Today, CUNY School of Law’s Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic (INRC) announced the release of the Toolkit to Challenge Gang Allegations Against Immigrant New Yorkers (Toolkit). Created in direct response to the dangers of overbroad, race-based gang policing being weaponized against immigrants, the Toolkit is for attorneys, advocates, and impacted communities — especially those on Long Island.
“The ‘gang’ label is exploited to dehumanize, criminalize, target, surveil, arrest, detain, and deport immigrant youth based on scant evidence and without adequate due process of law,” says Maya Leszczynski ’17, Adjunct Professor and lead on the Toolkit. “Mere suspicion of gang status can land someone in a gang database with no recourse and with serious, lifelong consequences.”
“ICE often alleges gang affiliation based on little more than a doodle in a notebook, a conversation with a classmate, a baseball cap, or an individual’s zip code. Thousands of Latinx community members have been arrested and disappeared into the immigration detention and deportation dragnet, as a result,” adds Professor Talia Peleg.
“From the earliest days of this nation’s conception, immigrant communities have been excluded in the name of economic stability, cultural and/or moral preservation and public safety, all proxies for racism and xenophobia. The Toolkit is a resource for immigration practitioners and communities alike to protect themselves from such inflammatory and racist allegations before the immigration system and beyond, ” says Nermeen Arastu, Associate Professor of Law and Co-Director of INRC
Crucially, the Toolkit addresses scenarios outside of the gang context where immigrant communities of color are being criminalized or deemed national security risks with scant or no evidence offering guidance on Fourth Amendment violations, evidentiary objections, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) forms wrought with vague and confusing questions. Also included:
- Strategies for Suppression or Termination in the “Gang-Related” Immigration Enforcement Context
- Guide to Completing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Forms in the Gang Allegations Context
- Evidentiary Objections to Challenge Commonly Introduced Evidence Used in Support of Gang Allegations
It also contains newly created templates and know-your-rights materials for practitioners and immigrant communities to use in educational settings. These documents are compiled together with existing materials, creating an easy-to-use resource with all relevant information in one place.
The Toolkit is the latest manifestation of the INRC mission to provide a platform for the exploration, development, and implementation of ideas and strategies to close the growing legal divide between citizens and non-citizens of the United States of America.
Additional Quotes and Commentary
Nermeen Arastu, Associate Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Immigrant & Non- Citizen Rights Clinic
“From the earliest days of this nation’s conception, immigrant communities have been excluded in the name of economic stability, cultural/moral preservation and public safety. From ‘communist,’ to ‘dirty Irish’ to ‘terrorist,’ history has repeatedly revealed that these labels, no matter how they are justified, are mere cover for racism and xenophobia. The characterization of Long Island’s Latinx community as gangsters and gang associates is just another racist and dangerous trope used to incite hatred, fear and marginalization of immigrant families. Like clockwork, the U.S. government seeks to use flimsy evidence, inflammatory language, meaningless databases and nonexistent due process protections in immigration courts to separate families, deport long-term American residents and destabilize communities in the name of gang policing. The Toolkit is a resource for immigration practitioners and communities alike to protect themselves from these allegations in immigration court, while applying for benefits before USCIS, and in their streets, schools and homes.”
Talia Peleg, Associate Professor of Law, Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic
“The ‘gang’ label is increasingly being used to justify large-scale law enforcement operations targeting communities of color. Thousands of Latinx community members have been arrested and disappeared into the immigration detention and deportation dragnet, as a result. ICE often alleges gang affiliation based on little more than a doodle in a notebook, a conversation with a classmate, a baseball cap, or an individual’s zip code. INRC’s Toolkit to Challenge Gang Allegations Against Immigrant New Yorkers provides crucial resources – all in one place – that advocates and community members can use to fight these allegations. Our hope is that these materials are used far and wide to protect those swept up in the government’s sweep – to ensure that they are released from detention, receive the immigration benefits they are entitled to and remain in the United States with their communities.”
Maya Leszczynski, Adjunct Professor, Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic
“The ‘gang’ label is exploited to dehumanize, criminalize, target, surveil, arrest, detain, and deport immigrant youth based on scant evidence and without adequate due process of law. By disproportionately and broadly casting young men of color and immigrants as gang involved, law enforcement’s violative actions against them tend to evade public scrutiny and non-citizens are burdened with proving a negative without access to the evidence being used against them. Although gang membership itself is not a crime, mere suspicion of gang status (based on overbroad criteria and an officer’s subjective determination) lands people in gang databases. And, despite the severe and lifelong consequences of gang database inclusion, New York’s gang databases operate in near-total secrecy, have no notification procedures, lack mechanisms to challenge inclusion, do not require criminality, and continue to disproportionately impact communities of color. We hope the Toolkit helps practitioners and communities affected by enforcement efforts.”
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