El Centro building ties, putting down roots to help Wake County’s Latinos, immigrants
El Centro Hispano cut the ribbon Saturday on a new center that will support and advocate for Wake County’s Latino and immigrant community.
“We are excited for this new chapter of El Centro Hispano,” Pilar Rocha-Goldberg, president and CEO of El Centro Hispano, said in a news release. “This expansion to Wake County is a monumental move for us, but more importantly for the Latino community in Wake County.”
The new office, located on the backside of the Villa Latina Plaza off Chapanoke Road, will offer services including literacy, parenting and education classes; health and wellness programs; immigration, legal and financial help; and political advocacy.
A large community room will provide space for celebrations, weddings, forums and training workshops, said Eliazar Posada, a longtime El Centro employee who is the Raleigh center’s first director.
The new space will give them a greater ability to build relationships with local, state and federal lawmakers, especially since the state Legislature is just a few miles north, Posada said.
“We’re seeing some changes in the political atmosphere, some changes in decision-makers, and some anti-immigrant, anti-Latino things have been coming down our way, so it was time that we use that power of community building we already have to put it into advocacy,” Posada said.
The Raleigh office will build community roots that “lift the people’s agenda,” said Ana Ilarraza-Blackburn, a co-chair for the Poor People’s Campaign, which launched the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina. The Poor People’s Campaign co-hosted Saturday’s opening celebration with El Centro.
Ilarraza-Blackburn said one of the last campaigns the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. worked on in 1968 brought together the black, Latino and Asian communities to “fight for the issues that lift the people out of oppression.”
“When we do that together, it builds power,” she said. “Could you imagine if everyone from all different walks of life — demographics, faith, gender — came together. We would be a political power to be reckoned with.”
“That’s right,” a woman in the audience responded.
Immigrant, Latino services, support
El Centro was founded as a community-based organization in Durham in 1992. In 2010, the organization opened offices in Carrboro and Chapel Hill.
El Centro also has an office at the Mexican Consulate in Raleigh and a mobile health unit — the Ventanilla de Salud — that connects people with free services, in addition to health screenings and nutrition advice.
Although El Centro has seen more clients coming to Durham from Wake County, Posada said, the new office is opening now because the board wanted to be strategic about next steps, funding and community support.
The Raleigh office is opening at a time of “constant attack” on the Latino community by local, state and federal political leaders and anti-immigrant policies, El Centro officials said. Roughly 7% of the city’s population is undocumented, or without legal status, according to Data USA.
Within the past month, 32 people in 10 counties along the Interstate 40 corridor have been detained by Immigration Customs and Enforcement, according to Siembra NC, a Latino advocacy organization operating in the state’s Piedmont region. About half of those detained by ICE officers were in Raleigh.
Elected leaders from Durham, Greensboro and Raleigh spoke out during a news conference earlier this week about the arrests, including Raleigh Council member Saige Martin. Martin was elected in 2019 and is the city’s first Latino council member.
“What our federal government is doing to our residents, and to our families and our communities is unconscionable,” Martin said Monday. “What they have done to Raleigh has not gone unnoticed. Immigrants are the backbone of our city. The lifeblood of who we are, how we thrive and how we progress. Without you, we are nothing. With you, we are everything. When you hurt, we all hurt.”
Several of the men were arrested at courthouses or probation offices, according to a Siembra NC news release.
“A Raleigh man had just completed his DUI community service hours the previous week when ICE agents surprised him outside his home,” according to the news release. “One had a 15-year-old DUI conviction on his record.”
Immigration enforcement
El Centro and other Latino-support nonprofits have worked individually and collaboratively in the last several years to create programs aimed at countering ICE operations.
In 2019, Siembra NC provided $45,000 in emergency cash assistance to 59 families affected by ICE detentions, according to the group’s website and support immigrant workers facing wage theft.
The group also trained residents in Alamance, Durham, Forsyth, Guilford, Orange and Randolph counties to identify and alert others about ICE enforcement actions and to create “ICE Free Zones” in neighborhoods, while advocating for sheriffs in multiple counties to limit their departments’ cooperation with ICE detainers.
El Centro and another Latino advocacy group, The Hispanic Liaison in Siler City, established a separate legal fund last year for families affected by ICE detention in Durham, Orange, Chatham, Lee, Randolph and Wake counties.
Staff writer Trent Brown contributed to this story.
This story was originally published February 22, 2020 at 4:40 PM with the headline "El Centro building ties, putting down roots to help Wake County’s Latinos, immigrants."
