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Over 15 Navajo Nation Members Wrongly Detained or Questioned in Trump Immigration Raids
One Navajo Nation official said that “many fear for the threat of being deported.”
Officials from the Navajo Nation are warning its members to carry personal identification that indicates they are citizens of the United States at all times following reports that more than a dozen Diné/Navajo people have been detained and questioned during immigration raids in Arizona and New Mexico since last Wednesday.
Navajo people, also known as Diné people, have experienced “negative and sometimes traumatizing experiences with federal agents targeting undocumented immigrants in the Southwest,” Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said in a press release.
The exact number of Diné/Navajo Nation members who have been detained is unknown, but there have been at least 15 documented cases of people being stopped at their homes or workplaces over the past week, CNN reported on Monday. These individuals were questioned or detained by federal law enforcement, who demanded they provide proof of citizenship.
It’s unclear which federal agency or agencies detained these individuals. They have since been released, but the detentions have made residents worry that future Trump administration immigration raids could target them, despite their status as citizens.
In one incident, a person was detained by federal agents during a raid in Phoenix, Arizona, with a Navajo official describing their situation as a “wrong place, wrong time” situation. That person was released upon providing officials with tribal identification, but only after they were detained and questioned.
Arizona state Sen. Theresa Hatathlie noted that several reports indicated that federal agents didn’t recognize tribal identification as valid proof of citizenship.
“With the way things are going right now and these types of situations, we have to put measures in place in order to help our constituents and government entities so that they can be a resource,” Hatahlie told CNN.
She added:
Tribes should communicate to Homeland Security and say, ‘This is a sample of our travel enrollment card. This is the sample of our Certificate of Indian Blood. If you have any questions to verify, here is a hotline. Here is a website.’
According to a press release from his office, Nygren is advising Diné/Navajos people “to carry state-issued identification, such as a driver’s license, other picture identification, or their Certificate of Indian blood, known as a CIB.”
That Indigenous people have been detained is a show of the widespread and seemingly racially targeted nature of the raids.
“There’s a lot of fear, and I know they’re probably feeling frustrated knowing that they don’t feel safe in the country where they were born or where their ancestors come from and there’s a lot of frustration of them being stereotyped,” said Navajo Nation Council Speaker Crystalyne Curley.
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Quakers Hit Trump Admin With Lawsuit Over Policy Allowing ICE Raids on Houses of Worship
“Quaker meetings for worship seek to be a sanctuary and a refuge for all,” said one Quaker organization head.
Several Quaker congregations are suing the Trump administration over an order lifting a previous policy that had curtailed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from conducting raids in “sensitive locations,” including schools, hospitals and houses of worship.
The Quaker groups filed their suit on Monday in a Maryland federal court alleging that the policy change within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) directly affects their churches and the houses of worship of other faiths, in violation of their First Amendment religious freedoms.
“The very threat of that [immigration] enforcement deters congregants from attending services, especially members of immigrant communities,” the lawsuit states, noting that attending such services is part of the “guarantee of religious liberty” enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
In an executive order issued in his first week of being president, Donald Trump rescinded the nearly 14-year policy limiting raids on places of worship and other sensitive locations. Several religious organizations across the country have condemned the new policy, which now allows ICE agents to storm into places of worship to detain undocumented immigrants as part of Trump’s draconian mass deportation plan. The Quakers appear to be the first religious group to have filed a lawsuit seeking to block the policy.
The litigation, which was filed by Democracy Forward on behalf of five Quaker congregations, notes that there are “specific procedures” that are typically followed when policies like these are changed. The Trump administration did not follow that process on this policy, the lawsuit contends.
Furthermore, the lawsuit states that the new policy “does not acknowledge that houses of worship are sacred spaces.” The suit adds:
[The policy change] does not acknowledge that for many, religious exercise is an essential activity (as the previous policy did). And it does not even consider what unconstrained immigration enforcement at houses of worship would mean as a result. Instead, it treats houses of worship as nothing more than places where ‘criminal aliens — including murderers and rapists’ go to ‘hide.’
The lawsuit seeks a complete ban on the new policy, leaving the older standard — which has been enforced since the Obama administration — in place.
“Quaker meetings for worship seek to be a sanctuary and a refuge for all, and this new and invasive practice tangibly erodes that possibility by creating unnecessary anxiety, confusion, and chilling of our members’ and neighbors’ willingness to share with us in the worship which sustains our lives,” said Noah Merrill, secretary of Quaker group the New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, one of the groups participating in the lawsuit. “This undermines our communities and, we believe, violates our religious freedom.”
“President Trump swore an oath to defend the Constitution and yet today religious institutions that have existed since the 1600s in our country are having to go to court to challenge what is a violation of every individual’s constitutional right to worship and associate freely,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward.
Those who were questioned or detained felt that “they have been racially discriminated and also profiled,” Curly said, adding that “many fear for the threat of being deported.”
Diné elder and activist James Jackson, also speaking to CNN, described the actions as “shameful,” and decried the raids by the federal government overall.
“No one is illegal on stolen land,” Jackson said. “It really goes back to the Indigenous way of life, that everything is made for the people. People have to understand that this is not the way to live or to be honorable and neighborly with each other.”
