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San Francisco Chronicle
3 days ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
California pioneered modern gang surveillance. Trump may be exploiting it
Six years before he was wrongly deported to a foreign prison over unproven gang ties, Kilmar Abrego Garcia got a firsthand lesson in American gang intelligence. In March 2019, Abrego Garcia stood outside a southern Maryland Home Depot chatting with three fellow day laborers when local police arrested them. Abrego Garcia was never charged with a crime or accused of one. But he was placed on a list of 'verified' gang members, something he discovered at an immigration hearing a month later. According to his attorneys, Abrego Garcia left El Salvador as a teen to escape the gangs that threatened to kidnap and ransom him. The evidence that he belonged to one of them came down to who he was with and what he wore. The practice of labeling him originated in California, the first U.S. state to legally define gangs and equate them with terrorist organizations. The Prince George's County Police Department, which arrested Abrego Garcia and handed him to federal immigration authorities, said a confidential informant told them that Abrego Garcia belonged to MS-13, an international gang started by Salvadorans in 1980s Los Angeles that was partial to bull horns as a symbol. That Abrego Garcia was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie when he was arrested indicated he 'was a member in good standing,' an arrest report stated. The first Trump administration lost its bid to legally deport Abrego Garcia. The second Trump administration circumvented the legal process. In 2019, an immigration judge determined that Abrego Garcia was more likely to be a victim of gang crime than a purveyor of it, and granted him protection from future deportation. On March 12, three days before President Donald Trump signed an executive order claiming the U.S. was at war with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, ICE agents arrested Abrego Garcia on his way home from work. The sheet metal worker had his autistic 5-year-old son in the backseat. Over the next four days, Abrego Garcia's attorneys say, he was moved to different locations in different states, questioned about gang affiliations, allowed two phone calls to his wife and flown to El Salvador, where he was frog-marched into a maximum-security prison for terrorists known as CECOT. At least 287 other U.S. migrants have experienced the same fate, though immigration advocates and attorneys suspect there are more. 'Many of these families really had their loved ones disappear,' Michelle Brané, a Biden administration immigration detention ombudsman who now leads the family reunification nonprofit Together & Free, said during a video briefing. 'It's just literally what it looks like to these families.' Numerous federal judges have recoiled at the White House's interpretation of U.S. law, issuing injunctions both preliminary and permanent against its invocation of the arcane Alien Enemies Act of 1798, threatening it with criminal contempt for not complying with orders to return migrants and directing it to do everything it can to bring back Abrego Garcia. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is attempting to deport scores of others for disputed gang affiliations. Attorneys for the detained immigrants say their clients are actually victims or potential victims of the gangs they're accused of belonging to. Some have had relatives killed; others say their sexual orientation would make them targets. While the administration initially chalked up Abrego Garcia's deportation as an ' administrative error,' it has since doubled down on claims that he belongs to MS-13, releasing his 2019 arrest report and offering as ' bombshell ' evidence a 2022 traffic stop in which Abrego Garcia was released with a warning. Attorneys for the banished migrants say Trump's actions are illegal. Civil libertarians say they are also a foreseeable, if extreme, extension of California's decades-long efforts to track criminal street gangs in computerized databases that have been found to be riddled with errors, assumptions and, in some cases, falsified reports. The state has tried to undo much of what it pioneered across the country — including the use of flawed gang intelligence in deportations. But the reforms are falling into a growing loophole, says a Southern California attorney who is trying to close it. Law of the land The grandson of a high-ranking Los Angeles and Newport Beach police official, Garcia-Leys already thought that cops placed too much stock in their own judgment. But it wasn't until the westside native moved to the lower-income, tightly packed Watts neighborhood in southern L.A., to teach at the lowest-performing high schools in the county, that he saw how heavily perception weighed in gang policing. 'In Watts, nobody trusted the police to do the right thing ever,' said Garcia-Leys, now the executive director of the Peace and Justice Law Center in Orange County, where he pursues local and statewide policing reforms. 'And it was just because they mistreated people, their demeanor, and they didn't seem to care if they got the right person.' Garcia-Leys said his students were resigned to their reality. They kept little more than a buck on them for their two-a-day 'pocket checks' — robbed by the gangbangers waiting for them outside of school, searched by the gang officers closer to home. 'It's the exact same sort of intimidation and harassment, and you'd experience it first at the hands of the gang and second at the hands of the police,' Garcia-Leys said. 'They were actually making the problem worse.' Garcia-Leys started his teaching career in 2001, four years after L.A.'s approach to gang policing became the California standard. He left teaching in 2010, after that standard had been adopted nationally. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department created the nation's first computerized database of suspected gang members in 1987, a year before California adopted the nation's first law defining street gangs and creating stiff penalties for belonging to them. A decade later, L.A.'s database was the template for CalGang, a statewide intranet system that quickly became the country's most widely used gang database. To be entered into CalGang, individuals have to meet just two criteria on a nine-item checklist. They included: self-identifying as a gang member; being arrested with gang members; associating with gang members; being identified as a gang member by a reliable informant; being identified by an untested informant; frequenting gang areas; displaying gang signs; wearing gang attire; and having gang tattoos. CalGang ballooned into what critics contended was an indiscriminate dragnet of communities of color. In 2010, more than 235,000 people were logged in CalGang as active gang members — 41,000 of them living in L.A. — with up to 200 items of personal information about each individual. A 2015 study in the Journal of Forensic Social Work found that it didn't result in a reduction of gang-related crime in L.A. In Sacramento County, where the sheriff's and police departments managed their own databases, the low threshold and broad criteria resulted in expansive lists of mostly Black and brown boys and men, who could be and were labeled gang members for wearing their high school colors, making or appearing in rap videos, or being fans of the rap-rock duo Insane Clown Posse. One Sacramento man spent more than a decade mistakenly validated as a member of the gang responsible for shooting him. Another Sacramento man had his gang validation extended five years after he was pulled over while wearing a Sacramento Kings hat. A 2016 state audit found widespread problems with CalGang, including a lack of oversight, unjustified and inaccurate entries, and data privacy violations. But the system had already influenced federal immigration authorities. Not only did U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, have 'read-only' access to CalGang between January 2006 and October 2016, it modeled its own gang database, called ICEGangs, after California's, according to a September 2024 paper by UC Irvine criminologists. A third-year law student at UC Irvine in 2016, Garcia-Leys co-authored a paper about the ripple effects of CalGang's unreliable intel on immigration proceedings — used to fast-track deportations, justify detentions and withhold legal status from otherwise eligible Dreamers. Wrongful gang allegations also show up in wrongful convictions. At its July 2024 meeting, the California Victims Compensation Board granted financial restitution to two different men wrongfully convicted of gang-related murders in 2001. One was Ronald Velasquez, who was awarded $1.2 million after losing 8,587 days to a wrongful first-degree murder conviction. Abraham Villalobos was granted $788,000 for a wrongful conviction of second-degree murder with a gang enhancement, for which he spent 5,629 days incarcerated. Before the conviction was overturned in March 2024, Villalobos was deported to Mexico. Opting out of reforms Over the past decade, the California Legislature has attempted to correct the embattled CalGang system by mandating a notification and appeals process for the people entered into it, and shifting oversight from the L.A.-heavy law enforcement representatives on the executive board and advisory committee to the state Department of Justice. Assembly Bill 90 in 2017 prohibited information in shared gang databases from being used for immigration enforcement purposes, under threat of access being suspended or revoked. The reforms have had intended and unintended consequences. The number of accused people in the database has plunged 87% since the end of 2017, when there were almost 104,000 entries. And people are getting auto-purged from the system at higher numbers than they're being added. Still, CalGang entries have a high failure rate. In 2024, the state DOJ audited 675 gangs identified by law enforcement agencies, and found that 154 — more than a fifth — didn't meet its standards for qualifying as a gang. Another 60 audits were still pending. Racial disproportionality remains an ongoing concern. Of the 13,691 people in the database, 69% are Hispanic and 28% are Black. Comparatively, 40% of California's population is Hispanic and 6% is Black. White individuals made up 6.9% of the 13,691 people in CalGang in September 2024 — the same percentage as six years earlier. 'It highlights the bias in the system, that white gangs typically aren't considered gangs,' said Mike German, a former FBI agent and author of 'Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within.' 'There's a tendency because of the bias that's inherent in the system to view white crime as the acts of individuals while holding collective blame when they're nonwhite crimes.' The number of law enforcement agencies using CalGang has also plummeted. At the time of the 2016 state audit, 92% of law enforcement agencies said CalGang was the only gang database they used. Today, only 10 of California's roughly 600 law enforcement agencies are active users, according to the California Department of Justice's response to a public records request. Garcia-Leys fears this means that many agencies have instead chosen to operate internal gang databases to avoid state oversight. 'They should not be sharing their databases but we don't know if that's the case,' he said. 'Here's the problem, right? Nobody's using CalGang anymore.' He's circulating a legislative proposal to close what he describes as the 'shared database loophole,' to make sure these ad hoc databases can't be used to fuel Trump's extraordinary renditions. He said it's drawn lawmaker interest but, because of the summer session deadline, could be a couple years away. In response to public records requests, the Fresno County Sheriff's Office, an early CalGang administrator, said it does operate a shared database accessible by state and regional agencies. The San Francisco Police Department, whose notorious 'Chinatown Squad' in the late 1800s was the first 'ethnic crime' police force in the U.S., said it does not track gangs. And the Los Angeles Police Department — which got kicked out of CalGang in 2020 for falsifying records — said it does not document suspected gang members, contract with software vendors to do so or train its police force how to document gang members. Los Angeles police are still training the nation's gang officers, however. The LAPD is well-represented among the leadership of the L.A.-grown California Gang Investigators Association, whose 33rd national conference in Anaheim in August has some two dozen planned classes dedicated to 'the street gang problem.' They include seminars about gang enforcement operations, investigating minors, Black gangs, the Mexican Mafia, Nuestra Familia and one called the 'Tren de Aragua Menace.'
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Yahoo
Neighbors mourn death of beloved grandmother who was shot to death in Prince George's County
PALMER PARK, Md () — The search continues for the person who over the Mother's Day weekend. The Prince George's County Police Department said investigators believe Leslie Davis, 54, was a target in a shooting that may not have been random. 'Well, if you want a good neighbor, that was her right next door,' said William Jackson, who has known Davis for roughly 40 years. 'She's not a bad person': Mom says after daughter drives through Laurel festival Officers responded to Davis' home along Ray Leonard Road around 2:20 p.m. on Saturday. They found Davis' body inside the residence. 'You would be hard pressed to ever see her. I've never seen her without a smile on your face,' Jackson said. 'And on top of that, she had a great smile. She would joke, she would talk to you.' Investigators are also looking for a motive. 'I don't know what they did, or why they did it,' Jackson said. 'I can't find, along with the rest of the neighbors in this area, any justification for anybody hurting that woman.' Jackson has a message for the judge if the suspect is convicted. 'That the judge find it in his heart to make sure that he gives that sentence, that we all look for sometime, called from 'now on,'' Jackson said. Laurel man faces up to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to distributing fentanyl Police are offering a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for Davis' death. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CNN
04-04-2025
- Politics
- CNN
The deportation of a Maryland father sends fear through Salvadoran communities in the US
A Maryland mother recently received two calls: One was from her husband, who said he had been pulled over after finishing his construction shift. The other was from Homeland Security, telling her she had just 10 minutes to pick up the couple's 5-year-old son who was in the car with her husband. Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura raced to her husband's side to hurriedly place their crying child in a car seat and say goodbye to her husband as he also wept. Now the shockwaves of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia's March 12 arrest and subsequent deportation to El Salvador – which the Trump administration says was a mistake – have spread well beyond the family and are rattling the south-central Maryland community. Years prior to his arrest, Abrego Garcia had been deemed a gang member by the Prince George's County Police Department in part because he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie, and on the word of an informant who said that he was an active member of the MS-13 gang – an allegation his attorneys continually denied, according to a recent court filing. But in 2019, an immigration judge granted him protected status, prohibiting the federal government from sending him to El Salvador. Abrego Garcia, who attorneys say fled gang violence in El Salvador more than a decade ago, has been sent to CECOT, the country's notorious mega prison. Their son, who has autism, has been finding Abrego Garcia's work shirts to smell his father's familiar scent after his arrest, Vasquez Sura said in an affidavit. 'This has been a nightmare for my family,' Vasquez Sura wrote in the affidavit. 'My faith in God carries me, but I am exhausted and heartbroken. My children need their father.' Like many communities across the US, the Trump administration's immigration crackdown has sent a wave of fear through the Central American community in Maryland, whose members told CNN they have been unfairly targeted by the administration or labeled as gang members without evidence. Salvadoran community members, including those who hold green cards or visas, say they have felt unsafe since Abrego Garcia's arrest as they could – at a moment's notice – be deported to a country where they face life-threatening danger. 'We've seen folks get deported that under the law would not be deported,' said green card holder Jorge Perez, a 25-year-old community organizer in Prince George's County, Maryland. 'What does it say about people with green cards everywhere here in the country? We're doing the right thing. We're following the system. We're doing it as the book says, but then the people in charge are not following their end of the deal.' Abrego Garcia's case appears to mark the first time the administration has admitted an error related to its recent deportation flights to El Salvador, which are now at the center of a fraught legal battle. Immigration policy experts say the case is consistent with how Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been operating under the new administration: The goal is meeting quotas, rather than targeted enforcement. 'What this case really highlights is how ICE has no regard for due process,' said Cathryn Jackson, public policy director at CASA, an organization that provides legal services to immigrants in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Georgia. 'They do not care if you get your day in court. They do not care whether you are guilty or not. Their job right now is to get everyone out.' CNN has reached out to ICE for comment. To cope with uncertainty two months into Trump's second term, one of the largest Salvadoran communities in the US is banding together to advocate for their families and prepare for the worst. When a wave of Salvadorans first migrated to Maryland, there was a stereotype that they were affiliated with gangs like MS-13, Perez said. Use of the harmful trope somewhat declined as the hard-working immigrants positively contributed to their communities and excelled in their careers by starting small businesses throughout the area. 'To see those arguments come back after we've established ourselves here and have shown our communities that we are people that wanted to see our communities do better … it's disappointing and it's angering,' Perez told CNN from Langley Park, where a large population of Central American migrants resides. What is enough? That's a question Perez's community has for the administration as they follow a legal path to US residency yet still could face deportation to a country they fled, he said. An estimated 2.5 million people of Salvadoran origin live in the US – making them the third-largest Hispanic population in the country as of 2021, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey. Maryland is home to the third-largest Salvadoran American population in the country – most concentrated in Montgomery and Prince George's counties, according to George Mason University. 'There's lots of fear because you see every day that there's ICE movement or ICE activity somewhere in the state, whether it's Montgomery County, whether it's here in Prince George's County,' Perez said. 'It's traumatizing,' Perez said of images and videos circulating online showing ICE suddenly arresting Central Americans he says do not pose a threat. Many Salvadorans come to the US seeking a better life after escaping gang violence and poverty in the country, said Yakie Palma, a second-grade teacher at a local public school. The US placed El Salvador under Temporary Protected Status designation in 2001, initially due to environmental disaster following two earthquakes. The designation has been renewed several times and will remain through at least September 9, 2026. The designation means 'an individual also cannot be detained by DHS on the basis of his or her immigration status in the United States,' according to the Department of Homeland Security. Palma said her students' Salvadoran parents are now terrified to do everyday tasks like pick up their children from school. The young students are also anxious, depressed and sleep deprived, which is impacting their performance on exams and assignments, she said. The students feel safe speaking with Palma in the classroom because she shares their Salvadoran identity, Palma said. One morning last week, a 7-year-old student came into the classroom tearing up and with dark circles under her eyes. Palma asked her if she was alright, and she declined to speak with her at first. But after Palma sent her to the classroom's 'calm down corner' to play with toys, the student told her that she was afraid she would be deported. That's despite the student being born in the United States, Palma said. Countless questions the community has about why Abrego Garcia was deported have been left unanswered, according to Perez. Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to El Salvador 'because of an administrative error,' but he can't be returned because he's now in Salvadoran custody, the Trump administration argued in a court filing Monday. 'Now we are scared that we could falsely be deported for no apparent reason,' Palma said. Abrego Garcia's legal team is asking for a preliminary injunction that would require the Trump administration to request the government of El Salvador bring him back to the United States, according to court documents. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Friday. During President Donald Trump's first administration, Perez's mother was detained by local police officers in Prince George's County, who then turned her over to ICE. In an earlier incident, Perez stopped attending some of his high school classes after witnessing ICE agents show up outside his family's apartment early one morning. This time around, Perez is afraid his green card will suddenly get revoked and he'll have to leave his family behind. Because of his mom's experience, Perez now works to educate his community and teach them their rights regarding immigration. To prepare for potential deportation, Perez advises families in his community to ready legal documents and ensure their children have a designated legal guardian. If there is no signed warrant, he tells them not to open their doors when an immigration officer comes knocking. 'Oftentimes this is a reality or something parents don't want to hear. No one ever wants to prepare to lose their child,' Perez said. 'No one wants to prepare to one day not come home.' As for Palma, she tells the students who are afraid for their families that they should always advocate for their loved ones. 'When I talk to my students about what's happening, I tell them that education is important. It is important for us to educate ourselves on what's going on and try to advocate for what you believe in and advocate for your family,' she said. Meanwhile, Jackson said CASA is working on three bills to help strengthen immigrant rights in Maryland. The Protecting Sensitive Locations Act aims to limit ICE access to places like schools and hospitals. Another bill, the Maryland Data Privacy Act, prevents ICE from accessing state and local agency data without a warrant. And the Maryland Values Act ends the 287(g) program, which allows local police to act as ICE agents. 'This is not the first time our communities have been under attack. We survived for years in the past,' Perez said. 'And we can do it again.' CNN's Priscilla Alvarez and Michael Williams contributed to this report.
CNN
04-04-2025
- Politics
- CNN
The deportation of a Maryland father sends fear through Salvadoran communities in the US
A Maryland mother recently received two calls: One was from her husband, who said he had been pulled over after finishing his construction shift. The other was from Homeland Security, telling her she had just 10 minutes to pick up the couple's 5-year-old son who was in the car with her husband. Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura raced to her husband's side to hurriedly place their crying child in a car seat and say goodbye to her husband as he also wept. Now the shockwaves of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia's March 12 arrest and subsequent deportation to El Salvador – which the Trump administration says was a mistake – have spread well beyond the family and are rattling the south-central Maryland community. Years prior to his arrest, Abrego Garcia had been deemed a gang member by the Prince George's County Police Department in part because he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie, and on the word of an informant who said that he was an active member of the MS-13 gang – an allegation his attorneys continually denied, according to a recent court filing. But in 2019, an immigration judge granted him protected status, prohibiting the federal government from sending him to El Salvador. Abrego Garcia, who attorneys say fled gang violence in El Salvador more than a decade ago, has been sent to CECOT, the country's notorious mega prison. Their son, who has autism, has been finding Abrego Garcia's work shirts to smell his father's familiar scent after his arrest, Vasquez Sura said in an affidavit. 'This has been a nightmare for my family,' Vasquez Sura wrote in the affidavit. 'My faith in God carries me, but I am exhausted and heartbroken. My children need their father.' Like many communities across the US, the Trump administration's immigration crackdown has sent a wave of fear through the Central American community in Maryland, whose members told CNN they have been unfairly targeted by the administration or labeled as gang members without evidence. Salvadoran community members, including those who hold green cards or visas, say they have felt unsafe since Abrego Garcia's arrest as they could – at a moment's notice – be deported to a country where they face life-threatening danger. 'We've seen folks get deported that under the law would not be deported,' said green card holder Jorge Perez, a 25-year-old community organizer in Prince George's County, Maryland. 'What does it say about people with green cards everywhere here in the country? We're doing the right thing. We're following the system. We're doing it as the book says, but then the people in charge are not following their end of the deal.' Abrego Garcia's case appears to mark the first time the administration has admitted an error related to its recent deportation flights to El Salvador, which are now at the center of a fraught legal battle. Immigration policy experts say the case is consistent with how Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been operating under the new administration: The goal is meeting quotas, rather than targeted enforcement. 'What this case really highlights is how ICE has no regard for due process,' said Cathryn Jackson, public policy director at CASA, an organization that provides legal services to immigrants in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Georgia. 'They do not care if you get your day in court. They do not care whether you are guilty or not. Their job right now is to get everyone out.' CNN has reached out to ICE for comment. To cope with uncertainty two months into Trump's second term, one of the largest Salvadoran communities in the US is banding together to advocate for their families and prepare for the worst. When a wave of Salvadorans first migrated to Maryland, there was a stereotype that they were affiliated with gangs like MS-13, Perez said. Use of the harmful trope somewhat declined as the hard-working immigrants positively contributed to their communities and excelled in their careers by starting small businesses throughout the area. 'To see those arguments come back after we've established ourselves here and have shown our communities that we are people that wanted to see our communities do better … it's disappointing and it's angering,' Perez told CNN from Langley Park, where a large population of Central American migrants resides. What is enough? That's a question Perez's community has for the administration as they follow a legal path to US residency yet still could face deportation to a country they fled, he said. An estimated 2.5 million people of Salvadoran origin live in the US – making them the third-largest Hispanic population in the country as of 2021, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey. Maryland is home to the third-largest Salvadoran American population in the country – most concentrated in Montgomery and Prince George's counties, according to George Mason University. 'There's lots of fear because you see every day that there's ICE movement or ICE activity somewhere in the state, whether it's Montgomery County, whether it's here in Prince George's County,' Perez said. 'It's traumatizing,' Perez said of images and videos circulating online showing ICE suddenly arresting Central Americans he says do not pose a threat. Many Salvadorans come to the US seeking a better life after escaping gang violence and poverty in the country, said Yakie Palma, a second-grade teacher at a local public school. The US placed El Salvador under Temporary Protected Status designation in 2001, initially due to environmental disaster following two earthquakes. The designation has been renewed several times and will remain through at least September 9, 2026. The designation means 'an individual also cannot be detained by DHS on the basis of his or her immigration status in the United States,' according to the Department of Homeland Security. Palma said her students' Salvadoran parents are now terrified to do everyday tasks like pick up their children from school. The young students are also anxious, depressed and sleep deprived, which is impacting their performance on exams and assignments, she said. The students feel safe speaking with Palma in the classroom because she shares their Salvadoran identity, Palma said. One morning last week, a 7-year-old student came into the classroom tearing up and with dark circles under her eyes. Palma asked her if she was alright, and she declined to speak with her at first. But after Palma sent her to the classroom's 'calm down corner' to play with toys, the student told her that she was afraid she would be deported. That's despite the student being born in the United States, Palma said. Countless questions the community has about why Abrego Garcia was deported have been left unanswered, according to Perez. Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to El Salvador 'because of an administrative error,' but he can't be returned because he's now in Salvadoran custody, the Trump administration argued in a court filing Monday. 'Now we are scared that we could falsely be deported for no apparent reason,' Palma said. Abrego Garcia's legal team is asking for a preliminary injunction that would require the Trump administration to request the government of El Salvador bring him back to the United States, according to court documents. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Friday. During President Donald Trump's first administration, Perez's mother was detained by local police officers in Prince George's County, who then turned her over to ICE. In an earlier incident, Perez stopped attending some of his high school classes after witnessing ICE agents show up outside his family's apartment early one morning. This time around, Perez is afraid his green card will suddenly get revoked and he'll have to leave his family behind. Because of his mom's experience, Perez now works to educate his community and teach them their rights regarding immigration. To prepare for potential deportation, Perez advises families in his community to ready legal documents and ensure their children have a designated legal guardian. If there is no signed warrant, he tells them not to open their doors when an immigration officer comes knocking. 'Oftentimes this is a reality or something parents don't want to hear. No one ever wants to prepare to lose their child,' Perez said. 'No one wants to prepare to one day not come home.' As for Palma, she tells the students who are afraid for their families that they should always advocate for their loved ones. 'When I talk to my students about what's happening, I tell them that education is important. It is important for us to educate ourselves on what's going on and try to advocate for what you believe in and advocate for your family,' she said. Meanwhile, Jackson said CASA is working on three bills to help strengthen immigrant rights in Maryland. The Protecting Sensitive Locations Act aims to limit ICE access to places like schools and hospitals. Another bill, the Maryland Data Privacy Act, prevents ICE from accessing state and local agency data without a warrant. And the Maryland Values Act ends the 287(g) program, which allows local police to act as ICE agents. 'This is not the first time our communities have been under attack. We survived for years in the past,' Perez said. 'And we can do it again.' CNN's Priscilla Alvarez and Michael Williams contributed to this report.
