By Jefferson Díaz
The Truth Reporter
Local Toledo are law enforcement officers know that they don’t have the authority to enforce immigration laws. This was made clear by Lucas County Sheriff Mike Navarre in a meeting he held with representatives of nine community organizations at the headquarters of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC).
After signing a Code of Conduct that allows Toledo communities to work with the Sheriff’s Department in order to provide better transparency in police work, Navarre answered a couple of questions from attendees: all of them were about immigration.
“We cannot interfere with the work that federal agencies do,” Navarre said, referring to the work that ICE does. “If they call and ask us to assist, we’re going to assist because we don’t want anyone to get hurt,” added the sheriff, who was very keen in ensuring that northwest Ohio has not witnessed large raids, as in bigger cities, carried out by ICE looking for immigrants.
Baldemar Velasquez, president of FLOC, reaffirmed what Navarre said: “we have not seen large ICE raids in Toledo, only sporadic encounters.” But that does not mean that communities are not prepared for when these operations come: “we’re teaching our people, especially migrants, what are their rights,” added Velasquez.
At FLOC the premise for migrants is not to escalate the situation into a bigger problem when these encounters with ICE occur, but rather to maintain their ground and know their rights. “ICE has offices in Sandusky,” says Velasquez to ensure that this agency is closer to Toledo than it seems.
It’s the first time that a code of conduct has been signed between the Lucas County Sheriff’s Office and community organizations of Toledo and one of the main objectives is for Sheriff’s deputies to respect due process in the execution of their work before all citizens who live in the greater Toledo area, whether they are citizens or have a regular immigration status or not.