Panel discussion held on immigration in Indian Valley area

FRANCONIA >> Telford Borough Police Chief Randy Floyd has lived in the local area his whole life.

“I’ve seen this area change dramatically,” he said during an immigration panel discussion co-sponsored by Indivisible HOPE and ACLU People Power Lansdale, held Feb. 8 at Peter Becker Community.

“When I was in elementary school at E. M. Crouthamel School, the most diversity there was you were either Lutheran, Catholic or Mennonite,” he said, “and I remember when the first Latino family moved to our community and came to our school, it was a big, big deal,”

Now, almost 50 years later, when he goes back to the school in Souderton, it has students of a variety of races and cultures, he said.

There are a lot of immigrant families living in Telford, he said.

“We encourage our families to come to us if they need help,” Floyd said. “We’re not going to ask you if you’re here legally or not.”

The local police are not part of federal immigration enforcement, he and other local police officials on the panel said.

“It’s not our job,” Floyd said. “It’s spelled out in law that we do not have a role in that.”

“Our role is very clear. That’s to protect our community — that’s everybody in our community, regardless,” he said.

“We’re here to do the same for them that we do for anybody else,” Franconia Township Police Sgt. George Moyer said of immigrants.

Souderton Borough Police Chief James Leary said in his 43 years of police work in Montgomery County, he has never been asked by federal immigration officers to take part in an immigration enforcement raid.

He said he also doesn’t know of the Souderton department, where he has been chief for eight years, ever having been asked by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to hold someone the local department had arrested.

“If they did ask us, we would tell them that we will go through normal processes and normal processes only,” Leary said.

There is an exception to that, however, which is if the person is wanted on criminal charges, he said. In that case, the department would hold the person, he said.

If the request was to hold someone for only an immigration issue, “We say we’re processing him or her the way we normally would and we’re releasing him in a timely fashion,” Leary said.

Lower Salford Township Police Chief Thomas Medwid said some people have misconceptions about the local departments being involved in immigration enforcement.

“We don’t have a Bat phone on our desk,” to call immigration officials, he said. “It just doesn’t happen.”

Understaffed local departments are also not looking to take on the role of the feds, he said.

“Couldn’t if we wanted to, and we don’t want to,” Medwid said.

“Forty-one million immigrants live in the United States and immigration has long supported the growth and dynamism of our economy. Immigrants and refugees are entrepreneurs, job creators, taxpayers, and consumers. But despite the positive impacts of immigrants on the United States’ economy and society, the tenor of the new administration threatens to move the United States to a more restrictive policy environment,” according to information in a release for the panel discussion. “Indivisible HOPE together with ACLU’s People Power Lansdale wants to bring some light to different aspects of immigration and improve community and police dialogue in our area.”

Christine Stenner, a German citizen in the process of emigrating to the United States and one of Invisible HOPE’s founders, said she came “looking for a place where all were welcome with open arms and the concept of melting pot was alive and well.”

Under the current administration, however, immigrants from some countries are more welcome than those from other countries, she said.

“I’ve come to learn that everyone who makes their life in America has dreams. They dream of a better life for themselves and their children and hope that circumstances and their own hard work will make their dreams come true,” she said. “They dream of being accepted into a community and being treated as equals.”

She also spoke about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program participants.

“These Dreamers are not just numbers and statistics, they are flesh and bone,” Stenner said. “They are our neighbors, our classmates, our teachers and colleagues. This issue is about real people who need our support.”

Philippe Weisz, managing attorney for HIAS PA, a non-profit refugee resettlement and legal services organization, said there are about 700,000 people in DACA and beginning March 5, about 100 of them per day are slated to lose their work permits and drivers license, along with also losing the opportunity to remain a part of the community.

Another about 300,000 people from various countries are losing their Temporary Protected Status, he said.

“Many of those individuals have been here in this country for well over 20 years,” he said.

Immigrant enforcement raids are increasing, he said.

Worldwide, the worst refugee crisis since World War II is happening, but the limit on the refugees allowed into the United States has been decreased, he said.

“I’ve been an immigration attorney for over 20 years now, and I have never seen the situation that immigrant and refugee communities are facing today,” Weisz said.

Timothy Welbeck, a civil rights attorney for the Philadelphia chapter of CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, spoke about the impact of current policies on American Muslim communities.

“I can almost without even watching my television know when the president says something inflammatory because I’ll get a significant wave of calls within a couple days,” he said.

The Muslim travel ban, he said, is “codified bigotry.”

“If you are not white, then there’s this presumption then that you are not American,” Welbeck said. “So then there’s this idea that you must prove that you’re American, prove that you are legitimately here, and if you cannot, then you’re subject to harassment, you’re subject to additional checks and things of that nature.”

White supremacists have been emboldened by President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and there is increased hostility, he said.

“We’re grateful for chiefs like Chief Floyd and his colleagues who are showing a level of empathy and compassion and preserving the peace, but some of their colleagues are not doing that,” Welbeck said.

Anne Montgomery, the parent of an adopted child through international adoption, said adoptees should have the same protections as children born into a family.

“Before 2002, and this will come as a surprise to almost everyone in the room, no child adopted by a U.S. citizen automatically had a right to U.S. citizenship,” she said. “OK, so let that sink in — no child got citizenship by virtue of adoption.”

Even after the change in the law, not all the adoptees automatically became citizens, she said.

“If we sanction the practice of international adoption, if adoption is to function as intended, I believe it must operate on a sound legal basis that guarantees the safety and security of each and every child, no exceptions,” Montgomery said.

She urged those present to support the proposed Adoptee Citizenship Act, which she said is expected to be reintroduced into the U.S. Congress soon.

In answer to a question if there has been an uptick of acts of hate since Trump’s election, Lee Detweiler of LEARN, the Local Emergency Action and Response Network, cited incidents in the area such as gravestones being knocked over in a Jewish cemetery, a woman in Doylestown wearing a Star of David who was told, “This is our country now, you Jew,” and an African-American woman being told, “This is Trump country now. You need to get out.”

Detweiler, who works with patients on dialysis said one of the patients taunted another one who was an undocumented immigrant, saying, “Are you worried now?”

“If any of my patients who are undocumented are deported, they’ll die,” Detweiler said.

“It’s brutal and it’s painful and these assaults are not just one and done,” she said. “The ramifications, they’re long lasting.”

Welbeck said he hears similar stories.

“I’ve had dozens of people, literally dozens of people, call me and tell me that they’re routinely harassed at work,” he said. That includes being called a terrorist, being told to get out of the country and that it’s not their country anymore, he said.

As a parent of a child of color, she’s also seen an uptick, Montgomery said.

“As a white person, I can walk in spaces and expect to receive a certain kind of treatment that I would have never questioned before I realized that my child doesn’t walk in the shoes and will never walk in the shoes that I can,” she said.

Since the 2016 election, her daughter has seen increased racial harassment at school, both to herself and others, Montgomery said.

“What was under the surface is above the surface now,” Montgomery said.

Moderator Golnaz Fakhimi, an immigrants’ rights attorney with ACLU PA, said the data shows that many immigrant households include persons of varying immigrant status.

“Some members may be U.S. citizens. Some may be lawful residents. Others may have a temporary status. Others may lack status completely,” she said.

The effects on one are also felt by the others, she said.

“Those chilling effects extend to everyone in the household and outward into the community,” Fakhimi said.

There is hope, though, she said.

“However dire things may feel, I think there’s still cause for hope in how we can make sure that the status quo doesn’t remain as it is, but improves,” Fakhimi said.

“White people carry a lot of power right now, and if you don’t say anything, if you don’t step up, then you’re complicit and that really matters. White men have the most power and then white women. It’s more important than ever for you to step up,” Detweiler said. “If you see something, you need to say something because if you don’t say anything, then you’re condoning that behavior.”

LEARN has done things such as holding immigration information training programs and solidarity suppers, she said.

“It’s no longer about tolerating. It’s no longer about, ‘Hey, that’s great they’re here,’” Detweiler said.

“The fact is that it’s really important that you become friends, that you get invited to Ramadan to break the fast, that you go to Passover, that you help people build a community building for their gay and lesbian alliance,” she said, “because when we do that, we are holding so deeply to our base selves of just being human.”

Earlier that evening, she said, she saw someone give up his seat at the program so someone else could have a seat.

“That’s all this is about. It’s just being decent and kind, but you’re going to have to stretch yourselves because there’s going to be uncomfortable times,” Detweiler said.

Indivisible HOPE’s next monthly meeting will be March 8 at Peter Becker Community, Tom Nolan said. The topic will be the environment, he said.