The Laurel police chief has provided addresses of Haitian residents to the FBI. In this excerpt from this Friday's Delmarva Today host Don Rush talks with Spotlight Delaware reporter Jose Ignacio Castaneda Perez who broke the story.
RUSH: The Laurel Police Department has been compiling a list of 14 addresses where officers have come across Haitians, who they believe are undocumented. This is Don Rush. That list was then turned over to the FBI, sparking outrage from some in the community. It was Spotlight Delaware reporter, Jose Ignacio Castaneda Perez, who uncovered the story.
PEREZ: Yeah, it really came about, we filed a public records request, a FOIA request with a bunch of small town police departments in Sussex County, one of 'em being Laurel Police Department, just for really any keywords related to immigration and documented ICE, various keywords that we were just looking for in any emails that they had sent or received from the police chief or any officers in the department. And then we ended up getting back the request from the Laurel Police Department, and that included in it a few emails back in January of 2024, in which the police chief Robert Kracyla had been communicating with an agent of the FBI and he had handed over a list that they had compiled. It was a list of addresses there in Laurel where police officers had encountered people who they believed to be Haitian immigrants and where they had encountered 'em. So it wasn't clear if it was houses where they were living or that it was just where they had encountered people who they believed to be both documented and undocumented Haitian immigrants.
RUSH: So in terms, by the way, these addresses, I understand that more than half, I guess were actual homes. What do we know about these addresses?
PEREZ: Yeah, more than half of them were homes. From our reporting, it seems that they are multifamily homes and they're just scattered across Laurel. We did not disclose the actual addresses and the story and in the reporting just to protect folks' privacy. But we did after the reporting and after the story came out, I went out and with printed copies of the article in Haitian Creole and drop, and we dropped off those articles there and mailboxes and knocked on some doors.
RUSH: So in terms of the chief, what does he have to say about compiling these lists?
PEREZ: The chief, he really defended the decision when we reached out to him for comment before the story published and then afterward, I believe he released a statement on behalf of the Laurel police department defending the decision, saying that if another law enforcement agency reaches out to the department for help, they're going to help. And that really, he maintains that the Laurel Police Department didn't do anything with that information. They compiled it at the behest of the FBI who reached out and asked them to compile that information and hand it over, and that they had never done something like that before. That is that the Laurel Police Department had never done something like that before, and that he was just passing along information to the pertinent agencies and agency who had reached out for help. That's what was mentioned to me when we reached out for comment and that he'll continue to do so to provide help to the proper agencies, but that the Laurel Police Department, I believe you said, is not involved in immigration enforcement and does not racially profile people. I believe that was the statement.
RUSH: Jose Ignacio Castaneda Perez, a reporter for Spotlight Delaware. Full interview can be heard on this Friday's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM, this is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
