{"id":70338,"date":"2025-01-31T10:41:53","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T18:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=70338"},"modified":"2025-01-31T10:41:53","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T18:41:53","slug":"api-leaders-in-atlanta-ally-with-latino-community-in-wake-of-ice-raids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=70338","title":{"rendered":"API Leaders in Atlanta Ally With Latino Community in Wake of ICE Raids"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Jongwon Lee<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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API leaders say the raids call for “solidarity” across Atlanta’s immigrant communities. \u201cWe have to realize that at any point this could shift to other communities.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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ATLANTA, Ga.\u2013\u201cPastor, can we send our children to school?\u201d That\u2019s the current refrain from parishioners of Iglesia Penuel Mission in Duluth, Georgia, says Pastor Jay Kim, whose church serves the Atlanta suburb\u2019s large immigrant Latino population.<\/p>\n

Kim\u2019s remarks come just days after a series of\u00a0ICE raids across Metro Atlanta<\/a>, including one that targeted a church, sewing fear among migrant families nationwide.<\/p>\n

Members of Atlanta\u2019s API community have stepped up in response.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are organizing temporary shelters for immigrants who have been kicked out due to the immigration raids,\u201d notes Kim, who is ethnic Korean but was raised in Paraguay and Argentina and speaks fluent Spanish. \u201cThey need a roof from the rain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kim\u2019s church is located along Buford Highway, a 30-mile stretch of road in metro Atlanta that is a\u00a0hub for the city\u2019s large immigrant community<\/a>, with restaurants and other businesses catering to the area\u2019s expansive diversity.<\/p>\n

\u201cLatinos are neighbors of our Korean American community. In the workplace and at home, Latinos are indispensable to Korean American immigrants,\u201d he says. \u201cMany Koreans help them invisibly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Atlanta is home to one of the country\u2019s largest Korean communities, second only to Los Angeles, as well as one the nation\u2019s largest Latino populations.<\/p>\n

Reporting by Telemundo<\/a>\u00a0notes arrests during the past week\u2019s raids took place along Buford Highway as well as other Atlanta neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

The Drug Enforcement Administration\u2019s Atlanta division along with the FBI issued statements acknowledging their involvement with the raids. \u201cThe FBI, along with our Department of Justice partners, is assisting DHS and other federal law enforcement partners with their immigration enforcement efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several thousand migrants were deported during the first week of Trump\u2019s presidency, according to reports. At least\u00a0half of those deported had no criminal record<\/a>\u00a0despite assurances from the administration that it would only target individuals with a criminal past.<\/p>\n

According to the\u00a0Washington Post<\/a>, the administration has now issued quotas to ICE agents seeking to increase the number of daily deportations to at least 1,200 to 1,500.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a time for solidarity,\u201d says Lily Pabian, executive director of the non-profit\u00a0We Love Buford Highway<\/a>, which works to preserve the area\u2019s multicultural identity. \u201cWe have to realize that at any point this could shift to other communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pointing to refugees and asylum seekers, who Trump has also targeted for deportation, Pabian stresses, \u201cThis is a time for us all to be very real about what\u2019s happening and the potential of where this could go.\u201d<\/p>\n

The area around Buford Highway first emerged as an immigrant enclave some 50 years earlier, a time of growing opportunity thanks to the expansion of the region\u2019s auto industry, explains Pabian.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of immigrant communities rose up, bringing with them their entrepreneurial spirit to build small businesses,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

That spirt helped\u00a0spur Atlanta\u2019s economic growth<\/a>. Immigrants\u2014including unauthorized migrants\u2014contribute approximately $9 billion in tax revenue to the city each year and are 41% more likely to start a business compared to their US-born counterparts.<\/p>\n

Despite their contributions, immigrants have often had to confront waves of racism and xenophobia, Pabian says, including during the Covid 19 pandemic when the API community became a target of hate, the most disturbing example of which came in 2021 after a\u00a0mass shooting<\/a>\u00a0that targeted Asian owned spas in the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like September 11 for us,\u201d says Pabian of the lasting scars from that period, adding the experience engendered a sense of solidarity and empathy that is now being extended to the Latino migrant population. \u201cSince the ICE raids, we see another community being marginalized\u2026 empathy is very important.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, fear and anxiety continue to ripple across communities here.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany immigrant parents will stop sending their children to school,\u201d says Kim, \u201cand there will be more cases of laborers not paid for their work. Immigrant women who are victims of violence will also be reluctant to go to the police.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his part, Kim acknowledges there is little he can do to stand in the way should agents arrive at his church\u2019s doorstep.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I hear that a member of my church has been arrested, I will try to find out how to contact their family. But if ICE wants to arrest undocumented people in my church, I can\u2019t stop them,\u201d he says, noting the absence of \u201csanctuary churches\u201d in Georgia, which he calls \u201cunfortunate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the raids, Kim\u2019s church has returned to the Covid era practice of holding online prayer meetings. \u201cWe created a chat room with 100 immigrants in it. We post morning and evening prayers in the chat room every day with the goal of praying for 40 days.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds, \u201cWe pray on our knees that we will survive the raids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Schurmann contributed reporting for this story.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ByJongwon Lee Jan 31, 2025 API...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70339,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70338\/revisions\/70339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}