Advocates urge undocumented immigrants: prepare a ‘go-bag’

Fear rippled through a group of Latino parents in suburban Chamblee, near Atlanta when a friend was deported to Mexico and temporarily separated from her two young U.S.-born children. The kids weren't able to immediately join her because she and her husband hadn't gotten passports for them.

More than nine months later, anxiety about being taken from their children is still palpable among the members of the support group for Spanish-speaking parents — most of them undocumented — of children with Down syndrome.

To guard against such separations — a widely decried effect of recent large-scale workplace raids — social workers and activists are urging undocumented immigrants to put together emergency kits similar to the kind emergency officials encourage people to keep in case of fire or natural disaster.

"Information is power," said Sonia Parras Konrad, a lawyer in Iowa who helped undocumented immigrants in the wake of a raid at the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant in May. "If they know their rights and are prepared, they can be more in control of their lives and what happens to them."

The immigrants' kits include passports for U.S.-born children, contact info for an attorney, information on their legal rights and other material that can keep families together or help relatives retrieve a last paycheck.

Susy Martorell, a social worker and president of the board of the Hispanic Health Coalition of Georgia who has run the Down syndrome group for about 10 years, said the group's members are constantly preoccupied with their legal status. That prompted her to depart from the group's main focus on health issues once or twice a year to bring in an immigration lawyer.

At a meeting last month, the parents listened raptly, concern visible on their faces, as attorney Luis Alemany answered questions and offered advice. Alemany urged them to prepare for the detention of one or both parents by securing passports and having a well thought-out plan for who will care for the children and how the family will be reunited if the parents are deported.

"Guests like him help us a lot because we learn a lot about immigration law and what we can do to prepare in case something happens," group member Leticia Gonzalez said in Spanish.

A 42-year-old stay-at-home mom from Mexico who lives in the Atlanta area, Gonzalez said she and her construction worker husband have been even more nervous since a man her husband works with was arrested and deported two months ago. The couple, who entered the U.S. illegally and have lived here for 17 years, have been trying to make sure they have all of his papers in order, including records of U.S. taxes he's paid on his income. But she said they don't yet have passports for all of their six children, four of whom are American-born.

Immigrant rights activists in different parts of the country said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seems to have stepped up its efforts in the last year or so, leading to more deportations. That seems to be supported by ICE removal numbers which have increased every year since 2003, the earliest year for which the agency provides numbers.

(The Associated Press)

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