A crisis that needed my attention
In May of last year Bill Shaner reported for Hell World on the abduction of a Worcester, MA asylum-seeker named Rosane Ferreira-De Oliveira by the federal government. It was an early look at how horrific scenes much like this would play out regularly throughout the country over the next nine months.
Luke O’Neil
Last week justice in the case was finally served. No none of the feds or local cops suffered any consequences. Instead a concerned public servant on hand to witness the wanton cruelty of the state has been made an example of in what local observers are alleging was a politically motivated trial. Etel Haxhiaj – a Worcester City Councilor at the time of the incident who subsequently lost her re-election bid in November – was found guilty of assaulting a police officer and sentenced to six months of probation and 40 hours of community service. To heighten the absurdity of the conviction – because absurdity is always the co-pilot of cruelty under fascism – Haxhiaj, who I interview down below, was somehow also found not guilty of the charge of interfering with police.
If you watch a video of the "assault" in question – which was shown to the jury – it's hard not to imagine them thinking ah hell I know we gotta get this "lefty cop-hater" for something but let's not go overboard here. There is no rational world in which what Haxhiaj does when she briefly braces herself after being pushed away by Worcester Police Officer Shauna McGuirk amounts to assault. It simply highlights the ridiculous double standard when it comes to how we allow our brave warriors to brutalize us to no end while also counting the most modest or incidental resistance as a grave affront to the law.
“The mention of a mother and women with an infant surrounded by ICE felt very urgent to me,” Haxhiaj said during the trial of the events of the day in question. “It has been my modus operandi to show up to constituent crises, whether it’s a fire, a building collapse... I characterized this as a crisis that needed my attention."
“My sole intention of going to that area was to perform the duties I was elected to do as a city councilor.”
Haxhiaj, a longtime advocate for police accountability and reforms in the city, was offered a plea deal in which she would have had to sign a letter apologizing to the cops for her behavior but she declined. Ashley Spring, a second community member who was similarly charged accepted the offer.
"My heart breaks at the brutality being unleashed on our neighbors and many others held captive in detention camps," Haxhiaj said in a statement after the trial. "On May 8, we did what ordinary people are doing across the country: we stood between masked armed federal agents and a mother. The murders of Keith Porter Jr, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti, the killings and kidnappings of Black and brown immigrant neighbors, remind us who the real aggressors are."
Shaner has more on the specifics of the trial here.
Bill Shaner
And a blistering piece at his newsletter Worcester Sucks written by Andrew Marsh here.
Bill Shaner
I don’t know why the jury made their incomprehensible judgement that flies in the face of rational thought and logic. Frankly, though, I don’t care. The more pressing question is, what kind of societal precedent does this case set? It establishes the standard of criminalizing good samaritans who rush to help their neighbors, particularly against state violence. It reduces the serious charge of assault to coincidental touches, and effectively strips the right of self-defense from the public, in contradiction of the spirit of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. ...
Any good faith and rapport the police hoped to foster with the residents of Worcester has been put through the shredder, from their actions on Eureka Street, the charges they levied on two incredibly brave defenders of our community, and the contradictions they voiced on the stand. Nobody has any reason now to trust that the police department will actually defend them in their hour of need, as they have proven that they will gladly inflict pain on those most in need and criminalize anyone who dares to stand up and offer their assistance.
Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin – to no one's surprise – blatantly lied about the facts of the case. Her lies were of course dutifully passed along by local news.
Haxhiaj "pulled a political stunt and incited chaos by trying to obstruct law enforcement's lawful arrest of a criminal illegal alien," McLaughlin said. "It's disgraceful that elected officials, like District Councilor Haxhiaj, are fighting to protect violent illegal aliens – in this case an illegal alien who assaulted a pregnant woman—over the safety of law-abiding Americans. This stunt by sanctuary lawmakers put the safety of our law enforcement agents at risk. ICE officers are facing a 1300% increase in assaults while carrying out arrests.”
All charges against Ferreira-De Oliveira for the May 8 incident were dropped in July and her asylum case was granted in October. She nevertheless spent five months in detention. Meanwhile her adult daughter has returned to Brazil and says she will never return. Her two teenager daughters were taken in by the Department of Children and Families – and were briefly reported as missing after running away – but have reportedly since been found.
And all of that for what? Just to rip one woman's family apart and make an example of another.
Do you feel safer now? After all of the time and expense put into this perversion of justice. I certainly do not.
I spoke with Etel Haxhiaj about her experience. Support this newsletter with a free or paid subscription if you are able to. Thank you as always for reading.
I assume you're disappointed with the outcome of the trial. Did you expect it was going to go this way? Because it’s a pretty absurd case top to bottom.
Yes, I'm very, very disappointed with the outcome. I honestly did not know what the jury was going to do. It was just very hard to predict an outcome. I knew that I was extremely determined and very convinced in my innocence, and I've maintained that throughout, even in the face of offers to drop the case in exchange for an apology. But I honestly did not think that the jury wouldn't be able to see the truth. That's what I expected them to see. The truth of the matter. I did not know how they were gonna react. It was very hard.
The truth seems to be having a tough go of things of late.
We weren't allowed to bring up any of the context in which these charges were brought forward [during the trial]. That it was a political prosecution, or the intent of the police union president to make me lose my re-election, or the alleged conversations he had and the pressure that he applied on the police department. We weren't allowed to bring any of those key factors in. I think it damaged my case greatly.
So you lost re-election in November. I assume that this all played a pretty big role, right? They must have tried to hammer you with all this stuff.
Yeah, the police union president literally went door to door, campaigned against me and in support of my opponent, who is a supporter of the police department's practices and union... He’s taking victory laps now through his comments saying that he's responsible for me losing the election and now getting convicted… And I think what happened on Eureka Street, a lot of people didn't like, and that also played a huge factor in my not getting re-elected.
There's something so pathetic about how the police react to something like the minor brushing of a police officer. They try to make it out like you were a boxer or something, you know, like you were squaring up against them. Don't you find that kind of absurd?
I find it extremely dangerous. One of the bigger worries that I had after this decision and conviction is that it allows police departments to not only stack charges against their political opponents when they have an opportunity, but any claims and truth of self-defense in response to excessive force can now be considered an act of aggression from an unarmed civilian.
In my case it was very clear that these charges were politically motivated. The officer in question amended her police report days after the incident. And so this, in my opinion, sets a very dangerous precedent about how police departments can use this particular statute and charges against their political opponents or any civilians who merely react reflexively in protection of their bodies when a police officer uses excessive force.
I think of the case of Renee Good, how they tried to frame it like she was trying to run over the ICE agent. But the human reaction, when a police officer has a gun pointed at you, or they're pushing you around, the natural human instinct is to react a little bit. It's one thing to literally start fighting the cops and it's another thing to just put your hands up, or be like, oh my God, be a little bit scared. That's a very human thing.
It's a very human thing. And I think, again, looking at the bigger picture and the repercussions that decisions like this have, it makes me think about the fact that not only can police departments can use this type of argument, that they have the right to forcefully and without any reason use aggression against unarmed civilians who are reacting – and I'm going to specifically say, as a woman – that is precisely what I would do in any situation if my body felt unsafe from the actions of a person who acted with the same aggression that the officer did. But my point is that, big picture, the fact that police departments can use that line of argument in a court, and find willing prosecutors to defend them the way that ADA Steven Gagne did, without taking into account the political prosecution and the context in which these charges came forward, it just shows me that, as I said in my statement, those two systems of power will continue to sustain each other. And residents and political figures like myself and advocates of police accountability and transparency will continue to get punished without the justice and the truth ever coming forward.
I personally know where my truth lies, and so does the community, and the fact that a prosecutor was willing to lean hard on my actions protecting a mother against armed federal agents speaks volumes to where their loyalty lies.
Obviously there are real consequences for the people involved, but it all feels like it's a form of theater on two levels. One, there's making an example of you, so other people, concerned citizens, might think twice about intervening in one of these kidnappings. And there's also what was done to the woman in question, Ferreira-De Oliveira. She had a legal asylum case pending, which was ultimately granted, and she still spent five months in detention. It was all a colossal waste of time and expenses and an exercise of arbitrary cruelty just to intimidate other immigrants I believe.
And knowing that she was not the subject of the detainment, they literally used her daughter with an infant to lure her out because they didn't know what to do with an infant. The subject of the detention was one of the daughters, the older daughter with an infant.
The two political theaters that played out are the casualties of all this. It’s of course, first and foremost, the fact that this family suffered irreparable harm. A 17-year-old was violently arrested without anyone taking accountability for it. And now you have a public servant who has done nothing but help and serve the community with a serious charge on my record. Granted, I did not go to jail, and I'm grateful for that. But the fact of the matter is that they sent a very strong message to anyone like me who ever dares to both stand in between cruelty and in defense of our community members and who asks for accountability for police misconduct.
So ultimately what we have here is dozens of federal agents, police officers, the court system, jurors, the cost of the trial, all of that just to tear apart this particular family and to make an example of you a public servant. The question that I have for people is do you feel safer now because of this?
Well according to the ADA's closing statements, as he put it, the president is not above the law, and a city councilor is not about the law, and he seemed quite happy with framing the argument that, at every turn, I broke the law, versus examining the political prosecution angle of this case, but also completely ignoring the inconsistencies that his own main witness displayed on the stand. The fact that she claimed twice that she just merely escorted me. The fact that they admitted on the stand, against every statement that the city of Worcester had put out to the public, that they were there to help ICE agents. The officer who alleged that I assaulted her admitted on the stand that the command for her to go deal with that situation, meaning myself and the mother, the 21 year old, was done on the command of an ICE officer. So they admitted on the stand that which we knew and witnessed with our own eyes, yet, you know, here we are again.
You're an immigrant yourself?
Yes, my family and I fled our home country of Albania 26 years ago due to civil unrest, and I lived undocumented as a refugee in Greece for two years before immigrating to the United States.
You would seem to be an example of the good parts of immigration in America! You come here to be elected to local office, you try to help people. I can't help but note the irony of that as well in this whole thing.
I kept thinking about when I was in Greece right before we were supposed to get interviewed by the American Consul. My dad actually got detained in an immigration raid, much like what happened on Eureka Street, because he looked like an immigrant. He got swept off and sent to jail. I remember the Consul gave us 24 hours for my dad to appear, and if not, then I would lose the chance of coming here as a green card holder.
He got out, we went and did our interview, and what I remember vividly, especially as the verdict was being called, is promising to this American Consul when he asked me, why do you want to go so badly to the United States? And I just remember begging him if he only gave me that chance that I would try to do good with my citizenship. Which is what I've literally done from the moment I stepped foot in this community. To be convicted of a crime for defending a person that was in the same exact situation that my father was that many years ago, it deeply hurt.
I think you've done good good work here and I'm sorry it worked out this way. Will you continue your efforts in the community and will you be able to run again or is that something you're even interested in?
There's no doubt that I will continue fighting and this makes my resolve stronger, Whether running for office is in the future or not that's not something I can think of right now, but I will continue my community work and I'll continue calling for civilian review board with subpoena powers for Worcester.
A recent one on ICE in Massachusetts:
Luke O’Neil
Not sure I should comment on this story.
Ofelia Torres, the teenage Chicago Public Schools student whose fight against cancer while her father was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers represented the federal government’s overreach during Operation Midway Blitz, has died, her family announced on Saturday.
The Torres family story came to public attention in October after Ofelia’s father, Ruben Torres Maldonado, was detained at a Home Depot in Niles. Ofelia had been on a temporary break from cancer treatment at Lurie Children’s Hospital when her family worked with her oncologist to arrange a short weekend getaway. Ofelia and three of her closest friends gathered to enjoy a Saturday of simple pleasures and normalcy before a scheduled return to the hospital and chemotherapy.
As the girls spent time together, Torres called his wife, Sandibell Hidalgo, from a number that came up on Caller ID as “prison / jail.”
“It’s me,” he said. “They got me.”
Donate to her family here if you can.