Immigration was a hot-button issue in the last national election, and since President Donald Trump took office, it’s become even more prominent. Headlines regularly discuss raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, rounding up undocumented immigrants. Tens of thousands have been arrested in the last few weeks and await deportation. Meanwhile, sanctuary cities have come under attack and face the threat of the federal government withholding promised funding. What does this all mean for New Hampshire residents? Here to discuss that is Eva Castillo, director of the N.H. Alliance for Immigrants and Refugees, or Welcoming New Hampshire.
By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew
This article has been edited for length and clarity.
Melanie Plenda:
Eva, please tell us about your work with immigrants and refugees. How long has it been going on, and how did you get involved?
Eva Castillo:
I got involved in the late 70s, when I first moved to the U.S. as a student, and then I realized the different treatment that we got from just regular people. I wasn't even planning on immigrating here, but this is all I've ever done since the ‘70s, and I became a resident in the ‘80s.
I worked at the now defunct Latin American Center in the ‘80s, and I noticed that concentrating on services is not going to make any difference, like putting a Band-Aid on a gangrene-infected wound. So I started doing advocacy and policy, and in 2007 I was hired by the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. They created this program, the New Hampshire Alliance for Immigrants and Refugees, because there were nobody — and still, to this day, there's nobody — whose only job is to advocate for immigrants. We have social justice organizations, and they can pick and choose immigration as one of their issues, but I only do immigration.
Melanie Plenda:
What is the work you do at the New Hampshire Alliance for Immigrants and Refugees?
Eva Castillo:
Right now, we're working on legislation, but we build community and we build positive relationships that make things easier for immigrants and refugees to integrate into society. We do leadership training with community organizing, tons of advocacy and just building relationships.
Melanie Plenda:
When we talk about immigrants, we often use terms like “documented” and “undocumented.’ For our audience, can you explain what those terms mean?
Eva Castillo:
Documented immigrants are people that are here legally. They can be students, they can be tourists, they can be people with work visas. They can be naturalized citizens or legal permanent residents. Undocumented people are those people that just came through the borders without inspection, or a very common occurrence is the people that came here on some type of visa and overstayed. It’s very common for students, for example, to overstay their visas, and also for tourists.
Melanie Plenda:
During the last presidential election, immigration was a hot topic. How did that impact the local community?
Eva Castillo:
Well, it really became frustrating because both parties use immigration as a punching bag to divert attention from the stuff that really matters to the regular public, even here locally.
I don't see why our local candidates have to run on anti-immigrant platforms. I have been asking people, “Is immigration such a problem for you?” And everybody says they care about housing and about jobs or they want a place that provides drug rehab. Immigration is not on their radar, so we are diverting the attention from the things that really matter to your average New Hampshire person and spending money that should go to more positive things.
The fact that they refer to us as criminals and drug dealers — that doesn’t do a service to anybody, because most of the people that are here are just regular, good people that are here just trying to give their families a better chance, and they're contributing as members of our society.
It is a fact that undocumented immigrants commit way less crimes than anybody. When you hear every time that an immigrant commits a crime or does something wrong, then it gets blown up in the newspapers, in the media. But I never heard anybody saying a French Canadian or an Irishman did this, and that gives a bad impression to the rest of the residents of the state, and that puts targets on our backs because we're all judged by the very few people that are, that are doing the wrong thing.
Melanie Plenda:
What are some of the concerns out there, when the rhetoric heats up like this?
Eva Castillo:
That someday they are going to get violence with us. In fact, I was just left a nasty message on my phone the other day by an anonymous caller. At least I have the guts and the integrity to put my name behind my words. Some just call me names and tell me, “I hope you get deported, I hope you die.” This is not the first time, and it won't be the last time, but it is just a matter of time before somebody really takes it upon themselves to hurt one of us, because we do not walk around with our passport tattooed on our forehead.
So, if you sound like me, or if you look like the stereotype of the immigrant — which is, by the way, not a white person — then you're in danger. I have calls from parents of U.S. citizens that are brown teenagers, and they say, how can my kid prove that he's a citizen? How do I protect my child? It is so painful, and at the same time it is upsetting that a mother has to worry about proving and doing something to prove that their kids have the right to live in this country when they've been born here.
Melanie Plenda:
I know it’s hard to generalize, but since President Trump took office, what’s been going on in the local immigrant and refugee community? How are they feeling? How do they feel treated?
Eva Castillo:
Again, we have seen an uptick in just nastiness towards us, and people are afraid. They are not going to the places that they used to go to. They try not to go out shopping too much. Some parents don't even want to send their children to school. The small businesses are being affected also, because their clients, their customers, don't show up.
I was talking to one of my friends who has a bodega. She said that at the end of the day, I have to throw half the food away because nobody no one comes. Another friend of mine has a barber shop, and she says that she is going to have to close her barber shop that she had for 20 years because people don't come.
So we're affecting people that are here legally, that are U.S. citizens. We're affecting everybody. It's not only the people that live in fear. And then the kids — they don't deserve to live in fear. They don't deserve to have this stress on them. It's affecting their mental health and their well being too.
Melanie Plenda:
You mentioned the fear, what are people doing to cope?
Eva Castillo:
I go around, and I teach people their rights. I talk to them and tell them not to fear and to trust that somehow things are going to get better someday. But even myself, I spent many nights just going to bed crying because there's not much I can do. I feel totally powerless.
These are people that I have known for 20 years or more, that I know are good people. I'm not around protecting criminals. This is my community too, so I don't want criminals regardless of where they come from. I don't want them living in my community. Every time they pick somebody that's a good person that I know that is just trying to do the right thing, and there's just no way for them to make it right in the way this dysfunctional system works, it really hurts me. So I cannot imagine if I am like this, how hard it is for those people that are families of mixed status. We have tons of mixed-status families living under one roof, so everybody's affected.
Melanie Plenda:
What is the alliance doing about all this?
Eva Castillo:
Well, I just give my support to people when they call me. Every weekend I go someplace, or every night I go someplace to give a “Know Your Rights” program. We have groups of people trying to provide support to the families that are left behind. There's another group of people that’s trying to find ICE activity, to verify that it is there instead of just spreading false news. That just increases the paranoia and the fear. We have groups of people just trying to talk to legislators locally to see if we can at least mitigate some of the harm or get people to understand that this is not the way. We really need to pass some type of reform that cleans up the old system and starts from scratch to make things easier. And we need to do something about the millions of people that are already here.
Melanie Plenda:
What other ideas do you have for solving this issue?
Eva Castillo:
We need our congresspeople to really grow some spine and do the right thing and stop using us — and I'm talking about both parties. Stop playing ping pong with the lives of immigrants, with the lives of people, and just revamp and pass some type of law that really solves this issue once and for all.
I have spent at least 25 years, if not more, begging our legislators on both sides. Please do something. We need to restate the fact that we're not talking about numbers here. We're talking about people, and we have really defaced immigrants. We have really dehumanized them to the point that people don't even have any compassion, or they don't feel anything because it's all about numbers. We're talking about families — mothers, children, fathers, elderly. Let's put humanity back in immigration.
Melanie Plenda:
Thank you so much for sharing these insights. Eva Castillo, director of the New Hampshire Alliance for Immigrants and Refugees, thank you for joining us today.
“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.