Challenge for immigrants: Burials
Undocumented face hardship in accessing funeral services during pandemic
BY JESSICA PARKS
Brooklyn’s undocumented
immigrants are seeing higher
death rates from the novel coronavirus
than the general population,
and community organizations
are having a diffi cult
time navigating the process
for burials and cremations —
which is compounded by the
lack of government support.
“At the front lines, we know
that they are dying at higher
rates from COVID,” said Councilman
Carlos Menchaca. “We
are struggling to ensure that
our local municipal government
is going to take care of
them.”
Citing a lack of available
city services, the Sunset Park
councilman’s offi ce has been
supporting undocumented immigrants
across the city in
making funeral arrangements
for their deceased loved ones —
a process in which, he claims,
many non-English speaking
families are being subjected to
price gouging.
“We are trying to run as fast
as we can to get as much information
COURIER L 20 IFE, JUNE 5-11, 2020
as possible,” Menchaca
said. “Funeral expenses and
price gouging, we are working
with Attorney General Tish
James to get to the bottom of
that.”
Undocumented families
have also been relying on community
institutions, like Mixteca
Organization in Greenwood
Heights, to guide them
through the complicated bereavement
process as language
barriers make their situation
increasingly diffi cult.
“We get a lot of heavy stories
every day,” said Janet
Perez, program director of the
Mixteca Organization. “Even
the process of claiming their
loved one, they haven’t even
been able to do it because of the
language access barrier.”
Representatives from the
community-based organization
have been in constant contact
with funeral directors to
support non-English speaking
families in making funeral arrangements,
and have been using
those experiences to compile
data in an effort to dispatch
more comprehensive information
on the bereavement process
for the families they serve.
“We are helping them advocate
in a way where we can
be on the phone call with them
and be persistent and follow up
with someone from the funeral
home,” Perez said. “We really
try to provide an extra level of
advocacy because oftentimes
they feel intimidated.”
The lack of reliable information
available to undocumented
immigrants leads to heightened
fears about the burial of
their loved ones amid reports of
mass graves and mishandling
of bodies, Menchaca said.
“The fear of losing bodies
in this massive processing
of deaths and the lack of information
families were getting
about where their loved
ones just made people afraid,”
Menchaca said.
Moreover, many immigrant
families hope to return
the bodies of their loved ones
to their home countries which
the pandemic has made exceedingly
diffi cult and more costly,
according to the councilman,
as many Latin American countries
banned the repatriation of
bodies from the United States
in an attempt to control the virus’
spread across borders —
which forces families to store
their loved one’s bodies until
restrictions are lifted.
“All of it just crumbled,
no country was taking bodies
from the United States,”
Menchaca said. “They have
to get stored somewhere and
that costs money, there is just
a real mess there.”
The city Department of Social
Services recently made fi -
nancial assistance up to $1,700
available for all city dwellers
who present a loved one’s valid
death certifi cate, regardless
of their immigration status,
to help pay for funerals, provided
that the total cost of the
funeral is less than $3,400.
Mourners attend a funeral at Green-Wood Cemetery during the outbreak
of the novel coronavirus. Photo by REUTERS/Jeenah Moon
Cop drives into protesters
in ‘disturbing’ video
BY MARK HALLUM
Safe streets advocates are slamming
the NYPD after footage from Brooklyn’s
George Floyd demonstrations show a
police cruiser plowing through a crowd
of protesters on May 30.
What Mayor Bill de Blasio described
as demonstrators surrounding the vehicle
was inexcusable to advocacy groups
like Families for Safe Streets and Transportation
Alternatives, who each issued
statements alleging police misconduct.
Video from the incident shows protesters
behind barriers and in front of
the vehicle on Flatbush Avenue. After
objects such as traffi c cones were hurled
at the SUV, the offi cer behind the wheel
hits the gas, plowing through people.
Although nobody was killed, the incident
heightened tensions between protesters
and police.
“Such brutal tactics, like using
6,000-pound SUVs as weapons against
people, must be immediately rooted out
of the NYPD,” Families for Safe Streets
Co-Founder Amy Cohen said.
Though de Blasio said the actions of
the offi cers may not have been in good
judgment, he believes the driver may
have taken whatever action he could out
of desperation.
An NYPD cruiser plowed through a crowd of
demonstrators along Flatbush Avenue.
Twitter/@pgarapon
“It’s inappropriate for protesters to
surround a police vehicle and threaten
police offi cers,” de Blasio said. “I’ve
been watching protests for decades. People
don’t do that...and if a police offi cer is
in that situation, they have to get out of
that situation.”
Sunday morning, de Blasio said he
would implement a review of all NYPD
offi cers’ actions over the weekend in
conjunction with the Corporation Counsel
and the city’s Department of Investigation.
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