Michael Levites 00:04
Good everybody! This is Michel Levites here with Yakov Spektor, an immigration attorney. And we’ll continue our sessions of Q and A’s on various questions on immigration law. First of all, Yakov, thank you for being with us. We appreciate it. And I want to ask you, deportation, that is very dangerous, because that’s the last resort, the permutation is where the government takes you and basically throws you out of the country. So we want to stop that. How do you think you going to stop a deportation?

Yakov Spektor 00:39
Well, one thing to, to really know why, you know, one thing to be aware of, if you are undocumented in this country, and you get any letters that come from the government, you probably already know that, but you don’t want to ignore that. There’s a lot of people here who kind of get scared, especially if they’re undocumented, but you got to understand that, just because you might get a letter telling you to come to immigration court, that does not mean that once you’re going to show up, they will grab you and deport you, unless you are natural criminal. And if you’re an actual criminal, then you might want to talk to a criminal lawyer before you talk to me, because I am an immigration lawyer. But for most people who are undocumented here, as you all know, you’re not criminals, okay, you’re just undocumented, and governments can not just, you know, grab you and deport you. Okay, what that means is that you’ll show up, the judge will want to know how you might be protected from deportation. It’s called removal proceedings by okay. And the government is not using that word anymore, because it does scare people. It’s called removal. If you do not show up for a single hearing, okay, the judge will order you removed. Once again, that does not mean that, you know, someone will come to your house and try to remove you. But if you do have a removal order, which is essentially a protection order, on your record, just because you were afraid to show up to court or afraid to talk to someone like me, if if God forbid, you know, many years down the road, you go for a vacation, let’s say somewhere close to Niagara Falls, right. And immigration, police gets ahold of you. And they see that you have a deportation order in your records, and they do have a right to simply remove you. And if you don’t have someone like me to try to actively fight for you at that particular point, you will be removed. So if you do get something from the government, you have to remember, even if you’re in deportation proceedings, even if you’re in removal proceedings, the procedure has to be followed, most likely will should be able to do something to keep you here for a number of years, maybe longer maybe even get you a green card. So the takeaway from this is that deportation is a scary word, removal proceedings is a scary sounding type of proceedings, but you’re not ignored. Talk to someone like

Michael Levites 03:05
that’s the lesson learned here is that you have to communicate, I guess, with the what used to be ins now it’s called the DHS,

Yakov Spektor 03:15
US United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Michael Levites 03:20
So you have to cannot ignore them. That’s the most dangerous thing. You have to communicate and communicate through an attorney. So the takeaway here is go to immigration attorney go to somebody like Yasha Specter, to know your rights and go with Yasha to court so that you have a knowledge about your rights, and you can get protected. Yasha want to follow up with a question on the protections, as you say, now, it’s called the removal order. In sanctuary states, I understand there are more rights or you have more protection than in other states, people are not always often clear on how this works. Can you explain please? Interesting.

Yakov Spektor 04:10
So that’s actually the word sanctuary itself. Right? That just means that you’re seeking protection, as you know, you know, if especially if you if you’re a history buff, which I know you are, Michael I am, I studied history for college and sanctuary was something that, you know, people would actually seek that in, in the church, for example, right when, you know, let’s say during the Second World War, Jews would sometimes seek sanctuary in in a lot of Catholic churches or Drosten churches and some sometimes they were able to escape concentration camps like that, sometimes not, but they’re less that’s what sanctuary is that basically 1/3 parties taking it upon itself. You know, moral duty to protect you and to say Julius city, for example, New York City. Okay, at some point, they decided that you know what, look, you know, we have a lot of huge population of undocumented immigrants in our city. They’re, they’re bringing our food, they’re cooking our food, right? They’re delivering our our takeout, you know, they’re cleaning our streets, and we want to protect them from federal authorities just trying to deport people and federal authorities. You know, it really depends on who is in the White House at the moment, you know, if you have someone like Trump in the White House, who is like a validly against who used to be, well, what do they against immigrants, you know, the federal, the Federal officers, all of a sudden will turn into people who will be trying to deport undocumented immigrants, you know, in, you know, with other presidents, it gets a little easier. But those cities pretty much they decided what they’re going to do, they’re not going to cooperate with the federal authorities, they’re not going to let their police got written orgies. And there’s very good reason behind it. Because let’s say if you’re an undocumented immigrant, right, or you’re an undocumented immigrant woman, right, you’re married, your husband is abusive, or let’s say somebody’s burglary arises your house, and you’re afraid to go to the police, because you’re afraid to tell them about your immigration status, because they will deport you. That’s a big problem for the society. In general, when you go and report crimes you don’t want to make, you want to make sure that they’re not afraid to do that. So those sanctuary cities, you know, it’s not only, you know, they didn’t just do it for the moral reasons, but they actually decided that what they really want to do, they want to protect the society in general, they want to make sure that people are not afraid to go to the police. And so they so that’s how the sanctuary city or the sanctuary state, a term came came about. Of course, if you’re undocumented, you will probably know if you live in a place like that, if not, you probably should learn a little bit about the place where you live in.

Michael Levites 06:59
So it goes by the city, not by a state. So for example, in New York, we’ll just say that only the city sanctuary, not the whole state.

Yakov Spektor 07:10
It’s not the whole state, Michael, no, yeah, that’s actually it’s the New York City. But as you know, in New York City, even though it’s a very small, it’s very small place compared to the New York state, New York State is a huge state. But nevertheless, population bias, it’s almost half of the population of the United States. And so it may it’s a big, it’s, you know, it’s a big part of, you know, who may provide sanctuary and who may not,

Michael Levites 07:37
would you say that if you are a democracy illegal resident, if you don’t have a green card yet, but for this, why would you say it’s more dangerous for you to travel outside New York City? Should you be cautious?

Yakov Spektor 07:56
You know, we, when we talked, at some point, when we talked about deportation proceedings, what does it mean, you know, to, you know, when the government is trying to deport you, you know, all that means is that the government is just initiating proceedings that may last for years, saying, pretty much being in a sanctuary sanctuary city versus, let’s say, a non sanctuary city, all that means is that you might be at a greater danger of those proceedings being initiated. For example, if you go somewhere to, you know, too close to you to it to do in Arizona Mexican border, okay, you’ll see a large concentration of border police there. So you know, they might just, you know, pull you pull you in, check your papers during routine traffic stop. Okay, so just use common sense job to someone like me, if you’re undocumented, be done. Know where you can go, where you can now go, know what your rights are, and most likely, you’ll be able to avoid most of the trouble that befalls the undocumented immigrants in this country.

Michael Levites 09:04
Okay, thank you. Yeah. I see that sometimes when people are under the protection or removal orders, they either put it on a monitoring system, like an ankle bracelet, or they’re remanded. They put actually in an immigration prison. Why do some people go to prison, and some people get a bracelet

Yakov Spektor 09:30
so that I think we might go way deeper into history, and we might like, so I will try to avoid that. So we’re just going to talk about how this what the situation is right now. Don’t forget that if you if all of a sudden you know, you get we get Republican administration coming to power in two or three years, these rules might change but at this point, the government has no interest of really a deporting you, unless you have a criminal record, you know, there are so many undocumented immigrants living in this country, that, you know, the government wants to concentrate its limited resources on making sure that the criminals are off the streets and the criminals do not stay in this country, which is a reasonable way to make sense to approach this, and this is what they try to do. Now, if you do have a criminal record, you know, we all make mistakes. And if you know, you’re one of those people who would say when, you know, you’re in your younger years, you know, you you did some things that you weren’t supposed to you were persecuted, convicted of those things. Okay. You know, you definitely want to talk to someone like me to see what you’re asking.

Michael Levites 10:42
Okay, very good. Okay. Yasha. Thank you so much. I appreciate your useful and interesting information. And we’ll come back to you soon with few more questions on immigration law. Thank you very much. Have a great day, everybody. Bye