Good afternoon, everybody. Good afternoon. I could encourage you to take your seats. We'd like to get started, if we can. She is here. All right. I guess this is stimulating. Once again, if I can encourage council members and members of the audience to take your seats, we would like to get started. Yes. Good afternoon again, and welcome to everybody. I'm Vice Mayor Steve Kay. This is a special Urban County Council Committee of the Whole meeting, and it is to address questions of the present status in our immigrant community. Just a few things before we launch into the agenda. I want to explain that this is an information session only. Council will not be making any specific recommendations or motions out of this meeting. We're really here to help Council and the broader community understand what the issues are that are now facing our immigrant community, and to make clear that it's not just the immigrant community that's affected, but it's really all of Lexington. and to essentially say in part to the people who are part of our community, who are immigrants, that we're paying attention to this issue and we care about their welfare. So I'm going to encourage council members to hold your questions, if you can, until the end of the presentations so that we can get through it all. I've spoken to all of the people who will present. They have all agreed to be brief. we should be able to get through all of the presentations and have time left for questions at the end. However, if you have a burning question as we go along, as usual, if you just sign in, I will recognize you to speak. Having said all that, I want to first invite Isabel Taylor to the podium to provide some background information on immigrants in Lexington. Welcome. Thank you very much, Vice Mayor Kaye, and thank you, other council members, for having me here. This presentation that I'm going to do very quickly for you is one that was already presented to the General Services and Department of Social Services Committee that Susan Lamb, Council Member Susan Lamb, chairs. It's a condensed version. A demographic update. My estimates are that our population is now 60,000 foreign language speakers in Fayette County. That means about 18% of the population. They speak 153, and I say plus, languages. The way I get my information for the languages that our population speaks is through the school system. Last fall, they reported to me about 96 languages. We merged that into a master list with two area hospitals, UK and St. Joe's, and that's how we add up the languages that we're serving here. The trend nationally is trending towards Asian immigration and Asian foreign language growth, and we are tracking that way also. Nationally, since 2010, Asia has replaced Latin America, including Mexico as the biggest source of new immigrants to the U.S. Net migration flows from Mexico to the U.S. turned negative between 2009 and 2014 as more Mexicans went home than arrived in the U.S. And by 2013, the percent of Asian immigrants had increased to 40.2% of the total immigration flow, while the Hispanic percentage had dropped to 25%. And that data is from the U.S. Census. This brings to our part of the world where we don't have a history of deep immigration like the portal states. We lack infrastructure, and mostly we see it in government service as a lack of language access interpreters, trained interpreters. so we're working on multilingual personnel and services and translations, particularly safety material. The challenge is two-way education. We need to educate ourselves about who's coming here, what their cultures are like, and they need to learn English and American culture and laws. Workforce and entrepreneurial support is necessary to help them integrate. But one of the biggest challenges, in my opinion, is misinformation about immigrants. One of the things that we get a little confused about is what type of benefits immigrants are entitled to. and under the 1996 Personal Responsibilities and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, it excluded, basically excluded immigrants from welfare, SNAP or food stamps, Medicaid, housing, FAFSA and other scholarships. And permanent residents, for instance, were allowed to have access to benefits only after 40 working points or quarters or five years of putting taxes into the system before they could access. The only exceptions, or there are a few exceptions to this, one is refugees and asylees that the government brings in or allows in under humanitarian conditions. There's also a little bit of misinformation, and I'm adding to that misinformation right here because that should read Latinos or Latin Americans come from 20 to 23 different countries. Hispanics are from about 15 countries, but Latin Americans speak many, many other languages. Many are U.S. citizens. Many are permanent residents. Many Latin Americans are international student visa holders. They're business owners, doctors, baseball players, ballet dancers, lawyers, university professors, musicians, artists, agricultural and equine industry workers legally present. So there's a lot of misinformation about who's here and where they're from and are they here legally. There's taxes. This information is national. It's from the Social Security Administration. Immigrants have a lot of the work ethic and shared responsibility values that Americans have, and they do contribute. I picked this information to show you because it is from the Social Security Administration's report to Congress, and it says that they estimate that excess of tax revenue paid over benefits from funds based on earnings of unauthorized workers is about $12 billion. Now, taking into account that normal international tax treaties, avoidance of double taxation treaties, allows foreign workers to be reimbursed for the taxes that they pay to a government that's not their own. However, unauthorized workers do not fall under the protection of those international treaties and therefore that money stays in our Social Security pot. The Social Security Administration also reported that with respect to payroll taxes from unauthorized immigrant workers, $13 billion went into the pot for local and state taxes. There's a fairly new report. It's called Contributions of New Americans in Kentucky, the New American Economic Economy Report of August of 2016. In 2014, they point out that immigrants who are about 3.4% of the total population in Kentucky, they are taxpayers and consumers. In 2014, they earned $3.8 billion. $343 million were paid to state and local taxes, leaving them with $2.8 billion in spending power. They also talked about exports that generate $1 billion in state and local taxes. Foreign investment is also creating jobs in Kentucky. This is only talking about manufacturing facilities. We're not talking about the hospitality industry. We're not talking about horses or anything else. This is only manufacturing. They're saying 450 facilities employ almost 90,000 people from 33 foreign countries. These facilities are representing 33 foreign countries. 31% of new investment came from international projects. Jobs. Immigrants are helping, and foreign investment is helping to create jobs here in Lexington. This is only a sample of some of the manufacturing that goes on here in our county. Robasta Roof Systems created 656 jobs, link belt construction 750, Schneider Electric 496, Train Lexington 891, and so on. It's a long list. Other countries represented are Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Italy, Australia. And I always include this last little blurb about A&W. Did you know that their world headquarters are here in Lexington? And they're owned by Prima. It's a Singapore company. So we're pretty interconnected internationally. And one of the ways that we're trying to get more information and have resources for you and for the mayor was the Mayor's International Affairs Commission. It is comprised, as you know, of education and communications committees, civic engagement, international business development, and of course the executive committee. And after the executive orders that came out, they have been very active in doing surveys, doing community meetings, getting information from the broad range of the public, of our residents, to see the impact and to see what is happening and to be able to report it to you. So that is the end of my part. If there's any questions, we'll wait. Thank you very much. Next, we will hear from Marilyn Daniels, who's going to talk about some of the legal issues. Welcome. My name is Merlin Daniel. I volunteer as an immigration attorney at the Maxwell Street Legal Clinic, which is a pro bono and low-fee legal clinic for low-income families who need help with immigration law. If you would find in your packet this chart, that's what I'd like to talk to you about. This is a chart that attempts to illustrate the kinds of immigration status you can have in this country. So I'm just going to talk briefly about it, and then we're going to talk about some of the results. The first column on the left is the column for U.S. citizens, and there's no question. That that is the most coveted category of immigration status in this country. It tells you a little bit about how you can become a U.S. citizen. It also tells you there are two things that are most important about that status. Those are the people that vote. No one else on this chart can vote except for that column. They are also the only people who cannot be removed from this country. They have a right to be here no matter what. And those are two extremely important characteristics at this time. The next column are lawful permanent residents. Those are your green card holders. They are permanent residents as long as they don't commit certain serious crimes or run afoul of other deportability issues. So they can be deported, but only in those instances. They have the right to be here. They have the right to work here. The next column are asylees and refugees. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that. I'm sorry, the important thing about the LPR column is that's the pathway to citizenship. You have to move into this column in order to become a citizen. So everybody else would like to move that way and get into that column, but it's very, very difficult. Except for asallies and refugees who are in the third column. They are folks who have very strong supportive systems in this country when they arrive. After they've been here a year, they can move from that third column into the permanent resident column. Now they're on the path to citizenship. The next column are non-immigrant visa holders. These are people that do not intend to come and stay here. They are temporary. They are simply entering the country for some reason. There are 80 plus different kinds of non-immigrant visas that people can obtain. But every one of them is only temporary. Some of them carry the right to work. Some do not. About 180 million people enter this country every year on non-immigrant visas. So that is a substantial group of our foreign-born. Then you have the quasi-legal status in the next column. The one that you might have heard of, I think more likely, is temporary protected status. That's temporary. It has to be renewed if the government approves it about every 18 months. In central Kentucky, we see mostly Hondurans and El Salvadorans who have that status. They have the right to work. That is also the column where the DACA young people are. The children that were brought in the country illegally as young children and who now are protected very temporarily from deportation by obtaining deferred action. And then the last column are the undocumented. These are people who do not have legal status. in the United States. About 40% of them entered with a visa but overstayed. They're called visa overstays. Once they pass the date when they were supposed to leave, they no longer have the right to be here, and they make up 40% of our undocumented population. The other 60% entered the country without documents in the very beginning. They did not come into the country through inspection points. The best estimates of the undocumented population is about 11.4 million people at this time. That is 4% of our total population. Keep that in mind as we talk about what the new rules are. So all of these, every column has members who are foreign born. People who were not born in the United States. About 42% of them are already citizens. They're already in the first column because they have become U.S. citizens. About 27% of them are in the second column. They're permanent residents. About 26% of them are in this last column. They're undocumented. So we have more than 90 different categories of immigration status. You cannot recognize a person's immigration status by looking at them. In fact, it's kind of difficult even if you go further than that. Suppose you meet someone who is a tourist from Peru. That person is in the non-immigrant visa holder category. That person should have a visa and they will show you in their passport. They have a 10-year visa. So they're okay. No, that's the wrong document to look at. That visa gives them the right to come to our border any time during that 10 years and seek admission. But when they're at the border, an I-94 is prepared for them that tells you when they enter and when they're supposed to leave. If they don't leave by that date, they become undocumented. About a year ago, we quit giving people paper copies of their I-94s. All of them are computerized. So you would actually have to go to the computer and find their I-94 before you could determine whether they are still in legal status. If you met a young person that has DACA, they will have a work permit, and it will tell you when it started and when it stops. You look at it. Suppose it doesn't stop until May of 2017. So they're protected right now. But you think, ah, I'll come back in two months, and they're not going to be protected anymore. No, because they may have pending a renewal application, and their new work permit may arrive, and usually does, before the old one expires. So, this is a part of the complexity, but I want to make the point also that immigration status is not static. You meet someone one day, and you might determine their status. But you can be an LPR one day and a citizen the next day. You can be a tourist one day and an LPR the next day. You can be undocumented one day and have DACA the next day. You can be undocumented one day and be an LPR the next day. You can be a tourist one day and undocumented the next day. It is a very complex system. So I think the reason we're here to talk to you all at this time is because the rules have changed. The rules have changed for every person on this chart. Every person. And all we can talk to you about is the rules that have been written down and published. Nobody knows exactly what's going to happen or how it's going to happen. But the rule now is that anyone can be arrested if an ICE agent suspects that they are violating federal or state law, including federal immigration law. So think about that. any of these people can be arrested if ICE suspects they are violating immigration law. And they must detain them. They must arrest them and detain them. But then the policy memoranda that follows that immigration order says, okay, you've arrested them, you've detained them, now let's figure out who we should release. Well, you've got to release all those U.S. citizens you picked up. You've got to release all the LPRs you picked up. You've got to release all the refugees and the asylees you picked up. You've got to release all the people with temporary protected status. You've got to release all the people that have any legal status in this country. This is what has terrified the entire immigrant community. Not just the undocumented. The entire community is at risk. The things that we are being asked for right now, the greatest demand for the immigrant community is, first of all, know your rights presentations because they have to know. What rights do I have at home? What rights do I have on the street? What rights do I have in my car? I've got to know how to act. What rights do I have if I get arrested? The second biggest demand is for special powers of attorney so that their children will not be left unattended if they are arrested. So that we are doing, we have 80 some odd requests right now pending for special powers of attorney so that they can name someone who will have the authority to take custody of their children and make decisions for them. This arises largely out of mixed status families where you have two undocumented parents and two U.S. citizen children. You have mixtures of immigration status in that same family. And the last request that we have is, how do I get myself released as soon as possible if I'm arrested? And what it's meaning is the entire immigrant community is going to have to carry certain documents all the time so that they can prove that they have legal status. Thank you. Thank you. So next we want to hear from Darrell Thompson with the Fayette County Public Schools. And, Council members, there's a rack card that's been distributed to all your places. Vice Mayor Cade, thank you for having me. And, Council members, on behalf of the Fayette County Board of Education and our superintendent, Manuel Kalk, I'm Darrell Thompson, the equity officer. and I'm here really to just clear up and provide points of clarity as it relates to our school district around this subject area. And you've got at your station a door hanger as well as a rack card. One of the points that we'd like to make, and as we partner with our community partners, is that our schools do not collect citizenship information. We enroll all of our students based on residency, and so we have no idea or keep a database on citizenship. And so that's oftentimes misunderstood by our partners and our stakeholders. And additionally, we do not share educational data that's protected through FERPA. And so knowing those two points, our job is to educate so that the community is educated and can support their stakeholders. And so we printed these rack cards as well as the door hangers in collaboration with our community partners behind me so that we can then support and create capacity for ensuring that the community is informed about their rights as it relates to their students. And so, again, on behalf of the district as well as our partners, we wanted to ensure that there was information being shared to our community that clearly articulated the rights of students as well as the rights of parents as it relates to educational status. Thank you all. or some values. And universities, why do they want international students? Well, a place like the University of Kentucky, a Research One institution, less than 100 Research One institutions in the entire United States, we care about talent, we care about innovation, and moving our students towards that, that betters them and all of us. And we're committed also to diversity on our campus because we seek to educate and enhance the learning experiences of all of our students on campus. So the international student on our campus actually educates everyone, their very presence on our campus. And universities believe without these diverse perspectives that we'll fail to provide quality education to students. and that our research would be developed in a vacuum without international perspectives. So it's those basic core things that develop the policies of universities and how they work with international students on their campuses. You have two handouts, I believe, that were given to you about the contributions, and a lot of folks have talked about the contributions of our immigrant community. I think those are in the packet. Yeah, maybe in your packet there. They show in the state of Kentucky, like our international student population, the numbers and the top universities in the United States, or not the United States, Kentucky, top institutions that have international students. And obviously UK is the top institution with the highest number of international students. but we have several other public institutions that have a good number of international students. And it also shows the places of origin there, just so that you can see. Maybe some of you might be surprised by some of the top-sending countries that we have here in Kentucky, but those are the top five there for you to see. And then also these two documents show the approximate amount of money that is contributed by the very presence of international students. And it's not just tuition dollars to the university, but it's the community. Every year I see T-Mobile going out there and saying welcome international students because they know they're coming and they're ready to get that revenue from our international students. So they do bring in economic growth to our community by their very presence here. The University of Kentucky, we have, as you can see here, more than 2,000 living on our campus or in our community. But I think one of the things I want to talk about with policy is defining what an international student is. And Marilyn did a great job of helping us to understand there's a whole alphabet of soup, even within the non-immigrant visa category. Every letter of the alphabet has a visa type. So I think it's important to understand that when we say an international student at the University of Kentucky, we're talking very specifically about a type of visa that allows you for the sole purpose of studying. It's a student visa. And there are really two types of student visas, F-1 and J-1 student visas. So when we think about the international students, I think it's important to think about that because those are the two visa types that the University of Kentucky is obligated to report information to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So all international students on those two types of visas are the ones in which the University of Kentucky reports information. And what does that mean? We have agreed with our government to have these students on our campus, so therefore we are regularly reporting about them, giving their address every time they change their address, phone number, their registration in classes. Every single semester we have to tell them, yes, they're registered. and continually to report that. This was all the result of something called the Student Exchange Visitor Information System, called SEVIS. And so all of these students are in SEVIS. So I was asked recently to explain what is the University of Kentucky's kind of policy in engaging with ICE. And I can just tell you what the current practice is and what it has been since 2003 when SEVIS was implemented. SEVIS was a program that was thought about before 9-11 but really got beefed up after 9-11. And I can just tell you about how those interactions are now. What they will look like in the future may be different, but what they look like now is if someone comes on our campus from immigration, they're really not coming for a student. They're coming to see me or another individual, a very small number of individuals on my campus that are responsible to report information to immigration about these individuals. And often they just are asking for an update about something like an address or can you verify. verify. And sometimes we don't know the reasons for why they're asking. But for sure, we don't have situations where they're just randomly coming on campus and interrogating our students. That is the situation now, and we have policy and protocol to handle the way the situation is now. Everybody understands that we give information only to ICE, not to just anybody, but only to them as it relates to those two visa statuses. Now, as you can imagine, there are a lot of other students on our campus that are not student visa holders. They may be here because their parents work at a company here in Lexington, and they're a dependent of their father or mother. We probably have some of those folks on our campus, and they are allowed to study. So there are many visa types on our campus and many folks on our campus that don't fall into these two visa categories. But our policy is only to assist ICE with these two visa types and only for the purpose of this program called SEVIS. So I hope that kind of helps clarify what that whole thing is about. And then the last two things I would say is that, So how are students feeling about these new immigration changes? As many folks have said, they are uncomfortable. They are nervous. But universities, I will say, are very nervous about drops in international student enrollment. And there are already starting to see some trickle of students deciding not to go to the U.S., to go to Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom. Students always have choices where they can go. And so one of our big concerns is that we may start to see a decline in our international student enrollment. And then our other concern is that our students will feel like they're welcome here. So what we've done about that is we have, actually it wasn't just recently, there's a program called BIRT. It's a bias incident reporting team on our campus. So if any student feels that they have experienced bias for any reason, they can report it to this team, and this team is tracking and getting trends so that we understand our campus climate. And I will tell you that shortly after some of the changes with immigration, we did see an uptick in those reports of international students. And we had this team in place long before. I mean, it was in place, it's been in place for a little while, not too long, I think more than a year. But we did start to see some of that. And so one of the things that we're concerned about is that students feel welcome. So welcome and that more keep coming are the two big concerns, I think, of university communities. Thank you very much. Next, we will hear from Chief Mark Barnard about present policies here in LFUCG. Thank you, Vice Mayor Kay. Vice Mayor Kay asked me to come in and explain some of the policies, and we have been spending a lot of time out in the community talking about our policies, reference ICE, immigration, and the police department's stance. We have been very consistent with it over several years that we are not an immigration entity. That is a federal immigration law enforcement capacity. We do not enforce ICE rules and immigration. We are focused on criminality and victimization here in Fayette County. We teach in the academy. We teach everyone and treat everyone with dignity and respect, and we are focused on if they are being victimized or whether they are a criminal element. We place people under arrest based on those criminalities. If that person happens to be someone that is not allowed into the country, That information is shared with ICE as it is throughout with everyone booked into our detention center. And we hold that person accountable here until deportation is decided on upon that factor. But for being pulled over, because I've got to ask a lot of questions on New Circle Road because we're doing speeding complaints, if I get pulled over, we don't ask immigration status. We don't look into that. We look at the person and the offense. and as far as our concerns are, is the immigration status is a federal guideline that they are looking at and working through, and we are not focusing on that currently. I was going to say thank you, but one Council Member has signed in with a question. Council Member Massadi. I'm sorry, Chief. While you're up here, I know when you stop a motorist, you always run the tags, and you get all the information through NCIC. So what if something comes up that's a red flag that says, you know, one of these statuses appear? Then what do you do? One of those statuses appear? Yeah, I mean, is there an indication of this type of status or not at all? No, ma'am. Okay, so you all have no indication when you pull that person over? Absolutely not. Okay, I didn't know if there was something in the system that might indicate, you know, what the status is. Okay, thank you, Chief. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Evans. Thank you Vice Mayor and my apologies for being late but I was listening as I was working so thank goodness for GTV The question I had goes back to when I was a public defender there were clients that I had that might be stopped for something of some probable cause and everything was okay but there's still the question of when an ID is asked for and that seemed to be the the hook that would create everything else. So I think I, somewhere around down the line, I'm sure I had a client that had the charge of false documentation. And I think from what I've heard, that's more of the concern than perhaps just being stopped for no reason. It's what happens when they're stopped and the ID is questioned. I guess to help the community, I mean, that's the issue. So just try and adjust that as well. So we have to identify who we're working with and who we are actually interacting with, and so we will ask for identity for that. And so if they get pulled over, someone gets pulled over, whether they're an immigrant or a citizen, if they don't have identification, then we'll go to the next step to try to identify that individual with any process that we can, whether we run the information through the National Crime Information Center or we run the information in another computer system. But we have to understand who we are actually interacting with to hold accountable, whether it's a citation or there's an arrest that's being made. So the fact that someone does not have ID is not necessarily – it's the fear that they'll just be hauled off to jail, that that fear is perhaps unfounded? Well, we come and encounter with a lot of people that don't have high fees. No, that's a loaded question. I'm sorry. I will just say it's across the board. We have a lot of people that assume other names and aliases that we encounter often and have fake driver's license as well as real ones, and we'll assume their brother's name or sister's name, so we encounter that often. And there's really no way except to work that out except through the court system. I just have not seen it as chief in two and a half years, and in being here 30 years, I have not seen a large identifying for deportation because someone is here working and is involved in an accident or got a speeding ticket or received a speeding ticket. Most anything that I've seen have been for violent offenders or narcotics crimes. that was my experience also but it's just always even if it is a minor a misdemeanor somehow the ICE holder still got put on so even though they've served their time for three or four days it was like well I don't know I don't know how long you're going to be here because ICE has a holder on you but I think that you addressed the concerns that I heard that just because you don't have an ID doesn't necessarily, that's not the thing that's going to haul you into jail. I mean, that's... To put people a little bit at ease and give a little bit of perspective of how we worked in the past, we had a large segment of our population that worked, kept cash at home, and were being victimized in a segment of town quite frequently every Friday were being robbed. That information wasn't coming to us because they were fearful of coming to the police, so we had to go out, meet with that segment of the community. And Council Member Henson, you remember this, where we went out and we spoke to them, told them exactly because they were being victimized. People were being hurt. They weren't reporting it. And that is really what our concern was, not immigration status. And that's really what we're looking for. We've had people of violent crimes that were afraid to come forward, and we're encouraging to come forward because we're not looking for deportation. and we're looking to make sure that you're safe. That's our concern in Lexington. Thank you. Council Member Henson. Chief, I expect Council Member Henson has a question also for the chief. Yes, for the chief. Thank you, Vice Mayor. While you're here, I'm not sure you can answer this, but I was just curious about when an individual is taken into custody to the Fayette County Detention Center. I know the detention center runs all this information checks, and if they suspect or determine that that person is undocumented, then they would contact ICE to say that person is there. and it was my understanding that they would only hold them for a few days and it would be up to ICE to come and get them. Do you know? I don't. I know we fingerprint everyone, which is a blessing that gets introduced into our Fayette County Detention Center because we make four to five cases a week now on fingerprints that we didn't make. And that is for identification purposes to make sure that we don't have someone using another name or an alias. What happens to that information, I understand it is shared with ICE, and if they have a fender that they are looking for maybe throughout the state or another part of the country and they're located here, they have that information and they're capable, if they wish to, to place a detainer. I guess I was curious of how many undocumented individuals going to the Fayette County Detention Center that are then released. and ICE does not put a hold on them. I would have to ask Steve that question because he would probably know it better than I do, but my assumption is a lot more released than are detained. And that's, you know, because I guess I know there's this fear out there. You're trying to go to work. You don't have a driver's license. all those issues that have existed for probably 20 years. But Lexington maintained that it would be up to ICE whether or not to place a hold on that permit. Yes. We have placed holds on or asked for detainers before, But those are for people that were involved in homicides, sexual assaults, abuse of children, violent criminals, offenders, narcotics, people with large amounts of drugs that they've been trafficking. We've placed detainers or asked ICE to help us to place detainers because we don't want those individuals to get out and then not be held accountable for those crimes. So we've done that, but I think that's a positive use of that because, quite honestly, we don't want those individuals to victimize more people in Lexington or to be able to push more poison that we're seeing with the narcotics through Lexington. So that's the one positive I'm looking at, and we think that helps Lexington. The fear, I understand, because of the national debate going back and forth and everything occurring. We spend a lot of time every day going to different groups, different organizations, and saying exactly what we're saying tonight is that is a federal issue. And quite honestly, we have our plate full in Lexington with victimization of other individuals, including people that are here that have immigrated to our community or may have just come across and is working here. We don't want that name on them. We'd rather say we don't want you to be a victim at all. but if they're a victim, we have to be able to serve them like we would anyone else. The young ladies that held the protest at the courthouse, we were at the Lexington Universal Academy. They met us out there. We were talking to the students there, and they said they were going to have that and wanted to speak to everyone and asked us if we would come down. We said absolutely we'll be there because everybody has that First Amendment right, and we want to protect them, and that's the position we're balancing constantly every day, And we have the position of balancing victimization over immigration. And our job specifically is to dealing with people that may be victimized. And I see that as our local law enforcement's main role is public safety for everyone that's visiting, living, or traveling through Lexington, no matter who they are. And I think that's really extremely important, particularly for a victim. If you're a criminal and you're in this country, you need to go. But we can't have it where people who are victims not being afraid to report a crime. Absolutely. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, sir. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Chief. That's all we signed up. Thank you. Next, we want to talk about the impact on the community. And first will be Betty Abnishani. Welcome. Thank you. I am Betty Etnashani, and I work in the Cardinal Valley community. Basically, I work at the Village Branch Library, but I'm here partly in my position and partly as a community member. I myself came as a refugee back in 1961 from Cuba and went through many of those steps my family did that Marilyn described. And now I'm ending my career kind of serving many people who were in my father, in my parents' situation. What I'm seeing in the Carnal Valley community, and people said, the word is fear. It's not uncomfortable, it's fear. It's fear, and the main fear is their children. Many adults say, I came from Mexico, I came from Honduras, I came from Guatemala, that's where I'm from. I can go back. But what about my children? There's no future for them. So what we're seeing is a constant flow of people coming in and asking for help. Many of the people sitting in the audience have come together to do the Know Your Rights presentations and talk about preparations that families need to do and to have in case you are detained. And as we hear the police and others talking, perhaps they will be released if the father or the mother is detained. And in many cases, the ones that come to me are often single mothers. if they are detained and they have one child or four children or seven children, who takes care of that child? It may be two days. It may be three days. It may be three months. It may be six months. Who takes care of their child? So the community is preparing. We're having workshops. We're dealing with these powers of attorney so that the families can identify someone of their choosing to take care of that child, hopefully temporarily. And so there's what we're seeing the most, people coming in for that kind of help. We're seeing a big increase in people who perhaps their children were born as many as 16 years ago, 17 years ago, and now they're taking the birth certificates out. They probably used them when the children enrolled in school and when they go back and they're trying to prepare passports for their American-born children in case the person who's going to be in charge needs to send them to that country if they are detained and deported. They're finding all kinds of mistakes on their birth certificates. Often it's very confusing. Most foreign names are confusing, but particularly Latino names. In some cases you have a father's name, not the mother's name. Sometimes you have the mother's name, not the father's name. In one birth certificate for one child you have two names. In the other child only has one last name. I've seen where the place of birth of one parent is Mexico, but they're Guatemalan, and it was a mistake at the hospital because they just assumed. So there's all kinds of mistakes, and it's tremendously painstaking and time-consuming to try and go through these corrections. We're lucky. Frankfurt has been very helpful and we've found that the ones that we're dealing with locally have not been as difficult. But many of the residents who live in the Cardinal Valley, and it's really throughout Lexington, it's just not Cardinal Valley. The children were born in North Carolina, Michigan, Los Angeles, all kinds of, so it's difficult. Every state has a different form, a different requirement. And we're not really set up to do this, but we're doing it somehow. So what we're seeing, but in its desperation, they're just so afraid. So that's something we're seeing firsthand. And then right after the election of the new administration, And recently, a few weeks ago, after ICE agents had been in Lexington and arrested individuals, the fear of both those times increased tremendously. And so we see when events like that happen, there is fear. There is fear to go to work. Children are afraid when their parents leave the house that the parents may not come home. We hear from parents, children who are now wetting their beds, who are scared because the fear that tomorrow mom and dad may not be there. So it's a real concern, and we're very happy. I mean, the group that has been working will keep working, and the school has responded, and all our friends and supporters are here, and we're all doing what we can. But it's a real issue. And you know, we're in Lexington, this is happening nationally. And Council Member Henson came over and talked to me about a wonderful young lady that she met last night at one of our on-the-table, Sandra. Is Sandra here? And you know, when she told me that, I wanted to say, hey, she's DACA. She's one of these wonderful students. amazing the energy the gifts that so many of these students if they are we're hoping that DACA stays it's not effective we don't know we're going to lose a lot of very talented people who all they've known is this country and who are ready to give back so I think we're here to make you aware we're here to make you aware that it's happening in our community and ask you just be, it's not just happening on the television set, it's happening here too. Thank you. Thank you. Next on Economic Impact, Edith Villalobos. Hi, my name is Irid Bidalobos, and I've been here since 1990. I'm a small business owner. I have two beauty salons, and since this happened this new year, we've been seeing a lot of difference in our clients. We've been very busy since we opened 12 years ago, in 2017 our business are like going down. Most of my clients are Hispanic. We serve in the Hispanic community in the area on Cardinal Valley. We have one there and 50% of our clients are moving. They're not coming. They're so afraid we're going through a really bad crisis. I mean, they've been calling us and we can go home and do their hairs. They're not spending their money. They're afraid to go out. I guess they're saving everything. And I do understand them. It is hard to go out and be afraid. If they see a police car outside, we don't have any clients. So this is a really bad situation. We're going through a little bit. I don't know what I can call. They're afraid of something happening, and they're not going out. They're not spending their money. And I have ten employees. Now I have six. I have to let my employees go. It is for a little bit. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Next, DACA. The person who's on some people's agenda could not be here, but we will hear from Michelle Estrada. Hi. Thank you for having us. My name is Michelle Estrada. I am 23 years of age. My parents brought me here when I was four years old. I had no idea where we were going. They just told us it was a better future. We've been here ever since. I am a DACA recipient. DACA is for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. I have technically grown up here. We lived in Frankfurt since we arrived. We moved to Lexington in 2009, and we've been living here since. I graduated Paul Lawrence Dunbar. I attended Sullivan during my senior year. I graduated with honors classes, top of my class, doing the best we can. DACA has really helped us. It's helped me and my siblings. I have two older brothers and sisters. They're both DACA recipients. It's really helped us try to stay calm and everything. Before DACA, I used to have panic attacks every time a police officer was behind us. And it got really bad. I was actually seen by a cardiologist. It was a mess. but both of my parents are unfortunately they're undocumented my siblings and myself are trying to cover them and protect them as much as we can I am now driving my mom around making sure she's safe and making sure we all try to stay out of trouble and just help the community fight and let us know hey we're here we're not alone, everybody's together and you know just trying to maintain everybody calm as much as we can I know it's a little difficult and it's hard knowing that it's not our country, but most of the people like myself, I grew up here, I don't know what I would do if I went back to Mexico, honestly. I've been here for 20 years, so I know the language, I know everything. I don't know, if I moved back to Mexico, I don't know where I would work. I do have family down there, but, I mean, growing up here, technically it's my country, you know. So I'm here representing most of undocumented students and undocumented people letting you know hey it's it's not it's not easy it's pretty difficult being a DACA recipient has really helped my life it has really helped myself find a decent job I was a supervisor at the airport for two wonderful years and I absolutely loved it every two years we do have to renew our DACA so it's it's a fear that we're wondering hey is are we going to renew it? Is it going to come back? Or are we going to have to try to find a way to be able to live in Mexico? It's been just a wonder. What if we don't receive it? If it does come back, it's just been one thing after another. Thank you. Thank you. Next, Representative in Religious Community, Bishop John Stowe. Vice Mayor, Council Members, thank you for this opportunity. I intend to be very direct. I don't intend to offend anyone. The 2016 presidential campaign last year surfaced increased expressions of intolerance and hate. Some of these came from pretty unexpected places, like schools in our community. With the election of Donald Trump, who was the preferred candidate of a variety of white supremacist organizations, ugly and violent expressions which are hurtful to certain segments of our population have continued to be heard and seen even in our relatively tolerant community. The President's gloomy inauguration speech focusing on America first continued the theme that was on such proud display throughout his campaign, Make America Great. But unfortunately what this means to some is that the multicultural, multilingual, diverse culture that is America has kept it from being great. And to be great again, the nation has to keep out Mexicans and Muslims. The hastily enacted enforcement of the executive orders, which attempted to bar entry to the United States from seven, now it's six, Muslim-majority countries, and ordered the suspension of the refugee resettlement program while ignoring or falsely discounting the already lengthy and intense vetting process which goes on, combined with increased deportation activity of the INS, have all served to intensify fear in the immigrant and the refugee community. And refugee communities are those, as we heard today, have a right to be here. They've already suffered trauma and been uprooted from their homeland. I just came from a meeting with Congolese refugees and their representatives. It was not lost on any of our Mexican-American community that Trump began his campaign with derogatory comments. I'm sorry, but when I asked people to speak, I had asked them not to make this partisan or aimed at elected officials, but to provide information about what the response has been. And I understand your views, but if you could limit it to... The fact of the matter is the rhetoric is there. The fact of the matter is kids are harassed in school. The fact of the matter is that our people live in fear because of policies. Little children live with anxiety about what will happen to their parents, as we've heard. Some come home from school asking if they're going to have to go to Mexico, a place they don't even know. They're taunted as un-American by their classmates and told to go back where they came from. Sessions which train our immigrant populations to know their rights are full, and they last hours because of the questions and concerns people have. And every time I celebrate Mass with our Hispanic community, I'm overwhelmed by the tears and fears that are expressed. I join with many of the religious and community leaders in Lexington to urge our city to continue to be a proudly welcoming community and to recognize the contributions the immigrant population is making. We can't allow our community to constantly live with the stress and anxiety that their families will be separated and they'll be uprooted from the lives that they know. I'm glad to hear Chief Barnard say that our local police force does not enforce federal immigration law. We need our community to feel safe. Thank you. Thank you. And then finally, briefly, to sum up, Marty Peralta. Briefly. Really? Really? Good afternoon, Vice Mayor, Council people. Thank you for listening to our community. Back in February 27, there was a piece of an article that was published in the Herald Leader, author by Rick Clewitt, Marilyn Daniel, Reverend Nancy Kemper, and Father Paul Braver about us, about Lexington, I would like to start by reading a little bit some excerpts from that particular article. Lexington Faye County prides itself of being a good place to live and to raise a family. For our community, to live up to this aspiration, we must enlarge our vision of who we are. Lexington is the home of people born in many different parts of the United States and in many regions of the world. Whether our ancestors moved here 200 years ago or whether we moved here last summer, whether we moved from Pike County seeking work from New York City to be here united with family or from another part of the world, fleeing civil war, Lexington is now our home. Some of us are affluent, but more of us are not. Some of us can barely afford to keep a roof over our children's heads. But we are all Lexingtonians, and we will need to work hard to respect, nurture, and protect each other. Our elected officers and civil leaders must help lead the way. We need to focus on building a strong community. The divisiveness in our country today weakens the links among many community groups. Let's keep Lexington strong. Let's craft a practical plan to maintain Lexington as a welcoming and inclusive community. Let's promote the inclusion of all of those in our midst, regardless of race, religion, national origin, immigration status, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Let's create social infrastructure which supports and maintains safety, civility, dignity, and respect for all. Let's coordinate and strengthen the links among community groups working toward these particular goals. Working to make our city one that helps and values all its residents does not mean that we must agree with all of each other's ideas, values, or choices. But it means that we need to treat each other as human beings, people fundamentally like ourselves. harassing or marginalizing numbers of our fellow citizens because they are not like us, in some way, in spots creating hostile factions and less pleasant and functional community. One, we hire medical, social services, and police costs. Therefore, those of us who share the dream of making Lexington a more humane, responsive, and united community need to speak up, show up, and be serious, determined, flexible, understanding, and committed. Again, thank you for listening to us. I think everybody knows that we are in a new environment. We don't have to go into the details about what it is. We see it in so many different ways. But not all of us are aware that a very important part of the Lexington community is right now in crisis. It is suffering the consequences of that new policies. That's what we try to do today, to show you that it is real that a part of us is suffering in this particular moment. People that cannot come here to talk to you, they are afraid, they don't want to come out, and that has a lot of bad consequences for our community. Bad consequences for Lexington. Economically, there's going to be an impact on the university in terms of revenue, in terms of how much money we can bring in. Many businesses are stressed right now because their customers are not thinking about spending their money and keep growing our economy. They are thinking that they may be the next one who has to leave the country, leaving their children here, and therefore they have to say whatever they have to be ready just in case. This is real. The fear that's happening, it is real. So please think about that. trying to understand the situation, trying to do something about. Of course, we know that this is not brought by us, that we are not the one who has a solution to this issue. We know that very well. That is coming from other places. But it is our responsibility to build a strong community. How are we going to be able to protect, to create a better Lexington for everybody? That is our responsibility. You guys need to send a loud and clear message to our community of reassurance. A loud and clear message that we are going to be welcoming everybody in our community, regardless in this particular case of the immigration status. They need to hear that. It's great that the chief of police is telling exactly that immigration enforcement is a matter of a federal law and it will not happen in Lexington. But our community don't see that. When they see a police car, they even sometimes don't know if that police car is a Lexington police car or is it a federalized police because they use the same uniform. That's real. And that's real for so many people. So we need to make that message loud and clear. We are not going to be enforcing federal laws at the local level. That's going to be very important. It is our current policy, but our people don't know that they are not clear. So that's going to be important. We need a message from you to say that. we need to make sure that people understand that the clear message about welcoming city safe city that we are there is a lot of positive thing that we are here that we are leaving last night we have on the top on the table meeting talking about why people are coming here how beautiful how wonderful is Lexington how good this is a place to raise our children but everybody need to understand that yes we are welcoming and this is a safe place and that's very important in that particular direction I want to jump to finish almost to one particular example a place where our community feels safe a model that we need to understand that we need to study why people go there why people feel comfortable there that happened to be the village library they feel that that is a safe place. They feel that they can go there. Any problem that they have regardless of what's the situation. Can we replicate that safe place across our city? Should it be our fire department station be safe places? Should it be the rest of the library be safe places? Should it be Global Lexington Global Lex is a safe place? Should it be, people understand that, should it our school be safe places for our people that's the message that we need to work but that message is not just for us we need to bring it to our community that should be more important finally there is the need for additional resources to coordinate these efforts there is a there are some organizations like the Maxwell Street Legal Clinic that did doing a tremendous job helping our community but they don't have the resources at this moment of crisis that are needed in order to do that job think about that think about that possibility we need to allocate some resources resources because right now a very important part of our community is in crisis thank you thank you council members questions comments at this time seeing nobody I'll just close by saying Thank you all for coming. Thank you for providing this information for us and for the community. We appreciate it. I'll take a motion to adjourn. So moved. I have a motion to adjourn. Well, I have not called a vote. Would you like to? Council Member Bledsoe. I was just going to recognize that Tatum Dale is here from U.S. Congressman Andy Barr's office. She came to listen to the conversation, so if you have questions or concerns, there is someone here to talk to you, and she's right there. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Then a motion to adjourn. So, Mayor. I have a motion. Is there a second to adjourn? A second. All in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? That motion carries. We stand adjourned.