Immigration advocates on Long Island say they’ve heard from people in the country illegally who won’t report crimes to police out of fears they could get deported and in some cases separated from their families.

Amid President Donald Trump's sweeping campaign to deport people in the country illegally, the crackdown is making people in the immigrant community reluctant to engage with government institutions, especially the police, advocates said.

That is making it harder for police to do their job, making communities less safe and emboldening criminals who think they can take advantage of immigrants, they said.

"Women are being forced to choose between suffering in silence or coming forward and risking their family," said Julia Miller, a supervising attorney at the Central American Refugee Center in Hempstead. "It's just devastating, and it feels like a violation of the police's duty to the community to serve and to protect when they're the ones making the community feel fear. That is the true miscarriage of justice here."

In one instance, a Nassau County woman originally from El Salvador who says she is the victim of a beating and attempted rape declined to report it to police out of fear of being deported, according to advocates.

Her reluctance came after the Nassau County Police Department teamed up with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in support of what the president pledged would be the largest mass deportation program in U.S. history.

The woman, a mother of three who is living in the country without legal permission, is afraid any contact with police will lead to her deportation and separate her from her daughters, Miller said. Two of the girls are U.S. citizens and one has a special immigrant juvenile legal status.

The woman won't report the alleged attack even though as a crime victim who cooperates with police she might be eligible for a "U visa" that eventually could lead to a green card, Miller said. She "wanted justice to show her daughters they deserve respect but ultimately couldn't move forward with the complaint."

Crime victims not asked status

Nassau County police told Newsday in a statement that "we do not and will not ever ask the immigration status of a crime victim or witness."

A spokesman for Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman did not respond to requests for comment but Blakeman previously said undocumented immigrants can report crimes without fear of being turned over to ICE..

"Victims and witnesses to a crime will not be asked for their immigration status," Blakeman said in a social media video released in late March and translated into Spanish. "If you call 911 for an emergency, you will not be asked for your immigration status."

Advocates said the reassurances were having little impact.

Immigrants "should be able to trust the police if they're in trouble," said Cheryl Keshner, a member of the Long Island Immigrant Justice Alliance. But "it's very hard to make a distinction right now when there's so much ICE activity in the community and when in Nassau County they've actually allowed the police to act as ICE agents."

"The fear is across the board," said Minerva Perez, executive director of the nonprofit Latino advocacy group OLA on the East End.

"We don't want them to pull back from reporting a crime because then the bad guys win," said Minerva Perez, executive director of the nonprofit Latino advocacy group OLA on the East End.

Not calling police

CARECEN's Miller said in another case reported to her agency, a Nassau County man saw an 8-year-old boy being beaten by his stepparent. But the resident did not want to call the police. While the stepparent is a U.S. citizen, the boy is not living here legally and could be deported.

The woman who said she is the victim of a beating and attempted rape initially had no hesitation about reporting it to Nassau police, Miller, the attorney, said.

"Before I had even mentioned the U visa, she indicated to me that she wanted justice for herself, that she wanted to have her day in court to see the person who had done this to her be a prosecuted for it," she said.

The woman said "she lives with constant fear of this person. She has nightmares, she sometimes flashes back to the incident," Miller said.

Nassau County Police and federal agents confront residents outside Park Avenue Elementary School in Westbury on June 10.

But then in March, Nassau County signed a "287 (g)" agreement allowing 10 of their detectives to be deputized as ICE agents. By late May, Trump’s deportation campaign shifted into high gear. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, told Fox News the administration wanted to boost arrests of immigrants from about 600 a day to at least 3,000 a day.

As the woman "started seeing the news about police officers interacting with ICE," she initially felt hesitation about reporting the crime, Miller said. The intensified national crackdown sealed her decision.

"She just decided that she would rather live with the trauma than re-traumatize herself and her child at the risk that she ends up in custody," Miller said.

'Victim in more danger'

Advocates say immigrants’ hesitancy to report crimes may embolden criminals. They range from landlords illegally evicting tenants to employers holding back wages to violent criminals including gangs terrorizing communities.

"It's a big concern," Perez said. "We don't want them to pull back from reporting a crime because then the bad guys win."

Miller said "ultimately, what the net result of this policy is, is that it allows the police to protect the bad guy and puts the victim in more danger than they've ever been."

It "makes their job harder," she added. "It makes the community not trust them. It makes it harder to investigate because people don't want to talk to them. People don't want to come forward because they're afraid of what's going to happen if they do."

Some areas such as the East End retain good relations with local police forces and advocates there still encourage immigrants to report crimes, Perez said. Suffolk County and local East End police departments do not collaborate with ICE.

"I haven't seen any issues of people not reporting crimes because they were fearful," said Chief James Kiernan of the Town of Southampton Police Department, noting that his department works closely with OLA.

"We've built a pretty good relationship with our immigrant population, so I think that things are still intact, and they still trust us to report," he said.

But that’s not the situation everywhere, Miller said.

For some crime victims "the process to come forward is already so re-traumatizing. It is already so emotionally difficult, so burdensome," she said. "Then on top of that, to have to fear the police themselves, the people who are supposed to be there to protect you. It leaves you feeling hopeless."

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