Undocumented

An Undocumented Teen Gains Asylum With The Help Of His Undocumented Lawyer

July 25, 2017 Rebecca Klein, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Immigration, Law, New York (NY), Undocumented

By Rebecca Klein for The Huffington Post - NEW YORK ― When attorney Cesar Vargas first met his teenage client Ivan Ruiz, a newly arrived undocumented immigrant from Honduras, he noticed Ruiz seemed to wear the weight of his traumatic childhood on his sleeve. Ruiz, 15 at the time, rarely spoke, returning questions about his life in Honduras with long stares and heavy nods. It was only over the course of a year that Vargas would learn the extent of abuse Ruiz suffered while living with extended family members after his parents immigrated to the United States for a better life. Ruiz was barely fed, forced to work long hours and beaten ― even whipped with tire rubber ― as punishment. The abuse became too much to bear. After trekking through Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador, Ruiz crossed the border into the United States in spring 2016. His journey wasn’t over, though, and a year ago he was ordered to appear in immigration court. With Vargas’ help, Ruiz recently won a life-changing victory: He was granted asylum. He now spends his days in summer school, soaking up new English words and the novelty of life with only low-stakes, teenage worries. He recently took two girls to the prom and is delicately balancing the affections of another.

60 Days Of Deportations And Detainments Under Trump

July 11, 2017 Yessenia Funes, www.colorlines.com Educate! Deportations, Immigration, Trump Administration, Undocumented

By Yessenia Funes for Color Lines - Tactics once reserved for violent criminals are now targeting undocumented youth and parents. In a cover story published today (June 16), Slate lays out 60 scenes from life as an undocumented immigrant in President Donald Trump’s America, pulled from the Columbia Journalism School’s Global Migration Project. Slate starts with February 20, the day the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued two memos on immigration enforcement. The following day, 25-year-old Edwin Romero, an undocumented youth who would have qualified for citizenship under the proposed (and failed) DREAM Act, was arrested for a traffic violation but, ultimately held overnight in jail on an “immigration hold.” Then, in March, there was a teacher in Honolulu who wrote a staff-wide email that he wouldn’t teach any undocumented student. The examples go on and on—up until April 20, exactly 60 days after the DHS memos. As Slate points out, fewer than 9 percent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees have been connected to violent crime.

ICE Officers Told To Take Action Against All Undocumented Immigrants

July 10, 2017 Marcelo Rochabrun, www.propublica.org Educate! ICE, Immigration, Undocumented

By Marcelo Rochabrun for Pro Publica - A directive from the head of ICE’s enforcement unit appears to push for tougher action than the Trump administration has publicly promised. The head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit in charge of deportations has directed his officers to take action against all undocumented immigrants they may cross paths with, regardless of criminal histories. The guidance appears to go beyond the Trump administration’s publicly stated aims, and some advocates say may explain a marked increase in immigration arrests. In a February memo, Matthew Albence, a career official who heads the Enforcement and Removal Operations division of ICE, informed his 5,700 deportation officers that, “effective immediately, ERO officers will take enforcement action against all removable aliens encountered in the course of their duties.” The Trump administration, including Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, has been clear in promising to ramp up immigration enforcement, but has so far emphasized that its priority was deporting immigrants who posed a public safety threat. Indeed, Kelly, to whom Albence ultimately reports, had seemed to suggest a degree of discretion when he told the agencies under his command earlier this year that immigration officers “may” initiate enforcement actions against any undocumented person they encountered.

Immigration Court Spotlights ‘Legal Hell’ Of U.S. Deportation System

July 10, 2017 Bill Boyarsky, www.truthdig.com Educate! Deportations, Immigration, Undocumented

By Bill Boyarsky for Truth Dig - I spent four days in immigration court recently as I began reporting on how President Trump’s nativist immigration policy, favoring native-born Americans, is reaching down to the street level. Contempt for immigrants was at the heart of his presidential campaign, and it remains a cornerstone of his domestic policy, whether the immigrants are from Muslim countries or are from Mexico and Central America. The United States is a nation of immigrants, founded and shaped by them, an idea so ingrained in the national psyche that it is almost a cliche. So is opposition to them, from the 19th century and the Know Nothing Party to Donald Trump. But the immigrants—Germans, Asians, Irish, Italians, Jews and many others—survived and prospered. “The migration of foreign peoples to the United States has been one of the most significant transformation processes in American history,” Erika Lee writes in her review of Roger Daniels’ book “Guarding the Golden Door.” Personally, I root for the immigrants. I see them as America’s future, a feeling reinforced most recently while I watched journalism students, children or grandchildren of immigrants, from Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles’ heavily Latino Boyle Heights. They were learning the best way of using their mobile phones to cover their community and transmit the news stories they dig up.

Women In California’s Largest Immigrant Prison Hold Hunger Strike

June 28, 2017 Victoria Law, www.wagingnonviolence.org Resist! California, Deportations, Detention Centers, Hunger Strikes, Immigration, Undocumented, Women

By Victoria Law for Waging Nonviolence - On June 14, 33 women who have been detained and incarcerated by ICE in California’s Adelanto Detention Facility launched a hunger strike. They were protesting the poor conditions at the facility as well as the policies that were keeping them away from their children and loved ones. The Adelanto Detention Facility, with a capacity of 1,940, is the largest private immigration detention facility in the United States. Run by the GEO Group, ICE pays $111 per person per day for the first 975 detainees, thus guaranteeing GEO a minimum of $40 million each year. If more than 975 people are detained inside Adelanto, the daily rate drops to less than $50 per day. Immigrant rights organizations, such as Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement, or CIVIC, and Detention Watch Network, have sharply criticized Adelanto for its widespread and systemic abuses towards immigrants in custody. Since March 2017, three people have died at Adelanto. Others have reported medical neglect and, on at least one occasion, being punished for seeking medical care. Norma Gutierrez, one of the women on hunger strike has suffered multiple strokes during her incarceration at Adelanto. Instead of receiving proper medical care, she was placed in solitary confinement.

An Interview With Ingrid Latorre About The Sanctuary Movement

June 16, 2017 Lucy Duncan, www.afsc.org Resist! Immigration, Sanctuary Cities, Undocumented

By Lucy Duncan for AFSC - Lucy Duncan: Ingrid, thank you very much, it's wonderful to meet you. It's been very inspiring to watch your journey and your courage in the face of your struggles and in the last few weeks. I know that you have told this story a number of times, but just for the purpose of this interview and considering the situation now, Ingrid, could you please tell the story briefly of what led you to enter Sanctuary at Mountain View Friends Meeting? Ingrid Latorre: Really I took Sanctuary because all of the other options were being denied to me by Immigration. I took Sanctuary in order to continue fighting for justice in my case. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had what they call a voluntary departure, and then I asked for a stay in order to try and reopen my criminal case where I had received poor legal advice, and immigration denied that stay, twice, and the Quakers had been accompanying me during the two times they denied my stay and they offered me Sanctuary and that was a chance to keep fighting my legal case and to try and get justice. It was also the only way to keep my family together, to keep my two boys and my partner and I together in the United States while I fight my case.

Trump’s New DHS Appointment Previously Called For Rounding Up Protesters

May 22, 2017 Derrick Broze, www.activistpost.com Resist! Immigration, Trump Administration, Undocumented

By Derrick Broze for Activist Post - “I’m both honored and humbled to be appointed to this position by Secretary Kelly, working for the Trump administration,” Clarke told McKenna. He said he plans to leave Milwaukee County in June to work with Office of Partnership and Programs as “a liaison with state, local and tribal law enforcement.” The DHS has not confirmed Clarke’s new position, but in a tweet they did acknowledge that the job does not require Senate confirmation. Clarke has been mentioned as a possible appointment to the DHS since the moment Trump was elected. However, the possibility of Clarke working with the feds has not been without controversy. The Human Rights Campaign blasted the news, calling Clarke’s appointment “a grave mistake.” “His homophobic, transphobic, racist and sexist views have absolutely no place anywhere, including and especially in law enforcement agencies or the federal government,” the HRC wrote. What makes Clarke so dangerous? For starters, Sheriff David Clarke is responsible for a prison in which four people have died and been tortured. At least one prisoner died of dehydration after the water in his cell was shut off for seven days.

TrumpBeat: Immigration Arrests Are Swamping The Court System

May 20, 2017 Kathryn Casteel et al, www.fivethirtyeight.com Educate! Immigration, Trump Administration, Undocumented

By Kathryn Casteel, Ben Casselman and Anna Maria Barry-Jester for FiveThirtyEight - Trump’s agenda may have gotten off to a slow start in Congress, but his administration has moved quickly in another area: immigration enforcement. Immigration arrests during Trump’s first 100 days were up 37.6 percent from the same period a year ago, according to a report released this week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Roughly 75 percent of those arrested had been convicted of non-immigration offenses, but approximately 10,800 were noncriminal arrests, up more than 150 percent percent from 2016. Trump hasn’t just vowed to arrest undocumented immigrants, however. He has promised to deport them. And that could be a challenge: The big increase in noncriminal arrests could create frenzy in immigration courts that are already overloaded with cases. “On one hand the administration is saying they have these priorities and they’re going on the worst of the worst,” said Joshua Breisblatt, a policy analyst at the American Immigration Council. “When they came out with these executive orders, all they actually did was make everybody a priority.” When Trump took office, he inherited an immigration court system with a backlog of more than half a million pending cases, with proceedings often taking years to be completed.

Immigrants In Georgia Detention Centers Put In Solitary For Hunger Strikes

May 8, 2017 Kevin Gosztola, www.shadowproof.com Resist! Detention Centers, Immigrants, Immigration, Undocumented

By Kevin Gosztola for Shadow Proof - Georgia immigrant detention centers frequently put asylum seekers and other migrants into solitary confinement as punishment for going on hunger strike. In a report [PDF] produced by Project South and the Penn State Law Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, human rights abuses at Stewart Detention Center and Irwin County Detention Center are examined. Twenty-four year-old Somali asylum seeker Sadam Hussein Ali describes how he was punished in 2016 at the Stewart Detention Center. “The staff put me in segregation for several days because I participated in the hunger strike that happened around Thanksgiving. They also fired me from my kitchen job for participating in the strike,” Ali said. “About twenty other Somali detainees were put in segregation. In segregation, I couldn’t see outside. I lost track of whether it was day or night. I had to request to use the bathroom every time; then I was chained; and then a guard would walk me to the bathroom in chains. I participated in the hunger strike because we have been detained for far too long. The nurses actually threatened to force-feed all of us on the hunger strike.”

Here To Stay: Immigrant Workers Demand Justice, Respect On May Day

May 3, 2017 Anne Meador and John Zangas, www.dcmediagroup.us Resist! Class Struggle, Immigration, May Day, Undocumented, Workers, Working Class

By Anne Meador and John Zangas for DC Media Group - Thousands of people marched in the streets of Washington, DC to celebrate May Day, the holiday often known as International Workers’ Day, with defiant calls for a living wage, benefits, and safe working conditions. In light of President Trump’s assault on immigrants and refugees, the rallies and marches also became protests against refugee bans, deportations and raids on immigrant communities. Crowds filled Dupont Circle, Malcolm X Park, Freedom Plaza, and Courthouse in Arlington, then converged into marches to the White House. American flags mingled with Mexican flags and bright red socialist flags. Many of the large number of Hispanic participants were immigrants from Mexico and Central American countries, and, in spite of risks, even undocumented immigrants were present and vocal. While some might expect recent Trump initiatives, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and efforts to build a wall on the border of Mexico, to intimidate those born in another country, there was an unmistakable tone of defiance in every speech, chant and sign. “No papers, no fear!” they cried. Some signs advertised the hashtag #heretostay.

May Day Strikes Hit Cities Around The Country

May 2, 2017 Resist! Day Without Immigrants, Immigration, Undocumented, Workers Rights and Jobs

By Dave Jamieson , Kate Abbey-Lambertz for Huffington Post. Workers in cities from coast to coast took the day off Monday to hit the streets and protest the Donald Trump administration for what organizers hoped would be the largest May Day demonstration in the U.S. in years. The mass protest ― coordinated by labor, immigration and other progressive groups ― served as another early test of the grassroots momentum against the new White House and its right-wing policies. It came on the heels of a climate march that drew tens of thousands to Washington, D.C., on Saturday. Backers of the May 1 protests saw the day as an ideal opportunity to challenge the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown. The president has promised to ramp up deportations of undocumented workers, strip federal funding from so-called sanctuary cities, and build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Zeferina Perez, a 59-year-old who came from Mexico two decades ago, said she wanted to show that American businesses cannot function without immigrant labor. She said it stung to see her community vilified on the national stage when immigrants were working hard for meager wages and often exploited to begin with. “We need to demonstrate to everyone that immigrants are important to this country,” said Perez.

We Asked ICE About Prank Calls To Their Anti-Immigrant Hotline

May 1, 2017 Rafi Schwartz, www.fusion.net Resist! ICE, Immigration, Undocumented

By Rafi Schwartz for Fusion - Adding to the frenzy was the fact that VOICE’s launch date of April 26 was also “Alien Day”—a reference to the moon featured in James Cameron’s 1986 classic, Aliens (LV-426. Get it?). Marine veteran Alexander McCoy told Buzzfeed News that he was inspired to call VOICE’s hotline after seeing #AlienDay trending on Twitter. “I told them I’d been abducted by a UFO,” he told the site. “There was a long pause. I heard them do a big sigh. And they closed out the conversation saying that they’d make a note of it and I should wait for the DHS to investigate my report.” As VOICE itself notes on its website, and in a recorded message to hotline callers, the line is not meant as a tip-line to report crimes. And the influx of hoax callers appears to have already taken its toll.

Terrorizing The Vulnerable

April 29, 2017 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Immigration, State Terror, Undocumented

By Chris Hedges for Truth Dig - The acceleration of arrests by the Trump administration among the estimated 11 million undocumented people in the United States is spreading panic throughout communities such as Elizabeth, where at least half of the population is foreign-born. Elizabeth police officers in February joined ICE agents in raiding a popular small business in an unsuccessful attempt to arrest a woman, who at the time was there with her two small children. The February raid, especially because of the participation by the police, along with the call by the Trump administration for widespread deportations, has radically reconfigured life in this depressed New Jersey city outside of New York City, as it has in many other immigrant communities. Undocumented parents of U.S. citizens are signing power-of-attorney papers so that if they are seized by ICE agents someone will have the legal authority to care for the children they leave behind. Businesses in immigrant communities have seen a precipitous drop in sales as families hoard what little money they have so they will have some resources if they are deported.

Once Again, Trump Attack On Immigrants Rebuked By Federal Court

April 27, 2017 Jon Queally, www.commondreams.org Resist! Immigration, Trump Administration, Undocumented

By Jon Queally for Common Dreams - 'Under our system of government, the President cannot coerce cities, counties and states to become agents of federal immigration enforcement by threatening the loss of funds appropriated by Congress.' In the latest rebuke of President Donald Trump's anti-immigrant policies, a federal court judge on Tuesday ruled the administration's threat to withhold funds from so-called "sanctuary cities"—which offer modest safer harbor for immigrants and undocumented residents in the face of federal detention and deportation requests—as unconstitutional. Issuing a temporary injunction against a move by the U.S. Justice Department to refuse grant money from California municipalities, U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick said the Trump administration's effort to withhold more than $1 billion in federal grants from Santa Clara and San Francisco counties was illegal. Though the ruling affirmed the government may have some authority to seek local compliance with federal law...

Making Sense Of The Deportation Debate

April 26, 2017 Aviva Chomsky, www.tomdispatch.com Educate! Deportations, Immigration, Undocumented

By Aviva Chomsky for Tom Dispatch - Ever since he rode a Trump Tower escalator into the presidential race in June 2015 and swore to build his “great wall” and stop Mexican “rapists” from entering the country, undocumented immigrants have been the focus of Donald Trump’s ire. Now that he’s in the Oval Office, the news has been grim. A drumbeat of frightening headlines and panicked social media posts have highlighted his incendiary language, his plans and executive orders when it comes to immigrants, and the early acts of the Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents when it comes to round-ups and deportations. The temperature has soared on the deportation debate, so if you think we’re in a completely unprecedented moment when it comes to immigration and immigrants, you’re in good company. Trump has repeatedly claimed that immigrants, especially undocumented ones, are flooding the United States, causing crime waves, and depleting social service budgets. Never mind that the number of such immigrants has been in steady decline since 2008, that immigrant crime rates are lower than citizen crime rates...

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