Group criticizes Tulsa, ICE deal
TULSA — Data about immigration detention in Tulsa this year provides a “disturbing picture into what is happening to our vibrant immigrant community,” University of Tulsa law professor Mimi Marton said Friday.
Marton, who also is director of the Tulsa Immigrant Resource Network, said people who have no criminal record or have committed only minor traffic infractions are being deported simply for having come to America “seeking a better life.”
She spoke alongside speakers and activists from Dream Act Oklahoma-Tulsa and the New Sanctuary Network at a news conference about immigration at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center on Friday.
From Jan. 1 to April 26, Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed holds on about 560 people who were detained in the Tulsa County jail, according jail data compiled by the Tulsa Immigrant Resource Network.
Of those people, 320 were detained with no criminal history and no current charges, Marton said, and just 50 of those 320 had some form of traffic violation against them.
When Tulsa County Sheriff Vic Regalado was campaigning for his office, he pledged that Tulsa County “will not go out and actively search out, root out anybody in any community simply because of their (immigration) status,” the Tulsa World reported at the time.
Tulsa County has an agreement, known as 287(g), with federal immigration officials that deputizes some of its officers as ICE agents. Marton said she opposes that agreement because not only does the county not earn money from it but it takes deputies away from other responsibilities.
“Every 287(g) officer who is busy enforcing immigration law is one less Tulsa County officer protecting our community in Tulsa County,” Marton said.
On Friday morning, Anjelica Aviles, 9, and Aiana Aviles, 7, said goodbye to their father, who was deported to Honduras.
The girls, as well as their mother, Megan Aviles, have spent their whole lives in Oklahoma. On Wednesday, they plan to move to Honduras to be with him.
“It’s never something you want to do — rip your kids from the only family, country, they know to go to another country,” Megan Aviles said at the Equality Center.
Aviles said her husband came to the United States when he was 17, after he witnessed the murder of his brothers and kidnapping and rape of his sisters.
Last summer, he was involved in a shooting that Aviles described as self-defense. That’s when officers learned of his immigration status.
“They need their dad,” Aviles said of her daughters. “Whether it’s here or there (Honduras), my family will be together.”