actual search warrant signed by a judge, you won’t be entering his residence,” Alvarez said. “And he stood there, literally in front of this guy’s house and waited until those officers were gone. They could not and did not do anything. And although I was not directly involved in that, it’s just an example of how criminal defense attorneys can have an impact on people and the immigration process.”
In addition, a few Lake County prosecutors have been enticed to work for the Department of Homeland Security, leaving posts temporarily empty, Alvarez said.
“There has been a significant turnover in the local prosecutor’s offices because they are being enticed with financial packages and offers to work for the Department of Homeland Security,” Alvarez said. “And it’s affecting the way the courts can proceed, because now the state of the prosecutor’s office is shorthanded. So there’s been an influx of prosecutors taking their talents to the federal government to, what I can only assume, assist in this process.”
As one of the few Spanish-speaking immigration attorneys in the Region, Attorney Mayra Rodriguez-Alvarez, of The Law Office of Mayra Rodriguez-Alvarez in Hammond, is booked through next February with immigration cases.
For client safety, all meetings are held virtually or over the phone for the time being. She said her office phones are regularly ringing with calls from people who say they are afraid to leave the house.
“We get calls everyday of people too distressed to go out, wanting to know what to do if ICE confronts them. ICE is violating all due process, even if someone is trying to invoke their rights, they’re being dragged and brutalized- what do you do in that case?” Rodriguez-Alvarez said. “They’ll beat them up first and then later find out they have a legal remedy pending, and then the agents say, ‘I wouldn’t have beat you up if I knew that. So, should someone just say they have a legal remedy pending, so they don’t get beaten? At some point, I have to say it’s safer to surrender. And as a lawyer, you don’t want to tell them that. But now it’s about safety. People are getting beat up, their car windows broken out and dragged on the streets.”
When it comes to bystanders intervening in ICE activity, it becomes tricky, Rodriguez-Alvarez said. Individuals are within their rights to record or ask for a warrant from agents who are making an arrest or entering private property, but it could mean putting their safety on the line.
“If you intervene, just know that you’re taking a risk that you may also get taken,” she said. “But if that’s okay with you, there’s been a lot of people that are standing up like in Chicago, blowing whistles, or they’ll show up to an arrest and ask, ‘Where’s your warrant? You can’t be here.’ And they pretty much end up kicking (ICE agents) out. But then there have been some cases where that happens and then the U.S. citizen is detained or beaten up, like the WGN reporter who got thrown to the ground outside of a detention center. So it’s just understanding that you can try to help, but also understand that no one is protected right right now. They don’t care.”
Inhumane conditions at ICE facility
Those detained are typically first taken to the ICE’s Broadview detention facility located west of Chicago, before being transported to a detention center or deported via the Gary/Chicago International Airport. At Operation Midway Blitz’s height, there were reportedly 200 individuals being held at any given time, according to court documents.
“They were overcrowded,” Rodriguez-Alvarez said. “They’re not allowing people to take their medicine. From colleagues across the country, I’ve heard many things. There’s been a lot of detention center human rights violations across the country. On top of withholding medication, they don’t feed them. They cramp them up in a cell with a bunch of people and they don’t let them shower.”
Kevin Mejia, founder of East Chicago Indiana News page on Facebook, said he has heard a mix of rumors and firsthand accounts, including one from a friend who was being held at the Broadview location.
“He is a 28-year-old man who came to America when he was two years old, and he was arrested,” Mejia said.
Mejia was able to get a hold of him by calling the Broadview facility before the man was deported.
“He said, ‘there are people trying to rape me’,” Mejia said. “And he was saying that the people, the agents, were trying to mess around with the older men that were detained there. One man spoke up to them and said he was going to report them, and they retaliated. They were trying to fondle them and mess with them — weird stuff like that. … I’d call at 12 at night, he would answer, and I’d hear an alarm in the background. He said they had the fire alarm blasting all night. He said, ‘They don’t let us sleep’.”
After individuals are transported from the Broadview facility to a southern Indiana detention center or across state borders, it can get nearly impossible for attorneys and families alike to track and contact the individual, Rodriguez-Alvarez said.
One recent client is a Marine veteran who called Rodriguez-Alvarez because he could not find his father, who had lived in the U.S. for 34 years.
“His son flew all the way out here to figure out what happened to him, and found out he got detained because he ran,” she said. “He got scared and he just ran. And as it turns out, he’s raised his kids here, his son’s a veteran. He wasn’t able to get legal status just on a small technicality. Nothing crazy. He pays his taxes. He has his house. His dad’s on medication. And he just left his breakfast on the table, he never came back.”
Rodriguez-Alvarez said the man signed his deportation papers because he didn’t want to be detained any longer and he wasn’t getting his medications while in custody.
“His son was trying to call me to see if there’s anything he could do or if he could visit him before he got deported, and they did not let him in,” Rodriguez-Alvarez said.
Similar accounts have been echoed in a class action lawsuit, which alleges that coercion tactics, such as withholding medication, have been used to get individuals to sign deportation papers.
Judge Robert W. Gettleman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued a temporary restraining order for the Broadview Center due to reported conditions including inadequate food, medical care and sleeping conditions.
A class-action lawsuit, Moreno Gonzalez v. Noem in Northern Illinois District Court, is ongoing by the MacArthur Justice Center and the ACLU of Illinois, alleging detainees were stripped of their right to an attorney and were treated like “animals.” The complaint cited “mass constitutional violations” and called the federal officers patrolling the facility “abusive and cruel.”
“(Members of the class action lawsuit) are routinely degraded, mistreated and humiliated by these officers,” the court document said. “…They are being confined at Broadview inside overcrowded holding cells containing dozens of people at a time. People are forced to attempt to sleep, for days or sometimes weeks, on plastic chairs or on the filthy concrete floor. They are denied sufficient food and water. …The temperatures are extreme and uncomfortable. Most nights are freezing cold. The lights are typically on all night. These conditions result in widespread sleep deprivation.”
Currently, federal court continues to review conditions at the ICE facility, where the holding population has been reduced drastically, though the current number is unknown. A hearing will be conducted on the conditions of the facility later this month, according to Gettleman.
ICE ‘won’t go away anytime soon’
Alvarez said that while ICE activity appears to be lessening in Chicagoland, it does not mean that residents have seen the end of aggressive deportation efforts.
“As far as ICE activity dying down, I can only hope so, but my fear is that it may subside in Chicagoland, but it’s only going to increase in other areas as these agents get deployed into other communities,” Alvarez said. “I think Chicago was an example of the federal government just to prove a point. And it’s often a political point. And so that’s the sad part as well. It becomes about politics and not the safety of the community and what’s right for people.”
In the south Chicago suburbs, Attorney Lauren Debolt hosts workshops about asylum petitions, applications for work permits and general counseling about the immigration process.
“Instead of putting on a show, which they’ve been doing, ICE is now back to doing their work in the shadows where nobody sees them,” Debolt said. “ It doesn’t mean things aren’t happening, but they are not going out of their way to be on Channel 5. And I think it’s actually going to be harder to track these things now, but they’re still happening. Since we live in a 24-hour news cycle, we think that we won, we beat ICE back. But that’s not the case.”
Debolt said as it stands, the Department of Homeland Security has a detailed database and electric monitoring devices tracking upwards of 50,000 households in Chicagoland alone.
“The thing about Midway Blitz is that the amount of people that they actually arrested with the sheer amount of resources they committed to the operation is grossly inefficient,” Debolt said. “ICE could have arrested that many people on their own, without all the extra expenses and extra agents. They can probably pull up 100,000 people in their database and know their whereabouts and just go pick them up at home. And so they committed this amount of resources to basically making an advertisement for how horrible they are. It is designed to be psychological warfare. It wasn’t really about immigration enforcement. It was psychological warfare.”
Though her clients in pursuit of asylum remain fearful, Debolt continues to encourage them to keep up with their immigration court dates to avoid certain removal.
Rodriguez-Alvarez said it’s important to begin the immigration process as soon as possible for anyone of undocumented status. This means that if someone is detained or arrested by ICE, they will have a “legal remedy” pending, which will make it easier for them to pursue being released on bond, preventing deportation.
“They cannot ignore this, it won’t go away anytime soon,” Rodriguez-Alvarez said. “It’s urgent to ensure they have something in order.”
If someone does not qualify for a legal remedy, she helps them make an exit plan by designating a “power of attorney.” A power of attorney is a written document that gives a trusted person the ability to manage affairs in one’s absence, such as bank accounts, personal property and care of one’s children.
“I have clients who have been arrested who have legal remedies pending and we are working to bond them out,” she said. “It’s extremely hard if they don’t have a legal remedy in the process and I am not already representing them as their attorney. But when I get a call from a relative after someone is arrested, it becomes almost impossible to find them. Most people who are arrested and are undocumented can’t seek bond, so we have to file a habeas corpus (petition) and they’re not being favorable to those cases. It’s a very rough time right now.”
Tony Burrell, The Welcome Network executive director, works with a team of attorneys and other volunteers to represent and guide individuals going through the immigration process. The Welcome Network is 70% funded through churches, donors and fundraisers to give financial aid for those who cannot afford to hire a lawyer.
“We’ve seen an uptick for sure in consultations,” Burell said. “We’ve seen double the amount of consultations than two years ago. People are wanting to know whether they have any immigration benefits that they qualify for, and now it’s more urgent for people than it was two years ago. We’ve had clients whose doors have been knocked on by ICE here in Northwest Indiana. And of course, that creates uncertainty and fear in many cases.”
The Welcome Network, founded in 2014, has a legal center located at 824 Hoffman St. in Hammond and a ministry office at 3642 Lake St. in Lansing, Illinois. While still accepting new clients, Burrell said they are booked six to eight weeks out for consultations.
This year alone, the organization conducted more than 400 household consultations, with more than half of those cases leading to the pursuit of immigration benefits. However, while the need has never been greater for immigration services, there are less resources, support organizations and funds than before, Burrell said. In addition, attorneys are challenged daily with constantly changing laws, procedures and delays.
“The processes are changing so quickly that it’s a challenge to keep up,” Burrell said. “ So we actually have to slow down with our consultations and make sure that the things that we relied on for years, we have to take a pause and check ourselves and say, ‘Does this still apply?’ Or has something new just happened in the last week or month that would change the course that we would want to go with a certain client? So it’s kind of nerve-racking and it’s definitely energy draining to keep up with changes almost on a daily basis. If you make a mistake or if somebody doesn’t catch something, then obviously there’s a feeling of responsibility because these are people’s lives in the balance.”
Burrell said the impact has a domino effect on affected communities, making them more vulnerable to being victims of crime.
“I don’t see these issues as political, but as basic issues of human dignity and constitutional rights,” Burrell said. “People do have rights and if the system changes so much that you’re not sure whether your rights are going to be upheld or trampled on, then it’s going to create entire communities that are fearful. And fearful communities are communities where people can be taken advantage of more and more. If someone’s afraid to even call the police, because they’re not sure if they or a family member is going to be detained, then that creates more and more instability in communities that are just trying to become more stable.”
One rising problem Rodriguez-Alvarez is dealing with is scammers posing as attorneys. As an attorney who practices nationwide, she is currently representing a client in Texas who was scammed out of $12,000 by someone posing as an attorney who pressured the client into filling out an online application with the promise of citizenship.
ICE then used the application to find the individual and put them into deportation proceedings, she said.
“I also had a client who called me panicking, and said that she kept getting a phone call from ICE saying that her family member was picked up. So I said, ‘Okay, let me call them,’” Rodriguez-Alvarez said. “And I called them and started asking questions and found out that it was a whole scam.”
She said she has discovered phony attorneys on social media who are using fake IDs and made-up credentials to appear official. Rodriguez-Alvarez said individuals should use trusted sites like the Indiana State Bar Association, in which people can search names to ensure someone is an attorney in good standing.
Other resources attorneys referenced include The Midwest Immigrant Defenders Alliance, which is reachable at 1-855-435-7693, and the Resurrection Project, which can be found at resurrectionproject.org or reached at 312-666-1323. A list of resources can also be found at the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project website at asaptogether.org and on the National Immigration Justice Center website at immigrantjustice.org.
Anna Ortiz is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
