Category: immigration

Advocates protest immigrant detention center in Waco,TX

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In honor of International Human Rights Day, advocates gathered last weekend to protest the Jack Harwell Detention Center. Reports from the detention center, located in Waco, TX,  indicated poor conditions and human rights abuses within the facility. In addition to focusing on the issue of immigrant detention, protestors shed light on the negative impact of the private prison industry. Check out the Texas Independent article below for a full report on the event. MW

Vigil in Waco protests immigration detention system, private prisons

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In Waco, a group of activists from around the state gathered to hold a vigil in honor of International Human Rights Day. Those gathered said they were there to shed light on “the devastating impact of detention and deportation on immigrants and their families,” as well as protest the for-profit private prison system that houses many of the detained undocumented immigrants.

According to a press release by Grassroots Leadership, which works with community, labor, faith, and campus organizations throughout the South and Southwest, the vigil took place in Waco to raise awareness of the Jack Harwell Detention Center in Waco, a private jail operated by Community Education Centers, a for-profit private prison corporation.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained immigrant women at the Jack Harwell Detention Center until ICE transferred the women from Jack Harwell to other privately operated detention centers in Taylor and Laredo. The press release stated that “reports from inside the facility included complaints of lack of access to medical care, including for pregnant women, spoiled food, no contact visits, and virtually non-existent access to attorneys.” (more…)

Are undocumented immigrants ‘persons’?

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By Chris Kromm

This column originally appeared in Facing South

When the U.S. Census counts the population of the country every 10 years, who qualifies as a person? This week, the state of Louisiana filed a lawsuit which challenges the Census’ long-standing policy of counting all residents — citizens and non-citizens — and using those results to divide up seats in the U.S. Congress.

The lawsuit, which has broad implications for the political role of immigrants, comes after Louisiana lost a Congressional seat following the 2010 Census count. Thanks to the massive displacement after Hurricane Katrina — the city of New Orleans lost 30% of its population between 2000 and 2010 — Louisiana’s delegation fell from seven seats to six.

During the last 10 years, every other Southern state saw growth — in many cases fueled by new immigrants. Texas, for example, gained four Congressional seats thanks to its burgeoning population; the Census estimates two-thirds of the growth came in the Latino/Hispanic community.

New immigrants were also key to increases in size, and added Congressional seats, in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Nationally, about 22% of voting-age Latinos are not citizens.

In the lawsuit filed directly to the Supreme Court, Louisiana v. Bryson [pdf], Louisiana argues that the Census policy of counting non-citizens allows other states to gain clout “at the expense of states containing relatively few” undocumented immigrants, like Louisiana. Leave out the undocumented residents, Louisiana says, and it would still have seven Congressional seats.

Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell innocently says that “Louisiana’s complaint simply asks the court to require the federal government to re-calculate the 2010 apportionment of U.S. House of Representatives seats based on legal residents.”

If the Supreme Court ruled in Louisiana’s favor, the fallout would be anything but simple. Aside from forcing 17 states to scrap their political maps on the eve of the 2012 elections, the law would fundamentally change how the Census works and immigrants are recognized in the country.

The U.S. Constitution originally said the Census should involve “counting the whole number of free persons,” which the 14th Amendment changed to “counting the whole number of persons,” including non-citizens.

Changing that mandate would be felt at every level of government and the economy. States and localities, which provide services like police, fire and medical treatment to undocumented residents, depend on billions in federal aid based on whole-person counts. Undocumented residents also paid $11.2 billion in taxes in 2010.

If the Supreme Court sided with Louisiana in saying that undocumented residents shouldn’t count in divvying up Congresional districts, they may be cornered into saying the Census can’t count them for other policy matters as well.

This isn’t the first time Louisiana leaders have dragged the Census into the immigration debates roiling the South and country. In 2009, U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) introduced an amendment to the bill funding the 2010 Census that would have required Census workers to ask residents if they were U.S. Citizens; the senate voted down the measure.

Redistricting advocate Justin Levitt, who runs the website All About Redistricting, said on Twitter that the Louisiana suit “will lose, and lose badly, for several reasons.” Rick Hasen at the University of California-Irvine agrees on the Election Law Blog:

How appealing will be an argument to a bunch of originalists/textualists that the term “persons” in the Constitution does not include all people, and in fact excludes non-legal residents?

Obama administration backs away from mass deportation

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By Alan Bean

The Obama administration appears to be backing away from the mass deportation of the undocumented.  As Maria Hinojosa’s excellent (and disturbing) documentary, Lost in Detention asked whether “the worst of the worst” were being deported (the administration’s official line) or if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel were scrambling to meet a self-imposed quota of 400,000 deportations.  Lost in Detention focused on the thousands of people who have been detained indefinitely while their cases proceed slowly through the immigration bureaucracy.  In the meantime, children have been separated from their children and wives from husbands.

It’s an unprincipled mess.

The new policy will begin with a pilot program targeting only those accused of a felony.  Since being in the country without documentation does not rise to the level of a crime, those with no criminal record will not be treated like dangerous criminals.  According to the New York Times, immigration officials

will focus on cases of immigrants who have been arrested for deportation, but who are not being held in detention while their cases proceed.  Immigrants who are deemed to qualify for prosecutorial discretion will have their cases closed, but not dismissed, officials said. That means that agents could re-open the deportations at any time if the immigrants commit a crime or a new immigration violation. Immigrants whose cases are closed will be allowed to remain in the United States, but they will be in legal limbo, without any positive immigration status.

The new policy is a lot like don’t ask, don’t tell, a pragmatic compromise driven by the lack of a national consensus.  Hopefully, the days of mass deportation are over–at least for now.  Media coverage, particularly Ms. Hinojosa’s compelling documentary, have given the Obama administration a black eye and damaged the President’s standing with Latino voters. 

Advocacy is the art of embarrassment.  Homeland Security officials insist that the 400,000 will be met, but, if this new policy takes hold, that seems unlikely.  There simply aren’t that many bad actors out there.

U.S. to Review Cases Seeking Deportations

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The Department of Homeland Security will begin a review on Thursday of all deportation cases before the immigration courts and start a nationwide training program for enforcement agents and prosecuting lawyers, with the goal of speeding deportations of convicted criminals and halting those of many illegal immigrants with no criminal record. (more…)

“Banking on bondage”: The rise of private prisons in the U.S.

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by Melanie Wilmoth

A recent report by the ACLU, “Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration,” details how the private prison industry feeds (and profits from) mass incarceration in the U.S.

As the ACLU points out, there are few who truly benefit from our country’s obsession with “tough-on crime” policies. With over 2.3 million people behind bars in the U.S, the punitive consensus driving mass incarceration has successfully shattered families and busted states’ budgets. However, there is one group that does benefits from locking up more and more people: the private prison industry.

Just as prison populations in public corrections facilities boomed over the last 30 years, the number of individuals in private prisons increased over 1600% between 1990 and 2009.

For private prisons, more crime equals more prisoners and more prisoners equals more profit. It’s no wonder that for-profit prisons support immigrant detention, mandatory minimum sentences, and “truth in sentencing” and “three strikes” laws. Large prison populations and harsh sentences result in greater profits. In fact, the success of the private prison industry relies on the country’s opposition to criminal justice reforms and fair sentencing laws:

“In a 2010 Annual Report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company, stated: ‘The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by…leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices…’

The GEO Group, the second largest private prison operator, identified similar “Risks Related to Our Business and Industry” in SEC filings:

‘Our growth depends on our ability to secure contracts to develop and manage new correctional, detention and mental health facilities, the demand for which is outside our control …. [A]ny changes with respect to the decriminalization of drugs and controlled substances could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, sentenced and incarcerated, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them. Similarly, reductions in crime rates could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities. Immigration reform laws which are currently a focus for legislators and politicians at the federal, state and local level also could materially adversely impact us.’”

Moreover, when you’re in the business of locking people up, there is high incentive to cut costs and maximize profits and little incentive to rehabilitate inmates and reduce future crime. As a result of cost-cutting measures, research suggests prisoners in private facilities are more likely to experience violence and inhumane conditions. In addition, private prisons tend to have high staff turnover due to low wages. While corrections officers and staff are making close to minimum wage, top executives at GEO and CCA receive over $3 million each in annual compensation.

Also of concern, as Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast points out, is the seldom mentioned “revolving door” between public and private corrections which the ACLU report highlights:

“Many in the private prison industry…once served in state corrections departments, and numerous state corrections officials formerly worked for private prison companies. In some cases, this revolving door between public corrections and private prisons may contribute to the ability of some companies to win contracts or to avoid sufficient scrutiny from the corrections departments charged with overseeing their operations.”

With high incentives to increase prison populations while cutting corrections costs and with little meaningful oversight due to the “revolving door,” the private prison industry is in a dangerously powerful position. In order to end mass incarceration, as the ACLU suggests, we must divest from private prisons and halt the expansion of “for-profit incarceration.”

To read the full ACLU report, click here.

“Shattered families”: The intersection of immigration and child welfare

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by Melanie Wilmoth

Earlier this week, the Applied Research Center (ARC) published a report exploring the effect of immigrant detention and deportation on the welfare of children and families.

Largely due to an increasingly anti-immigrant sentiment and aggressive enforcement of immigration laws, deportations are increasing at alarmingly high rates. ARC reports that “in 1992, the U.S. government [deported] 44,000 people, a historical number at the time. In less than two decades, that number has grown ninefold.” This year alone, the U.S. deported almost 400,000 people. Of those 400,000, 22% were parents of U.S.-citizen children.

In the U.S., 5.5 million children have an undocumented parent. According to ARC, “in the first six months of 2011, the federal government removed more than 46,000 mothers and fathers of U.S.-citizen children. These deportations shatter families and endanger the children left behind.” Shockingly, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has no up-to-date policy or guideline that addresses family protection in immigration cases.

So, when parents are detained or deported, what happens to the children who are left behind?

Often, these children end up in the child welfare system. Once detained, parents are moved hundreds of miles from their homes and are isolated from their children and families. Therefore, detained parents are unable to participate in the case plans that are required by Child Protective Services (CPS) for family reunification. In addition, child welfare departments lack policies aimed at reunifying children and deported parents. It is the combination of these factors and aggressive immigration enforcement that results in shattered families.

Over 5,000 children are in foster care because their parents were detained or deported. If these trends continue, ARC estimates that 15,000 more children will be separated from their families in the next 5 years.

To read more about the intersection of immigration and child welfare, check out the ARC’s full report here.

“Lost in detention”: The criminalization of immigration

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by Melanie Wilmoth

Earlier this week, PBS Frontline aired its documentary “Lost in Detention.” The documentary takes a hard look at the broken U.S. immigration system and the resulting increase in the number of detained and deported immigrants.

Under the Obama Administration, over 400,000 immigrants were detained and deported this year alone (which is a significantly higher number of deportations than in previous administrations). As Frontline suggests, much of this increase in detention and deportation is a result of Secure Communities, a partnership between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the FBI that uses fingerprint data to track criminal immigrants. Secure Communities allegedly aids in the deportation of immigrants who have committed serious crimes and, thus, pose a threat to public safety. According to ICE, Secure Communities prioritizes “the removal of individuals who present the most significant threats to public safety as determined by the severity of their crime, their criminal history, and other factors.”

However, the Secure Communities program has reached far beyond its stated purpose. Since its implementation in 2008, Secure Communities has successfully broken up families and incited fear in immigrant communities. Thousands of individuals, many of whom are non-criminals, U.S. citizens, and parents of children who are U.S. citizens, have been arrested. In addition, Latinos have been disproportionately affected by Secure Communities, making up 93% of those arrested through the program.

After arrest, 83% of individuals are placed in detention centers. Punitive in nature, the 250 detention centers in the country warehouse immigrants in prison-like settings until deportation. Reports of abuse in these centers run rampant.  (more…)

“A culture of cruelty:” Anti-immigrant sentiment and the war on immigration

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By Melanie Wilmoth

A recent report published by No More Deaths/No Más Muertes, documents in detail the abuses perpetrated by U.S. Border Patrol against immigrant detainees. No More Deaths is an Arizona-based organization that fights for immigrant rights and immigration reform. Through their research over the last 3 years, they have documented over 30,000 incidents of immigrant abuse.

Their report, “A Culture of Cruelty,” tells the stories of a sampling of the individuals who suffered from these abuses. The abuses documented include deprivation of food and water, failure to treat serious medical conditions, physical and psychological abuse, death threats, and inhumane conditions within detention centers.

During the course of their investigation, No More Deaths also uncovered thousands of instances in which due process was denied to immigrant detainees:

“We recorded 1,063 incidents of detainees not receiving due process. Common ways in which due process were violated were:

  • Forms not being provided in a language that the person can read
  • Failure to inform people of their rights to legal counsel and the Mexican Consulate
  • Failure to provide access to the Mexican Consulate when requested
  • Failure to follow protocol for detainees requesting asylum
  • Coercion into signing voluntary repatriation documents under threat of violence, criminal charges, or lengthy detention times
  • Forced fingerprinting on voluntary deportation documents”

As No More Deaths rightly suggests, the “culture of abuse” among U.S. Border Patrol did not arise in isolation. The documented abuses and maltreatment are a reflection of an increasing anti-immigrant sentiment and a punitive consensus that has resulted in the criminalization of immigration.

“In the first half of Fiscal Year 2011, illegal entry and reentry were the most common federal criminal charges prosecuted nationwide,” No More Deaths reports. In Alabama alone, the recent immigration laws have caused thousands of individuals to flee for fear of being detained.

In addition to the anti-immigrant policies that contribute to the war on immigration, there is also an economic aspect that cannot be ignored. Private prison industries, in particular, profit from the increasing numbers of immigrant detainees:

“In the last five years, the annual number of immigrants detained and the cost of detaining them have doubled: in 2009, 383,524 immigrants were detained, costing taxpayers $1.7 billion at an average of $122 a day per bed. Private industry, thus, has strong economic incentives to push for ever more extreme anti-immigrant policies, regardless of the cost to government or the human toll involved…The nation’s largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America, not only lobbied for but actually helped to draft Arizona’s SB 1070.”

The narratives of the immigrants that unfold throughout No More Deaths’ report are tragic and heart-wrenching, but their stories must be told if anything is to be done to change immigration policy and the current anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S.

Three Years, 30,000 Incidents of Human Rights Abuse: Are Border Patrol Agents the Real Criminals?

by Valeria Fernandez

Allegations range from Border Patrol agents denying food and water to adults and children in detention for several days, to purposely separating families during deportation.

Those are the findings of a new report released by the Arizona humanitarian aid organization No More Deaths. (more…)

Jesus ain’t your home boy

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By Alan Bean

If you can’t trust Jesus, who can you trust?

Unfortunately, you can’t trust Jesus.

Unless, that is, you are open to shocking new ideas about God, a counter-intuitive take on the created order, and a topsy-turvy understanding of the human condition.

When Jesus arrived in his hometown of Nazareth, everybody wanted to be impressed.  When a local boy makes good, small towns announce their association with the local-boy-made-good for the edification of passing motorists.  “We might look like just another hick town,”  the sign suggests, “but Bob Wills grew up here.”

Even if you’ve never heard of Bob Wills, you can’t help being a little bit impressed. 

Immediately after his wilderness encounter with the devil, Matthew tells us, Jesus took up residence in the little fishing village of Capernaum, on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, (or the Sea of Tiberias as Herod Antipas insisted on calling it).  From there, he moved into the surrounding communities, eventually arriving at his home town of Nazareth.

By this time, Jesus had acquired a reputation as a teacher with, it was widely rumored, the power to heal.  Nobody was thinking “Messiah” or “Son of God” at this point; but Rabbi was a distinct possibility.  Which explains why, when the hometown boy showed up for Sabbath worship, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and asked to read a passage of his choosing.

Turning to what we call the 61st Chapter (there were no chapters or verses in his day), Jesus intoned a startling message that, like the Lord’s Prayer, had been domesticated by frequent repetition. 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

 Then he handed the scroll back to the attendant and sat down.

Folks were impressed.  “He reads very well for a kid from Nazareth,” some thought.  “Good intonation, not too fast or too slow, and he fills the synagogue with his voice without appearing to shout.  Not bad for a rookie.” (more…)

Why declaring war on the undocumented is a really bad idea

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By Alan Bean

A federal judge has upheld key portions of an Alabama immigration law that will likely drive thousands of Latino students out of the public school system.  Under the new law, public schools can now determine the immigration status of students.  Police can also question residents suspected of being undocumented and hold them without bond.

The Alabama law, as originally passed, was designed to make it impossible for undocumented residents to live in Alabama.  Judge Sharon Blackburn has temporarily blocked provisions that would:

_ Make it a crime for an undocumented immigrant to solicit work.

_ Make it a crime to transport or harbor an undocumented immigrant.

_ Allow discrimination lawsuits against companies that dismiss legal workers while hiring undocumented immigrants.

_ Forbid businesses from taking tax deductions for wages paid to workers who are in the country illegally.

_ Bar undocumented immigrants from attending public colleges.

_ Bar drivers from stopping along a road to hire temporary workers.

_ Make federal verification the only way in court to determine if someone is here legally.

Since the Hispanic population of Alabama is 3.9 percent, one wonders why state politicians are suddenly so exercised about immigration.  It’s simple.  Conservative politicians got elected by promising to clamp down on illegal immigration.  (more…)

The most influential civil rights champion you’ve never heard of

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If you’ve never heard of Stetson Kennedy, you’ll feel as if you’ve known the man all your life after reading this wonderful eulogy by University of Florida professor Paul Ortiz.  Kennedy is generally remembered as a thorn in the side of the Ku Klux Klan, but as Professor Ortiz makes clear, his significance is much deeper and broader than that.  Until this morning, I had never heard Stetson Kennedy’s name mentioned in connection with racism, segregation, white supremacy or the civil rights movement.  How can that be?  AGB 

stetson_kennedy_typing.pngBy Paul OrtizStetson Kennedy passed away on Saturday, Aug. 27. He was 94 years old. Stetson died peacefully in the presence of his beloved wife, Sandra Parks, at Baptist Medical Center South in St. Augustine, Florida.

Stetson Kennedy spent the better part of the 20th century doing battle with racism, class oppression, corporate domination, and environmental degradation in the American South. By mid-century Stetson had become our country’s fiercest tribune of hard truths; vilified by the powerful, Stetson did not have the capacity to look away from injustice. His belief in the dignity of the South’s battered sharecroppers, migrant laborers, and turpentine workers made him the region’s most sensitive and effective folklorist.

Stetson was so relentless, so full of life, that some of us thought that he would trick death the way that he had once fooled the Ku Klux Klan into exposing their lurid secrets to the listeners of the Adventures of Superman radio program in 1947. As recently as April, Stetson gave a fiery speech to hundreds of farm workers and their supporters at a rally in support of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Tampa. Standing in solidarity with Latina/o and Haitian agricultural workers affirmed Stetson’s ironclad belief in the intersections between labor organizing, racial justice, and economic equity. (more…)