New London group helps free man from immigration detention center
Rauda describes treatment, conditions he endured
Roberto Rauda said he was sitting in a dormitory in a Massachusetts immigrant detention facility, feeling miserable about life on a rainy day in August, when a correction officer told him a group of protesters near the prison entrance was demanding his freedom.
“I felt happy they were fighting for me,” Rauda said during an interview Thursday in Waterford.
Rauda was released on $3,500 bail Wednesday after members of the newly formed New Londonbased immigration advocacy group Unidos Sin Fronteras rallied on his behalf. Members protested outside the Bristol County House of Corrections in North Dartmouth, Mass., sold homemade pupusas — a traditional Salvadoran dish — to raise money for Rauda’s legal fees and bail, and provided shelter and support to his wife, Emma Castillo.
“I’m very appreciative of the community,” Rauda said. “It was very hard for me when I was in the jail. I appreciate very much the people who were helping.”
Unidos Sin Fronteras member Paul Rubin and Rauda’s wife retrieved Rauda from the detention center. They stopped to eat at a local Cheesecake Factory — Rubin’s treat — and came back to the New London area, which Rauda considers his home.
On Monday, Unidos Sin Fronteras (United Without Borders) is planning a party to welcome him back to the community. He’ll also be returning that day to his job with a local lobster company.
The 37-year-old native of El Salvador has been in the United States
almost half his life. He was granted Temporary Protective Status and a work permit when he fled to the United States in 2000 from his gang-infested homeland. He said he paid legal fees for years to keep the protected status and never received the order of removal that federal Immigration & Customs Enforcement agents told him about when they detained him in May outside the state courthouse on Broad Street in New London.
Rauda said he had gone to the courthouse to deliver some paperwork he’d been asked for after receiving a ticket for having an “open container” of beer. Police had issued him a ticket when he stopped at a package store on his way home from a construction job and walked out with a bottle of beer. On his way into the courthouse he said he was approached by federal agents in plainclothes who had been parked in the courthouse driveway in a black SUV.
Rauda said he cooperated as they informed him they had an order for his arrest and put restraints on his hands, feet and waist.
“They took me to Hartford,” he said. “On the way up, they told me, ‘You don’t have a right to see a judge.’ They told me, ‘You’re going straight back to your country.’”
He said the agents’ attitudes seemed to change when he told them the only time he’d ever had contact with immigration officials was when he went to get his fingerprints taken for his work permit. He said they took him first to the ICE Enforcement & Removal Operations office in the U.S. District Courthouse in Hartford, where he was fingerprinted, given his “A” number, or Alien Registration Number, and allowed to call his wife.
From there, he was taken to the Bristol County House of Corrections.
Rauda, who had hoped to be a high school teacher before he emigrated to the United States, has no criminal record and said he’d never been incarcerated. He wasn’t prepared for the conditions inside the Massachusetts correctional facility where ICE has two units for detained immigrants. He said he slept on a thin mattress on a top bunk in a dormitory that houses about 70 detainees. He spoke of foul-smelling food, icy cold dormitories and scalding hot showers. He said some of the correctional staff spoke Spanish but only reluctantly. Rauda said they told him, “This is the United States. You can’t speak Spanish.”
During Thursday’s interview, Rauda answered some of a reporter’s questions in English. Attorney Marcy S. Levine, a member of Unidos Sin Fronteras who has opened her home to Rauda and his wife, served as a Spanish interpreter for the more complex questions and responses.
Prior to his arrest, Rauda and Castillo, together since 2013, had been living in an apartment on Bank Street. He worked for a company that packages lobster and on construction jobs, and she as a housekeeper at a Mystic hotel. After Rauda was detained, Castillo used money they had saved toward the next month’s rent to pay for legal fees. She sold their belongings — including, she said, a couch, kitchen table and television — and moved in with Levine, whom she had consulted after learning Levine handles immigration cases.
Rauda is represented by the Esperanza Center for Law and Advocacy, and was waiting inside the detention center for a November bond hearing. Levine said she called his attorney and suggested that if she moved the case from the New York court where it was originally filed to the Boston immigration court, Rauda might get a hearing sooner. It worked. On Tuesday, Rauda had a hearing via teleconference from the prison with Boston Immigration Judge Mario L. Sturla, who agreed to set a bond of $3,500. A New Haven-based advocacy put up about half of the bail amount and Unidos Sin Fronteras provided the rest, Levine said.
Sitting on Levine’s living room couch with his wife and Levine during the interview Thursday evening, Rauda said the couple would begin rebuilding their lives. Emma Castillo has an asylum hearing next March in immigration court and hopes to help her husband obtain legal status. They also hope to bring to Connecticut the children Castillo was forced to leave with relatives in Honduras. Rauda has met Castillo’s children only via video chat sessions but already refers to them as “his” kids.