In the new era of making America great again, landlords are openly threatening to sic ICE on undocumented immigrant tenants unless they agree to massive rent increases or to give up their apartments, harassment that isn’t new but has been newly emboldened by Donald Trump’s racism, according to a new report from the Sacramento Bee.
In one instance, Redwood City, California resident “Maria”—who spoke under a pseudonym—received a sketchy eviction notice, which she immediately took to housing attorneys. When they agreed that the landlord had not served the eviction notice legally, the landlord not only threatened to call federal immigration agents on Maria, but also threatened to report the attorneys to the state:
The landlord warned of reporting [attorney Daniel] Saver to the State Bar of California “for helping his clients who illegally live in the United States of America,” according to text message correspondence Saver sent to a legislative committee in March.
The text continued: “I believe the State Bar of California will be interested (in) my complaint, under the new leadership of our president.”
“This has gotten pretty pervasive,” said Saver, a lawyer at Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto.
“It isn’t anything new that immigrant tenants are threatened by landlords, or that they’re fearful about complaining about unhealthy conditions or asserting their rights,” said Saver. “What has changed now is the tenor of those threats and the brazenness of landlords who make those threats. That has shifted in the Trump era. This is not anything we’ve ever seen before.”
Because many undocumented immigrants are fearful of coming forward at risk of exposing their immigration status, the Sacramento Bee notes there’s no exact data on exactly how many families have lost their housing due to being undocumented, though “state and federal fair housing laws … cover undocumented immigrants.”
Still, enough anecdotal evidence has emerged that state legislators now want to take additional steps to protect undocumented immigrant families:
Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, said something must be done to to help tenants facing extreme rent increases, evictions and deportation threats. He has proposed legislation that seeks to prevent landlords from threatening to report tenants to immigration authorities or disclosing their immigration status themselves.
“Since Election Day last year, it has not been an easy time to be an immigrant in our country. For immigrant tenants, in particular, it has been a frightening time,” Chiu said. “We don’t think anyone should live in fear.”
Among one of those mix-status immigrant families is Maria Estrada, who was forced out of her Oakland apartment after her landlord threatened her with deportation:
“He (said) he’s going to report us to ICE,” Estrada said. “Any car we saw stop in front of the place, we couldn’t even go back to sleep because we (were) scared. Every time he would stop by the house and talk to us, he’d say ICE is going to pick you up ... when we hear that, we’d run away for the whole day.”
Estrada, 56, is in the country legally, but some in her family are not.
“I was worried what would happen to them, and for me, too,” she said. “I’m not a criminal.”
Another mixed-status immigrant family was forced to accept an $800 rent increase in order to stay in their Los Angeles home:
Abel Gonzalez said his landlord threatened to call immigration on him and his family, then sought to evict them from their southeast Los Angeles apartment that they’d lived in for seven years.
“I said, ‘Please don’t threaten us with this,’ ” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez, 46, said he and his wife are going through process of getting a green card and had spent their disposable income on “solving their status issue.”
“It felt really bad. We’ve been here 25 years,” he said.
Since Trump’s popular vote loss, hate crimes against immigrants and people of color have surged nationwide, with NBC News reporting incidents surged 20 percent in major cities. Just as disturbingly, numerous police chiefs and city leaders have reported data indicating that immigrants, regardless of legal status, are refusing to report when they’ve been victims of violent crime or sexual assault out of fear it could subject them, or their loved ones, to deportation.
When Donald Trump promised “law and order,” he meant for white people only. Frightening immigrants into leaving their homes, and ultimately the country, is an unofficial tactic that Trump has used hand-in-hand with his official “round up and deport” policy. But in states like California, it’s also emboldening activists and leaders to take even stronger steps to protect families.
“The vast majority of landlords are in the business of providing housing,” said the California Apartment Association. “They’re not in the business of trying to identify, capture and report people to immigration officials—that’s just not their job. Tenants shouldn’t have to worry after they’ve already been a tenant that their landlord is going to report them to ICE.”