This past Friday, ICE closed the deportation case of Ruth Montaño, the Bakersfield mother who faced deportation following her arrest for having dogs that barked too much.
Is Immigration Reform a Progressive Priority?
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Jan Tucker: The truth be told, immigration reform has never been a high priority among American progressives; as a consequence, no clear vision of what immigration reform should look like was developed outside the Mexican American community.
Kafka at the Border
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Michael Dear: A little-known paradox in debates on immigration reform is the ongoing fortification of the United States-Mexico border, which is occurring at the same time as the number of official ports of entry between the two countries is expanding.
Immigrant Detention and the Private Prison Industry
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Michele Waslin: Immigration detention has been steadily increasing over the last two decades. A new report by Justice Strategies suggests this increase is largely due to the efforts of private prison companies.
Dollars and Detainees: Examining For-Profit Detention – August 15th
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A recent report published by The Sentencing Project, Dollars and Detainees: The Growth of For-Profit Detention, details how harsher immigration enforcement and legislation led to a 59 percent increase in the number of detainees being held by the federal government between 2002 and 2011. It specifically examines how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the [...]
Deportations: Filling Quotas or Setting Priorities?
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Michele Waslin: It should raise eyebrows when ICE claims it’s falling behind on deportations and needs to deport more people.
ICE Deported 46,000 Immigrants with U.S. Citizen Children Last Year
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Michele Waslin: The impact of the deportation of a parent can be devastating for kids and their parents. It can also be expensive for taxpayers.
How Pasadena’s Implements “Secure Communities”
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Justin Chapman: In reality, Secure Communities has not only identified criminals, it has identified everyone who come through the criminal justice system, a lot of whom have done nothing wrong.
Secure Communities Has Devastating Impact
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Michele Waslin: The problems with Secure Communities are so wide spread that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appointed a task force to recommend fixes for the program.
DHS Extends Temporary Protective Status for Haitians
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Seth Hoy: The extension would allow approximately 48,000 Haitian nationals—whose homeland was devastated by an earthquake in 2010 and is still plagued by disease and instability—to extend their TPS for an additional 18 months.
Young Mexican Policewoman May Seek Asylum
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Andrea Nill: Her relatives have provided a different story. According to loved ones, Valles Garcia is in the U.S. seeking asylum after receiving multiple death threats from drug cartels.
Prisonomics 101: How ALEC and the Prison Industry Got Arizona’s SB1070 onto Gov. Jan Brewer’s Desk
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Seth Hoy: private prison corporations, who stand to make hundreds of millions in profits from the detention of immigrants, not only had a hand in drafting Arizona’s controversial immigration enforcement law, SB1070, but contributed millions to the bill’s cosponsors and continue to push the legislation in other states.
Counties Say No to ICE’s Secure Communities Program; Is Opting Out Possible?
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Michele Waslin: The Santa Clara and Arlington County votes come after questions and confusion regarding local jurisdictions’ ability to opt-out of the program.
Border More Secure than Ever: Now What?
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Michele Waslin: Once again, those who call for “enforcement first” have been put on the spot. Will any amount of enforcement ever be enough to move them to the next step? Will they continue to move the goalposts? Or will they finally recognize that comprehensive immigration reform is ultimately about securing our borders?
Napolitano Announces Next Steps for Southwest Border
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Seth Hoy: Although Secretary Napolitano trumpeted DHS’s new border initiatives as well as past achievements, she also acknowledged that the border can never be hermetically sealed and that stalling immigration reform by highlighting border security issues is not the answer to our immigration problems.
LA Progressive Articles: June 13 to 19, 2010
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Articles by Berry Craig. Tina Dupuy. Michele Waslin. Lawrence Wittner. Ron Wolff. Robert Reich. Anthony Samad. Kamala Lopez. Randy Shaw. Georgianne Nienaber. T. Christian Miller. Andrea Nill. Natasha Minsker. Steve Hockstadt. Mike Price. Tracy Emblem. David Love. Lydia Howell. Blair Fox, Tom Degan, David Love, Seth Hoy, Gary Corseri, Walter G. Moss, Ivan Eland, Joseph Palermo, Georgianne Nienaber, Jim Fuller, Andrea Nill, Michael Sigman
Deporting America’s Future: Harvard Student Pushes for DREAM Act
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Seth Hoy: Harvard sophomore, Eric Balderas, knows why the DREAM Act is important to so many. Earlier this month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) picked up Balderas in Boston on his way to visit his mother in San Antonio, Texas. Balderas now faces the possibility of deportation at a hearing next month. The 19-year-old biology major was valedictorian of his high school class and is on a full scholarship at Harvard.
Is Opting Out of the Secure Communities Program an Option?
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Michele Waslin: Given ICE’s stated intention to eventually install the system in all state and local detention facilities nationwide, and given the fact that DHS signs MOAs with the states, it is unclear how those local jurisdictions that want to opt out will be able to do so. Thus Secure Communities raises serious questions about the relationship between federal and local law-enforcement agencies, and about a local community’s ability to weigh in on important decisions affecting the entire community.
DHS Inspector General: No Assurance That Deputization Of Immigration Law Is ‘Achieving Its Goals’
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Andrea Christina Nill: Immigrant and civil rights activists have long claimed that the program leaves all brown-skinned residents vulnerable to racial profiling and other civil rights abuses, regardless of their immigration status. The inspector general’s assessment largely concurs with observations made by groups on the ground and goes further in pointing out that the program is inefficiently administered and failing to meet its goals
ICE Slip Up Casts Serious Doubt on Immigration Enforcement Strategy
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Michele Waslin: Until we have comprehensive immigration reform, ICE is going to be saddled with an enormous list of targets, and many people watching to see how they’re going to tackle it. If they want big numbers, they can achieve big numbers. But that won’t make us any safer or make the system any better. In any case the Administration and ICE have to figure out what their enforcement strategy is, articulate it clearly and consistently, and resist the urge to change it on a dime to please “enforcement-only” types who will never support comprehensive reform.
The Criminal Alien Program: Big, Old, and Misunderstood
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Michele Waslin: Of course, identifying and removing dangerous criminal threats must be a priority for ICE. However, time and time again data show that their methods for prioritizing these individuals are flawed and have negative consequences for noncriminals who get caught in the system.
Reporter Discloses List Of 186 Secret Immigrant Detention Facilities
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Andrea Christina Nill: According to a report published by Jacqueline Stevens in this week’s The Nation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is confining an unknown number of people in 186 secret, unmarked, and unlisted subfield offices. Since the subfield offices are designed to hold detainees in transit, they are not subject to ICE Detention Standards. As a result, Stevens claims ICE has essentially been able to hold individuals charged with a civil infraction in “conditions approaching those no longer authorized for accused terrorists.”
Is Secure Communities Making our Communities Secure?
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A new IPC report, The Secure Communities Program: Unanswered Questions and Continuing Concerns, released today highlights early evidence from Secure Communities—and experience with other ICE programs—that suggests this new program may not be living up to its name and may not be effectively making our communities more safe.
New Report Details the Chilling Effects of Immigration Enforcement on Workers’ Rights
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Our broken immigration system gives unscrupulous employers an incentive to hire unauthorized workers and exploit them—often resulting in depressed wages and working conditions for all workers in that workplace.
ICE Begins Immigration Detention System Overhaul
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While improvements to the detention system are necessary and welcomed, it is important to recognize that detaining immigrants is not a long-term solution to a broken immigration system.
Broken Immigration System Breaks Up a Jamerican Family
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In the end, 200,000 non-citizens are deported every year and separated from their families, even if the judge believes they should stay.
Immigration Report Highlights Bush Administration’s ‘Flagrant Disregard For Rule of Law’
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Two years after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) swept up and detained thousands of workers from six meatpacking plants across the country during one of the nation’s largest immigration raids, a new report released by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) today details how ICE officials terrorized UFCW members under the [...]
Another U.S. Citizen ‘Accidentally’ Deported
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Earlier this month, U.S. citizen, Irving Palomo, was detained and put in a van headed for Mexico due to an ICE mix-up. A few months ago Mark Lyttle, a U.S. citizen who suffers from mild retardation, was deported to Mexico. Mexican officials then deported him to Honduras, and Honduras deported him to Guatemala. After spending [...]
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