Active with the Activists: Rep. Goodlander Gets An Earful From Honduran Immigrant

By ARNIE ALPERT, Active with the Activists, InDepth NH

Arnie Alpert spent decades as a community organizer/educator in NH movements for social justice and peace. Officially retired since 2020, he keeps his hands (and feet) in the activist world while writing about past and present social movements.

MANCHESTER, NH — After surviving a traumatic encounter with armed and masked ICE agents near his Manchester home on Saturday, Edisson Erazo was able to relate his story to U.S. Representative Maggie Goodlander, D-NH, outside the Norris Cotton Federal Building in Manchester on Tuesday.

Erazo, a Honduran immigrant with Temporary Protective Status, said he and his wife were in their car when they were surrounded by five cars and masked men wearing vests marked “police.” The first thing they told him was that he matched the description of someone they were looking for. “I was like, well, you're standing right in front of me, and do I still match the description of the person? Can I see the picture?” he asked. He asked, as well, if they had an arrest warrant.

“It doesn't work like that. We're not supposed to show you anything,” he said the agent told him. “And then when I presented my paperwork, he said, well, that could be fake.” Erazo said he replied that their paperwork could be fake, too. “The good thing for you is that you can run me. I can't run you, so you can still be fake.”

Goodlander, who was at the federal building’s plaza attending the monthly Interfaith Prayer Vigil for Immigrant Justice, listened closely to Erazo’s story, asking occasional questions. Erazo’s wife, a green card holder; their attorney, Zoila Gomez; Sarah Jane Knoy of the Granite State Organizing Project; and Eva Castillo of the NH Alliance for Immigrants and Refugees were there, as well.

As four dozen immigrants’ rights supporters circled the area in front of the federal building in what is known as a “Jericho Walk” Erazo continued his story. When an agent Erazo referred to as “the big guy,” approached his window wearing a mask, “I told him, if you have a mask on, I don't want to talk.” Another agent, who was without a mask, was next.

“Can you talk to me?,” the agent asked. “Yeah, you and I, we can talk. You don't have a mask on,” Erazo replied. “I had no problem.” But then the “big guy” came back and said, “We're gonna get you, either the good way or the bad way.”

“I was like, do whatever you think you have to do.” At that point the agent went back to his car and returned in what looked like full combat gear and carrying a crowbar.

“So they had all these cars, none of them are government cars?” Goodlander asked. “They're just wearing vests that say police? You don't know from where, but some of them are masked?”

Erazo said they were, including the big guy who was said to be in charge.

“That big guy was holding a crowbar. But he said, why you have to be so difficult? I'm like, I'm not being difficult. I'm just defending myself,” Erazo said. “I don't have any problems, so I don't have no reason why somebody's going to be looking for me.”

While the interchange went on, his wife was capturing the whole thing on video from the passenger seat. Neighbors came out onto the street to observe and record, as well, Erazo said.

“They didn’t show you any badge?” Goodlander asked.

“I kept asking for that,” Erazo said.

“You were in your car?”

“I was in my car.”

“So then how long did it take?”

“At least ten minutes.”

“And then they came back and said, ‘Okay, fine, go?’” Goodlander asked.

“I don't know if they left because everybody came out and were recording, but they just left.” One of the agents told Erazo to report to the ICE office at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, but they didn’t give him any paperwork, something Goodlander said is a violation of the law.

“He was very smart, and he advocated for himself,” attorney Gomez said. “On Saturday, they came to break his window, literally, and he advocated for himself. He didn't open the window. He talked them through the process, and they ended up telling him to come here today.”

At the ICE office, there was no record of an appointment for Erazo. “Just go home,” he was told. Gomez said an ICE agent “checked his paperwork, went in, came back, went in, came back, took pictures and said, you’re all set.”

Erazo said he learned how to handle himself by watching videos.

Goodlander asked if he had presented “a red card,” referring to a card that people can give to law enforcement agents stating that they wish to exercise their constitutional rights, remain silent, and deny assent to any warrantless searches.

“The red card wouldn't have helped them,” Gomez explained. “They would have broken his window.”

“What helped was that he knew what to do and what to say. He had paperwork that showed that he had his work permit, that he had his extension of the work permit, that he had TPS,” she said. It also helped that he is a fluent English speaker and was able to communicate well with the agents.

“This is very, very unique. If he did not speak the language, have the paperwork with him, if he did not know how to advocate for himself, he would have been arrested, and we would have had to figure it out after,” she said.

Afterward, Goodlander said, “I get reports on a regular basis about masked federal agents who any reasonable person wouldn't be able to tell if they're a federal agent or not because they're wearing masks. They're not wearing, clearly, their badges. This is happening across our state.”

Goodlander is one of 80 Representatives sponsoring a bill known as the “No Secret Police Act,” which would require law enforcement officers and agents of the Department of Homeland Security engaged in border security and civil immigration enforcement to clearly display identification and insignia when detaining or arresting individuals and to ban them from using home-made, non-tactical masks.

“How can anyone have trust in a law enforcement system when you don't know, just as we heard a moment ago, whether this is a legitimate law enforcement agent. I mean, we're within hours of having masked neo-Nazis in front of our State House. This is a basic principle of government,” she added.

Goodlander said she is part of a litigation task force made up of Democratic House members which is sorting through the Trump administration’s abuses and deciding when it makes sense to support legal challenges. The group is tracking about 350 cases. Last week several of her colleagues, who had been denied access to an immigrant detention facility, filed a suit against the Secretary of Homeland Security and the director of ICE. Goodlander said she’d do the same if she were denied similar access.

Eva Castillo said it’s pretty common for ICE agents to apprehend people without identifying themselves, and that she was proud of Erazo for being able to stand his ground in a terrifying situation. “Even though he was scared, he did not show his fear, and he did not let them walk all over him,” she said.

Goodlander said she hopes to attend the next monthly vigil at 9 a.m. on September 2. The vigils, organized by the Granite State Organizing Project, began early in the first Trump administration when Indonesian immigrants, fearful of deportation, asked for faith community accompaniment during their check-in appointments with ICE.

This article first appeared on InDepthNH.org and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.