Red Cross Charged With Discrimination Of Latino Hurricane Victims

by Elena Shore

(PNS) -- For immigrants rights worker Victoria Cintra, the discrimination faced by Latinos on the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast is "worse than you could ever imagine."

Cintra and her husband, who were displaced from their Mississippi home by Hurricane Katrina, are traveling around the region for two months in an RV, distributing flyers and advocating for immigrants' rights for the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance.

"Immigrants are being victimized again by an aftermath of Katrina called the Red Cross," says Cintra, who claims to have witnessed the ejection of Latinos, under threat of deportation, from two Mississippi Red Cross shelters.

Cintra estimates that 50 to 60 Latinos left the Red Cross shelter at the West Harrison County Civic Center in Long Beach after a raid by law enforcement. Another 40 had to leave the organization's shelter in D'Iberville, outside of Biloxi, the following week.

Local and state police and U.S. Marshals raided the Long Beach shelter on Sept. 28. Deputies from the Harrison County Sheriff's Department, reportedly following up on a 911 call about a Latino male burglar with a tattoo, ordered all Latino males to come out into the parking lot with their shirts off, says Mary Lee Conwell, Red Cross public affairs manager for the Hurricane Katrina relief operation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

"The police entities told them in Spanish, 'If you're not out of here by Friday at 3AM, we'll bring buses and load you up and deport you,'" Cintra says.

The Red Cross didn't condone the raid and worked with a local preacher to find other places for the residents to stay, Conwell says.

Red Cross shelters have also housed clean-up and construction workers who have been hired by FEMA contractors like KBR, a Houston-based subsidiary of Halliburton. Often, Cintra says, "contractors hire subcontractors, and they bring in the immigrants and dump them in the middle of the street with no money, no housing and no English skills."

To make room for Katrina victims whose houses were condemned by FEMA, the Red Cross told workers staying in some shelters to leave within 48 hours. In D'Iberville, Conwell says, about 40 Latino workers were ejected.

The policy to move workers out of shelters in order to free up space for hurricane evacuees is "only being implemented against Latinos, since the Red Cross doesn't look at documentation," Cintra claims. "The Red Cross has always thought that everybody who even hints to look like a Latino is a clean-up worker." Even those who could prove that they lived in the area and were victims of Katrina were frightened into leaving, she says.

In Hattiesburg and Laurel, Mississippi cities with large numbers of Latinos, Cintra says staff at Red Cross shelters were asking family members to show social security numbers and birth certificates, which violated official Red Cross policy.

When Cintra reported this to the Congressional Black Caucus, Red Cross officials apologized. She says the practice has since stopped.

Red Cross spokespeople insist that the organization doesn't discriminate in deciding who's eligible for services.

"We absolutely have not kicked anyone out of a shelter based on their ethnicity," says Conwell. "We don't do that. If you come to our shelter in need of shelter from the storm," she says, "we're going to let you in."

Darren Irby, a national Red Cross spokesperson, adds that the Red Cross doesn't ask for social security numbers or keep a master database of everyone registered in its shelters.

"The larger issue is that the Red Cross isn't as diverse an organization as it needs to be to serve everyone," says Lisa Navarrete of National Council of La Raza, who has heard multiple complaints that echo Cintra's claims.

"The people on the ground aren't familiar with the community and can't communicate with them," Navarrete says.

Her organization is working with the Red Cross, she says, to clarify its policy of non-discrimination and make sure it is effectively transmitted to personnel on the ground, by people who can communicate with local populations.

The Red Cross has made an effort to reach out to Latinos in recent months. Shortly before Hurricane Katrina, it launched a Spanish-language Web site. Irby says the Red Cross has been recruiting as many bilingual volunteers as it can, but it still doesn't have enough.

Meanwhile, immigrant workers continue to flock to the region to get jobs, but many reportedly end up being exploited. "I get calls every day from people who are working in clean-up efforts and haven't gotten paid," Cintra says.

"Racism has always existed in Mississippi," she says, "but it was a very unspoken racism. Katrina tore the veil off of it."