'Know Your Rights' event captures Henrico residents’ Constitutional worries

 A panel of legal experts imparted information about growing concerns about Constitutional rights to a crowd of more than 100 people at the Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Glen Allen Nov. 19.

Topics focused on interacting with law enforcement and the justice system, understanding personal rights, immigrant rights in the current climate and voting rights.

Henrico County Police Chief Col. Eric D. English covered how to handle a traffic stop and what to do when approached by law enforcement on foot, emphasizing his efforts to be transparent and minimize friction between law enforcement and the community.

Three Chopt District Supervisor Misty Roundtree, who is a criminal defense lawyer, held the audience rapt, telling a personal anecdote about a scare involving her son’s college roommate who had committed a crime. As a gun owner, her son had to prove his innocence.

“My heart broke into pieces after the fact,” Roundtree said. “In that moment you want your family to be safe and while police will try to get teens to talk, a lot of people have been caught up in human error. For your safety you can say, ‘Officer, respectfully I decline to answer your questions.’”

Roundtree spent time addressing the concern about the lack of due process extended to people caught up in Immigration Customs and Enforcement, referring to the set of rules that is supposed to be applied equally to anybody charged in the criminal justice system, in which the law states how long it is before one is charged, when the person charged has to appear in front of a judge to have his or her case heard and when the person charged should go in front of a judge to ask to be released.

“If one of us does not have due process then none of us has due process,” Roundtree said.

Racial profiling

Immigration lawyer Miriam Airington-Fischer detailed some of the harrowing legal situations she has been dealing with.

“ICE can detain people if they have a warrant or if they have reasonable suspicion that that person is in the country without immigration status,” Airington-Fischer said. “That allows them to detain somebody for questioning. Now if ICE was just walking down the street and saw somebody, how would they have reasonable suspicion that somebody didn't have immigration status? We have a pretty bad temporary order that was recently entered by the US Supreme Court, where the US Supreme Court gave some examples of ways that ICE might have reasonable suspicion. Like how somebody looks, how they talk, whether they have an accent, what kind of job they have, like if they're a landscaper or if they're in Home Depot. That doesn't really sound right, does it? Some people are calling that racial profiling.”

Asserting that the U.S. Constitutional rights are extended to all people in the country, Airington-Fischer also explained that generally undocumented people who are detained are sent to private detention facilities, which is a difficult legal situation because immigration law is federal.

“It's a dicey with immigration law, because somebody can be arrested by ICE in Virginia and they can be moved to Louisiana or to Pennsylvania,” she said. “That makes it hard to hire a lawyer. It makes it hard for the lawyer to know where to file a bond motion. And sometimes it makes it impossible for the family to even find them.”

In deportation hearings, people have a right to hire a lawyer, but there are no public defenders.

“Representing yourself is like if you represented yourself in a murder trial,” Airington-Fisher said.

'It can be very scary'

Airington-Fisher encouraged the audience to show support for people who are targeted by ICE.

“If you do see any ICE interaction, it can be very scary,” she said. “ICE agents don't operate the way that we've all come to expect and respect in police officers.”

“They often don't have uniforms. They don’t identify themselves. They often wear face masks, balaclavas, street clothes or hoodies. They often hide in places around buildings and just grab people. They can be very aggressive. If you see any of this, it's 100% legal to film it.”

Henrico County NAACP Vice President Dionna Gibson focused on threats to voting rights, which she called the cornerstone of Black freedom in the United States of America and a central pillar of the NAACP advocacy for over a century.

She traced how from Reconstruction through the Jim Crow era, Virginia used poll taxes and literacy tests and countless other barriers to intentionally suppress the Black vote.

“And in spite of protections that were put in place back in the '60s from the 24th amendment in 1964 that outlawed the poll tax to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that banned literacy tests and other discriminatory practices in spite of those things being put into effect back in the '60s, Virginia has remained one of the most difficult states to vote in,” Gibson said. She said that advances and advocacy opportunities with the NAACP to hold elected and appointed officials accountable helped restore the voting rights of people who have a felony conviction.

On the audience’s minds were a range of issues including the importance of making teens aware of the legal process and how to stay safe out in the world. Some expressed concerns about self-protection when involved with the legal system and when interacting with law enforcement. Others in the audience brought up concerns about ICE aggressively picking up African American citizens.

Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor described the role of her office.

Airington-Fisher told harrowing stories of citizens and also people with legal status in Henrico County who have been detained by ICE, and she encouraged people to carry birth certificate and passports to prove their citizenship and share those images with loved ones.

Responding to an audience member who asked for clarification on gun-permitting, English told the audience that possessing a gun makes people more of a target when stopped by police. English told a father to weigh the safety benefits and risks of gun ownership with a child at home.

“Young people’s access to guns is a problem,” English said, encouraging those who own a gun to explore Henrico’s free gun-safe distribution program.

“I came out to be more informed. I’m a millennial so I get a lot of my news from social media,” said Imani Hill, a church member who is a teacher at a Richmond school with more than 80% immigrant students. “We’ve had ICE pick up parents of our students. It’s very hard for them emotionally when a parent disappears like that.”

Jerry Cuff, a church members and event organizer who is a part of the Mount Olive Baptist Church’s Security and Civic Ministry, said the large turnout reflected the community’s current sense of uncertainty and fear amongst people who watch news reports about ICE and law enforcement operations.

“We organized the event to dissuade fears and to help people know their rights,” Cuff said.

Dina Weinstein is the Citizen’s community vitality reporter and a Report for America corps member, covering housing, health and transportation. Support her work and articles like this one by making a contribution to the Citizen.