Mexican and Honduran immigrants flocked to New Orleans in Katrina's wake, hoping to find work rebuilding the city. Too many have fallen prey to unscrupulous bosses and violent criminals, and they need advocates.

Advocating for immigrants in New Orleans by Tom Greene, SJ

Javier Pimeda fastens waterproofing to a damaged roof in New Orleans's Garden District. The Census Bureau estimates that while a half million people were driven from their Gulf Coast homes by Katrina, 100,000 Hispanics moved in.

Seek the welfare of the city
... for in its welfare you
will find your own. (Jer. 29:7)

Over the past few months, the words of the prophet Jeremiah have served as a rallying cry for me as I advocate for undocumented immigrants in New Orleans, my hometown. Part of my ministry involves functioning as an intermediary for the Hispanic immigrant community in New Orleans and the Gulf region, an interesting integration of my work prior to entering the Society and my ministry as a Jesuit. Previously, I worked as an assistant district attorney in New Orleans, a job that introduced me to the criminal justice system and how it functions in this city. As a Jesuit, my primary ministry has been legally representing and advocating for detained immigrants.

I had not lived in New Orleans since 1991, but upon my return it did not take long to realize how much the ethnic and cultural landscape of my hometown had changed. Estimates are that as many as 100,000 Hispanics have moved to the city after Hurricane Katrina. I can now find taco trucks on Magazine Street, hear Spanish music on St. Charles Avenue, and meet Honduran teenagers while walking on the levee.

New Orleans police superintendent Warren Riley has been in command of a force that operated out of FEMA trailers after Katrina devastated the city. The police and fire departments are still using such trailers.

Stressed out, understaffed, and underequipped, the New Orleans Police Department struggles to protect all its residents. The rates for murders, robberies, and other crimes committed against Hispanic immigrants are particularly high.

Immigrant advocacy groups in other cities organize ways to preserve the cultural identities of immigrant groups, and I had initially envisioned that much of my ministry would be devoted to similar efforts. In New Orleans, however, the desire to preserve the identity of the Hispanic community has been trumped by the urgent need to recognize their human dignity and their contributions to the city. Although the citizens of New Orleans agree that its welfare depends on being rebuilt, there is little recognition that rebuilding relies heavily upon non-citizens — undocumented laborers.

Author Tom Greene, SJ, has a hand in a new venture, the Jesuit Social Research Institute (JSRI) at Loyola University New Orleans. It's been in business only since September, but it plans to bring Catholic social teaching to bear on issues including migration, poverty, and racism in New Orleans, around the South and in the Gulf/Caribbean area. "Right now, we're listening," says Fr. Ted Arroyo, SJ, executive director of the institute. "We've interviewed about 70 people in ten states, Mexico, and Central America, consulting with them about their needs and working to come up with some feasible pilot projects for the spring," he says. While a big emphasis of the JSRI will be conducting and publishing social research in an attempt to have a broad impact, it will also engage in local-level efforts. Greene, for instance, is teaching Loyola law students about immigrants' rights and taking them on his visits to detention centers, and JSRI personnel are also meeting with New Orleans police officials to advocate for more sensitivity to the post-Katrina influx of Hispanic workers.

Along with the African-American poor, the Hispanic immigrants have become outcasts in New Orleans, criminalized and victimized while they work to rebuild the city. The welfare of the city is jeopardized by the incarceration of its undocumented labor force, while "documented" criminals who rob and kill them remain on the street. It seems that New Orleans is criminalizing civil matters (violations of immigration law) at the expense of prosecuting criminal matters (felony assaults).

Visit any neighborhood in New Orleans and you will find Hispanic workers gutting houses, hanging sheetrock, and tacking down roofing tiles. Many days I want to walk the streets calling out Jeremiah's rebuke: "Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing, and does not give him his wages." These words ring in my ears each time I visit the law clinic at Loyola University New Orleans and hear day laborers' stories. They come in or call in, seeking help because they have not been paid for their work. Homeowners can be effusive in their praise of the immigrants who work long hours to renovate their homes but show little interest in ensuring that they receive a fair wage. The city has no task force to track down unscrupulous bosses. Some contractors operate with impunity and revel in the abundant labor supply for which they pay a pittance, at times nothing.

Pedro Reyes and his lunch truck cater to the many new Hispanic immigrant workers in New Orleans. Such trucks have become a familiar sight in the city, a reflection of a cultural shift. "I can now find taco trucks on Magazine Street, hear Spanish music on St. Charles Avenue, and meet Honduran teenagers while walking on the levee," says the author.

Other immigrants go unpaid because they are swept up in raids at work sites and shipped to detention centers in rural areas of Louisiana. Immigration detention has become big business for poor areas of the South and Southwest, and the federal government is doling out millions to private contractors to run the facilities. I am one of six nonprofit immigration attorneys in a state that will soon detain 4,000 immigrants. Each month I travel to immigration detention centers, because detainees need access to legal services.

I usually visit a center in Waterproof, Louisiana, once a month with students from the immigration law clinic at Loyola. By far the most common request we receive is for a phone call to a loved one or assistance in retrieving confiscated valuables. When they are arrested at job sites, immigrants are not allowed phone calls. Calls from the detention center can only be made by purchasing $10 phone cards, but it takes time for wallets and purses, confiscated by the police, to be forwarded to the detention centers. Thus, when I arrive for my monthly visit, many immigrants want help filling out missing property forms or want to get word to a daycare center (one week later!) that they will not be picking up their children. I have spent nights following these visits making phone calls to wives and children letting them know husbands and fathers are in jail.

The sad irony is that my home state is becoming a place of detained migrants and nondetained criminals. The criminal justice system is in shambles-the district attorney just resigned in late October, and the police department is understaffed, underfunded, and still operating out of trailers two years after Katrina. I am part of a coalition of community organizations that meet with the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) to advocate for the immigrant community in New Orleans. An NOPD official told me that he expects a record number of Hispanic murder victims this year in New Orleans, yet there is little or no Hispanic presence on the homicide investigation unit.

The Jesuit Refugee Service/USA's chaplaincy program aims to provide pastoral care to detainees at the Department of Homeland Security's four federal detention centers, including this one in El Paso. Spanish Jesuit Fr. Daniel Izuzquiza (right) is one of JRS/USA's staff who counsels detainees and offers liturgies and Bible study classes.		JRS/USA lobbies for the use of less-restrictive forms of monitoring than detention at these facilities. The organization is particularly concerned about the unnecessary detention of children. It works for the transfer of custody of minors from the Department of Homeland Security to the Department of Health and Human Services, a legal requirement.

Police acknowledge that Hispanics are being preyed upon, but there are minimal resources with which to stem the violent attacks. After two months of lobbying, the police department recently compiled a list of ten officers who will serve as translators for investigations involving Spanish-speaking victims. Day laborers are being robbed and murdered with increasing frequency, yet the only federal "public safety" money that seems to be flowing into the state is for the detention and removal of undocumented immigrants who are helping to rebuild it.

Adding to the complexity is the nationwide pressure on police departments to enforce immigration laws. The federal government has made a policy decision that public safety is secondary to making sure that people without documents are not walking our streets.

I often visit Mary Queen of Vietnam Parish in East New Orleans, a Vietnamese parish that has reached out to the Hispanic community living in its midst. The parish recently held a town hall meeting with the NOPD in response to a spate of crime in the area. A Vietnamese parishioner spoke about his two children who were killed in a home invasion a few weeks earlier, and an African-American mother related the fear and anxiety that overcomes her when darkness descends and a car rolls slowly down the street in front of her home.

No one from the Hispanic community attended the meeting. Before the meeting, a friend stopped by the home of a leader in the Hispanic immigrant community, a man who had survived another home invasion burglary that also took two lives. My friend implored the victim to attend the meeting to tell his story, but he was not willing-he feared being picked up and deported. Like many other undocumented immigrants, his story remains outside of the public forum.

Fr. Tom Greene, SJ, who was ordained a priest in 2007, is a research fellow at the Jesuit Social Research Institute of Loyola University New Orleans. His primary focus is on immigration in the southern United States and Latin America.

Each morning, millions of Christians pray the Canticle of Zachariah (Lk. 1:68-79), which concludes with: "In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace." These words sum up how I view my mission on behalf of the immigrants in New Orleans. They are indeed a shadow population, one that lives in darkness and the shadow of death. Each day brings us an opportunity and a challenge to be a companion to all of God's people, to shine Christ's light on them, and to guide everyone to the way of peace.