Tag: Criminalization of immigration

Organization of American States To Hold Hearing On Immigrant Detention Conditions In The U.S.

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

Immigration detention centers have seen several detainee deaths. (Photo: Univision.com/AFP)

Immigration detention centers have seen several detainee deaths. (Photo: Univision.com/AFP)

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights announced this week it will hold a hearing on conditions at detention centers for undocumented immigrants in the U.S. The hearings come after a series of detainee deaths prompted complaints from immigrant and civil rights organizations.

According to a story on Univision.com, the commission –which is part of the Organization of American States (OAS)– expects to publish a report on immigration detention centers later this year.

Santiago Cantón, the commission’s executive secretary, said at a press conference Tuesday that his panel has requested U.S. government authorization to visit some of the detention centers, but negotiations stalled over conditions for the visits.

The hearing will be held on Friday, March 20th, at OAS Washington headquarters, according to the official schedule for the IACHR’s 134th period of sessions.

The case of the detainees will be presented by the Transnational Legal Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law.

According to Cantón, the schools’ involvement and the hearing itself might help convince the U.S. government to allow the commission to visit the jails.

A recent Government Accounting Office report said the detention centers display bureaucratic deficiencies, medical personnel under staffing, slow response times to medical emergencies and poor food quality, according to a recent special report on Univision.com.

The American Civil Liberties Union has asked Congress to pass a law that would increase supervision of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and improve the treatment of immigration detainees.

Ninety immigrants have died in detention since 2003, according to the ACLU.

Some of the more high-profile deaths –like those of Guido Newbrough in Virginia and Hiu Lui ‘Jason’ Ng in Rhode Island— have brought attention to the plight of detainees.

But others are shrouded in secrecy, ACLU attorney Monica Ramirez told Univision.com.

“We don’t know all the causes for those deaths,” she said. “The government doesn’t give out information and many times we learn about what happened through families’ accounts.”

Obama Administration May Revise Controversial Immigration Enforcement Program

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff officers conduct an immigration raid in Phoenix (Photo: AFP)

Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff officers conduct an immigration raid in Phoenix (Photo: AFP)

After a federal program that empowers local authorities to enforce immigration laws was severely criticized in an official report last week, a Homeland Security official told Congress that the agency is working on modifications to the program.

Still, pro-immigrant voices argue the 287g program –named after the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996 that created it– should be shut down altogether.

In an editorial published last Sunday, Los Angeles Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión said,

As we have argued in the past, the (287 g) program should be ended. It is a sham that has only served to destroy families and ruin lives. That said, legislation that mandates efforts between federal immigration and local authorities to detain and deport felons should be fulfilled. But, we need to first close this shameful chapter and start from the beginning.

Last week, the Government Accountability Office released a report that said the program had expanded without proper oversight. Instead of targeting undocumented immigrants suspected of having committed serious crimes, local law enforcement agencies have arrested thousands for minor infractions, The Wall Street Journal reported.

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Connecticut Back in Crosshairs of Immigration Debate: Priest Arrested For Videotaping Police

James Manship in court - Photo: New Haven Independent.

James Manship in court. (Photo: New Haven Independent)

Father James Manship of St. Rosa of Lima Catholic Church in New Haven, Conn. pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of disorderly conduct and interfering with police. Father Manship was arrested by police in nearby East Haven after videotaping town police officers who he claims have been harassing Latino immigrants for a period of several months.

The case once again puts Connecticut at the center of the debate over the treatment of undocumented immigrants. In 2007 New Haven became the first city in the nation to offer ID cards to undocumented residents, allowing them access to municipal services. The Elm City Resident Cards have drawn sharp criticism and court challenges. In communities near New Haven, some say the hostility toward Latino immigrants goes even further.

“My arrest is the tip of a toxic iceberg of racial profiling by East Haven police,” Manship told reporters at a press conference following his court hearing.

On February 19th, police ordered owners of My Country Store, a Latino-owned market in East Haven, to remove license plates that they had used to decorate store windows, claiming they were inappropriately using government property.

Manship, who was in the store, began to film the officers, who then arrested him, claiming that they believed the priest was holding a weapon. (The New Haven Independent’s website has the police report.)

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Napolitano Orders Review of First Work-Site Immigration Raid Under Her Watch

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor
Napolitano (Photo: Washington Times/AP)

Napolitano (Photo: Washington Times/AP)

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided an engine remanufacturing plant in Bellingham, Wash. on Tuesday, it looked like the Bush administration policy of work-site enforcement would continue under the new White House. This, despite President Barack Obama’s campaign statement that “communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids.”

“The Obama administration decided against ‘change we can believe in’ and, instead continued the Bush legacy,” the Standing Firm pro-immigrant blog said. “I CANNOT believe the administration is allowing this to happen.”

Today, the mood is much lighter among immigration advocates, after the director of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, late yesterday ordered a review of the operation, the first work-site raid to take place since she took office:

This is a great victory and the first step to winning Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

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Second Death At Virginia Immigration Detention Facility

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

“The reason for this letter is to let you know what is happening at this Immigration detention center,” a man identified as J.E.R. wrote in a letter to a central Virginia Spanish-language newspaper, referring to the Piedmont Regional Jail in Farmville, Va. He then described how a German immigrant held at the facility died for lack of medical attention.

New York Times

Guido Newbrough's parents, Jack and Heidi - Photo: New York Times

“He was never given attention for the strong pain that afflicted him,” J.E.R. wrote. “One morning, he got up asking for assistance, he was knocking on the door seeking help and the jail guards threw him on the floor and dragged him to a corridor and then to a cell called ‘the hole,’ where the person is isolated from the rest and cannot use the phone.”

From ‘the hole,’ he asked for help and he died a day after Thanksgiving. (Jail officials) say he died of natural causes, but those of us who were there know that he died because of negligence.

The narration fits what the family of Guido R. Newbrough told The New York Times about the death of the German-born man, who spent 42 of his 48 years in the United States and apparently did not know he was not an American citizen.

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New Homeland Security Chief Napolitano To Focus On Employers Who Hire Undocumented Immigrants

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor
New York Times.

Napolitano - Photo: New York Times.

Hours after President Barack Obama was sworn in, the Senate confirmed now-former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano to head the Department of Homeland Security, an agency created in response to the attacks of 9-11.

Napolitano’s confirmation did not face any opposition: only a voice vote was taken on the Senate floor — no need for a roll call, according to Azstarnet.com.

The former governor succeeds Michael Chertoff as Secretary of Homeland Security, and is the first Democrat to head the agency. She comes to the job pledging to get tougher with “the demand side” of illegal immigration, namely employers who hire undocumented workers.

“You have to deal with illegal immigration from the demand side as well as the supply side,” she told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee during her confirmation hearing last week.

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News Analysis: Geithner’s Problems Refocus Attention on Undocumented Gardeners and Housekeepers

Aswini Anburajan, FI2W contributor

Aswini Anburajan, FI2W contributor

Democrats and Republicans alike appear to have little stomach to derail the nomination of Tim Geithner, President-elect Obama’s pick for Secretary of Treasury, despite his failure to pay $43,000 in taxes on time, and his hiring of a housekeeper who briefly lacked proper work papers.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid dismissed Geithner’s troubles this week as “a few little hiccups” in the nomination process.

Does political dismissal of Geithner’s troubles reflect a change in attitudes toward issues like the hiring of undocumented workers?

Little attention has been given to Geithner’s hiring of the worker, whose legal papers expired while she was employed him. Instead pundits and papers have focused on the irony that the man who will lead the Internal Revenue Service can’t figure out how much he owes in taxes.

Getty Images/Wall Street Journal)

Geithner (Getty Images/Wall Street Journal)

Geithner’s hiring of a housekeeper whose work papers expired should be noted, not as a criticism, but as a reality that the 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country are interwoven in the American workforce.

Geithner isn’t the first public official in this situation. In the presidential primaries, as Republican Mitt Romney campaigned around the country promising to crackdown on undocumented immigrants, the Boston Globe revealed that undocumented workers had been part of the landscaping firm hired by the Romneys.

Two of President Bill Clinton’s nominees for attorney general, Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, were both disqualified for hiring nannies that were undocumented and for not paying social security taxes on their wages.

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Vatican News Service Criticizes U.S. Immigration Enforcement, Commends U.S. Bishops

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor
Daquella Manera/Flickr

Fides news service criticized U.S. immigration enforcement in a recent dossier. ("Frontera", by Daquella Manera/Flickr.)

Catholic leaders in the U.S. have been raising their voices in support of reform of the nation’s immigration laws, as Feet In 2 Worlds has reported in recent weeks. Now, a Vatican news service has issued a report that praises American Catholic bishops for their opposition to “the ineffectiveness and violence” of United States’ immigration measures.

“For many years,”  Fides news agency said, “the Catholic Bishops of America have strenuously fought for migrants and against systems of repression, (and have been) actively involved in promoting immigration reforms which encourage legality and respect for human rights.”

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News Analysis: Immigration Policy in 2009

By Suman Raghunathan, FI2W columnist

As the dust begins to settle after the historic November elections, the incoming Obama administration has lost no time in assembling transition teams on a host of pressing issues, including immigration.

The new administration faces difficult questions about the recent focus on immigration enforcement, particularly after the Obama campaign’s promises to reform the nation’s immigration laws in a fair and humane fashion. In fact, one of President-elect Obama’s only explicit references to immigration policy during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was about the harsh effects of immigration raids on immigrant families – particularly on the over 5 million U.S.-citizen children nationwide with parents who are non-citizens.

What’s more, there’s a sense among many immigrant communities and civil rights groups that Obama is indebted to them after a landslide victory among immigrant voters. Strong Latino voter support for Obama tipped the balance against Sen. McCain in several key battleground states, including Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, and Florida.

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Sheriff Arpaio Gets His Own TV Show And An Online Revolt Ensues

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor


Sheriff Joe Arpaio in his new reality show.

Arpaio, coming soon, on the Fox Reality Channel.

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio has become famous for his made-for-TV antics, like forcing inmates to use pink underwear, and his immigration enforcement fervor, which has drawn heavy criticism from civil rights advocates. Now, he’s getting his own FOX reality show and pro-immigrant organizations are not happy.

In response to the FOX Reality Channel’s announced launch of Smile, You’re Under Arrest!, America’s Voice is gathering support for a petition which asks the Department of Justice to investigate Arpaio “for gross civil rights violations in the name of immigration enforcement.”

Arpaio is a controversial figure in his home of Maricopa County (which encompasses Phoenix) and way beyond.

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