Courtesy of Eino Sierpe

This summer, Juan David de Paz Royes, an undocumented immigrant in Buffalo, New York, claims that he was not paid for five weeks while renovating hotels. 

When de Paz Royes refused to work at or leave the hotel where he had been working and living until he was paid, he said that his employer reported him and his co-workers to immigration authorities. 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained de Paz Royes for almost two months, holding him until early October, he told the News. 

John Jairo Lugo, the community organizing director for New Haven-based Unidad Latina en Acción, postponed the News’ original interview for this article in order to travel to Buffalo and advocate for de Paz Royes’s release. He said that he did so out of concern that de Paz Royes would be deported for exercising his rights as a worker. De Paz Royes’s family members and colleagues who lived in Connecticut had contacted ULA following his detainment. 

With the help of ULA, de Paz Royes, originally from Mexico, has temporarily settled in New Haven, while awaiting immigration hearings in Hartford. De Paz Royes told the News that he hopes to obtain a T-visa, an immigration status for victims of human trafficking. 

“Thank God for the support of Unidad Latina that allowed me to leave immigration detention,” de Paz Royes said in Spanish. “They have helped me a lot with what happened to me and what I’m going through in this moment.” 

This January, ULA rallied in City Hall along with the Connecticut AFL-CIO and other local organizations, calling on the Biden administration to protect undocumented whistleblowers reporting labor exploitation from the threat of deportation. Following a nationwide movement spearheaded by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the Department of Homeland Security announced new policies that would temporarily protect workers like de Paz Royes in Buffalo from deportation. 

Protecting members from exploitation, deportation 

Founded in 2002, ULA strives to protect the rights of immigrant workers and families throughout Connecticut by assisting victims of wage theft and other forms of labor exploitation, fighting deportations and connecting members with legal support, Lugo said. 

According to Lugo, ULA has helped recover approximately $1 million in stolen or delayed wages, promoted efforts to increase the state minimum wage and succeeded in establishing the first municipal identification card for undocumented immigrants in the U.S. 

Although ULA assists a range of members, Lugo said that the organization centers its services on Spanish-speaking undocumented immigrants who do not have access to government support. 

He also emphasized that ULA prioritizes collective action and problem-solving and highlighted weekly meetings that are open to the public. 

“If we have a problem with the police, if we have a problem with a boss, what we do is basically mobilize members so that people in the collective can create pressure to resolve a problem,” Lugo said in Spanish. 

ULA’s weekly Monday meetings are set in a Howe Street building decorated with art, including a poster of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata and a quilt interwoven with photos of civil rights figures and quotes from the Declaration of Independence. The meetings begin with attendee introductions of their name and country of origin, with usually about 40 people in attendance — either in person or on Zoom. 

Their Oct. 30 meeting featured preparations for an upcoming Día de los Muertos celebration, including how to best preserve the heat of freshly-made tortillas. During a meeting on Oct. 2, attendees introduced the possibility of starting a support group focused on alcohol abuse, shared wisdom on how to make complaints to public school administration and had a member ask for someone to accompany them to a court date. 

ULA through the years: municipal ID cards and political advocacy

Lugo, originally from Colombia, described the history of the organization while perched on a folding chair in the office, its walls plastered with posters reading “NUESTRO LABOR MANTIENE LA ECONOMÍA DEL MUNDO” and “ESTAMOS EN NUESTRO HOGAR Y AQUÍ NOS VAMOS A QUEDAR.” 

In 2001, Lugo and ULA’s other founding members began advocating for undocumented immigrants to be able to obtain Connecticut driver’s licenses. According to Lugo, they were unsuccessful due to increased anti-immigrant sentiment following 9/11. Despite the setback, the group founded ULA the following year in hopes of assisting the New Haven Latine population with other issues, he said.

“Talking about the licenses was also talking about the police that hit you, the boss that robs you, the landowner that mistreats you, the one that discriminates against you on the street,” Lugo said in Spanish. “Why don’t we continue with the group [if] we’ve realized during all this time that there are many problems that affect the immigrant community?”

One of their first major efforts was a campaign for a municipal ID card program in New Haven, in order to grant undocumented immigrants access to city services and allow them to identify themselves to the police when reporting crimes and facing arrest.

In 2005, ULA collaborated with Junta for Progressive Action — another organization dedicated to supporting Latine residents in New Haven — and students at the Yale Law School on a study to ensure that the municipal ID cards had a legal basis. Despite the study’s success, the groups’ proposal for the creation of the IDs was not implemented immediately.

After further political advocacy, the Elm City Resident Card was approved in July of 2007.

Two days after the ID cards’ implementation, ICE raided homes in Fair Haven and arrested 32 alleged undocumented immigrants. Suspecting that the raid was an act of retaliation, ULA and Junta jointly filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security with the assistance of attorneys at the Yale Law School. 

After the lawsuit’s victory, ULA and Junta gained access to documents demonstrating federal officials’ concerns about the municipal ID cards and implying that the 2007 raids had been reprisals for the card policy. In subsequent years, this evidence aided ten New Haven residents’ suits against the ICE agents who had arrested them in the raids.

A major focus of ULA since their founding has been advocating to enact policy change on the local and state level.

In late 2006, ULA successfully pushed for the approval of General Order 06-2: a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for the New Haven Police Department regarding immigrants’ documentation status. The policy was the first of its kind to be implemented in Connecticut.

ULA’s efforts had been prompted by an incident a few months prior, in which an undocumented Mexican family called the NHPD regarding a house robbery and were threatened by the police with being reported to ICE.

ULA and Junta collaborated again throughout 2012 and 2013 to advocate on behalf of Jose Maria Islas, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who had been wrongfully charged with attempted robbery and turned over to ICE, despite his charges being dropped. ULA and Junta’s efforts contributed to ICE’s release of Islas and Connecticut’s passing of the TRUST Act, which prohibited police from handing over undocumented immigrants who had not committed serious crimes to ICE agents.

During Donald Trump’s presidency, ULA organized rallies and walkouts urging local churches — such as the First and Summerfield United Methodist Church, which is located on Yale’s campus — to offer sanctuary to undocumented immigrants facing deportation. 

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, ULA raised $40,000 to provide struggling families with food and financial assistance. The organization also led a campaign urging Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont to issue an executive order forgiving undocumented immigrants’ rent and mortgage debts while the economy was shut down. Lamont suspended rent payments until July 1, 2020.

Miguel Garcia ’24 has been a member of ULA since May 2022, acting as a liaison between ULA and Mecha de Yale, a student organization devoted to social justice for Latines.

Mecha used to have strong ties to ULA, Garcia said, but the connection between the organizations has been weaker in recent years due to the pandemic. One of his roles in ULA is rebuilding that connection, he said. Garcia is part of a group of Mecha members who attend ULA’s weekly meetings and participate in its events and demonstrations.

“I feel like it’s our obligation as students to get involved in the city in which the University is, and have conversations with people who are actually in the city, who live the day-to-day,” he said. 

ULA has conflicts with local unions, politicians 

Lugo said that there are some New Haven residents that disagree with ULA’s persistent and loud organizing tactics. For Lugo, internal and external conflicts are a part of running an organization and cannot be completely avoided. 

Lugo said that ULA no longer directly works with UNITE HERE! Locals 34 and 35, Yale’s clerical and technical workers union and service and maintenance workers union. He mentioned disagreements with union leadership stemming back to the 2000s and said that their agendas involve protecting different workers. Lugo said that the relationship remains respectful but distant. 

In a statement to the News, Pastor Scott Marks, organizing director with UNITE HERE and director of New Haven Rising, commended ULA’s dedication to championing immigrants’ rights in Connecticut and emphasized UNITE HERE and New Haven Rising’s commitment to investing in partnerships between unions and the local community. 

“The majority of members in our union, UNITE HERE, and in New Haven Rising are immigrants, women, or people of color,” Marks wrote. “Our members’ fight for justice in the hospitality industry is a fight for immigrant justice, and that includes the fight for the rights of non-citizens.” 

According to Lugo, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker has broken promises made to ULA and the immigrant community more broadly with his inaction, despite a close relationship with the organization and frequent attendance of meetings prior to assuming office. Lugo said the Elicker administration’s policies have lacked new initiatives supporting immigrants and increased NHPD arrests of ULA members, including Lugo himself. 

Elicker described Lugo’s comments as “disappointing,” saying that New Haven is a leader in supporting immigrants and undocumented residents. He cited the city’s issuing of 675 municipal identification cards this past year alone and the strengthening of sanctuary city policies in 2020, which he said ULA closely worked on. 

The Mayor also took issue with Lugo’s criticism of NHPD arrests of ULA members. Elicker said he personally reviewed the body cam footage of one of Lugo’s arrests and found no evidence of inappropriate behavior by the officer. He noted that Lugo was “uncooperative” with the NHPD. 

“The police department makes arrests, not targeting specific organizations, but based on illegal activity,” Elicker said. “Insinuating that the NHPD targeted any members of ULA is unfounded and goes against our values.” 

Looking to the future, Lugo and the other ULA leaders said they hope to create community legal clinics, rather than relying on lawyers with high legal fees for immigration and asylum cases. 

ULA is also preparing for a possible second Donald Trump presidency, Lugo said.

“It’s much better to face a new administration that’s against immigrants with an organized community,” Lugo said in Spanish. “When [Trump] came the first time, no one was organized, no one was prepared. But this is our idea: preparing ourselves in the coming year for if something happens that goes against our interests.”

Unidad Latina en Acción is located at 37 Howe St.