AUSTIN, TX — As if undertaking the long, arduous journey from Guatemala to Texas with a child in tow, seeking refuge in the United States wasn’t stress-inducing enough, a woman taking sanctuary at an Austin church has been fined more than $300,000 by immigration enforcement officials for resisting deportation.
Hilda Ramirez, 31, has been in sanctuary inside the St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 14311 Wells Port Drive, in Austin for nearly two years after receiving an order of deportation from federal immigration officials. It’s her second time in sanctuary after a previous eight-month stint from February to October in 2016 before a four-month period when she was allowed freedom of movement as her case was studied. She took refuge in the church again after her request was denied, where she remains to this day.
Despite the asylum she continues to seek on humanitarian grounds — and a background devoid of criminal history in Guatemala — Department of Homeland Security officials have determined she’s overstayed her welcome and they want her out. The department in June sent Ramirez a letter outlining the immigration policy they say she’s violated — along with a bill of sorts for having over-extended her stay.
That fine being imposed on Ramirez — an indigenous Guatemalan woman without a job who acknowledges an inability to read or write — comes to a whopping $303,620, according to a copy of the order obtained by Patch. The penalty is for “failure to depart,” according to the document.
“I thought it was a prank,” she told Patch during an interview conducted entirely in Spanish given the woman’s lack of English fluency. “I never imagined it would be like this. They know I’m not working, and fighting for my son’s life.”
She believes the letter sent to the church is merely a tactic of psychological intimidation on the part of federal immigration officials against a backdrop of anti-immigrant sentiment fomented by the administration of Donald Trump. “I think it was just used to intimidate me and other women,” she says. “It causes me some worry, and it causes me anger.”
Various immigration advocacy organizations — the Austin Sanctuary Network, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Free Migration Project, and Grassroots Leadership among them — now are demanding records from the Trump Administration “on the recent spate of exorbitant civil fines against people who have chosen to take sanctuary while pursuing their legal remedies to remain in the U.S.,” officials said in an advisory.
The number of immigrant women in sanctuary who have received such notices is unknown. In July, immigration advocates determined the practice is enabled by a seldom-used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Ac, and a number of people in sanctuary received notices of the Department of Homeland Security’s intent to fine them within a matter of weeks, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
Others have received similar notices of fines assessed daily for each day of they defy order to leave the country. Edith Espinal Moreno, an immigration activist and sanctuary seeker in Ohio, received such a notice on June 25. “I am happy that people who support me and others living in sanctuary are fighting to uncover all of the information that we know exists that proves that the Trump administration is purposefully retaliating against us because we are living in sanctuary,” she said in a prepared statement. “I want everyone to know that we are not going to let the government scare us into staying silent,” added Moreno, who has been in sanctuary since October 2017.
A copy of a letter from to Ramirez outlining the demand for $303,620 for not leaving the country when asked.
Click Here: kanken kids cheap
Lizbeth Mateo, a lawyer representing Espinal Moreno, raised concerns about the legality and motives behind the fines. “It is no secret that the Trump administration has regarded the practice of providing sanctuary to immigrants as a lawless one and has vowed to end it,” she said in a prepared statement. “But it is the government that has violated the law by trying to impose exorbitant fines in an effort to intimidate and silence immigrants who dare speak against this administration’s treatment of immigrants.”
Mateo said she is being aided by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the other organizations joining in the records request to uncover the breadth of the fines. A message from Patch to the Department of Homeland Security’s media relations department requesting details on the Ramirez case in Austin was not immediately returned.
The aim of the records request, Mateo said, is “to prove what we have known for a while that this administration is retaliating against sanctuary leaders like Edith.” Ian Head, who coordinates the Open Records Project at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “The Center for Constitutional Rights is proud to stand with the immigrant community and support our organizational partners in shining a light on this administration’s cruel and outrageous policy of fining immigrants, in particular those who have chosen to take sanctuary,” he said in a prepared statement.
Back in Austin, Ramirez spends her days inside the church waiting for her son to return from school as anxiety about their future grows. Life in the United States has not matched the idyllic vision of refuge she once had.
She said the treatment she’s received has been anything but hospitable. Before sanctuary, she and her son spent nearly a year at detention facility for immigrant women and children in South Texas. Ramirez described an uncomfortable stay tt the Karnes County Residential Center,: Verbal mistreatment by guards, water to drink with a heavy chlorine taste, meals with poor nutritional value and more.
Children housed at the center suffered from vomiting and nose bleeds given their extended stays in such conditions, she said. On top of that, Ramirez claims guards would undertake malos tratos — mistreatment as they would mock her illiteracy and indigenous status in categorizing what they perceived as her worthlessness, she told Patch.
“They were very rude to us when we were in detention,” she said. “They called us ignorant, said we don’t know how to do anything, would ask us ‘what are you doing in this country?’ They made me feel less,” she says, her voice trailing off.
Ramirez said she didn’t come to the United States seeking work as so many immigrants do. Instead, she came to escape the violence of her native country with an aim of saving her son’s life.
“It was not about a better life for me, but was about the life of my son,” she said. The scourge of gangs in Central America has been well documented, as have their tactics of recruiting boys into their ranks while meting out severe punishment to those refusing membership — including death. But Ramirez declined to talk about whether her now-13-year-old son was targeted by gangs.
“All I can say I fled to protect my son,” she said. She said her son is being allowed to go to school — for the time being, she added — and she waits for his return at the church each day.
Ramirez doesn’t have $306,620 to pay the fine, and federal immigration officials. Though lacking a formal education, Ramirez said she knows the reason for the hefty fine.
“They want to traumatize us psychologically, and I will fight for my case for both myself and my son,” she said. “ICE very well knows we don’t have that amount of money. We don’t have money, we don’t have anything. I need help from congressmen and our whole community because this is an injustice.”
If the aim is psychological torture, Ramirez suggested the correspondence has had the desired effect. “Even though they have not beaten me, they have damaged me psychologically with their offensive words,” she told Patch. “The majority of times, my head hurts. Usually, it’s one half of my head that hurts.”
Her son is emotionally taxed, showing signs of stress. Sometimes, Ramirez said, he comes home to the church feeling sad.
“I never thought immigration officials would take advantage of people so vulnerable, that would abuse people without a formal education in that manner,” she said. “But I won’t stop fighting even while they’re intimidating me because I want to fight for my child.”
Back home in Guatemala, her parents and several of her siblings have died — another subject she declines to discuss in great detail. Other than her son, she said, Ramirez has precious few family members left. It’s imagining a new life without having to hide that give her hope, buoyed by the embrace of the church protecting her from the harshness of the outside world.
“The church has been marvelous with me,” she said, her tone suddenly taking an upbeat lilt. “They are trying to help me, and are very supportive. I don’t feel alone.”
For more information about the organizations helping Ramirez, visit:
Recent Comments