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"The asylum case of a Mexican family whose matriarch was assassinated during a protest could “define the politics of refugee detention” and shape how the U.S. weighs future cases of those fleeing political persecution in Mexico, an El Paso-based immigration attorney said Tuesday."
JULIAN AGUILAR in the Texas Tribune on Dec. 29, 2010."Hector Lopez of Milwaukie walked off a Southwest Airlines flight Christmas Eve into his mother's arms at Portland International Airport, returning from a four-month deportation odyssey to Mexico even though he did not know until he was arrested that he is not a U.S. citizen or legal resident."
ANNE SAKER in The Oregonian, Dec. 25, 2010."The medical examiner noted in the autopsy report that Hernandez Rojas' death was a homicide — a term used because he had been restrained in police custody when he died. The term does not dictate criminal guilt — that's up to prosecutors — and no one has been charged in the killing.
When Navarrete heard later about a fatal incident involving the Border Patrol, he realized that the man who died was the one he had filmed getting beaten and stunned. He went public with his video and his recollection of that night.
That was about seven months ago, and there still are no official answers about what happened and no police reports about the incident available to the public."
MONICA ALONZO in the Dallas Observer, Dec. 16, 2010.Mark Farrales was brought to the U.S. when he was 10. He became valedictorian at his high school, "graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a degree in government, earned a master's degree at UC San Diego and was pursuing a doctorate there" when ICE arrested him and now detains and plans to deport him.
STEPHEN CEASAR in the Los Angeles Times on Dec. 19, 2010."The college students at the center of Lupita Murillo Tinnen's large-format color photographic portraits, now on exhibit at Women & Their Work, have big dreams.
One, we learn by the title of the portrait, is a mechanical engineering major; another is marketing major, yet another political science.
Each is captured in his or her bedroom. And each room reveals the endearing emblems of young identity asserting itself. Magazine images of celebrities adorn bulletin boards, and school merit certificates and sports awards hang framed and prominent on walls.
Each room seems preternaturally tidy, ready for its photographic fame.
And yet, the face of each young person is obscured. We see them turned away from us, their identity hidden.
That's because the Dallas-based artist has chosen to document students who are undocumented aliens — non-citizens without legal resident status in the United States."
JEANNE CLAIR van RYZIN in the Austin American-Statesman, Dec. 15, 2010."Tara Ammons Cohen doesn’t feel like a celebrity.
She didn’t look like one Monday, dressed in the bright yellow pants and formless shirt of a woman detainee sitting inside a small white-washed interview room at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma.
Her only “jewelry” was the plastic identification bracelet she has worn on her left wrist for more than 17 months.
Her story — of adoption as a 5-month-old in Mexico by American parents and how 38 years later she now faces deportation to the country where she has never lived — has gone viral on the Internet."
MIKE ARCHBOLD in The (Tacoma, Wa.) News Tribune, Dec. 14, 2010."The ACLU and two El Paso attorneys filed suit this morning against federal officials and the administrators of a remote, for-profit West Texas prison on behalf of the family of Jesus Galindo, an immigrant man who died at the prison in December 2008.
The lawsuit – filed in federal court in El Paso – names Geo Group, the scandal-plagued company that runs the facility for the feds; Lubbock-based medical provider Physicians Network Association (PNA); Reeves County; and four federal Bureau of Prisons officials. The complaint takes direct aim at the government's practice of contracting and subcontracting the incarceration of immigrant prisoners to for-profit companies. The predictable result is that corporations are doing it on the cheap – with sometimes deadly results for the prisoners.
"All four entities involved in Mr. Galindo’s custody and care—PNA, GEO, Reeves County, and BOP—bear legal and moral responsibility for his utterly preventable death," the suit charges."
FORREST WILDER in the Texas Observer, Dec. 8, 2010. [And here's a link to the lawsuit; 96 pages, so it may be slow to load, depending on your browser.]"When ICE officials realized in the final weeks of the fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, that the agency still was in jeopardy of falling short of last year's mark, it scrambled to reach the goal. Officials quietly directed immigration officers to bypass backlogged immigration courts and time-consuming deportation hearings whenever possible, internal e-mails and interviews show.
Instead, officials told immigration officers to encourage eligible foreign nationals to accept a quick pass to their countries without a negative mark on their immigration record, ICE employees said.
The option, known as voluntary return, may have allowed hundreds of immigrants - who typically would have gone before an immigration judge to contest deportation for offenses such as drunken driving, domestic violence and misdemeanor assault - to leave the country."
ANDREW BECKER, Center for Investigative Reporting, in the Washington Post, Dec. 6, 2010.Brought here when he was six months old; deported in his twenties. Now his only option is to return and ask for asylum. Is this any way to run an immigration system?
JULIANNE HING in Colorlines, Dec. 3, 2010.
FAIR's numbers don't add up.
TERRY GREENE STERLING in the Village Voice, Dec. 1, 2010."LAPD spokesperson Lt. Paul Vernon agrees that some of the women arrested may have been illegal immigrants who were forced to work at the club after being trafficked into the U.S., noting that false identification charges are often accompanied by human trafficking. Jessica Dominguez, an attorney for many of the women, believes that these women should be eligible for a U-visa, granting temporary legal status to victims of crimes who cooperate with authorities in prosecuting a crime. But the LAPD is not actively investigating issues of trafficking or indentured servitude."
CAROLINE HELDMAN in Ms. Magazine Blog, Dec. 2, 2010."With just minutes to decide whether someone gets deported, overworked immigration judges have reached a breaking point."
CASEY MINER in Mother Jones, Nov/Dec. 2010.