When federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested undocumented immigrants outside a church homeless shelter in Alexandria, Virginia, last year, the incident confirmed the worst fears of noncitizens and their advocates: even spaces designed to accommodate a community’s most vulnerable members could become ICE targets.
While shelter staff can do little to protect an undocumented immigrants if ICE agents arrive with a warrant naming specific people, knowledgeable shelter staff can still protect clients from arbitrary sweeps. Over the past year, cities like New York and Los Angeles have educated staff and clients about how to protect themselves from “deceptive tactics” used by ICE to target undocumented immigrants.
Though there are no concrete statistics, a significant number of undocumented immigrants experience homelessness and end up in shelters. A 2017 survey by the New York Immigration Coalition found that 61 percent of the city’s immigrant legal service providers had at least one client living in a homeless shelter. Twenty percent reported at least fifty clients staying in a shelter.
A significant number of undocumented immigrants experience homelessness and end up in shelters.
New York’s Department of Homeless Services said it is not aware of ICE making any arrests inside a shelter but nevertheless has proactively educated shelter directors about preventing federal agents from accessing shelters without legitimate warrants.
The department has provided legal information to shelters to distribute among immigrant clients, and social service agencies that operate shelters have been instructing staff to never document a client’s immigration status, and to review “Know Your Rights” information with immigrant clients.
“The city has been pretty good about being on the same page as advocates in terms of protecting clients,” said Legal Aid Attorney Kathryn Kliff. “DHS policy, at least from the top down, has been aggressive and made it clear that [the policies] apply to any vendor of the city’s department of homeless services—hotels, regular shelters and facilities, and cluster sites.”
Jeff Foreman, policy director at Care For the Homeless, an advocacy group in New York City, praised the Department of Homeless Services’ policy of “not allowing ICE activities that do not meet strict Constitutional warrant requirements.”
It’s a practice that other cities might do well to emulate.
New York City law mandates that all individuals experiencing homelessness, including undocumented immigrants, have access to temporary shelters. The city does not ask for immigration status during admission intakes, which activists say is a key measure for protecting undocumented immigrants. Los Angeles has similar policies.
Another incident that raised fears in New York City dealt with the relationship between ICE and commercial hotels. In January, Motel 6 locations throughout Washington state gave ICE information about guests with “Latino-sounding names.” New York’s Department of Homeless Services contracts with several hotels to temporarily house homeless individuals and families, but hotel management must adhere to the same confidentiality policies as the shelters, DHS said.
In Los Angeles, the Homeless Services Authority has guided shelter providers on how to respond to law enforcement inquiries and hosted trainings on dealing with ICE. It trains frontline staff on how to make sure that agents have a legitimate warrant and keep them out if they don’t.
“If ICE comes knocking and wants either physical access to the facility or wants a list of all the people that you served, often times they will not make that sound optional—but they are [optional],” said Inner City Law Center staff attorney Catherine Wagner Calderaro during a training last October.
Other cities have a lot more work to do to reach these level of enlightenment. In some Houston and Atlanta shelters, for instance, identification requirements disqualify undocumented immigrants from accessing services—a provision that prevents even U.S. citizens from getting into shelters.
Getting rid of ID requirements would eliminate “one of the most acute structural barriers” to providing shelter and help limit contact with law enforcement for people experiencing homelessness, said Sharon Simpson-Joseph, executive director at Atlanta’s Georgia Law Center for the Homeless.
In Houston, the criminalization of behaviors associated with homelessness—such as sleeping in makeshift shelters on public property—puts undocumented immigrants at risk of detention because local police in Houston can inquire about immigration status and share that information with ICE.
Despite tough talk by the Trump Administration about forcing municipalities to give ICE carte blanche, none of the shelter policies put forth by New York City and Los Angeles contradict federal law.
In fact, federal law enables undocumented immigrants to access emergency homeless shelters, and HUD’s homeless database does not require information about immigration status.
In April 2016, HUD and other federal agencies sent a joint letter to “remind housing and service providers that they must not turn away immigrants experiencing homelessness or victims of domestic violence or human trafficking, on the basis of their immigration status.”
When asked about arrests at homeless shelters, New York’s ICE office spokesperson Rachael Yong Yow responded with a link to ICE’s “sensitive locations” memorandum discouraging ICE agents from making arrests at churches and schools.
The erosion of safety, whether real or perceived, threatens to prevent people in need from seeking crucial services.
“Homeless shelters are considered a sensitive location so there are no stats related to the number of arrests in homeless shelters,” Yong Yow said, though the actual memo does not list shelters as a sensitive location.
Either way, the “sensitive location” designation may not mean much. According to the memo, ICE can still make arrests if “exigent circumstances exist” or agents receive approval from a supervisor.
There have also been reports of ramped up immigration enforcement in other spaces previously considered safe—like courthouses or outside schools.
That erosion of safety, whether real or perceived, threatens to prevent people in need from seeking crucial services—unless cities and advocates continue to proactively protect undocumented immigrants and train shelter staff, said National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty executive director Maria Foscarinis.
“The main thing is for people to know their rights,” Foscarinis said. “People do have certain rights even if undocumented and it’s important that people not be afraid to seek shelter.”
David F. Brand is a reporter and social worker based in Queens, New York.