Larry Floersch
Lately I find it very confusing to watch the news on TV. It is unnerving to watch video footage of large groups of armed and masked men in body armor and combat gear tossing tear gas canisters at protestors, dog-piling people to the ground while flooding their faces with pepper spray, and shooting them through car windshields as they attempt to flee or as they lay unarmed and pinned to the ground. These images, I think, must be from someplace such as Tehran or Caracas, where the people are protesting an authoritarian regime in which the leaders do not value human life. Right?
On the other hand, I also understand the desire of Americans to protect the nation from noncitizen criminal evil doers — fanatical terrorists, drug dealers, human traffickers. But are mass military operations the way to do it? I ask this because I once unwittingly came face to face with one of those “evil doers.”
Back in 2016 and 2017, we spent the winter in a small town on the Gulf (of Mexico!) coast in Florida. One day I was in the local Piggly Wiggly supermarket looking for an ingredient I needed for a recipe I wanted to try. I wasn’t having any luck.
“Can I help you find something?” someone behind me asked. I turned to find a trim, smiling, middle-aged individual eagerly awaiting my answer. He said he was the manager of the Piggly Wiggly. I told him what I needed, and he led me to the appropriate area of the store, where together we unsuccessfully scanned the shelves.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said with an accent that wasn’t Southern. “Give me two days and I’ll have that on the shelf for you.” When I returned two days later, the item I wanted was there as promised.
About a month later I learned through local news sources that he had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement pending his expulsion from the United States. According to ICE, he had a history of human rights violations.
The Piggly Wiggly manager’s name was Jose Francisco Grijalva Monroy, but he went by the nickname “Poncho.”
Poncho Monroy was 50 years old, a native of El Salvador, and had lived in the United States for 20 years at the time of his arrest. He had immigrated to the U.S. in 1997 under a “temporary protected status” after fleeing El Salvador and its civil war.
When he was 19 years old, Monroy deserted the Salvadoran Army, which, his attorney pointed out, he had been forced to join. But, according to his attorney, Monroy readily admitted that before he deserted he had, under orders, tortured suspected guerillas during El Salvador’s civil war. This included dragging a couple of them behind a Jeep and hanging others by their wrists and slapping their chests with his bare hands . As his attorney noted, Monroy claimed he did not want to torture anyone but was told if he didn’t follow orders, he would pay with his own life.
For his desertion from the army, Monroy was sentenced to 10 years in prison in El Salvador; he served 11 months before his family managed to get him freed. It was then he fled to the U.S.
Once in Florida, Monroy had an encounter with the law, but the charges were dropped. After that, he kept a low profile. He married and had two kids. He secured a good job, paid taxes, sent his kids to school, and blended into the local community through activities such as coaching in the local youth soccer league.
In a 2011 hearing on his status, an immigration judge ordered Monroy returned to El Salvador. It is not clear from the news whether that decision had anything to do with his past behavior or whether it was simply because things were more stable in El Salvador and his “temporary protected status” had expired. He appealed the order; it was denied in 2012. But the interactions with the immigration courts over his legal status made ICE take notice of his past.
It took ICE five more years to act. Witnesses described the arrest of Monroy at the Piggly Wiggly as quiet and routine, no sweep and no raid, and Monroy was finally returned to El Salvador in June 2017, leaving behind his wife and children.
I’m sure some people sleep easier knowing Monroy is gone. Others protested his expulsion outside the capitol building in Tallahassee. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But whether or not you agree with the result, it points to a larger issue: Do we need large military-style operations to round up people who in many cases are litigating their statuses with immigration officials? Ask five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos of Minneapolis, who was detained along with his father even though Liam’s immigration case is pending.
I suppose it’s true that ICE is just doing its job. But it’s how they are doing it that is the problem. Why all the hyperbole and the military theatrics of troops storming through urban neighborhoods? Is it really needed or is it just good television?
The words of Marc J. Moore, director of ICE’s Miami field office for Enforcement and Removal Operations, from the Monroy case in 2017, seem particularly ironic today: “As this removal makes clear, ICE is working diligently to ensure our nation does not become a safe haven for human rights violators.”
As recent events have shown, Minneapolis has become a safe haven for violators of human rights, and those violators are ICE. And we must remember, how they go about their job is dictated by a higher authority.
