A North Bergen woman who had been granted Temporary Protection Status in the United States since 2001 was detained for almost 36 hours in a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid titled “Operation Return to Sender” this past January.
To this date, she still has not gotten her passport and jewelry back.
Maria Argueta of North Bergen and 12 other plaintiffs who were snagged in “pre-dawn” raids by the U.S. government are now part of a lawsuit filed on their behalf by the Seton Hall Law School’s Center for Social Justice and Lowenstein Sandler, PC, on April 3.
They are seeking compensatory and punitive damages, attorney fees, and relief from harassment.
Just this past week, Seton Hall Practitioner-in-Residence Bassina Farbenblum, Esq., received a motion to dismiss the lawsuit from the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyers; they include Assistant Attorney General Gregory Katsas, U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, and Senior Trial Attorney Mary Mason.
“We received the response to the preliminary injunction this week,” said Farbenblum. “We now respond to the motion to dismiss [by early August].”
As for Argueta getting her passport and jewelry back, a response given by ICE in their motion to dismiss says they are not responsible because “It is clear that every law enforcement action cited by the plaintiffs was taken for the purposes of removing an alien from the United States.”
‘I had all my paperwork’
Argueta, speaking through an interpreter, said recently that she didn’t know why ICE took her to jail this past January.
A document filed by the Center of Social Justice on May 22 says that at 4:30 a.m. on Jan. 28, 2008, Argueta was awoken in her ground-floor apartment in North Bergen by loud banging on the doors and windows with such force she was afraid they would break.
According to Farbenblum, the basement tenants opened the door to the apartment because the ICE agents said that they were police and said they were looking for a male criminal. They then phoned Argueta’s brother, who alerted his sister that she needed to let the agents in.
“I don’t know what will happen.”
– Maria Argueta
________
According to Argueta, no male individual had lived in the apartment for the seven years she occupied it.
“Maria opened the door thinking it was the police and that she should be helping them with a criminal investigation,” said Farbenblum. “When she realized they were immigration, she then got her papers to show them.”
Argueta told agents that she was awarded Temporary Protection Status and was waiting to receive her new TPS card in the mail. Her status could have been checked in the publicly-accessible United States Citizenship and Immigration Service database.
“I had all of my paperwork,” Argueta said through an interpreter. “They didn’t want to check the papers I had. They put them down on the table and didn’t even read them.”
Allegedly tormented
Farbenblum said that ICE does not need consent or a search warrant as long as they can find a way to get the door open “through trickery.”
She said that her other plaintiffs experienced similar raids or worse, including the last family to join the case – whose 9-year-old son, a U.S. citizen, had a gun pointed at him, she said.
“I think that there is, with the new surge in immigration information, a sense of lawlessness now,” said Farbenblum.
According to the document filed by the School of Justice, agents watched Maria change out of her night clothes, and informed her that she would not be receiving a TPS card this year. The documents say she was denied an attorney and had her jewelry and Salvadorian passport seized.
They also told her that she would never be released. They arrested her before transporting her to an ICE facility in Elizabeth, where agents sang the Latino song “Maria has Gone,” according to the documents.
“A female ICE agent taunted Maria, telling her to put on clothes with long sleeves because where she was going there would be a lot of men,” said the document.
Government responds The government’s response does not acknowledge these allegations and states that they have the right to arrest anyone whom they “believe” is in the country illegally.
“They took me to Elizabeth and then to [an ICE facility in] Newark and then to jail in Jersey City,” said Argueta. “I didn’t understand why they were taking me in.”
Farbenblum said that she spent over 24 hours without food or water and was released without explanation on Jan. 30 at 3 p.m., more than 36 hours after her arrest.
Large roundups
The ICE cites 70 instances of case law in claiming they acted appropriately, while the Center for Social Justice has referred to a 1983 case called Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the New Jersey Constitution. They say the ICE is disregarding the constitution by ignoring basic civil liberties during the raids they have carried out from May 26, 2006 through this past April.
“You have these [agents] around trying to arrest as many people as they can, and the Department of Homeland Security Secretary General issued a [report] that 50 percent of the data that these people are relying on is outdated or inadequate,” said Farbenblum.
The Bivens case was the first time a federal employee’s alleged violation of constitutional rights led to monetary damages.
But the ICE said that since the Bivens case, federal agents have been able to act with “qualified immunity,” or be shielded from liability when breaking an individual’s constitutional rights, unless a hypothetical person in the agent’s place would have clearly known that they were clearly breaking someone’s rights.
They state this is even more reason why four plaintiffs who remain nameless in the current suit should reveal their identities, so that the agents may know the “particular circumstances surrounding the allegations.”
One piece of evidence that the Center of Social Justice has is from a raid that occurred in New Haven, Conn.
It is an e-mail between agents on April 30, 2007, to which the ICE did not aknowledge in their motion to dismiss.
One sentence, enlisting another agent for a raid, reads, “I know you guys usually work nights, but if you’re interested we’d love to have you! We have 18 addresses – so it should be a fun time!!”
A call made to the trial attorney on the ICE defense team, Edward Martin, was not returned.
“I don’t know what will happen,” said Argueta regarding her lawsuit.
Comments on this story can be sent to TriciaT@hudsonreporter.com