Local agencies learn about immigrant rights and how to enforce them

More than 100 service providers, educators and non-profit organizations packed Steinbeck Hall in Hartnell College with great concern and heavy questions surrounding immigration.

“What is our right as an employer if INS comes to the door and they’re asking to come in,” said Erendira Guerrero with Encompass Community Services.

“I still have questions about our local community and their reaction to ICE,” said Lauren Dasilva with Monterey County Rape Crisis Center. “How involved our local law enforcement is with ICE.”

Organizers of the Know Your Rights and Immigration Workshop said the goal of the event is to answer many of those questions and bring clarity when it comes to organizations informing and protecting clients who are immigrants.

“There’s different ways that you can have social change and one is through information and empowerment,” said Hartnell College Professor Hortencia Jimenez. “So if immigrants realize and know that they do have rights regardless of their undocumented status, I think that’s very powerful and very transformative.”

Participants learned about immigration history, executive orders by the Trump administration about border enforcement and sanctuary cities, which Salinas City Councilors voted against being.

“Even if a jurisdiction declares themselves a sanctuary city that does not protect the population in that jurisdiction from an ICE enforcement action,” said Immigration Attorney Magnolia Zarraga. “Most likely it only says that the local resources will not be used in order to enforce immigration.

Participants also learned how to host their own know your rights workshop.

“The information has been presented in a way that I’m already having ideas how to apply it, and how to take it back to my agency,” said Guerrero.