PAINESVILLE, Ohio — A law firm that specializes in immigration law held a “Know Your Rights” workshop Wednesday in response to the country’s current immigration climate.
“We want to make sure that [immigrants] know that Trump’s not God. He’s not the king. They can’t just rip up the Constitution,” Richard Herman, an immigration attorney who heads the Herman Legal Group, told cleveland.com.
He said he has many clients in Painesville and wanted to inform and remind immigrants that they have protected rights under the Constitution, even if they are not U.S. citizens.
The meeting was held at the Morley Library in Painesville, a community that includes a large Latino community. The city’s Latino population doubled between 2000 and 2010, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, and the majority of them trace back to central Mexico.
Within the past week, about 700 immigrants were arrested across the country by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. While the raids were mostly targeted to catch individuals for whom ICE had a warrant to detain, they did break with Obama-era policy that prohibited collateral arrests — arrests of additional undocumented immigrants who were not named in an arrest warrant, according to Vox.com.
Though Northeast Ohio has not yet seen an ICE raid under the Trump administration, the attorneys at Wednesday’s workshop wanted the community to be aware of their rights if law enforcement comes knocking.
“The immigrant community has to prepare for worst-case scenarios under the new administration, which may include an increase in immigration arrests and placement in removal proceedings, and repeal of some of Obama’s executive orders like DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals),” a news release from the law firm regarding the presentation says.
Herman addressed the group of about 15 immigrant attendees in English. His colleague Frank Krajenke translated the presentation into Spanish.
Packets of information, including samples of an ICE warrant and a warrant signed by a judge, were handed out to the attendees. Herman also touched on the importance of a family emergency plan — like what to do if a parent is arrested while their American child is in school.
A small group of protesters lingered outside the meeting room before the workshop began, Herman said, though they left by the time it began.
See and hear more of what the immigration rights workshop had to offer in the video above.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
