In Granger, attorneys with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project can’t keep up with the number of deportation hearings.
In Yakima, inmates held on suspicion of violating immigration laws have nearly tripled since March.
And across the Yakima Valley, social service agencies report a drop in the number of immigrants seeking help, while crime victims in this country illegally are becoming more reluctant to file complaints.
These are all signs of President Donald Trump’s executive orders stepping up immigration enforcement, said attorney Lara Contreras, who directs the Immigrant Rights Project.
Contreras said her office of three immigration attorneys and two legal advocates can’t keep pace with a growing number of deportation proceedings in Seattle and Tacoma, where a huge backlog has fostered a five-year delay on final rulings.
“There are going to be many people representing themselves in front of an immigration judge,” Contreras said. “We don’t have enough staff to represent everyone facing deportation.”
On a recent morning, a half-dozen people came to the firm’s Granger office seeking advice.
Among them was Yolanda, who feared her 18-year-old son would be targeted for deportation if he applied for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
“There’s no category of an individual who is exempt from ICE enforcement.”
-Rose Riley, ICE Spokeswoman
A student at Heritage University, he works with his mother in the fields from 3 a.m. to about 3 p.m. before heading to classes at 4 p.m.
But her anxiety was calmed when she was told her son would not be exposed to deportation if he applied for DACA, the Obama administration’s policy that allows certain undocumented people who entered the country as minors to obtain a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation, and eligibility for a work permit.
She said she doesn’t want her son to end up like her, trapped in field work. He’s majoring in business administration with a minor in computer science.
“People are fearful. There are people afraid to gather information regarding their cases,” Contreras said. “People are afraid to go to the police department because they are afraid they’ll get turned over to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).”
Incarceration
Under a federal contract, the Yakima County jail typically houses 50 to 90 people suspected of being here illegally each month, with the exception of last October when about 150 Haitian refugees were housed here temporarily.
Most of them are brought to the jail from other communities throughout Central Washington, while a small number are identified by ICE after being arrested on local charges. The county receives about $84 a day for each inmate it holds for ICE.
But this year, the jail has seen a steady increase in ICE holds. In March, there were 141 inmates suspected of being here illegally in the jail — a 156 percent increase over the same month last year when 51 such inmates were housed. Numbers in April, May and June were double or nearly triple during the same time last year.
The bigger numbers are the result of Trump’s executive orders, which provide broader guidelines for seeking out undocumented immigrants, said Rose Riley, Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman in Seattle.
And the vetting process has become less selective than in previous years, when ICE officials typically focused on serious criminals, Riley said.
“There’s no category of an individual who is exempt from ICE enforcement,” she said. “If they came into the country illegally or unlawfully, they will be subject to ICE enforcement.”
Under the executive orders, ICE officers don’t hesitate to ask anyone associated with someone who they arrest about their status, she says.
“It’s not dependent on their criminality, but on whether they are here legally or not,” she said.
“There’s definitely an increase,” said Department of Corrections Director Ed Campbell. “We’re seeing folks moved through from other jurisdictions.”
Campbell attributes some of the increases to an overall rise in the jail population, which has shot up from a daily average of 750 to 800 inmates to more than 900.
A clogged court
Last year, 2,124 people — 729 of them charged with a crime other than being here illegally — were removed from the region, which includes Washington, Oregon and Alaska, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security.
This year, the region is on pace to surpass that. Within about a three-month period from Jan. 20 to April 29, a total of 1,070 people were deported, of whom 798 were charged with a crime.
But immigration courts in Seattle and Tacoma, where the region’s cases are heard, had more than 9,470 pending cases as of March 27.
Of those, 982 are in the Tacoma court, which hears cases of those incarcerated.
Nationwide, there are 598,943 pending cases, of which 24,431 involve people convicted of crimes other than being in the country illegally.
Many cases are being delayed for months with their final hearings pushed out five years, Contreras said.
Those delays have some willing to waive due process to avoid being detained during the proceedings, said Maru Mora with Latino Advocacy in Bellingham, which works with groups across the state on immigrant rights and advocacy.
“In some cases people are just saying ‘look, if you’re going to deport me, just go ahead and deport me,’ ” she said.
More than 90 percent of those detained in Tacoma do not have attorneys and many have limited or no access to legal libraries to prepare their cases, Mora said.
Many have been moved to a county jail in northern Oregon where a legal library isn’t offered nor any facility to work on cases, she said.
And those detained in Tacoma only get one hour a day in the legal library, Mora said.
“So when they come back to court they’re not prepared for their hearing,” she said.
“The huge backlog, it’s impossible to get a lawyer; it’s expensive, and you’re transferred to a county jail.”
Meanwhile, social service providers have seen dramatic dips in people seeking services.
In May, the YWCA reported huge declines in women seeking emergency shelter, with only 28 compared to the 140 woman and 158 children the agency helped the year before.
Catholic Charities of Yakima, which provides an array of social services including low-income farm worker housing, said it saw a similar dip in people seeking services early in the year, but now people are coming in again.
“When we see a dip, usually it’s attributed to ICE activity in the area,” said CEO Manual Villafan. “That keeps them from accessing services our organization provides.”
Contreras said victims of crimes are reluctant to come forward as witnesses or seek protection orders.
“They fear that an ICE officer is lurking by,” she said.
Read more about Immigration enforcement boost felt throughout Yakima Valley
