Bishop Orlando Findlayter sees his Brooklyn church as more than a place of worship. In 2001, he launched a coalition of Caribbean clergy to advocate for congregants that had been affected in the September 11, 2001 attacks, successfully establishing a scholarship for boys who had lost their fathers in the towers’ wreckage.

This summer, at the urging of US Rep. Yvette Clarke, Findlayter turned Clergy United to Save and Heal’s Focus towards immigration reform, an issue that he said resonated with many of his foreign-born congregants. Within months the organization had tripled in size, and in late October 120 leaders traveled to Washington, DC to meet with various Washington power players.

“We believe that trip was very successful,” Findlayter said. “You don’t usually see a hundred people dressed as ministers walking through Congress.”

Findlayter’s work underscores a larger trend: as Congress lurches towards another attempt at immigration reform, religious leaders have emerged as some of the loudest voices calling for change.

In New York’s heavily immigrant communities, churches are often a focal point of community life. The Interfaith Center of New York, founded in 1997, has leveraged this and built a coalition of over 1,000 grassroots and immigrant leaders who represent more than 15 different faiths.
“For a lot of immigrant communities the faith leader is the go-to person for everything from social work concerns to immigration status to counseling, so they’re really the point person for a lot of these communities that are finding their way,” said Reverend Chloe Breyer, executive director of the Interfaith Center.

Advocates say that this time around, the faith-based push for reform has a broader base of support than in 2007, when attempts to overhaul the immigration system failed. The Latino community has traditionally been at the forefront of immigrant rights advocacy in New York, and Findlayter said recognizing this spurred him to try and recruit more African-American and Caribbean clergy.

“As religious leaders we feel we have a mandate to get involved,” he said. “In the past, it seemed that only the Latino community was fighting.”

The wide array of faith traditions the Interfaith Center represents reflects a similar diversity in New York City’s immigration population, according to Sarah Sayeed, a program associate with the organization.

“It’s not just impacting Latinos, it’s impacting Asians, and beyond this traditional South Asian or Arab category – it’s East Asian, too,” she said. “As more people are kind of swept up or swept off, it’s critical for voices beyond the Latino community to get involved.”

Findlayter said that much of the work he does centers around educating congregants about the privileges and pitfalls of life as an undocumented immigrant. This includes advice about ensuring that people obtain tax identification numbers, or cautioning them against seeking legal advice from unscrupulous attorneys. Findlayter said as he became more heavily involved, he was surprised at how many members were undocumented.

“That’s problematic because they don’t have access to healthcare, they are unemployed or underemployed,” he said.

The education cuts both ways. Last week, the Interfaith Center brought seven different faith leaders to tour a facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey where asylum seekers await the outcome of their attempts to win refugee status.

“It was a very somber occasion,” Sayeed said. “I think that Elizabeth as a facility is better kept and maintained than a lot of other facilities, but it was quite clear that it’s a space where you were being warehoused essentially, where you were being held.”

Education aside, the Clergy United to Save and Heal march on Washington offers an example of the expanding influence faith leaders may exert in the immigration debate. Findlayter noted that, “elected officials understand that one person may represent 100 or 500 people.”

At a recent town hall meeting sponsored by the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) demonstrated that he grasped this calculus. He repeatedly urged religious leaders to galvanize their flocks.

“The first thing I want to point out is that there is a law above city and state and federal law and that is the law of God,” Rangel said at the meeting. “Throughout history, if someone was hunted down unfairly there was one place you can go for safe passage.”

An augmented clergy presence in the immigration debate comes as advocates are focusing their attention on policies that can tear families apart. As the law currently stands, judges have no discretion to consider whether someone facing deportation for a criminal offense has U.S. citizen children.

For clergy that develop close relationships with the families that attend their churches, mosques and synagogues, the issue of family unity has provided a powerful impetus get involved. Frances Liu, a field coordinator for the New York Immigrant Coalition, said that clergy have the ability to distil the legal intricacies of immigration law into a simple, moral statement.

“There’s a recognition that the debate got really toxic the last time around, so we’ve seen many faith leaders answering the call to bring the moral center back to the debate,” she said.

Daniel Conkle, a professor of religious studies at Indiana University, drew a parallel between the flurry of faith-based immigration activity and church leadership during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Both sought to restore the same fundamental rights to all members of society, regardless of ethnicity or background.

“The beliefs of common religions in the United States – that is to say Christianity, Judaism and Islam – have significant political and moral implications,” Conkle said. “The basic premises of the faith have implications as to how one ought to treat people, so religion is inherently concerned about community.”

A rally last week in front of the immigrant detention center on the corner of Varick Street and Houston Street featured representatives from African, Latino and Asian immigrant advocacy organizations, all of whom decried immigration policies that they said were fracturing their communities. Under the glare of a bright December sun, protestors waved banners and shouted slogans such as “immigrant rights are human rights.” Behind them, six uniformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers looked on.

Reverend Robert Coleman of Riverside Church began the protest, which was organized by the New York Immigration Coalition, began with a prayer. The detention center looming to Coleman’s right has drawn media attention after a 2008 petition, composed by detainees who had not been charged with criminal offenses, described abuses including a lack of medical attention.

“Oh God, we find part of your face is incomplete, because part of your face is in this building,” Coleman said. “Part of your face is hidden and detained and transferred from place to place.”

“Strengthen our hearts and steady our minds that we may stand in the path of injustice and say ‘no more’”.

Ferman, 65, grew up a precocious pianist in Uruguay. She started playing at age three, gave her first concert when she was seven, and by 11 had played with a symphony orchestra.

When Ferman arrived in the United States 26 years ago, she was surprised to discover that no one was familiar with famous composers from Uruguay – or from Latin America in general. She expanded her repertoire to include more music from her home country and created the organization Pan-American Music and Art Research, recruiting talented musicians from various Latin American countries.

“I came here and no one knew what my country was, so I decided to show it with music,” she said. “At the beginning they told me that I was jeopardizing my career, that no one was going to listen to Latin American musicians and composers.”

An audience of about 100 people assembled in the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center (on Monday for the launch of this year’s Latin American Cultural Week, which features Latin American dancers and musicians around the city. Mayor Bloomberg’s office officially recognized the cultural celebration last year.

A procession of musicians with impressive resumes including symphony orchestras and Grammy nominations took turns sitting behind a gleaming black grand piano and played the work of composers from Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico and Brazil. The sound reverberated off the tile floors and palm trees that rose out of the plaza, drawing in patrons from nearby chain stores.

The audience also received free salsa lessons from a pair of Argentinian instructors, though the response was lukewarm. A mostly elderly crowd – with women outnumbering men four to one – formed jagged lines and swayed politely for ten minutes or so. Afterwards came a salsa performance. The guitarist sat bent over his instrument, his shiny black ponytail hanging down his back, while the pianist compressed and bent  his body to the rhythm of the music.

The master of ceremonies, Malin Falu, introduced songs in both Spanish and English, the former coming with some appreciative head nods from audience members. She described a song entitled “Malagueña” as “one of the pieces we know since we are growing up in our home countries.”

“This,” Falu said while brandishing a program in between performances, “should be a document for anyone who is studying Latin American music. This builds knowledge that we have classical musicians of the best quality.”

Since Ferman first started organizing the celebration in 2006, more artists have been volunteerring her services, rather than her needing to coax them. Now that it is officially recognized by the mayor’s office and is part of the city’s Latin Media and Entertainment Commission, she said the event has gained visibility.

Sandra Jaikaran, a 48-year-old nanny, was passing by with two little girls when she noticed the event. She did not know the composers, she said, but she was impressed.

“I think it’s fascinating,” she said. “It’s a kind of sophisticated thing – it has class, elegance to it.”

— Jeremy B. White

Habtamu Dugo has lived in New York with asylee status since 2008. He emigrated here from Ethiopia, where he worked as a journalist for a decade. His work, which often detailed government-sponsored violence, exposed him to beatings and death threats.

“I wrote stories of violent governmental abuses against specific designated ethnic groups, and that put me at loggerheads with the ruling regime,” Dugo said. “Every healthy statement that’s critical of how the government operates risks your life.

Dugo is a member of the Oromo tribe, which faces systematic discrimination despite representing the largest ethnic group in the country. Dugo said that the silencing of Ethiopian intellectuals has precipitated a mass exodus of educated professionals. Journalists in Ethiopia often publish anonymously, or using pseudonyms.

Currently, Dugo travels around the country raising awareness about the situation in Ethiopia.  He has spoken at conferences in Washington, DC and Atlanta, on Voice of America and at middle schools in Colorado. He said that even diaspora Ethiopians are often unaware of the enormity of conditions in state prisons and the repression of certain ethnic groups.

The situation in Ethiopia, Dugo said, is unlikely to improve soon. In the absence of a healthy Ethiopian press, able to hold the government accountable, his current work is the next best thing.

“I’m just working for the people who don’t have a chance to speak for themselves,” he said. “I am doing that until I can see a change back home. I am doing that in every capacity I can, and this is the best place to do it.”

— Jeremy B. White

Joe Leone, an Italian-American, talking to an employee at his store. Photo: Jeremy B. White

By Jeremy B. White

The story of Joe Leone Introna’s family is the quintessential American narrative of immigrant success. His grandfather immigrated to America from Bari, Italy in 1947. He worked as a longshoreman and sent money home to his widowed mother.

Two generations later, Leone, 34, runs a thriving Italian food importing and catering business that he founded 12 years ago and that is a fixture in his New Jersey community. Also like his grandfather, Leone works feverishly to raise money and send it to Italians in need.

A 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck Italy’s Abruzzi region in the early hours of April 6, killing nearly 300 people and leaving over 48,000 homeless. Leone quickly raised about $25,000 and traveled to the town of L’Aquila, where he distributed clothing, toiletries and flashlights to the victims.

“The experience was very overwhelming,” Leone said.

Before Leone left, he obliged an Italian man’s request for an American flag, having brought one with the rest of the supplies. As he drove away from the town, he saw an image that he said spurred him into action: an Italian flag and an American flag, fluttering side by side over the shattered town.

“I said that my work wasn’t done yet,” Leone said. “I had a concept of how to motivate Italians throughout the country, young and old, to give back to the homeland of Italy.”

Inspired by the rows of blue government-issue canvass tents that L’Aquila’s dispossessed were using for shelter, Leone has spent the last nine weeks sleeping in a Eureka! brand tent to raise awareness and generate contributions to Joe Leone’s Earthquake Relief Fund, a registered 501(c)(3) charity.

He has pitched the tent in cities around the country, mapping his route through states with a population of at least 300,000 Italian-Americans. Every time someone contributes money, Leone has him or her sign a 6-foot by 5-foot American flag and write where in Italy his or her family originated from. This has produced seven huge flags adorned with signatures and the handwritten names of Italian towns from Naples to Palermo, which Leone will distribute to L’Aquila’s residents when he returns as a sign of Italian-American solidarity.

Leone's current quarters, in front of his New Jersey store. Photo: Jeremy B. White

The tent outside of his store in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey stands beneath a signpost pointing to the different cities Leone has visited so far: Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Las Vegas, Hoboken, Providence and Westerley, Rhode Island.

Leone has raised around $20,000 since he established the relief fund, and he pays administrative and travel costs himself. He said that the small size of the charity – he essentially runs it himself, with the help of a few coworkers – makes it more accountable than other charities.

When he returns to L’Aquila on Nov. 22, Leone said he will bring a debit card so that he can purchase directly from local businesses. Christy Feig, director of international communications for the American Red Cross, said that this type of donation often proves more useful than “in-kind” supplies such as clothing that people on the ground must sort through.

“When you send money it can be spent locally and that gives a boost to the local economy and can help get it going again after a devastating disaster,” Feig wrote in an e-mail.

The Italian Tribune, a newspaper targeted at an Italian-American audience in the tri-state area, honored Leone on Columbus Day as “a fine representation of our ethnic background,” editor Marion Fortuna said. In Point Pleasant Beach and Sea Girt, the two New Jersey towns in which Leone’s stores are located, people have been equally receptive.

“I thought it was pretty amazing,” said Susan Diamond, a regular patron, as she waited at the checkout counter adjacent to an American flag layered with signatures. “I’m part Italian, so it really touched my heart.”

Not everyone has been as supportive. Leone’s travels have left him discouraged, as competition from big-name charities such as the American Cross and the National Italian American Foundation has claimed possible donors.

“People have been very territorial when it comes to what to fundraise for, who to fundraise for,” he said. “People are questioning why I’m doing this, why I’m sleeping in the tent.”

“There’s some times that I want to take all they money we’ve raised, put in a check and just give it to an organization that’s bringing money over there and just be done with it,” Leone said. “But then there’s the other side of me that’s saying I can’t do that, because it’s going back on every person that has donated throughout the country.”

Leone is tired. A large man with thick black hair swooped back in stiff curls, his fatigue is evident in his soft and halting speech during an interview in his office. His fundraising mission, he said, is “the hardest thing I’ve done in my life.” After more than two months of sleeping in a tent through the steady noise of Boston or the temperature extremes of the Nevada desert, it has not gotten any easier.

“I’ve never camped a day in my life,” he said. “I get better sleep on the plane.”

Leone had just returned from Los Angeles to spend a few hours checking in on his business before embarking on an evening flight to Florida. He moved among display cases full of meat and tubs of multicolored marinated olives, shaking hands with customers and dispensing advice to employees.

Then, it was time to go.

“I want to see this through, 100%,” Leone said. “I’ve been very tempted on quitting, but I’m not a quitter.”

Yunhong Chopstick Shop, which opened its doors about a year ago, is the first store specializing in chopsticks in New York, according to proprietor Richard Lam. He said that the clientele is about half tourists looking for a souvenir and half local Chinese shoppers in search of a housewarming gift to celebrate special rites like holidays and weddings.

“It’s actually a custom for Chinese to give these out as a gift for many occasions,” Lam said.

The chopsticks on sale varied widely in appearance and price, ranging from $44 for “the Chess Player” to $282 for “Four Gentlemen”. Most of them were sold in their own boxes, similar to a set of silverware. One set came in a red box featuring “Mao’s Poem” and a picture of the erstwhile chairman. There was a pair for each sign of the Chinese zodiac – Rabbits, Oxen, Rats and all the rest.

Lam said that the different prices reflected the varying levels of workmanship required of and the material involved. For example, artisans spend 15-20 days layering in lacquer for a pair with inlaid seashells. Similarly, black mahogany and ebony are among the more expensive types of wood.

A couple of Israeli tourists were browsing through sets of wooden chopsticks with different inscriptions, such as “to serve the people” and “to always keep learning.” They settled on “to seek the truth.”

— Jeremy B. White

When Carmen Duarte’s son Ramon was arrested in 2004 his status as a legal permanent resident meant that the charges – drug possession and intent to sell – placed him in deportation proceedings. Carmen knew she needed a lawyer.

The first lawyer Duarte turned to charged her in the first meeting. Soon, Duarte said, she was going straight from work to his office, paycheck in hand. Unable to keep up with payments, she was evicted from the Queens apartment she had lived in for 18 years. Ramon remained in prison.

“This is a very cruel person,” Duarte said.

A woman on a train overheard Carmen talking about her woes and suggested that she go to a man named Victor Espinal. Espinal said he could get Ramon out of prison and even his citizenship. But Duarte eventually discovered that Espinal was not certified to act as an attorney.

“I didn’t know he was not a lawyer,” Duarte said. “A lot of people was innocent, going in his office – for nothing.”

Duarte’s struggle is an emblematic case of immigration service fraud. Last Monday, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that his office had issued 30 subpoenas to people and organizations accused of immigration service fraud, expanding a sweeping investigation launched this May.

The investigation is the largest under Cuomo’s tenure, now encompassing nearly 100 businesses and individuals in New York City and Long Island. But immigrant rights advocates say the investigation underscores a perennial problem of foreign-born New Yorkers getting bilked out of their money by people offering services they cannot deliver.

“Definitely the issue of fraud, in terms of immigration service providers, is rampant,” said Valeria Treves, executive director of the Queens-based organization New Immigrant Community Empowerment. “There’s a lot of misinformation that the community has to suffer through.”

Immigrants are particularly vulnerable because of their ignorance of the complexities of U.S. immigration law. They will go to neighborhood businesses or individuals in pursuit of documentation that will allow them to work legally or that will update their legal residency status, often without being eligible.

Fraudulent organizations will mislead such clients, promising to help them obtain the necessary papers and charging accordingly. They often claim to “know someone” in immigration services that will allow them to bypass the usual legal procedures, or will invent nonexistent visa categories, Treves said.

“People are desperate for immigration papers, and they will believe a lot of things to get those papers,” Treves said.

The transactions are often informal, cash-in-hand affairs that do not leave a money trail. Treves said that a fear of authorities, particularly among undocumented immigrants, can discourage exploited immigrants from reporting their cases, although once a certain a specific person or business is publicly denounced “a lot of people come out of the woodwork.”

The consequences can be more dire than losing money. In an especially bitter piece of irony, immigrants seeking residency papers will unwittingly alert immigration services to past misdemeanors. This can be the first step in starting deportation proceedings, according to Angela Fernandez, executive director of the Northern Manhattan Immigrant Coalition.

“If they do submit paperwork, they could really put this person in violation of the law and even could get them deported,” Fernandez said.

Cuomo’s subpoenas target people who are not accredited for the services they claim to offer. For example, notary publics, or “notarios” in Spanish, are ubiquitous in heavily Latino areas of the city, Fernandez said. Although they are only legally permitted to provide services such as help with tax returns, these “notarios” often claim the authority to help clients get immigration papers.

In Latin America “notarios” have broader powers, including the ability to act as attorneys, and this discrepancy may help explain why Latin Americans continue to turn to them.

“[It’s] the comfort level of if it’s a storefront compared to a huge building downtown,” Fernandez said.

In one high profile case recently undertaken by Queens District Attorney Robert Brown’s office, a man running his operation out of a storefront church in Corona, Queens, pleaded guilty to claiming more than $50,000 from a mostly Ecuadorian clientele.

“People turn to members of their community because they trust them and because they speak the same language, and these people turn around and prey on them,” Fernandez said.

The issue is more acute in the Korean-American community because transactions with people promising immigration papers often occur in an informal setting, according to Kathy Chae, staff attorney for the Flushing based community organization YKASEC – Empowering the Korean Community.

Chae said that in New York’s Latin American neighborhoods, perpetrators of fraud such as “notarios” are often well known and established in their communities. This is not the case for many of the Korean victims Chae has dealt with, who were promised documentation by someone they did not know. When these people abscond with the money, victims have slim chances of locating them.

“The most common stereotype is ‘I was introduced by a friend,’” Chae said. “I haven’t seen anyone who can bring a case or even a specific name.”

While Treves lauded Cuomo for prosecuting these cases, she said that the issue is likely to persist if immigrants continue to receive inadequate information.

“We also need to get resources so we can take educational measures with communities and take preventative action,” she said.

The USCIS building is in many ways the apotheosis of faceless bureaucracy. The building soars out of the ground at 26 Federal Plaza, a hulking grey rectangle tiled with row upon row of tinted windows. You pass through a metal detector into a building. Once inside, you encounter people wandering from floor to floor in search of various forms, or waiting in line for the person who will direct them to the next line. There is, for no particular reason, a partially enforced rule against using cell phones.

The room we met in was a scrubbed, dull-gleaming white. Two symmetrically placed holders full of little American flags lie on the table. The only decoration adorning the walls is a USCIS seal and headshots of President Obama, Vice President Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Mayorkas was much warmer than his agency’s New York building. He is an immigrant from Cuba, naturalized in 1973, and the experience seemed to give him empathy for the people USCIS daily denies or grants entry to the American Dream. He spoke of his grandparents scrupulously saving money to pay for the naturalization process, and frequently referenced “look[ing] through the eyes of those we serve.”

He spoke about reaching out to learn the concerns of these people, saying that, “as a public service agency, we shouldn’t govern by edict.” He noted that USCIS gets all of its funding from the fees associated with applying for status, and this means an obligation to transparency and consistency across different states.

“The public owns us, and we have an obligation to be open and candid,” he said.

Another topic of discussion was the sharp drop in the number of applications to USCIS over the last year, which was accompanied by a parallel decline in revenue. Mayorkas speculated that the drop-off might be due to the recession, and then fended off questions about proposed fee increases intended to cover lost revenue by saying any such hike would be “modest”.

The bureaucrat-speak, in which Mayorkas extolled the virtues of a new USCIS website, gave noncommittal responses about “evaluating possibilities,” and deferred questions about looming immigration reform, was as vanilla as it comes. But Mayorkas is clearly smart and committed to his job, and seems to possess a quality that can be so rare in a huge state-run bureaucracy: compassion.

—By Jeremy B. White

Arches of shimmering green, white and red bunting hang over several blocks of Mulberry Street in downtown Manhattan, the air suffused with the scent of fried dough and grilling sausages; vendors sell Italian soccer jerseys and t-shirts emblazoned with slogans like “Italian Prince”.

Offerings ranged from the authentic – delectable Italian foods made with important ingredients – to the campy, as in a sign above a pizza shop with an image of Vito Corleone intoning, “we’ll make you a pizza you can’t refuse.”

“This festival was brought here 83 years ago,” said Jerry Scivetti, who moved to New York from Italy when he was 15. “They passed it over to their children, their children to their children, and it will always go on.”

Despite all the proud displays of Italian culture, the Italian Americans I spoke with talked more about how the feast is a reminder of what once was. Italians are in many ways the iconic New York immigrants, conjuring up images of turn-of-the-century Ellis Island and of a people fleeing hardship to build a new life.

But “Little Italy” is largely submerged in Chinatown, evident from the steady encroachment of awnings written in Chinese on the festival’s fringes. Italians have widely dispersed from their downtown landing point of a century ago, first to other boroughs, then to the suburbs of New Jersey and Long Island and beyond.

The religious epicenter of the celebration was the Franciscan Fathers Church of the Most Precious Blood, a stoic stone building that was erected in 1872. Visitors tacked money to a board standing in front of a fiberglass statue of Saint Gennaro (mostly $1 bills, with the occasional $5 or $10) and tables set out before the church displayed medallions with images of saints, statuettes and rosaries.

“The church is very small now, mostly visitors,” said Father Joe, a Franciscan from a nearby church who was helping with the event. He said that the congregation has historically been mostly Italian, but he noted that a Vietnamese priest now leads a weekly Vietnamese language mass.

Still, many Italian-Americans’ roots run deep, and the festival serves as a reminder. Pat Castellano, an architect who lives on Long Island, said of his mother Phyllis – a woman who grew up Little Italy and identified herself as one year older than Saint Gennaro himself — “what happened in the past stays with her.”

“People come back because they feel comfortable in this neighborhood,” he said. “Even if they don’t live here, it’s home.”

—By Jeremy B. White

When Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) leaped to his feet to question the veracity of President Obama’s claim that undocumented immigrants would not receive access to healthcare, he offered what many are calling a preview of how the two issues could become inextricably linked.

Just as some of the most contentious rhetoric surrounding the healthcare debate has concerned resources and cost – who gets what when, essentially – the immigration debate will revive old arguments about who is entitled to government programs.

Obama already linked the two issues while speaking to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus , and media outlets such as Politico have already written about what may be on the horizon.

The president has pledged to take up immigration reform in 2010, a pledge welcomed by the Hispanic advocacy groups who lent him broad support during his election campaign but have since complained of being sidelined.

A report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has determined that undocumented immigrants get access to healthcare in the form of affordability credits, which are effectively government subsidized healthcare discounts.

Director of Research Steve Camarota used the analogy of a highway with a speed limit that police say they will never enforce, echoing a criticism that the healthcare bill lacks sufficient mechanisms to check applicants’ citizenship status.

Camarota said that if the bill passes in current form, the government could stand to pay double or even triple of the funding it currently provides to undocumented immigrants.

He contrasted an analysis based on what is fiscally sound with an ideological stance built on the principle that “everyone in America as a result of their personhood should have health insurance, just as everyone who is accused of a crime, even an illegal immigrant, should have a lawyer”.

Walter Ewing, a senior researcher with the Immigration Policy Center, wrote in response on his blog that the CIS report “present[s] a portrait of immigration and the U.S. economy that is over-simplified and off the mark”.

So, the policy wonks have already begun sparring. Stay tuned to see what happens when elected officials take this up. Like the healthcare debate, may to get ugly. Just as we have heard incendiary arguments about Obama plotting to take away Grandma, some lawmakers are likely to begin inveighing about immigrants as sapping the country’s jobs and resources.

— By Jeremy B. White

By Jeremy B. White

At a pro-immigrant rally in East Harlem last Thursday, Jose Tirso described in halting Spanish how a misdemeanor may get him sent back to his native Dominican Republic.

In 2003 Tirso, 53, was serving time in Rikers Island for marijuana possession when he was told he had a “visitor” waiting to see him in the jail’s gym. But instead of his family, Tirso found Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents.

Tirso, a frail man shielded from the chill wind by a light brown sweatshirt, fought back tears as he spoke of being held for nearly a week past his release date and of not being provided medication for a heart condition. He is still fighting deportation proceedings initiated when ICE agents interviewed him.

Tirso is one of the more than 13,000 foreign born inmates at Rikers who have been swept up in immigration dragnets over the past five years. The issue of federal immigration agents targeting foreign-born inmates at Rikers has become a top priority for immigrant advocacy groups.

These groups are carefully eyeing Dr. Dora Schriro, who replaced Martin Horn as commissioner of the New York City Department of Corrections on Monday, as a potential ally in their battle to bar ICE from city jails.

At the heart of this issue is the overlap between New York City jails, whose inmates face criminal convictions, and ICE, a federal agency that detains who may be deported. Schriro has overseen systems that detain immigrants as well as prisons that house convicted criminals.

Schriro began her career as the Assistant Commissioner at the City Department of Corrections under former mayor Ed Koch, and later oversaw the state detention systems for Missouri and for Arizona. Her work in Arizona earned her an “Innovations in American Government” award.

She also advised Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano on detention and removal, and directed for a short time ICE’s office of Detention Policy and Planning, an agency created in August to help overhaul the sprawling immigrant detention system.

“I’m cautiously optimistic about what Ms. Schriro can accomplish,” said Michelle Fei. director of the Immigrant Defense Fund.  “My understanding is that she does have a great background on immigration and how that interacts with the criminal justice system.”

Schriro has said that she resigned her post with ICE and moved to New York to be closer to family. She is not yet accepting calls from reporters, according to DOC spokesperson Steve Morello.

Caroline Isaacs, director of the Arizona branch of the pro-immigrant American Friends Service Committee, said that Schriro developed a reputation as a pragmatist during her time in Arizona. Isaacs described Schriro as “polished,” someone who “likes to look at the research of what’s going to be efficient and cost effective.”

Schriro, Isaacs said, was fairly progressive compared to her predecessor, Terry Stewart. She encouraged “sensible reform and humane treatment” and allowed advocacy groups an unprecedented level of access to Arizona prisons. But Schriro was an often inscrutable figure whose decisions could be difficult to predict, Issacs said.

“She played everything close to the chest and wouldn’t necessarily implement the reforms we were pushing for,” Isaacs said.

Isaacs cautioned against predicting too much based on Schriro’s tenure in Arizona, noting that “what’s progressive in a state like Arizona is going to be so foreign to people in New York.” Riker’s Island contains 10 separate jails, with three other facilities in the greater city; in Arizona, Schriro was responsible for 10 prison complexes and an array of private institutions that contracted with the state.

New York immigration advocacy groups are especially critical of the Criminal Alien Program, a program that gives ICE access to DOC records listing place of birth for people incarcerated in New York City prisons.

Here’s how it works: after ICE finds that an inmate was born somewhere other than the United States and could therefore be subject to deportation, it dispatches agents to interview that inmate.

Although these interviews are voluntary, immigrant advocates say that most inmates are unaware of this and may unwittingly give information leading to their detention. Inmates – including some who are U.S. citizens – can be transferred to remote facilities in Texas and Louisiana, sometimes without having yet been convicted of a crime.

“People at Rikers who are arrested for minor charges, people who are wrongfully arrested, people who have served their convictions – all of those get wrapped up into the Criminal Alien Program and then as soon as they enter into Rikers are sent down this road to deportation,” said Fei.

Fei said that, in interviews, inmates have described ICE agents using coercive methods such as threatening to detain their families if they did not cooperate. A recent agreement between advocacy groups and Horn has committed DOC to provide inmates with more information about their rights related to ICE, and Fei said advocates would be looking to Schriro to ensure that she upholds these reforms.

Todd Clear, a professor at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that Schriro will have the power to do “a wide variety of things”, including controlling how undocumented immigrants are transferred from New York jails to the immigration detention system and determining their access to outside resources.

“As long as they are in New York state custody,” Clear said, “she has very substantial discretion about what kinds of programs she can provide them.”