United States: End Detention of Refugees for Failure to File Forms

Human Rights Watch
December 29, 2009

"For the US government to bring persecuted refugees to this country and then turn around a year later and jail them because they didn't file immigration forms is ironic to the point of absurdity. This mindlessly bureaucratic policy unnecessarily traumatizes refugees and their families, not to mention wasting the government's resources."
Bill Frelick, refugee policy director at Human Rights Watch

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Grassroots migrant groups to meet in Athens

By Kathy Durkin
Workers' World
Oct 30, 2009

Athens, Greece, will be the setting Nov. 1-4 for the Second International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees. Migrants and refugees from grassroots organizations around the world will speak out on the horrific conditions facing workers who have to leave their homelands.

The IAMR is supported by a broad spectrum of migrants’ rights advocates, progressive workers’ groups and social movements. Their gathering will counter the government-led Global Forum on Migration and Development and the Civil Society Organizations, which are meeting the same week in Athens...

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Doctor makes music that crosses cultural divides

Marco Visscher | September/October 2009 issue
Ode Magazine

Physician and singer Rupa Marya is on a mission to break boundaries musically and nationally...

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It's Time to Reform Immigration

Reform Immigration for America


Tell Congress: "It's time to fix the broken immigration system. Pass comprehensive immigration reform this year!"

Our broken immigration system is hurting our economy, American families, and all American workers. Comprehensive immigration reform is the solution. President Obama supports reform. But only Congress has the power to pass legislation...

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DHS Announces 11 Previously Unreported Deaths In Immigration Detention

American Civil Liberties Union

Announcement Prompted By ACLU Lawsuit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

NEW YORK – Prompted by an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit seeking previously unreleased documents related to the deaths of immigration detainees in U.S. custody, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials today revealed 11 deaths that have occurred at detention facilities since 2004 that the government had previously failed to publicly disclose.

In April, in response to the ACLU lawsuit which was filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), DHS officials released what they called a comprehensive list of all deaths in detention that included a total of 90 individuals. With today's announcement, the government has now admitted to a total of 104 in-custody deaths since fiscal year 2003.

"Today's announcement confirms our very worst fears," said David Shapiro, staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project. "For too long, the system of detaining immigration detainees has been devoid of transparency and accountability. This forces us to question even further whether there are still more deaths that somehow have gone unaccounted for."

The ACLU sued DHS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the DHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in June 2008 for failing to turn over thousands of public documents in their possession relating to the deaths of immigration detainees held in U.S. custody. The ACLU filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after repeated failures by DHS officials to release those documents in response to requests by the ACLU for critical information about the deaths of dozens of people in immigration detention.

In a FOIA request submitted by the ACLU to DHS in 2007, the ACLU sought information about whether ICE – or any independent monitoring agency – adequately tracks deaths of immigration detainees, who are often housed in county jails around the country alongside criminal detainees, or in one of numerous immigration detention facilities managed by private prison companies.

OIG reports to Congress prior to the ACLU's FOIA request contained only vague and sporadic references to investigations into these deaths. Additionally, the reports provided little useful information that would assure the public that meaningful investigations are conducted into each death and that steps are being taken to guarantee that detainees receive necessary medical services before it is too late.

Deficient medical care is believed to be a leading cause of death in immigration detention, and is the number one complaint the ACLU has received from ICE detainees. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in 2007 against the San Diego Correctional Facility (SDCF), an ICE facility run by Corrections Corporations of America, Inc. (CCA), the country's largest for-profit correctional services provider. In its lawsuit, the ACLU challenges flawed medical care policies and the denial of needed treatment by ICE and the Division of Immigration Health Services which has led to suffering and even death of detainees at SDCF.

Attorneys working on ACLU's FOIA litigation include David Shapiro of the ACLU National Prison Project, Judy Rabinovitz of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, New York-based attorneys Benjamin R. Walker and Margaret K. Winterkorn-Meikle and Washington-based attorneys Margaret K. Pfeiffer and Lee Ann Anderson McCall.

Additional information about the ACLU National Prison Project is available online at: www.aclu.org/prison

America’s ICE Backwards Approach to Immigration

Truthdig
By Andrew Becker and Hugo Cabrera, CIR
June 29, 2009

This article is a collaboration with the Center for Investigative Reporting.


The U.S. has hired thousands of Border Patrol agents and prosecutors while adding only three immigration judges since 2006. The result is a clogged system that leaves immigrants and even U.S. citizens in prison limbo...click title above to continue

Tell the White House & Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform this year

United Farm Workers
June 25, 2009

Pass comprehensive immigration reform this year!

United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez issued the below statement today (June 25, 2009) from the union's Keene, Calif. headquarters following President Obama's meeting at the White House with top congressional leaders on immigration reform. Please read it and then take action and send your message the president and key congressional leaders.

The United Farm Workers is grateful to President Obama for moving the process of immigration reform forward with today’s meeting at the White House. We take heart from the Democratic congressional leadership's commitment to place comprehensive reform on the agenda this year. But there are those who say 2009 is not the year to address this pressing issue.

In April 1963, in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Dr. King wrote, "For years now I have heard the word, 'Wait!'...We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that 'justice too long delayed is justice denied.'"

In June 1963, addressing the nation to propose the Civil Rights Act, President Kennedy reminded Americans, "Those who do nothing are inviting shame...Those who act boldly are recognizing right as well as reality."

In September 1965, "Ahora es cuando!" ("Now is the time!") became the rallying cry of Cesar Chavez and the farm workers when they took a stand for justice and humanity by beginning the historic Delano grape strike.

Now is the time to move forward with a comprehensive immigration reform bill that recognizes reality and embodies equity for hard-working immigrant families, businesses and the American people who have been plagued for too long with a broken immigration system.

Across all groups of voters, the American people desire a just and practical solution. A grassroots national campaign is behind comprehensive reform. The congressional leadership and the President are for it. Let both Democrats and Republicans, in President Kennedy's words, "recognize right as well as reality" and pass comprehensive immigration reform this year.

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It's time for Congress to stop legitimizing hate groups

Presente.org

The recent double murder of Brisenia and Raul Flores is just the latest act of violence flowing from the anti-immigrant sentiments of groups like FAIR and the “Minutemen.” Please join us in calling on leaders in the House and Senate who oversee immigration policy to renounce these groups and stop giving them an audience. Congress must stand up to this kind of hate and extremism!

The Bloody Truth Behind Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric

by Sally Kohn
Huffington Post
June 16, 2009

A week after a white supremacist attacked the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, and on the day that three teenagers are being sentenced in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, for brutally beating and killing a Mexican immigrant, it's time we confront the fact that behind violently anti-immigrant and supremacist rhetoric is a real urge and a real encouragement for actual violence...

Judge Halts Deportation of 4, Cites ICE Conduct

By Mary E. O’Leary, Register Topics Editor
Monday, June 8, 2009
New Hampshire Register

...The judge found the actions of the agents, where they forcibly entered private homes and failed to demonstrate probable cause for arrest were not even “on the margin” of acceptable behavior.

Prisoners at Federal Immigrant Detention Center in South Texas Stage Hunger Strike Over Alleged Abuses, Denial of Due Process

DemocracyNow!
April 29, 2009

As many as 100 people held at the Port Isabel Processing Center, an immigration prison near Brownsville, Texas, have been on a hunger strike since last week to draw attention to alleged abuses in the facility and their extended detention without due process. Inmates say their complaints to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, or ICE, about lack of medical attention, denial of food and other abuses have fallen on deaf ears...

Join the virtual immigration Reform march

United Farm Workers

Tomorrow, thousands across the country will march to demand that Congress do the right thing on immigration reform.

This issue is vital to the UFW and to the farm workers we represent. Farm workers do the hardest, most difficult jobs that others won't do. They help feed this nation. Yet, they are faced with fear and intimidation because many employers use the threat of deportation to keep on exploiting them.

Please join us in fighting for immigration reform by participating in a virtual May Day march that we are doing along with other immigration groups. Help us show Congress that there is a growing movement that stands with the President to pass real immigration reform this year.

It’s time to end this cycle of fear and abuse and achieve real change for working families. To do so, we need your help to move the campaign forward. Please take action today and join the virtual march.

Arizona Public Defender Blasts Militarization of Immigration Enforcement, Criminalization of Undocumented Workers

Democracy Now!
April 27, 2009

We speak with Isabel Garcia, co-chair of the Coalición de Derechos Humanos, a grassroots organization in Tucson that fights the militarization of the Southwestern border region and discrimination and human rights abuses by federal, state and local law enforcement officials affecting US and non-US citizens alike. She is also the legal defender of Pima County, Arizona, and won the Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Award in 2008 and the 2006 National Human Rights Award from Mexico’s National Commission for Human Rights.

Immigrants Hope Their 'American Dream' Isn't Fading

National Public Radio
Tell Me More, April 8, 2009 · Thousands of immigrants flock to the U.S. every year in pursuit of big dreams. But the current economic crisis causes fear that some dreams might not be so attainable, after all. Three such immigrants share feelings of hope, doubt and frustration as they reflect on having left their native land, only to face tougher hardship in the U.S.

Kenya illegally deporting Somali asylum-seekers -UN

April 3, 2009
By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA, April 3 (Reuters) - Kenyan authorities are deporting asylum-seekers to Somalia, a violation of international law, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said on Friday.

UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said that the police and military, acting on orders from provincial authorities, have been rounding up and forcibly returning Somalis trying to reach Dadaab, the world's largest refugee settlement.

35 illegal migrants found dead in Pakistan

Guardian (AP)
April 4, 2009

More than 100 people were inside the metal container when police opened it on a tip-off, Bakhsh said. Some were taken to the hospital unconscious and the death toll could rise, he said.

The stench from the container suggested some might have been dead for days, he said...

Support the DREAM Act!

The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act is bipartisan legislation that addresses the situation faced by young people who were brought to the United States years ago as undocumented immigrant children, and who have since grown up here, stayed in school, and kept out of trouble.

If passed, the DREAM Act would facilitate access to college for immigrant students in the U.S. by restoring states’ rights to offer in-state tuition to immigrant students residing in their state. The “DREAM Act” would also provide a path to citizenship for hardworking immigrant youth who were brought to the U.S. as young children and to pursue higher education or military service, enabling them to contribute fully to our society.

Film Depicts 'Train Of Death' Ride

National Public Radio
Morning Edition, March 12, 2009 · Central Americans coming to the U.S. often make the perilous 1,000-mile journey across Mexico. Thousands make that trip riding a freight train so dangerous they call it "the train of death." More people will learn about that train ride with the release of the film "Sin Nombre," which won two top awards at the Sundance Film Festival.

The Age of ‘Crimmigration’

A new study by the Pew Hispanic Center reports that Latinos have now become the largest single ethnic group in the U.S. federal prison system. The rising arrest and detention rates are driven largely by changes in immigration law that criminalize undocumented immigration, as nearly half of all Latino offenders were jailed on immigration-related “crimes”.

Read the full report here.


http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20090225_the_age_of_crimmigration/

Interpreting the Largest ICE Raid in U.S. History: A Personal Account

New America Media, Commentary, Erik Camayd-Freixas, Ph.D., Posted: Jul 11, 2008

Editor's Note: A Spanish-language interpreter in Postville, Iowa battled with his own ethical decisions about how to stay neutral during the largest single-site raid in U.S. history. He says nothing could have prepared him for the prospect of helping our government put hundreds of innocent people in jail.

POSTVILLE, Iowa -- On Monday, May 12, 2008, at 10:00 a.m., in an operation involving some 900 agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed a raid of Agriprocessors, Inc., the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant located in the town of Postville, Iowa. The raid – officials boasted – was “the largest single-site operation of its kind in American history.” At that same hour, 26 federally certified interpreters from all over the country were en route to the small neighboring city of Waterloo, Iowa, having no idea what their mission was...

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=dd3d7679d6579a9a883d376a80142456