ICE protesters tread a fine moral line

Last weekend St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Cedar Rapids held a “legal observer training” to teach anti-ICE demonstrators to film encounters with federal law enforcement. The church co-sponsored the event with the Linn County chapter of Indivisible, an anti-Trump group, and immigrant advocacy group Escucha Mi Voz (“Listen to My Voice”).

When it comes to documenting ICE encounters, there’s a fine line between what’s legal and what’s not; what’s safe and what’s risky; what’s right and what’s wrong. For their own sake, I hope anyone intending to be a “legal observer” does a better job at drawing that line than some of the organizers who were training them.

ARREST SIMULATION PREVIEWS VOLATILE SCENE

Video footage taken by KCRG in Cedar Rapids shows two simulated ICE arrests at last Saturday’s event.

In the first, two men posing as ICE officers appear unannounced in makeshift police gear and facemasks. Each takes an organizer from the front of the sanctuary by the arms and walks them out while the crowd of over 500 people mostly looks on from the pews. A few blow whistles; one records the pretend operation on her smartphone while following the pretend ICE officers to the exit and shouting repeatedly that they must show an arrest warrant.

Fact check: False. ICE detentions are typically done via administrative warrant from DHS, which officers are not obligated to show to the public. Officers do not need a judicial warrant to enter the public spaces of a church such as the sanctuary – only nonpublic areas such as offices or other locked spaces.

St. Paul's has a sign posted on its door that ICE cannot enter without a judicial warrant, which the Iowa Conference of the United Methodist Church has acknowledged lacks a legal basis.

In the second simulation, attendees utilize their training and whip out their smartphones. Most record from the pews, but well over a dozen of them quickly approach the pretend officers to crowd around them while shouting for warrants and blowing whistles.

It was perfectly legal. It was also chaos. And the larger the crowd, the louder the shouting and harder it is for people to move out of the way. In a non-simulated version, it wouldn’t take much for lawful intervention to turn into unlawful interference.

TRAINING DRAWS SCRUTINY

A video from the Jan. 31 training later went viral on social media, drawing the attention of Congresswoman Ashley Hinson, who said in a social media post that the trainings encourage activists to interfere with law enforcement. Supporters of the event pushed back, saying that attendees were given clear guidance on what bystanders have the legal right to do while present at the scene of an ICE encounter – and what they don’t.

Hopefully, that’s true. But the training is itself an acknowledgement of the high potential for something to go wrong. Leaders of the event have also acknowledged how faint the line is between legal and illegal.

They’ve even insinuated that it may be OK to cross that line in some situations. After a similar training last month in Iowa City, Escucha Mi Voz lead organizer Alejandra Escobar said that protesters may have greater freedom to obstruct ICE operations if they act in larger groups.

“ ... if it’s a crowd of 300 people and there are two [federal agents], and you’re interfering, they’re not going to arrest – they can’t. They don’t have the capacity to arrest 300 people with two vans outside,” Escobar told KCRG in an on-camera interview after the organization’s Jan. 17 training in Iowa City.

That doesn’t lend a lot of confidence to the idea that these activities are 100% ethical.

‘WORST OF THE WORST’

Some critics have implied in the last year that they might not object to ICE enforcement efforts if the administration would limit those efforts to deporting the “worst of the worst.”

But are “legal observers” actually capable of identifying the “worst of the worst” at all – let alone on the spot in volatile situations of immigration enforcement? Do they know in that moment whether the person being detained has a criminal history that places them in that category?

Probably not. Chances are that “legal observers” don’t even know the names of the people their actions are designed to protect, let alone their legal or personal histories That means they also don’t know if they’re unwittingly shielding the worst of the worst by making it harder for the feds to apprehend them.

I wish it were as dichotomous as anti-ICE activists imply: that every person targeted by immigration enforcement is either an innocent person with a spouse and a family who deserves to stay, or a rare menace whose exit is long due.

It’s not that simple. Nor is it always that clear.

Take the case of one man from Honduras who crossed the border illegally as an unaccompanied minor in 2013. Since then, he has gotten married and has two children. He was working a construction job to support his family when he was detained.

His name is Eswin Mejia, and he is also a convicted murderer. Ten years ago, while drag racing in Omaha with a blood alcohol content of more than three times the legal limit, he killed Sarah Root, a young Council Bluffs woman, by rear-ending her vehicle while she was stopped at a red light. He hit her vehicle so hard it was pushed the length of a football field.

After posting bail, he fled the country and lived a quiet life in his native Honduras, presumably staying out of further criminal trouble for nine years until he was located by the Honduran government last year and extradited to the U.S. It was only last week that he was sentenced in Nebraska to 20-22 years in prison.

With good behavior, Mejia could be released in as little as 10 years. I doubt many disagree that he qualifies as among the worst of the worst and should therefore be deported upon his release.

But say Mejia was still in the United States when he was taken into ICE custody. What do you think people trained as “legal observers” would do if they saw the construction worker and husband and father of two being approached by ICE agents?

Would those legal observers recognize the man now pushing 30 as the once-19-year-old wanted for homicide? Would they realize that ICE was about to take one of the bad guys off the street and decide it best to not get involved?

Or would they flock to the scene without a second thought and do what they were trained to do – form a crowd, blow their whistles, shout demands for a warrant and record everything on their smartphones, believing that they are doing something good?

MORAL ACTIONS OR MORAL FAILINGS?

Presumably acting to counter immoral actions, anti-ICE protesters don’t seem able (or willing) to realize their own shaky moral standing.

If their tactics helped a noncitizen targeted by ICE to elude capture, most of them would be pleased with no regard for the moral implications of their activities if that person were a criminal who was then able to commit further crimes.

There is a line between right and wrong. It’s not always obvious, and it must be drawn by every single participant who chooses to engage with ICE. That's easier said than done amid a swarm of people in a frantic emotional state.

Maybe we'll find out whether two hours of training and a couple of bizarre simulations are enough to help people discern that line. Or maybe we’ll find that these anti-ICE organizers have taken a sad situation and helped make it much, much worse.

Comments: 319-343-8222; althea.cole@thegazette.com