Immigration hotline gains huge response in its first month

Immigration hotline gains huge response in its first month

A hotline created to take calls and emails about perceived injustices surrounding Alabama's new immigration law is getting a huge response. 

Officials with the Department of Justice announced the creation of the hotline last month.  They say since then, they've gotten more than one thousand calls or emails coming into the hotlines.   

"We continue to investigate every allegation we're receiving," said  Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez.  "And we're going to follow up every logical one to its conclusion."

The areas of reported concerns range from immigrant children being bullied at school to employers being accused of not paying immigrant workers.  The numbers come as no surprise to Jeremy Love.  He works for the Hispanic Interest   Coalition of Alabama.  

"We've heard a lot of people calling here that are concerned about HB 56 and how it's affected them," Love said. 

He said the calls come from immigrants as well as those in the country legally. Love says some of the calls also confirm concerns HICA officials had when the law was first passed, such as immigrant victims not reporting crimes.  He says they are seeing evidence of that on their domestic violence hotline. 

"We're definitely seeing a decrease in people willing to come forward because they're afraid of law enforcement officials," he says.  "So crimes aren't being reported the way they should be right now." 

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