WATCH CDC seeks to advise immigrants of their rights
By GABRIELLA FINE
Waltham Times Contributing Writer
WATCH CDC, a local organization promoting affordable housing and supporting immigrants and others in the Waltham community, recently held a program to prepare immigrants for shifting tenant-renter dynamics and educate them on their legal rights as the Trump administration starts implementing hard-line immigration policies.
On Jan. 16, ahead of Trump’s inauguration, WATCH community members and allies met on Zoom to discuss tenants rights within the immigrant community ahead of the Trump presidency.
Some Zoom participants expressed concern about the possibility of landlords threatening to report tenants to ICE in the face of any tenant-renter conflict. Participants also urged their neighbors to “know your rights” and strategized about potential responses to landlords threatening tenants.
WATCH officials said the new president’s policies have the potential to impact many in Waltham. Government data and official tallies of the number of undocumented immigrants in the city are difficult to come by. However, Genoveva Tavera, community organizer of WATCH, estimated that somewhere between 2,600 and 3,200 immigrants in the city are undocumented. She said most new immigrants to Waltham are from Guatemala.
The biggest fears within the Waltham Latino immigrant community are of mass deportation, family separation and an end to birthright citizenship, Tavera said.
Trump on Jan. 20 signed an executive order on birthright citizenship, declaring that granting U.S. citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil is unconstitutional. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution guarantees citizenship to those born on U.S. soil. A federal judge has temporarily blocked Trump’s executive order, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional” as multiple parties sue to stop Trump’s order. As of last week, 22 states have filed suit against Trump over his executive order.
Housing concerns
Tavera said during her nearly eight years with WATCH she has seen “all the challenges, deeper problems, that new immigrants and also now low-income residents had because of the rising cost of housing.” She described living situations where two or three families reside in a single-family unit in order to afford rent. Tavera said landlords know when multiple families live in one unit but, “The only thing that they care [about] is that they pay the rent. And landlords love to rent to Latinos because they know that they pay because they are afraid to lose their apartments.”
Doug Quattrochi, a co-founder of MassLandlords, a nonprofit group for owners and managers of residential real estate, said he doesn’t expect law-abiding landlords to be impacted by Trump’s immigration orders.
“Whatever the federal administration might want to do with respect to immigration, landlords and housing providers across the entire country cannot ask what someone’s immigration status is, what their documentation may be, except to verify an identity,” he said.
Quattrochi also said landlords are put in a difficult position when they’re asked to leave the names of undocumented renters off rental agreements. “That’s going to make it really hard for a responsible landlord to approve your application,” he added.
Quattrochi said there are risks when renting from landlords who are lax in compliance with the law.
He said he worries that such renters could be in housing that is not safe, citing carbon monoxide poisoning and fire as two potential risks.
“If you sign up to live in a country like the United States, where potentially there’s going to be very draconian enforcement, you have to be completely off the radar, and that means that you’re renting from landlords who are completely off the radar, and so your housing maybe is not going to be safe,” he said.
Community response
WATCH’s recent work informing community members about their legal rights comes as Waltham residents and other institutions prepare for the local impact of Trump’s immigration policies.
Waltham Public Schools’ superintendent’s office last week issued a statement saying it would not allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to enter schools without a judicial warrant. The statement read, “The Civil Rights Act of 1964, state law, and federal law require state educational agencies and local school districts to provide all elementary and secondary students with equal access to public education – irrespective of race, color, sex, gender identity, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or immigration status.”
It continued, “Our building leaders will not admit any ICE agents into school without a judicial warrant.”
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Boston Field Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Members of the “Waltham, MA Residents” Facebook group in recent weeks debated the appropriate response to potential ICE presence in Waltham.
One user wrote, “I heard a rumor that ice was conducting raids in Waltham today… is there any truth to this? I am scared I’ll probably continue to carry my passport around so the modern day ss can’t take me.”
Another user responded, “If you are in the country legally, don’t sweat it.”
One member shared a graphic cautioning social media users from spreading rumors of raids and only sharing documented, verified reports of ICE presence.
Editors notes: Genoveva Taverna serves on The Waltham Times community advisory board.
