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Undocumented

Meet Organizers Behind The Next ‘Day Without An Immigrant’ Strike

April 20, 2017 Sarah Aziza, www.wagingnonviolence.org , ,
By Sarah Aziza for Waging Nonviolence - When 26-year-old Catalina Adorno hit the road on March 28, she knew it would be at least six weeks before she’d sleep again in her own bed. Since that day, Adorno, a Mexican-born New Jersey resident with a strong voice and bright laugh, has criss-crossed from Pennsylvania to Maine as part of a regional support team for Movimento Cosecha, a national immigrant rights coalition. Her stops have included major cities and small towns, as she and her three teammates work to mobilize Cosecha’s vast network of “local circles” ahead of a massive day of coordinated action slated for May 1. On April 3, Adorno’s team stopped off in Washington, D.C. to hear Cosecha spokesperson Maria Fernanda Cabello make the formal call for a May 1 nationwide strike. The planned action, billed as “A Day Without an Immigrant,” is set to be the largest immigrant rights action for at least a decade, with hundreds of thousands already pledging to stay home from work for a day in protest of systemic discrimination towards the immigrant and undocumented communities. At the press conference, Cabello pointed to the massive labor and capital power represented by the immigrant community, including 11 million undocumented residents.

Fighting Fear, Hundreds Join Border Caravan For Migrant Rights

April 17, 2017 Laura Carlsen, www.counterpunch.org , ,
By Laura Carlsen for Counter Punch - The Federal Building looms overhead like a threat as the protesters gather. Washington policies have brought them here to Sacramento, to push the state government to protect its citizens and communities from the anti-immigrant orders of the 45th president. Union members, migrants, government officials and grassroots organizers—the categories often overlap—chant and march before stepping up to the mike to tell their stories and make their promises. Matching t-shirts read “Caravan Against Fear” with dates in April and a graphic of a child, her arms spread in a welcoming gesture, her face turned upward in hope. It’s the launch of an unusual caravan for unusual times. One sign reads “Somos el pueblo. Respeta nuestra humanidad”—We are the people. Respect our humanity. Since when do the residents of an advanced democracy have to plead for respect for their humanity? Apparently, since the election of Donald Trump. Although deportations and fear existed before, since November 2016 and the orders of the Trump administration to arrest, detain and deport up to 3 million undocumented workers the atmosphere has gotten much uglier.

Is Trump Waging A Stealth War Of Retaliation Against Sanctuary Cities?

April 1, 2017 Sarah Lazare, www.alternet.org , , ,
By Sarah Lazare for AlterNet - General Jeff Sessions doubles down on President Donald Trump’s threats to crack down on sanctuary cities, evidence is mounting that the administration has already made them the target of retaliatory immigration raids as part of a backdoor effort to force compliance. The term “sanctuary city” refers to the hundreds of jurisdictions across the United States that, to one degree or another, limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. CNN reported on March 25 that an unnamed “senior U.S. immigration official with direct knowledge of ongoing ICE actions” testified that federal authorities have descended upon sanctuary cities to pressure them to cooperate.

Children As Young As 3 Detained 500 Days And Counting In Disgraceful Immigrant Prisons

March 23, 2017 Sarah Lazare, www.alternet.org , , ,
By Sarah Lazare for AlterNet - For more than 600 days and two Christmas holidays, Marlene and her seven-year-old son Antonio have languished in indefinite detention at Pennsylvania’s “Berks Family Residential Center,” a glorified term for an immigrant prison. Her child has been granted Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), which the U.S. government says is supposed to “help foreign children in the United States who have been abused, abandoned, or neglected.” But instead of sanctuary, or even a fair hearing, Marlene and her son face open-ended incarceration and “expedited removal” orders, compounding the trauma they endured when they were forced to flee their home in El Salvador under threat of gang violence.

A Movement For ‘Sanctuary Campuses’ Takes Shape

March 16, 2017 Dulce Morales, www.otherwords.org , , ,
By Dulce Morales for Other Words - With spring midterms on the horizon, this time of year is often stressful enough for college students. Yet for some students this year, the stress goes far beyond the normal pressures of tests and quizzes. For many immigrant students and their families, it’s now an issue of safety. Two executive orders recently signed by Donald Trump are to blame. The first is an updated version of the so-called “Muslim ban,” which restricts travel from six Muslim-majority countries. The other gives local officials more power to detain undocumented immigrants and makes it easier to deport them. Travel bans will do next to nothing to keep out terrorists...

Number Of Sanctuary Cities Nears 500

March 15, 2017 Stephen Dinan, www.washingtontimes.com , ,
By Stephen Dinan for The Washington Times - Nearly 500 jurisdictions are now sanctuary cities, according to a group that’s tracked the issue for more than a decade, and who said there’s been a massive surge in the number of places trying to thwart federal immigration agents since President Trump’s election. The Ohio Jobs & Justice Political Action Committee has added more than three dozen new cities and counties to its list in 2017 alone, as jurisdictions rush to try to shield illegal immigrants from what they expect to be a new push for deportations under Mr. Trump. “More will be coming,” said Steve Salvi, founder of OJJ. “A lot of communities now, there’s resolutions in the works and citizens groups encouraging city councils to pass them.”

No More Saturday Marches

March 9, 2017 Nelson Lichtenstein, www.jacobinmag.com , ,
By Nelson Lichtenstein for Jacobin Magazine - The brilliance of strikes and stoppages like the Day Without Immigrants and the Women’s Strike lies in organizers’ willingness to halt business as usual. In mid-February, as thousands of people were pondering what to do about a midweek “Day Without Immigrants,” one of them called up a union office in Chicago to ask if he should call in sick when going on strike for the day. “You can’t say you are calling in sick. You’re on strike!” replied an agitated union official. “If you are calling in sick, you’re just sick.” This little bit of confusion illuminates larger and more important questions facing all those seeking the best way to protest President Trump...

Three Lessons From Fighting Obama Raids To Organize Under Trump Regime

March 8, 2017 Jacinta Gonzalez, www.mijente.net , , , ,
By Jacinta Gonzalez for Mijente - As many community members start to plan out emergency response teams and community defense, there is a need to think out short and long term organizing strategies that we can use so that we do not fall into patterns of solely doing individual deportation cases, press and mobilizing work, but are also thinking about long-term power building. While enforcement under the new regime represents an expansion and escalation, it is built upon past practices that can provide us with key lessons now. In 2013, the New Orleans community was facing an increasing ICE presence in immigrant neighborhoods including raids

Faith Communities And Campuses Trying To Give Refuge To Immigrants

March 6, 2017 Rebekah Barber, www.faccingsouth.org , , ,
By Rebekah Barber For Facing South - Dating back thousands of years, the concept of sanctuary stems from the custom of offering hospitality to the stranger. In ancient Greek cities, slaves and thieves took sanctuary at the shrines of the gods. During biblical times, those who had killed someone accidentally could take asylum in cities designated for refuge. In recent years, dozens of U.S. cities and counties became part of this tradition by adopting so-called "sanctuary policies" that bar local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. The policies aim to build safer communities by strengthening undocumented immigrants' trust in local police.

Lawsuit: Up To 60,000 In Forced Labor In US Private Prisons

March 6, 2017 April M. Short, www.alternet.org , , , ,
By April M. Short for AlterNet - As many as 60,000 immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could play a role in a class-action lawsuit accusing a private prison company of violating federal anti-slavery laws. The lawsuit alleges that detained immigrants awaiting court dates were forced to work for $1 per day or for free, on threat of solitary. The suit was initially filed on behalf of nine immigrant plaintiffs in 2014 for $5 million in damages, but was recently moved to class action status. Now, attorneys expect damages to grow substantially, maybe involving tens of thousands of plaintiffs, as Kristine Phillips reports in a March 5 Washington Post piece detailing the lawsuit.

Underground Network Readies Homes To Hide Undocumented Immigrants

February 28, 2017 Kyung Lah, Alberto Moya and Mallory Simon, www.edition.cnn.com , ,
By Kyung Lah, Alberto Moya and Mallory Simon for CNN - Los Angeles (CNN)A hammer pounds away in the living room of a middle class home. A sanding machine smoothes the grain of the wood floor in the dining room. But this home Pastor Ada Valiente is showing off in Los Angeles, with its refurbished floors, is no ordinary home. "It would be three families we host here," Valiente says. By "host," she means provide refuge to people who may be sought by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The families staying here would be undocumented immigrants, fearing an ICE raid and possible deportation. The purchase of this home is part of a network formed by Los Angeles religious leaders across faiths in the wake of Donald Trump's election.

Trump Administration Issues How-To For ‘Hyper-Aggressive Mass Deportation Policy’

February 22, 2017 Lauren McCauley, www.commondreams.org , , , ,
By Lauren McCauley for Common Dreams - New Homeland Security guidelines constitute a sweeping rewrite of Obama-era policies on immigration. The Trump administration on Tuesday issued new guidelines that constitute a "sweeping rewrite" of Obama-era policies on immigration, greatly expanding the number of individuals that can be forcibly deported and further emboldening the current crackdown. The memoranda on implementation (pdf) and enforcement (pdf) of President Donald Trump's recent executive orders on immigration, which were dated Monday and published by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), were leaked to news agencies over the holiday weekend and sparked wide concern among immigrants and civil liberties organizations. The official guidelines, signed by DHS Secretary John Kelly, "expand raids and the definition of criminal aliens, while diminishing sanctuary areas and enlisting local law enforcement to execute federal immigration policy," The Hill reported.

Can An Army Of Lawyers Stop Trump’s Mass Deportations?

February 22, 2017 David Iaconangelo, www.csmonitor.com , ,
David Iaconangelo for The Christian Science Monitor - FEBRUARY 11, 2017 —A group of prominent Mexican officials, legislators, and other political figures wants Mexico to resist President Trump’s deportation plans by assigning lawyers to fight cases in US immigration court, utilizing tough legal tactics that could jam up the workings of an already backlogged system. Monarca, as the group is named – after the monarch butterfly that travels freely between Mexico and the United States – is meeting with immigrant-rights groups in Phoenix on Saturday to discuss details of the plan. They also hope to meet with the city’s mayor and Sen. Jeff Flake (R) of Arizona, long active in talks for a comprehensive immigration reform, according to the Wall Street Journal. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who hasn’t taken a position on the plan, says his administration will take steps to defend its citizens living in the US, including allocating $50 million to help undocumented immigrants facing deportation.

DC Business Owners Support Migrant-Led Strike

February 18, 2017 Anne Meador, www.dcmediagroup.us , , , ,
By Anne Meador for DC Media Group - Immigrant workers around the country on February 16 flexed their economic muscle with a strike called “Un Dia Sin Inmigrante,” or “A Day Without Immigrants.” Planned at a three-day conference in Boston on February 10, the series of boycotts and strikes are intended to gain leverage for foreign-born immigrants, visa holders and undocumented immigrants at a time when migrant communities are scapegoated and discriminated against. Recently, Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids have swept through cities, detaining and deporting many people who allegedly lack proper documentation to reside in the U.S. “Now more than ever, it is important for the immigrant rights movement to have an offensive strategy,” said Maria Fernanda Cabello, a spokesperson for Movimiento Cosecha, in a press release.

History Shows Trump Will Face Legal Challenges To​ Detaining Immigrants

February 13, 2017 Kevin Johnson, www.theconversation.com , , ,
By Kevin Johnson for The Conversation - President Donald Trump has followed through on his promise to ramp up immigrant detention as part of immigration enforcement. His executive order on border security and immigration describes a “new normal” that will include the detention of immigrants while they await removal hearings and removal. Trump’s order expressly announces the end of “catch and release” of undocumented immigrants after their apprehension, which allowed them to post a bond and be released from detention while their removal proceedings moved forward. Rather than doing something new, President Trump is simply expanding the use of immigrant detention.
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