Undocumented migrants in terror on frontline of Trump sweep

by Romain FONSEGRIVES

Construction worker Maoro has lived happily in Colorado for almost four decades, but for the last month he has hardly left his house, afraid that US immigration officials will swoop and deport him.

"It's worse than a prison," the undocumented migrant tells AFP at his home in the city of Aurora, a major focus of Donald Trump's heated anti-immigrant rhetoric in the presidential election campaign.

"I already feel sick from not going to work," said Maoro, 59.

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Unable to pay his rent and dependent on his daughter -- an American citizen -- Maoro has never been so afraid as he is now, living under a Republican administration that has promised mass deportations of anyone without the right paperwork.

When three men in uniform knocked on his door recently, the middle-aged Mexican, who, like other undocumented migrants in this story insisted on using a pseudonym, followed the advice of well-wishers and rights activists in his neighborhood and didn't answer.

His terror is widely shared in Aurora, a suburb of Denver that is home to around 100 nationalities according to local non-profit groups.

Churches and mosques are emptying, the intersection where day laborers wait for casual work is sparsely populated, and a shopping center filled with Latin-American food outlets says it got 10,000 fewer visitors than usual in February.

On February 5, heavily-armed US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers carried out raids in Denver and Aurora, using battering rams and armored vehicles and making a number of arrests.

- 'Operation Aurora' -

The city of Aurora was propelled into the national immigration debate last year when viral video circulated showing armed Latin American men bursting into an apartment.

Then-candidate Trump seized on the footage as proof that Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had "taken control" of Aurora.

The city's Republican mayor rejected the claim, insisting the video showed an isolated incident peculiar to that particular building and a neglectful landlord, and pointing to a drop in the city's crime rate over the previous two years.

Trump pressed on, claiming Aurora was a symbol of an America under attack from dangerous migrant criminals, and pledging he would deport millions of people when he got back to the White House.

The city's immigrant population say they are being used as scapegoats for wider societal problems.

"Everything that's going wrong in the United States now is because of Tren de Aragua," quips Alexander Jimenez, a Venezuelan who fled Nicolas Maduro's regime a year ago.

"That's not possible."

Jimenez, a grandfather, limits his travel and is hiding with ten members of his family, waiting for their asylum applications to be processed.

Since the raids, his grandchildren have refused to go to school, for fear that the police will be waiting for their parents outside.

"They see on television what is happening, that they are taking away Venezuelans and all those who are not from here, from this country," he sighs, pointing out that last month's ICE raids netted people with no criminal record.

A social media posting at the time insisted "100+ members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were targeted for arrest and detention in Aurora, Colo., today by ICE."

According to a report by Fox News, around thirty people were arrested, of whom only one was a gang member.

Officials contacted by AFP refused to give details about those who had been taken into custody.

- Separated from children -

"This targeting of criminals by ICE is being used as a pretext to pick up other people that are innocent, that don't have criminal records," said Nayda Benitez, a member of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.

Her association offers legal advice classes in Spanish, Arabic and English, educating all-comers on their rights.

Attendees at classes learn that they do not have to open their door if the police do not have a judicial warrant, that they can remain silent, and that they do not have to sign any papers.

This simple advice was balm for Susana an undocumented Mexican who was deported in 2017, at the beginning of Donald Trump's first term, and spent five years separated from her children before finally getting back to Colorado.

"When you discover that you have rights, it's a powerful thing, because you say to yourself: 'if only I had known'," the 47-year-old said.

Susana says she now regrets having spoken too much during her interactions with the authorities last time around.

"I knew there was a constitution," she sighs. "But I didn't know that this constitution protected me as a migrant."