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Immigration

A Juarez Refugee Christmas

December 23, 2019 By Kent Paterson, Counterpunch.org , ,
As temperatures dip near or below freezing, scores of Mexican refugees huddle in their makeshift tents of layered plastic sheeting at the foot of the Santa Fe Bridge that connects Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, with El Paso, Texas. Many small children form part of the group. No colorfully wrapped packages wait below a Christmas tree. No heart warming lyrics from mariachi singers enliven the site, though a small figurine of the Virgin of Guadalupe watches over the people who wait and wait and wait for their chance to argue a case for political asylum in the United States.

India’s Government Is Going To War Against Its Own People

December 19, 2019 By Vijay Prashad, Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. , , ,
On December 13, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights released a powerful statement that criticized India’s new citizenship law. This “fundamentally discriminatory” Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019 would expedite citizenship for persecuted religious minorities from India’s neighboring countries. But in the list of those minorities, it names only Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians. It does not name Muslims, despite the fact that there have been several important cases of Muslims being persecuted in Pakistan (the Ahmadis), in Afghanistan (the Hazaras), and in Myanmar (the Rohingyas).

D.C. Chef Arrested By ICE Officers Who Seemed To Be ‘Trying Their Luck’ In Apartment Building, Lawyer Says

December 18, 2019 By Rachel Kurzius, Dcist.com , , ,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers hung around in the hallway of a D.C. residential building that many Central Americans call home, and conducted a search on the first apartment that opened its door, says a lawyer for a resident who was arrested by those officers in November. He is still detained and has yet to receive a bond hearing, his lawyer says. Ava Benach is an immigration lawyer in D.C. who was called by a prominent restaurant group to represent one of their workers, she tells DCist. She says she is not allowed to name the restaurant group or the man who was arrested...

Letting Our Values Out Of Their Cage

December 13, 2019 Robert C. Koehler, Commonwonders.com , ,
My God, they put Jesus and his parents in cages, as though that’s what U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents would do — you know, keep the spirit of love and compassion from entering the United States of America. Are they suggesting there’s an equivalence here between the divine family and a bunch of illegals . . . drug dealers, rapists, possible killers of American citizens? The Claremont (California) United Methodist Church has tossed a shock bomb into the season of wreaths and holiday shopping.

At Emotional Meeting, North Dakota Residents Talk County Officials Out Of Trumpian Plan To Ban Refugees

December 12, 2019 By Julia Conley, Commondreams.org , ,
At a standing-room-only meeting on Monday evening, residents of Burleigh Country, North Dakota, rejected a proposal that would have made the county the first in the nation to refuse entry to refugees. After hearing from more than 50 residents including recent refugees, business owners, and Indigenous people who addressed the more than 500 community members at the meeting, the county commission voted 3-2 to allow up to 25 refugees to resettle in Burleigh County in the coming year.

The Dangers Of Trump’s “Safe Third Country” Agreements In Central America

December 3, 2019 Peniel Ibe, Afsc.org , ,
The Trump administration is methodically dismantling the U.S. asylum system to slash immigration to the U.S. One of the most devastating changes the administration has introduced is negotiating agreements with Central American countries to require asylum seekers traveling through a country to first seek protection there. The agreements would effectively make it impossible for migrants to seek safety at the U.S. southern border – and endanger the lives of thousands of people fleeing violence and poverty in the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala) region and other countries.

On This Day Of Thanks And Mourning, A Call To Demilitarize The US Border

November 30, 2019 By Tara Tabassi and Mariam Iskajyan, Commondreams.org , ,
One year ago this week, as families across the country were preparing to sit down together for a Thanksgiving (or Day of Mourning) meal, families at the U.S.-Mexico border were facing a potentially deadly threat; just one day prior, Donald Trump had authorized U.S. troops to use lethal force against migrants and asylum seekers. Since then, the militarization of the southern border has only intensified. Approximately 7,000 military service members are now stationed there, operating under continued unclear rules of engagement and nebulous legal authority to surveil, detain, and even kill.

No Music For ICE! Musicians: Pull your Music From Amazon This Holiday Season

November 29, 2019 Staff, Medium.com , , , ,
In an escalation of our NoMusicForICE campaign, we just issued takedown notices to pull our music from Amazon’s digital platform, and you can too. We’re calling on musicians & labels who oppose ICE’s human rights abuses to join us during the holiday season. Read on for why, and how, you can join us in a collective digital takedown, in solidarity with groups fighting Amazon’s support of ICE nationwide. Mass takedowns will begin on Black Friday and continue throughout Amazon’s all-important holiday shopping season.

DACA: Damned If They Do, Damned If They Don’t + Never Again Means Now

November 22, 2019 Eleanor Goldfield, Occupy.com , ,
DACA in the supreme court – the arguments over legality, the power of presidents and the pawns of imperialist games. Next up, Never Again Action launches proactive and historically conscious activism, combining outreach with protest.

Not Guilty: Jurors Acquit Border Aid Volunteer Scott Warren On Harboring Charges

November 21, 2019 Henry Brean, Tucson.com , , ,
Federal court jurors in Tucson drew a line between harboring and help on Wednesday, when they acquitted border aid worker Scott Warren on felony charges for the assistance he gave to two Central American men last year. The not guilty verdict came after just 2.5 hours of deliberation, and it was greeted with cheering, laughter and tears from Warren’s supporters and fellow aid workers, including a contingent of clergy members from across the country. “The government failed in its attempt to criminalize basic human kindness,” Warren told the crowd outside the downtown courthouse after it was over.

Meet The Immigrants Who Took On Amazon

November 15, 2019 Jessica Bruder, Wired.com ,
It was 11 days before Christmas in 2018, and Amazon’s warehouse in Shakopee, Minnesota, was operating at full tilt. At the rear of the facility, waves of semi trucks backed up to a long row of loading docks, some disgorging crates of new merchandise and others filling up with outbound packages. Inside the warehouse, within dark, cyclone-fenced enclosures, thousands of shelf-toting robots performed a mute ballet, ferrying towers of merchandise from one place to another.

‘Highly Disturbing’ Pentagon Document Shows US Military Surveilling Groups Protesting Family Separation

November 14, 2019 By Jake Johnson, Commondreams.org , , ,
The U.S. military is reportedly surveilling rights groups and activists engaged in peaceful protests against both President Donald Trump's border wall and the separation of migrant children from their families at the southern border. According to an internal Pentagon document obtained by Ken Klippenstein of The Young Turks in partnership with The Intercept, military forces deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border assessed the "threat" posed by interfaith group Heartland for Human Justice and Rio Bravo Action Camp...

Navigating The Dilemmas Of Unarmed Accompaniment On The US-Mexico Border

November 7, 2019 Alison Wood, Wagingnonviolence.org , ,
International accompaniers must work to undo the power dynamics they rely on to increase the safety of their local partners and learn when to say "no." There is only one migrant shelter in Agua Prieta, a town on the south side of the United States’ border with Mexico. The Centro de Atención al Migrante “Exodus,” or CAME, has offered hospitality to migrants for the past 19 years. With a shift in patterns of migration that led hundreds of asylum-seeking families to Agua Prieta in the first months of 2019, CAME has housed over 150 people at a time in a space built for 50 people — with a wait list of nearly 500 more.

Europe’s Greed Is Fueling The Migration Crisis To Europe

November 5, 2019 Vijay Prashad, Independent Media Institute, Globetrotter , , ,
If you ask African migrants in Europe who came across the Mediterranean Sea in a boat if they would make the journey again, most of them would say “yes.” Many of them had been in vans and trucks that took them across the dangerous Sahara Desert, and many of them had been on board vessels that struggled to get across the choppy waters. They might have seen their fellow migrants die of thirst or of drowning, but none of that halts their conviction that they’d cross the sands and the seas again.

Resisting Anti-Immigrant Hate In The City Of Big Shoulders

October 15, 2019 By Teresa Albano, Progressive.org , ,
Chicago, the City of Big Shoulders, is also the “epicenter for many of the organizations that are undermining America from within.” At least that’s what a far-right media activist wrote in an email published in the Chicago Tribune, after he and fellow anti-immigrant activists flew in from California to carry out a protest action. Too bad they hadn’t done their homework. Ben Bergquam, and three other men, all dressed in MAGA T-shirts and hats and toting video cameras and selfie sticks, showed up on September 21 at a southside church to “confront Emma Lozano,” one of the men said in a video posted on Bergquam’s Facebook page.
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