Source: mprnews.org<\/p>\n\n\n\n
People packed the sanctuary at Church of the Incarnation in \nMinneapolis on Sunday for a Spanish-language Mass \u2014 and after communion \nand prayers wrapped up, they headed to the church basement, looking for \nmore worldly answers to many of their fears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As federal \nauthorities confirmed stepped-up immigration enforcement across the \nUnited States over the weekend, immigrants in Minnesota with legal \nstatus \u2014 and those without \u2014 said their fears were growing more real by \nthe hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“They feel afraid. Because they don’t know who is who, \nand who supports us,” said Antonia Alvarez of Pueblos de Lucha y \nEsperanza, an immigrant advocacy organization based in Minneapolis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She\n helped organize the ad-hoc legal clinic, with lawyers at folding \ntables, tucked into Sunday school classrooms and offices in the \ncentury-old Catholic church on Pleasant Street and 38th Avenue in south \nMinneapolis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alvarez\n said some immigrants were reluctant to so much as leave their homes \nover the weekend, for fear of encountering Immigration and Customs \nEnforcement officials even on the way to church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The legal clinic\n started just hours after Acting ICE Director Matthew Albence said that a\n long-anticipated crackdown on deportation orders had begun around the \ncountry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We are doing targeted enforcement actions against \nspecific individuals who have had their day in immigration court, and \nhave been ordered removed by an immigration judge,” he told Fox News on \nSunday morning. “These are individuals who have come to this country \nillegally, had the opportunity to make an asylum claim in front of an \nimmigration judge, and most of them chose not to avail themselves of the\n opportunity and didn’t even show up for their first hearing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NPR reported that the roundup showed few signs of materializing Sunday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
St.\n Paul immigration attorney Kara Lynum told the crowd at the church in \nMinneapolis Sunday that there wasn’t any initial indication that ICE had\n stepped up that activity yet in Minnesota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It seems like it’s just kind of a hodgepodge here and there,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lynum\n said the prospect of the crackdown, though, had struck fear in people \nin many situations all over the region \u2014 from new arrivals who ICE \ndidn’t even know about, to naturalized citizens who still fear a knock \nfrom immigration agents on their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She took issue with \nassertions that stepped-up enforcement was the inevitable legal \nconclusion of a full and due process for immigrants who came to the U.S.\n illegally. Lynum also said a recent crush of arrivals and a flurry of \nlegal activity hasn’t given authorities the chance to even find some \npeople to tell them their day in immigration court is coming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“So\n when the administration says that, we know that they may have what’s \ncalled an in absentia order \u2014 which means they were ordered deported \nwhen they weren’t even in court, because they didn’t know about it,” she\n said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lynum said some arrivals are reluctant to even make a \nlegitimate claim to stay, for fear that they, too, will identify \nthemselves to authorities and fall into legal limbo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the \npeople who spoke with lawyers at the Minneapolis clinic, a 20-year-old \nman who asked not to be identified, said he’s weighing an asylum claim \nafter fleeing threats of gang violence back in his native El Salvador. \nBut he said through an interpreter that he worries even staying out of \nsight won’t protect him as immigration agents fan out across the \ncountry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through the interpreter, the man said he hears “a lot \nabout people who aren’t doing anything wrong and are detained \u2014 and then\n that kind of has a domino effect of people who are then affected by \nthat, so if one person is detained, it can lead to several other people \nbecoming detained, and that is really worrisome.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the \nnationwide immigration crackdown loomed, religious leaders across the \ncountry used their pulpits Sunday to quell concerns in immigrant \ncommunities and spring into action to help those potentially threatened \nby the operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Chicago priest talked during his homily about\n the compassion of a border activist accused of harboring illegal \nimmigrants. Dozens of churches in Houston and Los Angeles offered \nsanctuary to anyone afraid of being arrested. In Miami, activists handed\n out fliers outside churches to help immigrants know their rights in \ncase of an arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We’re living in a time where the law may \npermit the government to do certain things, but that doesn’t necessarily\n make it right,” said the Rev. John Celichowski of St. Clare de \nMontefalco Parish in Chicago, where the nearly 1,000-member congregation\n is 90 percent Hispanic and mostly immigrant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While federal \nimmigration officials were mum on details, agents had been expected to \nstart a coordinated action Sunday targeting roughly 2,000 people, \nincluding families, with final deportation orders in 10 major cities, \nincluding Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Miami.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Activists and\n city officials reported some U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement \nactivity in New York and Houston a day earlier, but it was unclear if it\n was part of the same operation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Acting Homeland Security \nSecretary Kevin McAleenan would not answer questions about the operation\n at an unrelated briefing in Washington on Sunday on the emergency \nmanagement response to Hurricane Barry.<\/p>\n