Courage comes in many different forms. For Esmeralda a transgender asylum seeker from Mexico who faced horrific circumstances in immigration detention, it came in the form of seeking justice. Kept in a segregated cell with other transgender detainees, Esmeralda never realized that her experience in detention would match the trauma of discrimination she had faced back home. But her story is also one of hope for change.
Immigration Detention
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Hate Crime Victim Julio Maldonado Wrongfully Convicted, Now Being Deported
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Kuck Fights for Justice for Youssef Megahed
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Hate Crime Victim Julio Maldonado Wrongfully Convicted, Now Being Deported
Transgender Asylum Seeker Speaks Out Against Detention
Published November 12, 2009 @ 05:20PM PT
Esmeralda: A Transgender Detainee Speaks Out from Breakthrough on Vimeo.
Making Immigrant Detention Comical
Published November 04, 2009 @ 09:26AM PT
If New Jersey airport officials could detain Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan, Dr. Jorge Cham is just a small fish in the sea for British immigration officials.
Cham of PhD Comics had a deportation scare in the United Kingdom recently. He took it in stride and produced some wonderful comics called PHD Tales from Heathrow Detention Facility that are somewhat telling of the American immigration system as well.
Enjoy them here: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Responding to the comics, if the 9-11 perpetrators did hate us for our freedoms, they got their wish. Our response was to fulfill their dying wishes by shredding our constitutional protections, destroying civil liberties, casting suspicion at every 'Other' and growing our archipelago of immigrant detention.
(Photo Credit: MIT)
NY Report Finds 39% Immigrant Detainees Eligible for Relief
Published November 03, 2009 @ 10:14AM PT
A newly released NYC Know Your Rights report from New York City Bar Justice Center claims that 39% of immigrant detainees at the Varick detention facility in New York have ways to adjust their status. They are only allegedly 'illegal aliens.' Of the 250 kidnapped by the U.S. government, 100 detainees were jailed without facing charges while working on a $1 per day, however, the Department of Homeland Security sees the jail as a 'good model' to emulate.
The NYC project could only help 10 detainees per week. 27 of the detainees were lawful permanent residents while some had claims to relief for being born to citizen parents. 39% have claims to adjustment of status via cancellation of removal; asylum; withholding of removal, and/or relief under the Convention Against Torture, non-immigrant visas including U and S visas, 212(c) relief; and adjustment of status under 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Netroots Nation: The Promigrant Blogosphere
Published August 24, 2009 @ 09:26PM PT
Speaking from one of the panels at Netroots Nation week before last, Prerna and XicanoPwr say what needs to be said about Democratic weaseliness on immigration reform and the inhumanity of locking up entire families for civil immigration violations.
Also I recognized someone else up on the stage there :) I'm getting a couple last emoticons in (not that I've ever used them before) before our style guide comes into force and Strunk and White rule the day ;)
Also I truly did appreciate the opportunity to participate in the panel and the invitation to Netroots Nation. The whole four-day experience opened my eyes in many ways and I am very grateful I was able to attend.
"I don’t care if it’s Guantanamo Bay. We want to fill the beds.”
Published August 04, 2009 @ 10:48PM PT
Today's title comes from this piece from Maria Muentes at Families For Freedom:
Recently, the Donald Wyatt Center in Rhode Island lost its contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to house 153 immigrant prisoners after the horrific death of a detainee. Center representatives publicly bemoaned the loss of $100,000 per week and quickly began looking for a way to get more prisoners. The chairman of the board for the center, Daniel Cooney, said, “Frankly, I’m looking at it like I’m running a Motel 6. I don’t care if it’s Guantanamo Bay. We want to fill the beds.” He was eventually fired in the fallout from this remark, but his candor is revealing. Immigrant prisoners are valuable commodities to local jails. This approach boosts the economies of private prison companies and municipalities but costs the federal government millions—perhaps billions—of dollars.
That is the big picture.
But read the stories of Roger, Ravi, and Robert included in the piece to get a sense of what these policies mean to individuals and families caught up in this meatgrinder.
(Remembering for a moment the life of Hiu Lui Ng, the computer engineer who died in excruciating pain at Donald Wyatt after his spine shattered due to untreated cancer, accused of faking his illness and mistreated by his captors--this is the regard with which ICE holds human life. That is the backstory to Wyatt's closure and Daniel Cooney's "Motel 6" comment.)
Immigration Raids Increase Pressure to Migrate
Published August 02, 2009 @ 08:40AM PT
Your weekend links:
- In the context of the Gates arrest in Massachusetts, Maria-Theresa Hernandez writes about her experience with a border patrol officer (ICE wasn't formed until 2003) a decade ago.
About 10 years ago, I was crossing the international border to the United States from Mexico with my cousin, who is a Mexican citizen. She was going to visit me for a few days.
The ICE officer she was speaking to about a tourists visa was outrageously rude. She is a retired school teacher, which is stated on her I.D. Instead of using the word "retirada" (retired), he said she was "retardada" (retarded). She and I were shocked at his audacity. Yet, neither one of us said anything. You cannot say anything to an ICE officer, or he'll find a way to make your life miserable. In that particular situation, she would not have been able to cross over with me.
Unfortunately, while not true of all ICE and CBP officers, disrespect and abuse of power are still prevalent among many. I see this as an attorney with my clients--far worse goes on when no attorney is present.
- Representatives of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights visited U.S. immigration detention centers recently and found that "many men, women and children detained in those facilities are held in unacceptable conditions, and the right of those persons to due process remains, in many cases, compromised." The ACLU has more.
- Aspiring immigration lawyer Cynthia Mazariegos guest-blogs at Latina Lista about her trip to Guatemala to visit Postville deportees.
- And Frontline journalists Greg Brosnan and Jennifer Szymaszek went to Guatemala and Postville to interview people in the aftermath of the federal raid. Watch the video here.
- Glenn Greenwald explores how both Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann have been censored by their corporate masters at GE and News Corp. But this is emblematic of how U.S. journalism too often bends to the will of corporate conglomerates.
- Dee brings word that Minuteman and former Aryan Nations soldier Gunny Bush is now a suspect in a fourth murder, this one in 1997 in Washington state. Bush is separately charged with the murders of nine-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father Raul.
- Writing in the Washington Blade, Julie Kruse from Immigration Equality encourages LGBT voters to support a comprehensive immigration reform package that includes an option for Americans to sponsor their same-sex partners for legal residency. Bringing the broader LGBT community into the debate adds momentum for both positive immigration reform and LGBT equality, she argues.
- To give credit where due after I wondered whether Senator Schumer was getting his immigration talking points from restrictionist websites, he has now written in the Buffalo News that "Daniel Stein, head of an extremist group called FAIR [the Federation for American Immigration Reform], distort[ed] my position on immigration in order to scare the American people using false and distorting arguments."
- Underground Undergrads tells us that Education Secretary Arne Duncan now supports the DREAM Act.
Yet, the bigger question is: Did the raid deter future migration to the United States? No.
The reality of the severe poverty found in Guatemala is still enough reason for fathers, mothers, and children to leave their families behind and make the life-threatening migration north. What the massive raid in Postville did was to create more financial difficulties for a population that is already in poverty.
She also reminded me that family separation is a problem for families in sending countries as well as those that travel to the U.S. or form here. Children in entire communities grow up without one or both parents, who have traveled abroad for work to support the families they've left behind.
[Image: Guatemalan Human Rights Commission meeting with Postville deportees. (Michelle Cassel, via Latina Lista)]
Secretary Napolitano: Enough is Enough!
Published July 30, 2009 @ 09:38PM PT
Today Kyle speaks for many of us in describing the video America's Voice just released:
I'm very happy to report that America's Voice, in partnership with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the New York Immigration Coalition, and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, have finally had enough of Janet Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) continued abuse of migrants in the United States.
I recognize that the Obama administration has a lot on its plate with health care reform, climate change, education, and many other issues I'm anxiously awaiting action on. That, however, does not give the Obama administration the excuse to continue to allow the DHS to terrorize migrants with the remains Bush-era migrant enforcement apparatus. The people voted for change on U.S. migration policy and Obama has only given us much of the same.
I have been pushing for the above organizations to take a stronger stance against the continued terrorizing of the unauthorized migrant population in the U.S. While there is still much that can be done, I am happy to join these organizations in calling for DHS to:
- Implement the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law recommendations: conduct a full investigation into the home raids, make these raids a last resort; obtain judicial warrants, and videotape all home raids.
- End your partnership with civil rights abuser Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and stop the expansion of programs that have led to racial profiling and decreased public safety, such as the controversial "287 (g)" program in its current form.
- Correct the unacceptable conditions for immigrants and asylum-seekers in your expanding immigrant detention system. Pursue alternatives to detention whenever possible. Stop deporting U.S. citizens.
- Halt the expansion of broken policies that undermine labor protections, such as the flawed E-Verify program, which both labor unions and business groups strongly oppose.
- Begin work on real, comprehensive immigration reform immediately.
America's Voice (30 July 2009)I encourage others to sign the petition as well.
