San Joaquin Delta College has resources for the immigrant population to help in case of a situation with ICE but also legal services and programs to assist with necessities. Outside of SJDC, many individuals may not know the resources in their area that can assist with necessities, legal services, educating or pathways to citizenship.
EL CONCILIO
El Concilio assists with the California Central Valley families and single people with different necessities in order to help them succeed in their efforts to create stability here in California. Through the support of serving the community of these under-served immigrant populations with services to improve their education and skills for the real world. Since 1968, they have provided citizenship prep classes, legal services and application support with workshops and private consultations.
Areli Hernandez, immigration office assistant that provides support at El Concilio to the legal services team. She assists with a lot of the concerns and questions the immigrant population. Hernandez states some of the services and resources they provide at El Concilio.
“I am part of the immigration department and there is way more departments that El Concilio actually helps with. In terms of the immigration department we assist individuals of low income with free consults. We help them prepare applications for free as well, 90 applications which are green card renewals, and DACA applications. Also, we help with citizenship, the preparement of that application, background checks, in case someone is struggling with wanting to know their background before they apply for citizenship. The attorney, also we do our presentations for schools and that’s such a small scope of some of the services we provide,” said Hernandez.
Hernandez states how often the immigrant population comes to El Concilio for their assistance.
“We do get clients coming every week. We are only appointment based and our calendars are pretty filled up so usually Tuesdays are when we do these free consults. Essentially our calendars are fairly booked up. The paralegals and me, probably take 2 to 3 clients a day. The attorney is taking out a little bit more and he also has services in Modesto on Friday so his calendar is pretty booked up. I want to say that on average he probably has around seven to eight clients a day,” said Hernandez.
The biggest concern of the immigration population that has been said to El Concilio legal services is concerns of status of residency and fear of the unknown with the current administration.
“We do have a higher demand but with that being said, there is a lot more people also calling in with fear of not knowing if this is something that they wanna do, either for the renewal they don’t know if they’re prepared to renew it because of how things are changing. How the administration is acting so there is a lot of people that come kind of give us a call and be like ‘Will you guys be able to do this?’ or ‘Is it gonna affect me?’ just because once again I said they have fear of this administration and not knowing what’s gonna come about with this presidency,” said Hernandez.
When asked about specific scenarios of cases where the immigrant population has said concern of risking residency when making any moves.
“We see that residency are being taken away because of these situations so I think that would be the biggest issue with people coming in.Because of this there’s also people coming in to do citizenship way more often than we did get before this presidency before this administration and it’s all it’s all through that same fear that they would rather prefer to go through the process of citizenship to solidify their status here, Then to risk the residency being taken away, we also get a lot of issues with travel.,” said Hernandez.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES
Catholic Charities of Stockton provides resources and support through helping through integration into American life with educational programs. Services provided are of immigration of legal series like appeals and forms, also programs to assist immigrants succeed.
Maira Reyes, DOJ Representative and lead case manager at Catholic Charities of Stockton who assists with Immigration Legal Services. Reyes States the resources that Catholic Charities of Stockton provides in order to support the immigrant population.
“We provide affirmative help with immigration legal services, affirmative cases. So we do offer DACA renewal. We offer citizenship. We offer renewal of green cards. And we also do family petitions. So anyone applying for a resident card. We do the adjustments in the U.S. and the consular cases that go outside of the U.S as well. We do receive grants from the state so that we’re able to offer the services free to the community. And for those that do not qualify for those grants, it’s always a low cost compared to the attorney. So it’s very affordable for the community,” said Reyes.
Reyes mentions the amount of people that have been seeking their assistance and the resources they provide to help as many people as possible. Catholic Charities of Stockton host workshops once a month and some weekly to provide support to those in need.
“So again,we offer free services for those that qualify for the grants. Those do go individually to one-on-one basis due to the confidentiality. But they are every 30 minutes, so that way we’re able to help a lot of individuals in one of the workshops. We also offer the know your rights workshops to inform the community of their rights, because that’s a big concern right now with everything going on. And we also have the fraud workshops that we recently added because yes, unfortunately, we are getting a lot of calls. Almost every single day with a lot of people that have been victims of fraud.” said Reyes.
Reyes clarified exactly what fraud that has been caught affecting the community who are looking to seek legal services but aren’t aware of potential scams or red flags in people seeking to take advantage of those in need.
“There’s a lot of people that are impersonating attorneys that are impersonating Catholic charities, saying that they’re from Catholic charities or that they’re this attorney from here or there and they are taking money from people and not providing any services.”
Reyes states the biggest concern that has been said to Catholic Charities of Stockton has been facing from the immigrant population.
“The number one thing right now is probably the situation with the tensions. That is for sure the biggest concern, which is affecting our work overall, because we are seeing a little bit of a decrease with more people actually showing up to their appointments because of the fear of detentions. People are very hesitant to submit their applications because they fear that it will lead to detention or a deportation.”
MEXICAN HERITAGE CENTER
Mexican Heritage Center and Gallery (MHC&G) is a safe space for educating and promoting cultural art for the community. MHC&G hosts many events and activities to honor and celebrate cultural and traditional holidays. The MHC&G supports the community through safe and supportive place of gathering with resources to help the community.
Gracie Madrid, President of the MHC&G and retired principal for Stockton Unified School District for 42 years. Madrid said the lack of business or gathering at MHC&G due to the tensions of potential ICE raids for being in public spaces.
“They just happen to be here and they ask, nowadays, it seems like everybody’s afraid of doing anything. And so they’re not loud about it. Or a son or a daughter might be here and ask about it for their parents, but not for themselves. So it’s kind of on the quiet side,” said Madrid.
Madrid states the effects on the community that the ICE raids have had on the events and gathering of everyone. How the community and small businesses are suffering due to the fear of possibly being targeted.
“When we had our day of the dead, we usually have 1,000 plus, almost 2,000 people, then I noticed that a section of a community was missing, they weren’t here. They usually come as vendors because they like to cook and sell things.So we had less people, and people noticed right away. Loss of businesses. There’s going to be less Mexicanos everywhere. You know, so they just don’t know where we’re going to end up, even as Mexican Americans. An economy is very important,” said Madrid.
Madrid mentioned the resource and information packet which she provides to people seeking assistance at MHC&G, given to her by Alicia Ramirez from United Farm Workers.
“Well, here it just gives them a lot of things, if ice comes, what they should do in different situations.These materials are designed to be clear and accessible and easy to distribute. They’re really good at explaining if you’re at home and they come, what do you do because a lot of people don’t know that,” said Madrid.
