From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made when Ice detained a man known in Rochester as Papa Omar.

His name is Omar Ramos Jimenez and he was detained several weeks ago, as reported by my colleague Gino Fanelli.

This detention and possible deportation is exactly the kind of case that Rochester city leaders have said they've been worried about.

A man with a history of building businesses and helping others in the community.

Family and friends accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement Ice of lying to Ramos Jimenez in order to get him to their office and arrest him.

Ice allegedly contacted Ramos to Mendez and told him he needed a new phone app installed for reporting to Ice, which he regularly does, and it needed to be done in person at the agency's Buffalo field office.

As Fanelli reports, Ramos, Jimenez and his wife had run a successful Mexican restaurant called La Plaza at the public market some years ago.

They founded La Casa restaurant.

For the past eight years, Ramos and Mendez has worked in landscaping and snow removal.

After he was detained by Ice for the first time in 2013.

Ramos Jimenez has sought to receive asylum asylum status, and he was denied those protections in 2020 but quickly filed an appeal.

The appeal of that ruling is ongoing in the legal system.

Ramos Jimenez has meanwhile been complying with all requests and check ins from Ice.

His daughter said, quote, my father has been in this country for over 20 years.

He has built a life here.

He takes care not only of our family, but our community as well.

He is the one that helped our neighbors remove a tree stump, who made sure to plow and salt our neighbor's walkway in the winter for safety.

He's a community member.

He's a friend.

He's Papa Omar, and he's not just my father, but he's the community's father.

End quote.

His daughter is here to discuss her father's case.

Let me welcome our guests in studio.

Gino Fanelli, my colleague and I investigation in City hall.

Reporter.

Back with us.

Thanks for being here, Gino.

Thanks for having me.

And Omar's daughter is Cassandra Bocanegra, who is also senior manager of organizing and strategy for the Finger Lakes Region at the New York Immigration Coalition.

Welcome.

Thank you for being with us.

Thank you for having me.

And welcome as well to Olivia Poste Rich, senior attorney at the Worker Justice Center of New York.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me.

Wish we could have someone from my sitting in this fourth chair.

Gino.

That's what I'm going to start with.

That would be helpful, wouldn't it?

Good luck.

Well, I understand that.

And that's just the reality here.

So we're going to do our best to start by walking through the facts.

And I'll start briefly with with Cassandra.

I mean, this is not probably an easy conversation for you to have.

You do work in this field, but this is your dad.

What do we know about how he's doing right now?

We've, We've been lucky enough to be able to see him and speak with him on the phone.

My brother and I were able to see him Friday after he was detained.

And he continues, like, he's a really he's he's got a really strong spirit.

He's maintaining positivity.

He's, continuing to to help people, even even in detention.

He's he's looking out for others.

He's worried about us.

Every conversation has has been.

Make sure that this gets done.

Make sure that you go change your mom's oil.

Make sure that your brother's, Boy Scout troop is is also, don't forget that our dog has a vet appointment on the 20th.

It's it's consistently been, just making sure that that we are okay.

He's asked about the neighbors and just.

He's like, if somebody is somebody salting Gail's yard is, Or Gail's walkway.

Did you talk to to Adam about Zions?

Like he's he's he's maintaining positivity.

Obviously it's really difficult to not have him here.

And he's continuing to you continue to be who he is and worrying about everyone.

Where is he located right now?

Right now, he's at the, Buffalo federal detention Facility, which is located in Batavia.

So that's in Batavia.

That's an all male facility.

All male detention there?

Yes.

Are used to house women as well.

But for the last few years, it's been all male.

Okay.

And we're going to talk as we go throughout this hour with Olivia about the work that she's doing and where detainees are going and what that process is like.

Let's kind of back it up here.

Gina, if and only when did this story hit your radar?

This would be, Thursday of, and last week, week before a couple weeks.

It's kind of when it came into my detention, those when the, the Rapid response Network and, some of the, immigration advocacy groups here were, you know, posting on social media about it, I had found the federal filing that had been, filed on, Omar's behalf.

And went through that.

And, I have known Cassandra for a little while.

We've talked quite a few times.

So, that became part of what made it noteworthy to me, but also the just the facts and circumstances of how this played out, is something that made it very noteworthy to me that this was, kind of, an extraordinary way that they, detained him was by making sure that someone who seemed to be following the rules and wanted to follow the rules was the reason he got detained to begin with.

That was, kind of shocking to me.

And I think that's what made it a noteworthy story.

Yeah.

So we're going to talk about those facts of the case here.

And by the way, as a journalist who's been looking into the story, is there any evidence that that you can find that the Ice detention of Omar Ramos Jimenez, who's 50 years old, originally from Mexico, lived in Rochester since 2004.

Is there any evidence that he's connected to what the white House says?

They're really looking for, which is drugs, terror groups, crime?

Not a shred of it.

No.

Okay.

I mean, I certainly didn't see that myself.

So, so let's start with the story here.

He has been in Rochester since 2004.

And, Cassandra, what would you describe as sort of his timeline of how he's built a life here since 2004?

Yeah.

So when in 2004, my dad, was working in construction.

At that time, it was just me, my mom and.

And my dad.

He was working construction.

He was, my mom had, my parents had started, in the Rochester Public Market, and, that was where we worked, every Saturday.

So I often say that the public market raised me, the public market is like a big part of our family life.

And then in 2020 ten, I had my signora.

He cried.

We we had a group of friends and family who who supported us, who were with us for that time in 2013, 2012, my parents open la la Casa.

In 2013, immigration came to La Casa, and took my dad away.

He was detained in Batavia.

And the next day at like I was still I, I was 18, and I remember thinking.

Like feeling grateful and in a, in a very messed up way, that we, that I had to be thankful that I was 18 so that I could actually go out, go and bail him out of Batavia.

And so that that happened in 2013.

And then since then, it's been he's continued to, to to work.

He's continued to build a life.

My brother is is here as well.

My younger brother, he's continue to he's been an active member of my brother's Boy Scout troop, and been supportive of of all of the efforts and fundraising efforts.

He's been, an active member and active neighbor in the 19th Ward.

He's we've we've held an annual, Dia de Los Muertos event to honor our loved ones who we haven't been able to see.

And back in Mexico, as well as, like, all the loved ones that we've gotten to know and that we've gotten to, be next to, he's consistently thinking about others.

And every time any of our neighbors have gotten sick, have gotten injured, or have needed extra support, he's been one of the first ones to say, like, I can do that.

I can.

Don't tell them not to worry.

I'll, I'll, I'll do that for for listeners who may be wondering.

So he comes here around the age of 30, late 20s.

Why did he come to Rochester?

Why did he leave Mexico?

He, we love our country and we love our city.

We love Monterrey, but it doesn't offer the same opportunities that the US does.

And Rochester, my my dad happened to have a friend who was living here in Rochester, who told him, you should.

You should come here like it's a great place to live.

It's, it's it's really it's really com it's it'll be a great place for, for the family.

So my dad came to Rochester because of that.

And.

Our, like, economic opportunity and a better life is always what drives people to to emigrate.

And that's what drove my dad and my parents to come here was seeking a better life, seeking better economic opportunities, seeking, seeking things that we have been calling the American Dream.

And there's this there's also this idea in, in Mexico in particular, that the U.S is a welcoming place that anyone can become like, anyone can become whatever it is that they've always wanted to become in the U.S.

it's a land of opportunity that's a home for immigrants.

And so that that's a big driving force for for many people, including my family.

In a moment, I'm gonna ask you to kind of take us through his reporting and what's happened in the last couple of weeks.

But just let me address a couple of things that may be on the mind of some listeners.

And as Cassandra and Olivia know, the listening audience is going to have a range of views on this because, that's we're in a country right now that have been real conversations about who stays and goes and what that looks like, and I want to acknowledge that there are a number of people who have supported this administration who have been very concerned or turned off or worse, by the detention of people like Omar and I played a couple weeks ago.

I played the clip of Joe Rogan saying exactly that, Joe Rogan saying, I signed up for detention and deportation of people running drugs and committing crimes.

Now people have been here for decades raising families.

He wasn't talking about this exact right in Rochester in, but he was.

But I also want to read a quote from just this morning, vanity fair has a pretty amazingly candid interview with Susie Wiles, who is the president's chief of staff.

In this interview that she did with Vanity Fair on the record, she called J.D.

Vance a conspiracy theorist.

She said that Elon Musk is absolutely a daily ketamine user.

I mean, like she goes all over the place.

She says that Donald Trump has an alcoholic personality even though he doesn't drink.

And here's what she said about the issues of Ice detentions.

This is Susie Wiles today on the record quote.

This is, from Vanity Fair.

Missiles express misgivings about how the round up of immigrants has been carried out.

At times, I will concede that we've got to look harder at our process for deportation, she said.

Criminals should be deported, she added.

But if there is a question, I think our process has to lean toward a double check.

When two mothers were arrested and deported with their children after voluntarily attending routine immigration meetings, Susie Wiles said I can't understand how you make that mistake, but somebody did.

End quote that is, today.

That's the president's chief of staff.

She's saying you can't lure people who are complying to meetings, who have children and are raising families, and then deport them.

That's not what we intended to do.

That's the closest person to the president who's not J.D.

Vance.

It's almost sounds like she's talking about your your case, doesn't it?

Your family's case.

Yeah, a little bit.

Does that surprise you to hear that?

It does.

It does.

And I think that that's I think that that kind of speaks louder to like, the issue, like we're not it doesn't feel like this is it doesn't feel like there's a real plan.

It just feels like they're looking at anyone who is of color and just grabbing them, I would say, and I don't know how you see this, Gina, but just watching what's happened in our community, in communities across the country and reading Susie Wiles and listening to Joe Rogan, but also listening to Stephen Miller.

I think the split within this administration, there is a strong split.

I think the chief of staff, I think the strong supporters like Rogan, really didn't want the the deportation or the detention of people like Omar Ramos, a menace.

They wanted drug dealers and people associated with violent gangs.

And I think Stephen Miller absolutely wants people like Omar Ramos a menace out and I think he's essentially said that that's how it looks to me.

What do you say?

Absolutely.

And, you know, it's it's a struggle that I have with, even framing it in the way of like when we have, you know, incidents with, a covered suburb with roofers that, are detained by ice, right?

Or the or the case of Omar, of saying like, well, these people are not the criminal that they said they were going to go after, because then I'm conceding to the original point that there are these criminals to go after.

And we know that this entire narrative is based on a lie.

There is no migrant crime wave.

There is no mass influx of criminals happening to this country.

We know for a fact that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a lesser rate than the general public.

So if we're going to have this this idea that we need to get the criminals out of here, and that's the reason that this, massive ramp up in immigration enforcement has happened under this administration.

I think that we are we end up having the wrong conversation when the real conversation is this is a conspiracy theory, it's a lie.

It's not true, and it's hurting people's lives that it continues to happen again.

Gina is not saying that there haven't been crimes, even violent crimes, drugs brought by people who are undocumented.

Of course, that has happened.

And what Gina was saying is, you cannot then say that the statistics support the mass detention and deportation of anybody who doesn't have full status because of the likelihood that they will commit crimes, because the stats actually say the opposite, that the likelihood is they commit less crimes for obvious reasons.

By the way.

Yeah, they're trying to avoid it.

Trouble.

If you want to use the logic of Stephen Miller, that if one person does something and then the entire group that that person comes from is responsible for that action, there's words for that.

It's racism and xenophobia.

That's what those things are.

That's why it's defined as.

And it's impossible for me to look at the way this administration has been carrying out these actions and looking at these things and not say, these are bigoted actions.

They are not actions meant to resolve a problem that is actually happening.

It's meant to quell the interest of people that are fed on this kind of fear, that I believe that this kind of thing is happening and it really gives something people to justify some kind of, implicit bias they already have in themselves.

And that's what I think a lot of this administration's actions do.

They justify things that people already feel in their heart that might just be not verifiable by reality?

Let me get away from the Stephen Miller side of this, and let me ask a question of Cassandra Bocanegra.

Again.

We're talking about her father, 50 year old Omar Ramos Jimenez, who was detained earlier this month.

He's currently in detention in Batavia and, was complying with Ice for years and in fact was detained while complying with a request from Ice.

But let me ask you a separate question.

You said that, you know, as much as you can appreciate Monterrey, Mexico.

Rochester in the United States represented a whole different level of opportunity for your family, which is why your decision was made to come here.

And I can imagine someone saying, okay, but why not go through what is admittedly a longer process and quote unquote get in line and try to go through that process before you come here, because there's a lot of people who would like to come here.

That yeah, there that process is a very, very long process.

That process takes decades.

Takes years.

One of those processes was to wait until I turned 21 and have me ask for my parents to, to join me in, in the US.

Okay.

Because what is your state?

I was born in Texas.

I'm a first generation American, a proud daughter of immigrants.

So that was one option.

And in order for that to happen, I had to.

And there was a lot of things I had to ensure that I didn't do include, like, with my parents being married like, that was that was additional time that was added to the process.

Minimum that process could have taken 10 to 15 years.

Oftentimes it takes longer.

It's the numbers for folks to be able to come here is they haven't changed in decades, and they haven't kept up with everything that's going on around the world and everything that's affecting people in other parts of the country.

In other parts of the, of the world.

I mean, and so anyone who's everyone would love nothing more than to come and do things, come to the, come to the U.S, come to a go to a different country and be able to apply for citizenship, for residency, for asylum.

But often it's confusing.

Like our immigration system is so confusing.

I've heard from attorneys at tax law and immigration law are two of the most difficult laws.

Practices of law to, to be in.

And that's attorneys who have studied and who understand the language.

Imagine being somebody from a, country that doesn't speak English, and you maybe have not studied the law in your own country, let alone in another country.

And you're now expected to advocate for yourself without the resources and without the language access.

And then when you aren't able to do that, there's people who are angry at you for not doing things, quote unquote, the right way when you didn't even know that there was a right way or a wrong way to do things are as in my work in advocacy, I've seen people, trying to defend themselves in immigration proceedings who don't even speak Spanish.

They speak indigenous languages and have no way of understanding what's going on.

I've seen children being placed in situations where they're expected to defend themselves against a government trained attorney in a deportation proceeding.

I've seen we've seen children as young as three years old being placed, in deportation proceedings and being expected to to defend themselves.

Our immigration system is needs a lot of help, and it makes it impossible for people to actually do what it's meant to do.

In your father's case, he.

Gina's reporting, said he was first picked up by Ice 2013 2013, in 2013, and he complies with everything they're asking and filed at that time for two things.

Asylum.

And a dismissal of a removal charge.

Is that right?

Yes.

Okay.

And in 2020 he has denied those things.

Yes.

But immediately filed an appeal.

And that appeal is still ongoing as I understand it.

Yes.

So if you if you look at this just through the legal lens of it, Olivia.

He's going through a legal process, isn't that right?

Yes.

I think one thing that gets lost in these conversations about whether someone has status or doesn't have status is just how complicated the system is.

So sometimes people come here without status.

Sometimes people come here with status and lose it for whatever reason.

And then a lot of people who don't currently have status might be able to achieve status in the future.

So a lot of people who are currently being detained are in the middle of proceedings and are applying for some sort of relief that will let them stay here either a bit longer or permanently and are still facing immigration consequences.

Okay.

And so this appeal ongoing, you don't have a sense for how long it's going to take.

No.

Okay.

And I don't know how long they typically take Olivia.

Well, it's much harder to predict now because we have a very overwhelmed system, both in terms of our judiciary and our immigration courts.

They're completely overwhelmed right now because of the amount of immigration enforcement happening.

So it's very hard for us to predict now how long certain applications for relief will take.

I used to do a lot of visas for trafficking victims, and those used to be pretty solidly 18 month time turnaround for us.

And, and now it's been way above that.

And we have no way to advise our clients how much how much longer they'll wait.

Okay.

And so what is the case that, Ramos and Mendez should be granted asylum?

A lot of Americans, laypeople like myself, who don't know hardly anything about what is a very complex system, think about asylum.

And they think fleeing, political persecution, collapsing governments, etc.. What's the case in this one for for your debt?

Oh, there's a lot of, different reasons there.

I think there's five buckets.

And Olivia, please correct me if I'm wrong for asylum.

One of them being political, but, there's also a lot of, like, worries when you come to the US.

There's this idea like it.

The US is consistently seen as, as a place of, of riches in it, to put it, to put it bluntly.

And there's this idea that when you return back to your home country, you have this immense amount of wealth that you've accumulated.

I remember my cousins when I was younger saying, oh, like, yeah, if you go to the US, you just step on American soil and you get a car, you get a house, and you get, like all this money right away.

And it's hard to explain to folks back home the work and the effort and the struggle that comes with being here.

And so when we go back, there's this idea, this perception that we are we are overly privileged and we become targets for, for for crime, for people to who it's unsafe.

It becomes unsafe.

If you've been here for years and you go back to your your community, it becomes unsafe.

You you have become to Americanized.

You sound to American.

It's obvious that you're not from whatever wherever your home country is.

And you become a target for people who are looking to to make a quick buck.

Olivia, is this a is this a case that has been made legally?

I mean, is there standing for that?

So I don't want to speak to the specifics of Omar's case because I'm not his attorney generally.

But just.

Yeah, in general, one of the bases for asylum is for, for a particular social group, and I don't know the ins and outs of every single one of them, because you can come up with a new particularized social group, brand new, if, one arises.

So examples of this would be families who've been victims of domestic violence, from a specific perpetrator who are not safe in their country because their perpetrators looking for them, or families who have been targeted by, a gang specifically.

And even those small groups can be considered a particularized social group and so can be eligible for asylum because they're part of a concrete group of people who are more or less identifiable for whatever reason, who are high risk of persecution, violence, etc.. Should they be forced to return to their home country?

Okay.

So, you know, finally, in this particular case, let's wrap up some of the details here.

Your reporting tells us, and I don't think there's any reason to doubt the account, that I asked Omar to come to their office in Buffalo.

Something regarding his phone.

There's no reason to doubt that that's what happened here.

Is that right?

That's.

Yeah, that seems to be what happened.

There they he had been complying with all the request of reporting to Ice, throughout, the past, decade or so, and, they called him down there, said they needed to install a phone app on his phone, and he had to come to the Buffalo field office to do it.

He arrives and they detain him immediately.

And interestingly, in the in the federal filing, there was, some kind of language that they use that.

Well, we'll be able to expedite your asylum case if we have you detained.

There was something to that effect was, the kind of the logic they had.

And there was another portion about change in presidential priorities mean that you need to be detained.

So there was those two portions of why he ended up being detained there.

But yeah, they essentially tricked him.

And, by following the rules, as you know, how he ended up being detained to begin with.

There's someone who's been complying with Ice for more than a decade, probably doesn't need to be physically detained to expedite an asylum claim.

Probably not.

And it raises a really interesting question to me is, you know, if you're doing things like this where people are following the rules and then they end up, you end up detaining them like, well, what encouragement do people that are, you know, in Omar's position have to follow the rules?

Then why would they comply with you if they feel like, oh, that's interesting.

Yeah, they they might.

It almost it seems counterproductive in a way that you are instilling this fear that like, if I communicate with you at all, if I follow the legal process at all, I am going to be punished for.

Yeah.

I mean, you're right.

If Ice is actively lying to people and tricking them into detention, that word is going to spread quickly, of course, and it is not unreasonable to think that people will not show up at the next time they're asked by Ice.

Yeah, if you're going to be detained, in a courtroom, as it's happened in, there's regular cases of those in New York City, why would you show up to court?

Okay.

So I think we've established the case where it stands now.

And then the question is what the timeline is.

I have no idea.

I mean, like, what do you know about timelines?

You know, for now, I guess that's why the guests are here, right?

Very little.

Yeah.

Very, very little about.

I mean, and the only thing I know about timeline is either side.

Cases can take a long time, especially when they're in a defensive asylum case.

They can take years, to move forward.

But whereas this Wednesday and now I will defer to the other guests on that because I don't know what the timeline looks like here for me to speak to that or do you want to, I guess I can say a little bit.

So during so, my, my father was, asked to go to the Buffalo detention or the Buffalo field office on December 3rd, which was Wednesday the first that very day, our attorney filed, a habeas petition, which is basically asking the government, like, why am I being detained?

The judge has given until January 20th for the government to respond.

So at the very least until January is, is is where, where we are right now.

We're our attorneys is working on, and other things that that filing other petitions, filing other, other forms to see if that, if we can speed that timeline up.

But right now, January 20th seems to be a date that we have.

What do you think the possible outcomes are here?

I, I don't know, deportation is one of them, right.

Deportation?

Possibly, but I'm I, I wouldn't even know where to.

There's so many different possibilities.

I don't even know where to where to begin.

I think it would help to clarify that there are two legal systems at play here.

Okay.

The first is immigration court.

And when we talk about immigration court, this isn't a court the way people generally think of court, because it's part of the executive branch, of our government.

And so this is the branch of government through which you apply for different types of immigration relief.

You might apply for bond if you're detained, and then the immigration law system gets to decide your case.

And there are ways to appeal throughout that process before ultimately some decisions are revealed by federal courts and then habeas petitions are not are completely separate from immigration proceedings because a habeas petition is a several hundred year old writ, essentially where you're demanding the government justify your detention.

So you're not challenging necessarily your removal, or deportation.

You're challenging your detention because it is possible to remove someone, without them being detained.

That's perfectly possible.

So the habeas proceeding will be focusing more on whether or not Omar has been lawfully detained.

And that's, I think, the answer that will be we'll be getting hopefully sooner rather than later.

And the immigration side of things can then go on for quite some time.

After the question of whether or not Omar can be lawfully detained has been answered.

Yeah.

How long could he be held in Batavia?

So there is a sort of soft limit that some Supreme Court precedent has indicated that we really don't like to see people detained without a good reason for more than six months.

I should back up and mention a little bit about like, what is immigration detention?

You know, it's not the same as school detention.

Essentially, these are folks who, the majority of whom have not been accused of any crime or haven't committed a crime, who are in jail like conditions.

And so at the six month mark, you can file another habeas petition often and say, okay, the length of time I've been here is becoming very punitive.

I haven't committed a crime.

I'm essentially in jail.

So, that could be another potential avenue for someone who's been there that long.

But we've seen people be detained much, much longer than that.

For, for over a year.

Years in some cases.

Yeah.

Let me get a little bit of feedback and, then what we'll do is after we take a break, we're going to talk more generally about what Olivia Rich, senior attorney at the Worker Justice Center of New York, has seen, you know, where detainees are going from our region.

And a little bit more about process.

I know, there are questions from listeners about what people can do.

We're going to talk about that.

A couple pieces of feedback I want to read here.

And, you know, in your reporting, this is a person, Omar Ramos Jimenez, who had the attention of the city council, president of Rochester, state senators.

I mean, you had quotes from people who clearly understood that this was kind of a pillar of the community.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

I actually that was like a 24 hour notice, probably the biggest turnout for a rally I've ever seen.

Yeah.

That with that pretty, pretty wild.

So, and especially when I was, like, ten degrees outside.

Yeah, yeah.

Pretty remarkable.

Well, here's Peter who said, hi, Evan.

I worked side by side with Cassandra and her family at the public market before La Casa began.

Omar exemplified everything that we cherish about people and parents.

He worked from waking until sleep, often helping those around him while building a future for his children and neighbors.

It was wonderful to see Cassandra follows those footsteps strongly and with love.

I wish more American citizens would see how we need more citizens like Omar and his family.

That's from Peter.

There you go.

I mean, I know if there's anything you want to say there, Xander, but thank you.

Peter.

Charlie says, Evan, let's call this detention by Ice.

What it is paramilitary people drunk with power, inflicting as much pain and trouble as they possibly can.

They are fulfilling the far right's ideological plan to rid the country of as many brown people as they possibly can for any reason.

This appeals to Trump's followers under the false pretense that Ice is arresting criminals.

I'm calling out anyone from the right to call the show and defend what ice has done to this wonderful, innocent man that is from Charlie.

And again, I would say I think there is a fissure even in the Trump administration.

But the Stephen Miller side is winning.

That's what I think is I, I'm I'm trying to be fair here.

I mean, I think Gina and I are just looking at the facts of what the administration is doing and saying.

And if Susie Wiles, if some people in the administration feel queasy about some of this stuff, Stephen Miller and others don't, and they are winning, right?

That's right.

It.

Yeah, I don't think I think that's right.

It's a matter of whether or not Stephen Miller feels queasy about it.

He actively revels.

No, no.

Right.

It's the other people might feel queasy, but not Miller for sure.

Bob writes to say, Evan, I'll admit I haven't followed what the administration has been saying.

I thought that people who don't have legal status here have always been subject to deportation.

Right?

And previous administrations just haven't bothered to do it.

I did think Trump was going to prioritize criminals, but if someone else comes to their attention, they could still be deported.

Isn't that what happened here?

That is from Bob.

Olivia.

Do you want to take that in general first?

So, yes.

Again, the question of if someone has status or not can be tricky because someone might have a valid claim to status that they're either having applied for because they don't know that they have that potential avenue for relief, or they have a pending application for status.

But with a case like this one, and we see a lot of cases like this, unfortunately, where you have the government essentially allow someone to, be out on bond, be released from a prior detention so that they can continue their immigration case while they're at home with their families, in their communities.

There generally needs to be some reason to change your mind on that, because when someone's released on bond, the idea is that they've shown that they're not a flight risk and they're not a safety to their community.

And part of what our due process means, and this is both a statutory thing and a constitutional thing, is the government shouldn't just be without notice or an opportunity for someone to defend themselves or without good reason, changing their mind on these decisions that they have made.

Such that a person who gets to live in safety, knowing that they can proceed with our immigration case and be out of a jail like center, suddenly has that flipped on them at a moment's notice without any way to defend themselves?

Okay, Cassandra, anything you want to add there?

I think we just have to remember, like our immigration system is, it was backed up before the Trump administration, and it's even more backed up now.

People, they're people are waiting years to hear responses about what their what what's going on with their case.

We've been waiting five years to figure out, to find out what is going on with my father's case like that, and that's normal.

Like waiting five years is normal.

We've heard of people waiting 20 years, 30 years to get responses from their from their cases.

So I think it's I think one of the things that we have to continue to keep in mind is like people are waiting and our our system is broken.

It's it's not it's not easy.

It's not fast.

And they're like the people who are who are in process and even those who who aren't are all trying to do the same thing.

They're trying to build a life for their families.

They're trying to make sure that they can be part of a community.

They're they're working hard.

A couple other quick points on Bob's note.

And I appreciate the know, Bob.

You know, he's pointing out that other administrations maybe haven't been as aggressive as this one.

I think what's different, Olivia, tell me if I'm wrong here, is that we haven't seen ice literally lying to people and sort of entrapping them to come to an office and then putting them in handcuffs before that is new, as far as I know.

But it is true that under the Obama administration, there was a lot of deport, quite a lot of deportation.

Some activists, I think Gina Fanelli, have called Obama the deporter in chief.

There was that moniker for a while.

So it's not like deportation just started a year ago.

I think it's just the manner of the bait and switch.

And, you know, Bob, you're raising a question of whether what they're doing is illegal.

That's what the I guess the courts are set up to decide.

And, and that there's going to be an asylum claim, there's probably going to be all kinds of legal wrangling over this.

But the larger question, Bob, is whether this is a wise thing to do.

And there are people the president's chief of staff basically said, this is not what we're willing to be doing and should be doing.

It's bad for communities.

It's bet it's bad.

Look, it's cruel.

So there's the the discretionary part, which is you don't have to do it this way.

And then there's the legal question with the courts to decide.

But I don't think, Olivia, I think it is true there's deportations are true under Obama.

I don't think I'd seen that Ice was lying to people like they are.

I mean, we have I don't know about this specific instance so much, but we have been talking about what we call ice bruises for a long time.

Okay.

Where ice will make up some sort of fabrication to get in contact with someone.

Sometimes they'll pretend to be from the power company.

Oh, boy.

So they'll show up at people's houses pretending to not be themselves.

Essentially, to get people to open the door.

And we call these ice freezes.

And these have been going on for a while.

So while on one sense what is happening is unprecedented in the sheer volume of it and, a real lack of care as to whether or not they're following any procedural rules or safeguards.

This has been an issue for a long time.

And I think what you're saying about like is, is this necessarily wise is an important point, because I think back during the Obama administration, there was some hope that there would maybe be legislative change such that people who have been here for a long time been upstanding members of their community, had a path to citizenship, or that if a person who was asked to leave, because they hadn't come here lawfully might be able to come back, in a reasonable time frame if they followed certain rules.

But we don't have any legislation like that.

As of as of now.

Okay.

We're left as we take our only break of the hour, we'll come right back here, and continue with this conversation on not only the story of Omar Ramos Jimenez, a 50 year old Rochester Syrian who was born in Mexico, came here 21 years ago.

Founded a couple of restaurants, worked at the public market.

It's been working in landscaping, certainly, well, well-regarded in this community and picked up by Ice, for detention.

And now he's being detained in Batavia.

Laura writes to say the legal immigration process has been intentionally long.

For decades.

She says our immigration system had been stalled.

There has never been enough immigration judges or other resources.

People wait literally decades for their cases to come up.

This had been an intentional barrier.

When legislation has come up to increase the efficiency of the system, it has been stymied by Republican resistance.

Those who from their high horse state that people should come the legal way or the right way, have no understanding of, or don't wish to acknowledge the reality of the impenetrable system that immigrants are trying their best to navigate.

That is from Laura, a short break.

We're going to come right back here on connections.

Coming up in our second hour, we're going to lighten things up.

And I think we need that.

And we're going to talk about holiday movies, Christmas movies.

We're going to talk about the the best of the classics, the worst that are out there.

Your list of best and worst.

We'll take your submissions.

We're going to examine whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

We'll have a conversation about all of it and have some fun, much needed fun, a little lighter conversation.

Next hour and.

Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Mary Carolla Center.

Proud supporter of connections with Evan Dawson, believing and informed and engaged community is a connected one.

Mary Carey, ola.org and Excel US Blue Cross Blue Shield working with members to find health coverage for every stage of life, helping to make care and coverage more accessible in more ways for more people across the Rochester community.

Details online at Excel bcbs.com.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson and I got a number of emails from listeners.

Want to know what can anybody do about this?

I'm going to ask Cassandra first.

And if you're just joining us, we've been talking about Cassandra's dad, but also Cassandra is senior manager of organizing and strategy for the Finger Lakes region at the New York Immigration Coalition.

Her father, Omar Ramos Jimenez, is detained by Ice currently and is being held in Batavia.

People are wondering what they can do.

What do you want them to know?

I, there's so much there's so many things that people can do and there's so we have so much power as a community.

I think one of the things that we that was mentioned earlier was how immigration proceedings are very different from, regular court, where I think we are all familiar with, with the saying, like you, you have the right to an attorney, and if you can't afford one, one will be provided to you.

And that doesn't apply to immigration court or immigration proceedings.

And so, an attorney, especially in immigration proceedings, is invaluable and something that we are consistently missing and consistently low on, for our immigrant communities, one of the pieces of legislation that my organization is working on is called the Access to Representation Act, and that, helps ensure that everyone who is going through removal proceedings has the right to an attorney within New York State.

And also it ensures that, we have funding for, for our legal service providers to be able to do the work that they're doing, especially with with immigration, with immigration proceedings here.

So obviously, like one of the things that people can do is, is we need we need to make protections available for our for our communities.

We need to make sure that every New York's New Yorker, regardless of status, is protected, and has equal opportunities when it comes to, to defending themselves in court.

So that's definitely one of the things that folks can do if you go to NY because og backslash, care for care for life, you'll get more information about the, Access to Representation Act and the coalition for Access Representation equity for Immigrant Families.

They've been doing a lot of work, on ensuring legal protections for immigrant communities.

We have been doing we did a Somali fundraiser on Sunday, and with community with with family and community.

We don't know what the future is going to hold for my dad.

We don't know what the future is going to hold for my family.

We are unsure of, like if they're going to request another bond.

If there is going to be another bond hearing.

And bond has been exceptionally high in immigration proceedings, upwards of 15,000 for for folks normally.

So we, we have been raising funds and just preparing if that is a possibility that happens.

We also don't know how long the legal the legal battle is going to be.

Is it going to just be until January 20th, or is it going to be much longer than that?

So, we've been we've been fundraising for that.

We've been collecting letters of support for, for my dad.

Character letters are really important in anyone's case, just so that the judge knows who it is that they have in front of them.

Like, do they have a, like hearing from from community members?

Like what type of person someone is in immigration proceedings is is really helpful.

If folks want to get involved, they can email free Omar 585 at gmail.com for for ways to get involved.

Yeah.

We've we've been that we there's so much uncertainty that it's it's a little difficult to give multiple ways of support, but definitely like working on legislation that helps all access representation Act, the Build act, getting involved with local agencies, local organizations.

The Rochester Rapid Response Network has been super supportive and has been super vital in making sure that our that our communities are safe.

The, our legal service providers, down at the the center for justice, they're always looking for support and and for for ways to help the community and and volunteers to help with that.

Refugees helping refugees worker.

Just like all of these organizations in, in in the Rochester area are all in need of support.

So getting involved with any of them is, is a great way to get involved and ensure that this doesn't happen to someone else, or that if it does, that that other person does have the community support that my family and my dad are lucky to have anything to add.

Olivia.

Yeah, I would also add that I think this what we're seeing today is really an inevitable result of decades of demonizing immigrants and talking, about immigrants as if they were synonymous with criminals and using very dehumanizing language to talk about our immigrant community.

So I think when we're seeing situations like this where things that are just unfair are happening and unfolding before our eyes, talking to our friends, talking to our families who might not have the same perspective as us about what's happening is important.

You know, we might not have to get to the same conclusion about what the best policy should be, but I think we can have more people in agreement that everyone needs to have due process dignity in their treatment in the United States, have their human rights respected no matter what, what path forward we're going to take legislatively that the sort of behavior is not okay, and it's not a good use of taxpayer resources either.

What are we missing in this story?

Gina Fanelli yeah, I just wanted to touch on the previous, point on, you know, other administrations have done, deportations, too.

There's been Ice arrests under previous administrations.

And it is important to point in scope the numbers here.

And I'm just quoting reporting from my colleague Brian Sharp.

Last year, I'm at a point to two months to June.

In July last year, in June, there were 299 Ice arrests in New York State, 334 in July this year, there was 1374 in June, and there was 1142 in July.

All of last year, there were six Ice arrests made in Monroe County.

As of August, there were 166 last year, 160 by August of this year.

That's just these are outdated numbers, but this is from the summer.

So the point being, yes, this has happened under previous administrations.

There's always been deportations.

There's always a skill.

Not to this scale and not to the scope of aggressiveness.

And when you're going for the, if you're going to make the claim that you're going after the criminals, the murderers, the rapists and all of that, well, one, we know that that's not the majority of people that are here on under undocumented status.

And eventually you're going to get to a point if your directive is to keep arresting people in mass, you're going to start going after people like Omar.

You're going to start going after people that are working roofing jobs that are just, you know, kind of living their life.

And I might be between paperwork that might have undocumented staff that might be seeking asylum.

Eventually you're going to scrape the proverbial bottom of the barrel of, you know, not getting the people that you really are saying you're going after.

And, going after people that are just, you know, might be trying to follow all the rules.

And at a certain point, that it happened very quickly because there weren't that many criminals to go after to begin with is, the point that I think I'm trying to make here.

So, yes, it's happened in a previous administration that this kind of ramp up is unprecedented.

And the numbers Mr.. Show that.

And I just want to add something to what, you know, saying, there's a ripple effect every time somebody is taken from our community, like, we had over 200 people show up who knew my dad on Friday, December 5th.

And that was just one person in our community.

What happens when all of the farmworkers that we rely on for our industry, for New York State's biggest export, dairy or vegetables, are all gone.

What happens when every single roofer is no longer able to be here?

What happens to all the nurses, all the health care providers, all of the folks who who support our elders, our bus drivers, immigrants are not just in one section of the economy.

We're everywhere.

What happens when all of us are gone?

Do you worry that he is going to lose his asylum case and could be deported anyway?

I yes, like I worry about about that.

I worry about what?

Like what decision could be made.

I worry about like what conditions are like inside and how that might break his spirit.

And yeah, there's a there's a lot that I worry about.

Well, let me get back to Bob, who followed up to say, seems like something we should all be able to agree on.

Hire more immigration judges to cases can be resolved quickly, so either deport or grant status.

Do it quickly.

Don't leave people in limbo.

And he's wondering who sets asylum rules.

Are those federal laws?

So, asylum actually has a basis.

It has a basis in federal law.

It also has a basis in international law.

This idea that you have as a global community, we want people who are in danger and fleeing persecution to be able to go to other countries and find safety there.

So while there is a lot of asylum law that is in statute, there is also a lot of more technical procedural rules that are constantly changing.

And the federal government has discretion.

Is that right?

Yeah.

They have a fair amount of discretion to both through different procedural rules.

And also a wider policy is just, for example, okay.

Just even the conditions of detention can affect who's getting asylum and who's not, because a lot of people will voluntarily leave the country because they cannot tolerate being in detention any longer, even though they have a strong asylum claim.

So there's a lot that the government can do, apart from affecting statute to affect how likely someone is to get or not get asylum.

They also have been exercising, as far as I can tell, a fair amount of control over, immigration judges and immigration judges with a background in immigrant defense are appearing to be fired at a much higher rate than immigration judges with a background of working for Ice.

So the decision makers are also shifting over time.

I'm done.

Our last 30s and I did want to squeeze this in.

We've been talking about Batavia, but where have people that you've been working with who've been detained?

Where else are they being sent from?

Our region.

So especially women are being because they can't be housed at Batavia, are being shipped out of New York at alarming rates, sometimes within 24 to 72 hours.

I have clients in Texas.

I have clients in Louisiana.

I have clients in Kentucky.

The conditions are often much worse there, and it's a lot harder to provide them with legal services.

And some of these folks are pregnant, breastfeeding, parents of small children.

It's very, very disruptive to take them out of their home state and ship them far away.

And you're very busy right now.

Yes.

Well, I want to thank our guests for for being here to at least tell the facts of this case as best we can see it.

And then, Cassandra, as we leave you this hour, you mentioned an email address.

If people want to get in touch with you.

What is that again?

Free.

Omar 585 at gmail.com.

Cassandra Bocanegra is the daughter of Omar Ramos.

Mendez will be following that case in that story.

Senior manager of organizing and strategy for the Finger Lakes Region of the New York Immigration Coalition.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks to Olivia Poste Rich, senior attorney at the Worker Justice Center of New York.

Thank you for being here.

And of course, outstanding reporting from our news team.

And Gino Fanelli, as always, thank you for being here, Gina.

Thank you.

More connections coming up.

This program is a production of WXXI Public Radio.

The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of this station.

Its staff, management, or underwriters.

The broadcast is meant for the private use of our audience.

Any rebroadcast or use in another medium without expressed written consent of Z is strictly prohibited.

Connections with Evan Dawson is available as a podcast.

Just click on the connections link.

At WXXI news.org.

Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Labella associates, dedicated to the pursuit of partnership for more than 40 years, offering services in the development of buildings, infrastructure, environmental, and energy projects.

Labella powered by partnership, Labella picked Calm and Abundance Food Co-op, a community owned grocery store with a focus on local and sustainable products operating since 1968.

Located in the South Wedge and online at Abundant Start co-op, you are listening to Z, am, FM and HD Rochester, EOS FM in HD Geneva and zero HD2 Rochester area.