Portside

What happens when loathing for immigrants reflexively trumps all other concerns?

We learned one answer to this question late last month, when a crucial witness to the Hard Rock Hotel collapse in New Orleans was deported to his native Honduras. The witness, Delmer Joel Ramirez Palma, had reported job site dangers to his supervisors before the collapse, which killed three people and injured dozens. Afterward, he spoke to media and to the whistleblower division of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which is investigating the incident along with the New Orleans Police Department.

But two days after the collapse, in what was at best a bizarre coincidence, he was arrested by federal authorities for fishing without a license and turned over to ICE. Because of his importance as a witness, the head of the state’s labor agency requested a stay in his deportation, according to CNN.

The Trump administration had the ability to grant a temporary law enforcement parole or deferred action, but chose not to. ICE also showed little regard for the principles underlying an agreement with the U.S. Department of Labor (of which OSHA is a part) not to let immigration enforcement obstruct investigations of workplace infractions.

Will the investigation of the collapse reveal legal violations, potentially leading to civil lawsuits or criminal charges? Most likely. Will the investigation explain why the collapse happened, and how to prevent future tragedies? Almost definitely. Is a person who was there before and during, who raised concerns before the incident and saw everything that happened, a critical witness? Resoundingly, yes. And remember, unsafe construction conditions endanger pedestrians and the general public, in addition to workers. Ramirez Palma’s deportation will prevent this event from being fully understood, and will discourage future whistleblowers of all kinds from coming forward.

That’s why the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health sent U.S. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia a petition today, signed by more than 500 individuals and organizations, calling on him to make every effort to bring Ramirez Palma back to the United States to help with the investigation.

The Trump administration’s foolish, outrageous decision to deport this witness demonstrates an Ahab-like focus on enforcing one law—the Immigration and Nationality Act—even when it plainly and seriously undermines enforcement of so many others. The decision to deport Ramirez Palma is also peak hypocrisy. The Trump administration purports to care about law enforcement, but when a local law enforcement official asks for help from the administration—help they can readily give—the Trump team turns its back.

In fact, hypercharged immigration enforcement endangers communities in a host of ways. Harsh and unpredictable immigration enforcement dissuades victims from reporting crimes like domestic violence. In a 2017 survey of law enforcement agencies, officials reported that a range of crimes were going unreported and becoming harder to investigate for this reason, including domestic violence, human trafficking, sexual assault, child abuse, extortion, and elder abuse. This has broad-ranging consequences; many communities—and even the same household—can contain families with mixed status (undocumented, residents, and citizens). As more than 30 current and former prosecutors observed in a 2018 amicus brief, “Police cannot prevent or solve crimes if victims or witnesses are unwilling to talk to them or prosecutors because of concerns that they, their loved ones, or their neighbors will face adverse immigration consequences.”

ICE officers who make immigration arrests in courthouses make matters worse. When people fear detention or deportation if they go to court, that seriously impedes the functioning of our legal system: Victims won’t enter the courthouse, witnesses won’t appear, and defendants won’t show up, either. That’s why the chief judges in California, New Jersey, and Washington state all wrote to key Department of Homeland Security officials in 2017 to express their concerns about the impact of ICE in courthouses—to no avail. That’s also why a few months ago, two district attorneys in Massachusetts, and later the Brooklyn district attorney and New York state attorney general, filed lawsuits, still pending, to stop ICE from entering their state courts.

In other cases, ICE has preempted the wheels of justice by deporting criminal defendants prior to trial. For example, this fall, ICE deported a man in Colorado accused of sexually assaulting a child. This occurred before his case was resolved, prompting a critical observation by Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty: “If the defendant returns to the United States, it will not be as a convicted sex offender who served a sentence and is on the sex offender registry. Their action disrupted the case and our path to a mandatory prison sentence.” In October, Massachusetts’s top judges objected to deporting criminal defendants before trial, because it interferes with the state’s criminal process: “It prevents victims from having their day in court, denies defendants the opportunity to be exonerated, and allows defendants who would otherwise be convicted to escape punishment.”

Now, with the deportation of Ramirez Palma, ICE may have reached a new low. What does it mean when the federal government cavalierly deports a key witness (and victim) of a tragic and dramatic building collapse? And when this occurs despite a top state official’s request for a stay, and amidst coverage by national media? And how many less high-profile witnesses and victims have been swiftly deported, without anyone knowing?

Reputable studies have repeatedly shown that immigration itself either reduces crime or has no impact on it. Other laws matter, too. ICE needs to stop interfering with the justice system and public safety, by taking a more measured and strategic approach to enforcement in general, by not arresting people at courthouses, and by refraining from deporting people (plaintiffs, victims, witnesses, defendants) in the middle of investigations, lawsuits, or prosecutions. ICE should also quickly rectify this particular situation, and parole Ramirez Palma back into the country.

It’s a dangerous time when the federal government uses immigration enforcement for its own political ends, contrary to the interests of both justice and public safety. What this leads to is not law and order, but lawlessness and disorder and a greater risk to public safety.

Terri Gerstein is the director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at the Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program.

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