In the first week of 2016, 120 undocumented Central Americans – adults and children who in the last two years fled gang violence in their native countries – were victims of U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement raids designed to deport hundreds. Just before Christmas 2015, it was revealed that the Obama Administration would zero in on adults and children who had been ordered to be removed by an immigration judge.
While the Church World Service offered sanctuary to immigrants who were in danger of being deported and others have tried to dissuade Obama from continuing ICE raids, there doesn’t seem to be any signs of slowing down.
In Pennsylvania, for example, Montco’s immigrant community lives in constant fear, according to NBC Philadelphia. And there have even been rumors that ICE has targeted children at school. Even though government officials have said no raids will take place in school, at one Maryland high school that is 70 percent Latino, attendance has dropped, NPR reports.
There is a lot of confusion surrounding ICE raids, so Latino Rebels has started a new crowdsourcing campaign aimed at getting a better idea of where raids are happening. Starting this week, MigraMap will allow people to report raids and share their own stories.
“We’ve taken a bold approach to our community equity building initiatives, by creating our own grassroots dataset campaign to help ICE raids’ targets. We shouldn’t depend on other platforms to inform us when and where these ICE raids occurred,” said Marlena Fitzpatrick, Latino Rebels CEO. “At the same time, we’re fostering self-expression and allowing our community to tell their own stories. The community has the power to inform other constituents by using this tool.”
So far, there are fewer than 10 raids reported, most of which have already been verified. Those who report a raid have to provide the date, whether or not someone was removed, the zip code, and how the person knows that it happened.
You can fill out the form, which is available in both Spanish and English, here.