Illegal immigrants urged to clam up on status

A new strategy being used by illegal immigrants in an effort to avoid deportation has little, if any, real impact, according to an attorney who works to help the immigrants.

Read Paul Giblin's blog, Checking In

The strategy calls for illegal immigrants to remain silent when law enforcement officials ask them about their immigration status. Elias Bermudez, an immigrant rights activist and Spanish-language radio host, has been advocating the tactic since Monday.

Attorney Kara Hartzler told the Tribune that the strategy is legal, but unlikely to alter deportation proceedings.

“Anyone who is asked about their immigration status has the right to just not answer. I mean, you’re required to basically give your name, but you have a right to not answer questions,” said Hartzler, a lawyer with The Florence Project, a nonprofit organization that advises people detained in Florence, Eloy and Phoenix on suspicion of being in the country illegally.

However, police officers also can take into account a person’s refusal to answer questions when they decide whether to detain a person on suspicion of being in the country illegally, she said.

Those detained people then would have to prove their immigration status in court.

However, there is one instance in which the silent treatment could affect deportation, she said. There’s a movement among some immigration lawyers to get immigration cases dismissed on the basis of racial profiling.

“In those cases, you certainly want to not have someone make a statement that is going to possibly lead to their deportation. So yeah, that’s a valid legal tactic that people are taking,” Hartzler said.

“Let’s say a police officer goes into a bus station, and he goes up to a person who looks Mexican and he says, ‘Hey, where are you from?’ Well, there’s an argument there that the police officer did that based on impermissible reasons of racial profiling,” she said.

Of course, most illegal immigrants don’t have the money or legal contacts to mount such a defense.

Bermudez outlined the silent treatment strategy while speaking at Phoenix City Hall.

“My message is, please do not answer the question: Are you here legally or not?” he said. “That question has to be answered in a court of law and under the due process of law.”

That came in response to a prior news conference by Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon during which he called for a review of police policy that bars officers from inquiring about people’s immigration status in most instances.

Gordon said he can no longer support the existing policy. He assembled a four-member panel of former federal, state and county attorneys to recommend a new policy by Dec. 31.

Afterward, Bermudez said a change in police policy is certain to lead to racial profiling of anyone who looks Hispanic or speaks Spanish.

Bermudez urged all Hispanics — both U.S. citizens and illegal immigrants — to fight potential racial profiling by giving police officers the silent treatment concerning their immigration status.

Gordon has emphasized that a key consideration in the Phoenix police policy on immigration is that it must not result in profiling.

Yet, any change in immigration policy is certain to lead to profiling, Bermudez said.

“There is no way that a police officer can detect by looks who is here legally or illegally,” he said. “So racial profiling has to take place.”