 Hello, welcome to Legislative Update. I'm Nenette Boulevage. I am here co-hosting this program with my good friend Jim Baumgart. Glad to be here. He is so kind to let me join in on his show the last couple of months. It's wonderful. We're here on the UW Sheboygan campus, the studios of WSCS. So we're thrilled that they're willing to host us here. Today we have a wonderful guest, Jennifer Estrada from Vosses de la Frontera, which is an organization that is chapters all over the state of Wisconsin, but also in Sheboygan County. So tell us about who you are, Jennifer. You are the statewide organizer, I understand. Tell us about yourself and the organization. Correct. Yes. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm the statewide organizer for Vosses de la Frontera. We are grassroots operation based out of Milwaukee, but like you said, we have chapters now growing to 11 chapters this year all over the state. And we provide help and support for our immigrant communities. We have services such as English classes, citizenship classes, deportation defense. We keep them also updated on all the laws that are coming or trying to come into effect and how we can protect and protect the immigrant community, but also get them integrated into our community and make sure that they know that they are a part of our community. They provide so much support into our economic state of this, especially the dairy state. We have so many immigrants that work the dairy farms. And just to kind of help the public get over some of those misconceptions exactly on who immigrants are and how they contribute to our state and our communities. And you reminded me of something that I didn't fully appreciate. I always assumed Vosses de la Frontera was just for Latinos, but it's for any immigrant. And because we have a wide variety here in Sheboygan, not just Hispanics, but from Syria, from other Middle Eastern countries, African countries, Somalia, Europe, and all over. And so you provide services to help all of those. We do, and actually we'll be celebrating on the 7th with a big citizenship kind of gala of all the people that have become new citizens through our program. This year we're already a little over 200, and it isn't just from Mexico or El Salvador, Guatemala. We do help people from all over the world. So that's, yeah, that's enlightening. So the reason I wanted to have you, I first learned about your organization on the local level. About a year ago, last March 2017, I was there to watch and participate in this huge civic activity in front of Sheboygan City Hall. And you were protesting a bill. The number was 200. And it was phenomenal because this 500 people crowded in front of City Hall on Center Street, and then were able to join some of them into City Hall and successfully. And because we have a great Sheboygan City Council, they shot down that bill. But that's not true everywhere. So tell us about that bill, and I know it relates to this beautiful sign here. Yes. Yes, that was great. We have been fully embraced by the Sheboygan community and the City Council, like you said, are amazing. They helped shoot that bill down. That bill is kind of like a mimic of what Waukesha is going through right now. The 287G program was one of the 23 applications that were accepted by the Trump administration. Milwaukee was also included in that, but they actually had gotten turned down. We have a little bit higher presence in Milwaukee, but in Waukesha, sadly, it was passed. So the sheriff had applied for this program. It was then granted by the Trump administration. So he would reserve federal funding if he would train his officials to act as immigration agents. So pretty much if you are an immigrant and you are in the community, if you're driving, they have the right to pull you over. And when they pull you over, they have the right then to ask you your status. So saying, hey, show me. It's like the SB-4 in Texas that we all heard of, the show me your papers. That's a law. This is a program. And that has been implemented now in Waukesha. So that is our huge campaign. It's ripping families apart. It's creating fear. We just had, last Friday, we actually had a community forum with the immigrant community, with the police chief, with the mayor. And the chief of police and the mayor are completely against this. But yet, because the sheriff has the power to apply for it and they got granted, they have to, well, at least the sheriffs will have to abide by that program. But police don't have to. The police do not. And Salah, it's creating even like a divide between our local law enforcement because they're saying, hey, we don't want anything to do with this. It's going to create for victims of a crime. Say if you are a victim of a crime and immigrant is the witness, they're not going to want to step forward and be the witness to that crime because they're in fear of, hey, we could get deported. So say you are someone of, say, Hispanic descent or just maybe an African-American you're driving along. You've lived here your whole life. You were born here. You don't have papers with you. So somebody stops you and you can say, well, I was born in Wisconsin, but how do you prove it? Exactly. And the sad part is after proving it, then you are, initially, then you are going to be treated like a criminal because if you don't have that paperwork to prove where you're from, you will be taken down. You will be fingerprinted. You will be mugshot. You will be pretty much penalized like a criminal, even though you're not. Over 50 years ago, for many years, I was in the scouting movement. And over 50 years ago, part of our troop had a couple of Hispanic children that were voice counts. And how that happened was that their dad was a migrant laborer from Texas, a citizen all of his life. He would come up for a number of years. Finally, he met his wife to be married and got a job at Kohler. Those kids are still in the community. They could be stopped and they're not carried any kind of papers. Because why would you? They were there before some of the first, my grandfather who came over from the old country. These Hispanics from Texas have been there for hundreds of years, some of them. Yeah, it's sad. You really get caught into a situation that you may not be able to show that you're a citizen and yet you are. Yeah, it's like a catch-22. They're using this as a legal way to racially profile people. It's sad. It creates fear, not only for the immigrant community, but then it's like, well, why are they doing it? The people that are not immigrants that don't fully understand the system, they have this fear thinking, well, why are they doing this? What should we be afraid of? So it divides the community and divides families. It divides families, yeah. And I understand that for you, this is personal. It is personal. I started organizing with Poses La Frontaine in 2009 just as a volunteer. In 2012, it got a little bit serious for me. I had my husband of 16 years, father of my children, was picked up by the local police saying that there was an ice hold on him. Ice stands for? Immigration and Customs enforcement. They had taken him into custody. We are personal friends with the local law enforcement in Manitowoc where we live. They had called us because my husband was a volunteer at the YMCA. We were really integrated into our community, worked at the same job for 10 years, paid taxes, everything, all the misconceptions that there are. We did. You have five children. We have five children, yeah. And the local law enforcement had called me and said, hey, this is the first time we've ever had to do this, but your husband has been put on an ice hold. We have him down here. They even actually allowed me to go in and sit with him in an interview room, which they probably shouldn't have allowed, but they did, because they didn't even fully understand what was going on. I was allowed to see him and they said, well, if ICE does not pick him up in 48 hours, he has to be released. In an hour taps, ICE had come from Dodge County and they had came to pick him up. At that time they had transferred him to Dodge County and he was put on an ice hold. And it only because my husband came here when he was 15. He was the only one that came across his whole family. He's a family of 10 kids, so he had come across to help try work and support his family there. He was sending money home. He was sending money home the whole time, yes. He came, was working here. We met, we fell in love. He started his family here, but still continued to help his family in Mexico. In 1999 we had started the process with a lawyer, not a very good lawyer, who gave us some very bad information saying that we couldn't legalize his status here, that we would have had gone to Mexico to do it. Which wasn't true. Which wasn't true, but we were young and totally naive. This is before we had tried the children. We didn't know, right. The immigration system, even like being directly involved in the immigration system now in dealing with so many cases, it's still changing. On such a rapid rate, like there's always something new coming up. There's always, oh, there's this ban. There's something getting taken. There's something getting given. And even under President Reagan in the 80s, he had a whole different attitude about immigrants. So it's very understandable that someone who was here would have a different view of their future here. Correct. Because it was more tolerant. Right. I was completely ignorant to the fact. So when he got picked up, I was, I mean, I thank God that I had an organization like Voces de la Frontera to pull off of because I was completely confused and ignorant to the fact that, hey, what was going on? Why is, you know, he's a law abiding person. He doesn't have a criminal record like they're trying to say we're getting rid of all the criminals. He's a father. He's a husband. He's active in the community as a volunteer 10 years at the same job and we pay taxes. So everything that they say that they were doing was the exact opposite of what my husband was. So when my husband went and had gotten picked up, he then was put into detention. And because he had come across twice, there was no due process. He was not even allowed to see a judge. It was an automatic deportation. He was gone. So we had to see him for about a month, going back and forth from Manitowoc to Dodge County. And remind you, I was a stay-at-home mom at the time. He was our breadwinner. So to take that breadwinner out of a house, and now I'm stuck with, you know, I had a newborn. I had young children. So you had to pay the rent and you had to buy the food and... Everything. On nothing. Because they, you know, they took them. And thank God, I mean, like where he was working, I had a lot of backing through Voces de la Frontera. I had a lot of backing. Sounds like quite a Christian group there. Yeah. So how is he now and how are your daughters now? So it's hard. I mean, I know you've had the chance to hear my daughter speak. My daughter speak in January. Yeah, she, at a march, she speak at Senate hearing that, and she's something that broke my heart, even as a, not only just being her mom, but just as a person. Like, I didn't realize how much it affected them, but she, you know, she said what is most impactful, like, yeah, they are a product of the system and they're left, the children are left to pick up the pieces. I mean, she has to see her dad through Skype. He can't be here for any of the important events of her life. Congratulations. Congratulations. Prom. You know, anything, anything that she does, she's involved in music, nothing. And that's sad. I mean, it's sad that kids also have to live with that fear of, hey, my parents went to work and are they coming home? And this is happening to thousands of people throughout the country. And in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin. Yeah. We've had so many, like, recent dairy raids. The dads go to work. Ice comes in. They take them and they don't return home. And a lot of the mothers, I mean, I personally feel for them because I know what it feels like to be that mom with the husband being the breadwinner. They're at home with the young children and getting that phone call of, your husband's not coming home. And then not knowing that end result of, is he going to get shipped to, back to his country? Or is he coming home to us? And we're almost running out of time already. But I just want to make the point, because you've mentioned farms quite a bit. Yes. And we have this program here, Got Milk. And what you do, you say Got Milk, thank an immigrant. Yeah. Because I do not believe in 2018, we would have a dairy industry in Wisconsin without immigrant workers. We would not. We need them now. So this is, this is heading home. You bet it. And Wisconsin's heritage requires this, we have to do something about it. And these are good workers. They are wonderful. Yeah. And sadly, people don't understand the immigration system that there is no real visa available for agriculture. So there's nothing that they can really do to even become a legal permanent resident. And that's sad. Well, we will definitely have to have you back, Jennifer. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your time. Thank you everyone here. Thank you, Jim. Tune in next time to legislative update.