Immigrants battle deportation fears in Harvey’s aftermath
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Alain Cisneros, a community organizer for the Immigrant Families and Students in the Struggle, an advocacy group known by its Spanish acronym FIEL, speaks with Adabella Fonseca, a Mexican woman whose parents brought her to the U.S. illegally when she was a year old, with her 10-month-old daughter, as he counsels Harvey evacuees who are in the country illegally at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston.
HOUSTON >> Immigration advocates are turning to social media and visiting shelters to tell Harvey evacuees who are in the country illegally to put their personal safety above fears of being deported.
A sharp increase in immigration arrests under President Donald Trump and Texas’ tough law against cities that don’t cooperate with federal immigration authorities had created an uneasy climate even before Harvey struck. Houston has about 600,000 people in the country illegally, the third-largest in the nation, behind New York and Los Angeles.
An organizer at the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston got mixed responses after telling evacuees not to worry about immigration agents on the streets during the crisis and to have family members apply for federal disaster aid if they are U.S. citizens.
A Honduran woman told him she was considering leaving the United States with her three children. A Mexican woman said she was scared to leave the massive, makeshift shelter.
