Dan Kowalski on Immigration Law and Policy

"In his groundbreaking 2001 study of border enforcement, "Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide," border scholar Peter Andreas rightly observed that border policing has "some of the features of a ritualized spectator sport," noting that the game metaphor reflects the "performance and audience-driven nature" of the politics of border control. As the politics of border security in Texas and Arizona so well illustrate, "secure the border" is a rallying cry that energizes constituencies, catapults politicians to office and produces a steady stream of Fox News appearances for prominent border security hawks. It also diverts the debate over border policies far away from any reflective discussion of the structural causative factors producing the border crisis."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:27 AM | Permalink

"Complaints of fraudulent and unethical legal advice that can result in the deportation of immigrants are becoming more common in Iowa, according to a state official and immigration attorneys."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:01 AM | Permalink

"If he cannot hire guest workers, he said, the chain of lost jobs and income for local people would run back to the alligator and crawfish farmers whose crops he would not process and forward to the restaurants that serve his products. That sequence is what Louisiana employers said they hope to avert with the lawsuit. “This is a showstopper,” said Frank Randol, who runs a crawfish business and a Cajun restaurant in Lafayette and represents the Crawfish Processors Alliance, one group in the suit. “In 40 years I’ve been in this business, we’ve faced just about everything,” he said, “but now we are facing our own government trying to shut us down.”"

JULIA PRESTON in the New York Times, Sept. 12, 2011.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:15 AM | Permalink

Most detained under Secure Communities have scant or no criminal records, data show.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:29 AM | Permalink

"In 2007, the last year for which there are official estimates, as many as 17,500 people were brought into the United States as human trafficking victims, according to the Department of Justice. Most were used for forced labor or forced sex or both.

And those crime victims have been treated in the same manner as illegal immigrants, people who can be forced to return to countries and circumstances that often helped launch their sad journeys.

But that may be changing."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:09 AM | Permalink

"The Department of Homeland Security is pushing for 14 miles of border wall to be built through Hidalgo and Starr counties even though it could flood U.S. towns and violate a treaty with Mexico."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 09:17 AM | Permalink

Does the H-2A guest worker visa program make it easy to exploit farmworkers?

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 09:06 AM | Permalink

"It means the “left hand isn’t aware of what the right hand is doing,” said Carlos Spector, Lara’s El Paso-based attorney. "I think it’s important to note that this [directive] has not reached the lowest levels of ICE... because [Border Patrol agents] are still picking up pregnant women.""

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:36 AM | Permalink

"A shift in prioritizing which immigration cases to prosecute for deportation has created hope, some of it false, among those living in the country illegally."

GINNIE GRAHAM, Tulsa World, Sept. 6, 2011.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:15 AM | Permalink

The heartbreaking, chilling and infuriating story of refugees deported to homes they've never known, due to retroactive immigration laws.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:24 AM | Permalink

"Andres Robles, 22, was released yesterday evening from the Lafourche Parish jail without explanation, "They just pulled me out and told me I was getting released," he told me today from his parents' home in Thibodeux, Louisiana. He was really happy to be back in his old bedroom, where he would have been living the last few years if DHS had not unlawfully deported him in 2008, ignoring the fact that he had derived U.S. citizenship from his father in 2002."

JACQUELINE STEVENS, Sept. 2, 2011.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:08 AM | Permalink

"It’s expected that Latinos will be the majority in Texas in about a decade. Yet the state has one of the lowest Latino voter turnout rates in the country. That is why the GOP is making a play for permanent political dominance in the Lone Star State. In collaboration with the Texas Observer, reporter Melissa del Bosque has this profile of Juan Hernandez and the Hispanic Republicans of Texas PAC."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:10 AM | Permalink

"Now immigrants around the country are trying to find out how the review of nearly 300,000 deportation cases will actually work. The administration has said it would try to identify immigrants considered low-priority — including students, the elderly, victims of crime and people who have lived in the U.S. since childhood.

Many immigrants expressed hope that their cases would qualify, but immigration attorneys and advocates urged caution until more details are known."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:23 AM | Permalink

"More than 200 people crammed into a meeting room Saturday in this city's heavily Latino Fruitvale District to condemn Secure Communities, the federal deportation program that was billed as targeting "serious convicted criminals" but has ensnared many who committed minor offenses or were never convicted of the crimes on which they were arrested."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:19 PM | Permalink

"Mr. Burke said prosecutors saw that they could accuse the Evensons under the severe penalties of the tax code — “the hammer,” as he put it. Charged with evading more than $400,000 in taxes on wages for some 360 unauthorized immigrant workers, the Evensons together face more than $10 million in fines if convicted on all counts."

JULIA PRESTON in the New York Times on May 30, 2011.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:25 AM | Permalink

"Complaints about unpaid wages among Latinos in central Iowa have sharply increased in the past four months, immigrant advocates say."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:40 AM | Permalink

"A top federal immigration official is asking states' attorneys general to help him crack down on fake immigration lawyers and educate immigrants on how to spot them."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 12:36 PM | Permalink

"Texans advocating extreme solutions to secure the border — including land mines and booby traps on Texas farmland along the Rio Grande — have a new forum to share their views: a website operated by the Texas Department of Agriculture."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:10 AM | Permalink

"From the office of his commercial real estate company here, Mr. Isenberg confers by webcam with Saad Nabeel, a college student who once lived in Texas but now calls from Kuala Lumpur.

Mr. Nabeel’s mood shifts from hopeful cheer to reeling despair. And Mr. Isenberg reassures him, time and again, that despite the daunting odds, he will one day return to live in the United States.

The alliance of Mr. Isenberg, by his own description a hard-driving Jew, and Mr. Nabeel, a Muslim engineering student from Bangladesh who was deported last year, is one of the more unusual tales in the history of immigrants’ struggles to prevail in the American immigration system."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:10 AM | Permalink

States across the country, including Georgia and Oklahoma, where the legislatures debated immigration bills this week, have been mulling controversial Arizona-style immigration laws.Thirty-seven states are considering tougher immigration bills, with multiple bills pending in some states."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:09 AM | Permalink

"As many state legislatures consider laws to expand the role of local police departments in immigration control, police chiefs across the country say they are reluctant to take on these tasks and want clear lines drawn between local crime-fighting and federal immigration enforcement, according to a new report by a police research group.

Dozens of police department commanders who participated in the report recommended that local officers should be explicitly prohibited from arresting people solely because of their immigration status, and should have orders to protect victims and witnesses regardless of that status."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:25 AM | Permalink

"Officials with the state's two largest police departments, in Omaha and Lincoln, oppose adoption of an Arizona-style immigration law in Nebraska.

They say deputizing local officers to enforce federal immigration laws would significantly raise taxpayer costs, hurt existing crime-fighting efforts and spawn dozens of lawsuits for false arrest.

The Nebraska proposal, Legislative Bill 48, could discourage members of immigrant communities from sharing information about crimes with police out of fear their immigration status could be checked, said Deputy Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer.

"Our mission is to reduce crime and reduce the fear of crime," he said. "We are afraid and have concerns that LB 48 will hamper those efforts, as it is written."

LB 48 is scheduled for a public hearing Wednesday afternoon before the Legislature's Judiciary Committee. It is among the most anticipated hearings of the current legislative session.

Fremont Sen. Charlie Janssen, the chief sponsor of the measure, disputed the contentions of Schmaderer and Lincoln Police Chief Tom Casady. Their opinions make Omaha and Lincoln "sanctuary cities" for illegal immigrants, Janssen said."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:09 AM | Permalink

"Forty-four-year-old Ramdeo Chankar Singh is at his wit’s end.

The former U.S. soldier, honorably discharged from the Army nine years ago, believes he is fully qualified to become a U.S. citizen, and has been trying to become one for almost a decade. But immigration officials are telling him he doesn’t meet the eligibility requirements.

Not only that, Singh, married to a Trinidadian native like himself, and with two U.S.-born children ages 10 and 5, is now facing deportation. A hearing has been set for March 22."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:57 AM | Permalink

"A Honduran teenager gained fame as the star of a documentary film that showed the dangers faced by children who ride across Mexico atop freight trains to cross illegally to the United States. But the boy, Kevin Casasola, rode the trains again, and now he has been granted asylum in the United States, his lawyer said on Monday."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 10:23 AM | Permalink

"At the law school, she was one of three speakers at a public-interest class and later a student social-action club. It was Ms. Castillo who captivated the students. She was their age, she dressed like them (when they had to look like lawyers rather than students), she spoke as they spoke and had the same quick intellect.  She could have been one of them."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:20 PM | Permalink

"Importing an Arizona-style immigration law to Indiana puts Gov. Mitch Daniels in a no-win situation politically.  No wonder he hasn't said whether he'll sign it."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 12:35 PM | Permalink

"The opponents of legislation that would outlaw so-called “sanctuary cities” argue that it would turn local police officers into immigration agents and divert resources from their primary job: preventing and solving crime. Law enforcement officers say it could have another, unintended consequence — silencing potential victims and witnesses who will be too afraid to identify themselves to cops."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:53 AM | Permalink

"A voluntary program to run all criminal suspects' fingerprints through an immigration database was only voluntary until cities refused to participate, thousands of recently released documents show. The Obama administration then tightened the rules so that U.S. cities had no choice but to have the fingerprints checked."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:24 AM | Permalink

"Immigration is poised to be a heated issue this year with Oklahoma lawmakers proposing nearly 30 bills ranging from restricting property rights of noncitizens to requiring school officials know the legal status of students."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:40 AM | Permalink

"For almost four months, doctors and nurses at Advocate Christ Medical Center cared for the young Mexican laborer who had fallen from a roof and lost the ability to speak, breathe or move most parts of his body.

But Quelino Ojeda Jimenez was in the U.S. illegally, and just before Christmas he was taken from the Oak Lawn hospital, loaded on an air ambulance and flown to Oaxaca, capital of the Mexican state where he was born.

His abrupt departure, which Ojeda says was undertaken without his consent, outraged a group of Mexicans living in Chicago who had rallied to his aid, tending to him in the hospital and encouraging him not to give up."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:59 AM | Permalink

"A federal judge who participated in controversial court hearings after the huge immigration raid in Postville says the 2008 legal proceedings were "a travesty."

District Judge Mark Bennett, who sentenced 57 of the 389 immigrant workers arrested at the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant, makes his allegations in a new documentary film about the raid's aftermath."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 03:31 PM | Permalink

"Thousands of immigrants from India have crossed into the United States illegally at the southern tip of Texas in the last year, part of a mysterious and rapidly growing human-smuggling pipeline that is backing up court dockets, filling detention centers and triggering investigations."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 11:00 AM | Permalink

"The little girl is captured in a photo taken after her mother's murder, dressed in a frilly pink dress and clutching a grape lollipop, her face nestled in her grandmother's chest.

The grandmother, Marisela Escobedo, looks determined in the snapshot, taken at one of many protests she staged to demand justice for her 16-year-old daughter, Rubi Frayre, whose presumed killer walked free despite confessing to her murder.

It was at one of those protests that a gunman hunted down Escobedo, 52, and shot and killed her just steps from the state capitol building in Chihuahua City on Dec. 16. And in that moment, 3-year-old Heidi Barraza Frayre, the toddler photographed in the pink dress, became — for the second time in her short life — both a victim and a symbol of the deadly violence consuming Mexico.

The little girl now sits in a Houston shelter for immigrant children, separated from her remaining family, surely unable to understand much about the asylum request that has been filed on her behalf."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 02:18 PM | Permalink

"State legislators intent on cracking down on the hiring of undocumented workers could be embracing a system so fraught with errors that some critics say it actually hinders employers who use it to check the eligibility of new hires. Employers could also be caught up in a constitutional legal battle in the process."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:55 AM | Permalink

"A federal judge has ordered state health officials to stop denying unmarried parents an easy way to designate a child's legal father if one or both parents lack a Social Security number.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt ruled Thursday that there was enough evidence to show a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the policy could succeed, and she issued a preliminary injunction to stop the practice until the case is resolved."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:36 PM | Permalink

"So far this year, 10 illegal re-entry cases have been filed in federal court in Oklahoma City. On Jan. 5, 15 defendants were indicted, pleaded guilty, or were sentenced on charges of unlawful re-entry into the United States."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 10:51 AM | Permalink

"Like 4 percent of the population of Oregon, Gomez is one of 150,000 people in the state who are undocumented immigrants. Call them illegal aliens. Call them lawbreakers. Gomez calls herself an American."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:52 PM | Permalink

"There is safety, yes, but also loneliness, hardship and the psychological torment that comes with living within walking distance of a place to which you cannot return."

HECTOR TOBAR in the L.A. Times, Dec. 31, 2010.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:30 AM | Permalink

"Mexican journalist Emilio Gutiérrez has done what’s been asked of him. He’s stayed out of trouble, and he’s put the seven months he spent in an American detention center behind him. Now he just wants to know if he will be allowed to remain in the United States or whether he will be returned to Mexico, where he believes his life is in danger."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:01 AM | Permalink

"This Renteria sounds like a troublemaker. If he's in this country illegally, why, boot him right back to where he came from.  Except that "where he came from," for Renteria, is the city of Portland, Ore.  Daniel Renteria-Villegas is a United States citizen.  Yet when Metro Police Officer Rickey Bearden took down his information in the arrest report, he listed Renteria's place of birth, for some reason, as Mexico."

BRANTLEY HARGROVE in the Nashville Scene, Jan. 13, 2011.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:36 AM | Permalink

"We've had hundreds of students questioned and stopped and inconvenienced, and perhaps a dozen students, scholars, or family members who've been detained or jailed," says Cary M. Jensen, director of the International Services Office at the University of Rochester. "For international visitors who see people boarding trains, pulling people off, asking for documents, it feels a lot like East Germany did when I visited in 1980."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:48 AM | Permalink

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 10:36 AM | Permalink

"Proposing state enforcement of immigration laws can produce strange bedfellows.  The Texas ACLU and an El Paso county sheriff who supports the controversial Secure Communities program stood side by side at the State Capitol in Austin Thursday to denounce pre-filed, immigration-related legislation similar to Arizona’s SB 1070. A conservative businessman was added to the mix, indicating lawmakers intent on rounding up Texas’ undocumented population might have a harder time than initially presumed."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:52 PM | Permalink

"Undocumented immigrants as a group fear dealing with police, and some abusers use that fear as a lever, threatening to turn in their victims and separate them from children through deportation."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:14 PM | Permalink

"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."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:25 AM | Permalink

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:15 AM | Permalink

"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."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:02 AM | Permalink

"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."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:35 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:44 AM | Permalink

"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."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:41 AM | Permalink

"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."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 02:29 PM | Permalink

"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."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:00 AM | Permalink

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:27 AM | Permalink

"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."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:17 AM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:46 AM | Permalink

FAIR's numbers don't add up.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:31 AM | Permalink

"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."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:39 AM | Permalink

"With just minutes to decide whether someone gets deported, overworked immigration judges have reached a breaking point."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:56 PM | Permalink

"The American Bar Association created ProBAR more than two decades ago to assist asylum-seekers detained in South Texas through the confusing patchwork of immigration court proceedings, said Meredith Linsky, director of the ABA’s South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project.  Touring La Posada this week, ABA members and local immigration lawyers heard the stories of refugees from all over the world who fled their homes to seek asylum in the United States. In telling his story, one Brazilian man looked toward Linsky, repeating, “They aren’t lawyers, they’re angels.”  Unlike in criminal cases where defendants are appointed public defenders if they can’t afford a lawyer, those who go before immigration courts must pay for their own, hope to find pro-bono help or go the proceedings alone, often with limited English and little-to-no understanding of how the system works, Linsky said.  The same goes for unaccompanied children, explained Karen Grisez, chair of the ABA’s Commission on Immigration."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 09:32 AM | Permalink

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"We are unfortunately seeing a pattern of people who look Latino being detained in the region without state-related charges. Most of our Latino clients started their road towards deportation from a traffic stop. In most cases, there was no traffic sanction imposed on the clients and the stated reason for the initial detention seems but a pretext for stopping clients for being brown or Latino."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:57 AM | Permalink

The Fresno Bee is running an 8-day package on immigration:

"The Fresno Bee spent months interviewing more than a hundred farmers, public officials, experts and illegal immigrants. The goal: to explain how inconsistent laws, policies and attitudes have made illegal immigrants a central — yet hidden — part of the San Joaquin Valley’s economy."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 09:44 AM | Permalink

"The case has drawn widespread attention nationally and internationally. It's a clash of two seemingly unrelated interests — those concerned about the aftermath of immigration raids that often lead to split families, and those who are fighting for the rights of adoptive parents. And both sides argue they only have the best interests of the child in mind."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:52 AM | Permalink

"The message on Secure Communities and whether or not counties could be removed from the program has changed multiple times in the last six months, as local officials in Arlington, San Francisco and Santa Clara sought to determine how they could opt out of sending fingerprints to immigration enforcement. Now, even after ICE held meetings with the three counties confirming that opting out is impossible, a coalition of civil rights groups is fighting to get more information on the program and how communities can avoid joining it."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:46 AM | Permalink

"Republican state lawmakers, buoyed by their party’s resounding victories on Election Day, are signaling just how far they're willing to go in cracking down on illegal immigration in the upcoming legislative session. A slew of bills filed Monday includes measures that would sanction businesses that hire undocumented workers, require state agencies to report on the costs of providing services to illegal immigrants and allow police to check an individual's immigration status on “reasonable suspicion.” ... If lawmakers do pass some of the strongest anti-immigration measures, they will wind up on the desk of Gov. Rick Perry, who must sign or veto the bills. Perry supports an end to any sanctuary city policies and criminal penalties for businesses that "knowingly hire" illegal immigrants but has said the Arizona immigration law is not right for Texas. "DPS and local law enforcement should not be responsible for the federal government's failure to secure our border," says Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:22 AM | Permalink

"One of the best Limit Hold’em players on the planet might never again step foot in the United States. Canadian poker pro Terrence “Unassigned” Chan, winner of two PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) Limit Hold’em events on the same day in 2009, was turned away from entering the States by U.S. Customs and Immigration officials late last week – twice."

BRETT COLLSON in Poker News Daily, Nov. 4, 2010.

[More details here on Chan's blog.]

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:21 AM | Permalink

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:03 AM | Permalink

Seven recent articles by Tom Barry at the TransBorder Project, a project of the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC:

1.  Time to Rein In Border Security Bandwagon (Sept. 27, 2010)

2.  Outsourcing Texas Border Security (Oct. 24, 2010)

3.  New Consulting Firm at "Epicenter" of Border Security in Texas (Oct. 25, 2010)

4.  Consultants as the Commanders of Texas Border Security (Oct. 26, 2010)

5.  New Strategy for Border Control (Oct. 27, 2010)

6.  Intelligence and Muscle in Texas Border Security (Oct. 28, 2010)

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:24 AM | Permalink

"Last Christmas Eve, Maria Bolanos made a decision she would later regret: During a fight with her partner, she called the Prince George's County police and sought their protection. The call for help had disastrous consequences for Bolanos, a 28-year-old undocumented immigrant from El Salvador. Within months, she found herself ensnared in an increasingly controversial immigration enforcement program designed to deport undocumented criminals.  Bolanos now faces deportation and possible separation from her 21-month-old daughter, who was born here and is a U.S. citizen."

SHANKAR VEDANTAM in the Washington Post, Nov. 1, 2010.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:01 PM | Permalink

Franc Contreras reports from the Mexican city of Tonatico, where many are following the ongoing US political debates to see what type of an impact the election would have on their hopes to migrate across the border for a better life.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:32 PM | Permalink

With that money, the 28 people in the ALEC offices throw three annual conferences. The companies get to sit around a table and write "model bills" with the state legislators, who then take them home to their states."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 11:47 AM | Permalink

"NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.

The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:31 AM | Permalink

"When Rohan Coombs joined the U.S. Marine Corps, he never thought he would one day be locked up in an immigration detention center and facing deportation from the nation he had vowed to defend.

Mr. Coombs, 43, born in Jamaica, immigrated to the United States legally as a child with his family. He signed up to serve his adopted nation for six years, first in Japan and the Philippines, then in the Persian Gulf during the first war with Iraq."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:06 AM | Permalink

"As long as adjudicators process a high volume of cases, the agency will ignore and even cover up serious misconduct, including deportations of US citizens or people who have other avenues of relief. One immigration judge told me, "I'm afraid there's a premium on quotas and productivity, and not the truth.""

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:58 PM | Permalink

"Valquires Geraldes' fear that she and her son, Wilson, would one day be deported from their Austin home to their native Brazil was no fleeting concern. It hung over her head more than 20 years.

"It was a nightmare," Geraldes said of their extraordinary legal case, which raised humanitarian concerns about 24-year-old Wilson Geraldes, who has severe autism, learning disabilities and limited communication skills.

Now her anxiety has been lifted, Geraldes said Wednesday. Late last month, an immigration judge in San Antonio terminated deportation proceedings for her and Wilson, their attorney Simon Azar-Farr of San Antonio said."

JUAN CASTILLO in the Austin American-Statesman, Oct. 20, 2010.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:15 AM | Permalink

"In the best-case scenario, Texas state Rep. Leo Berman hopes his state will be sued."

ELISE FOLEY in the Washington Independent on Oct. 20, 2010.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:50 PM | Permalink

"Immigrant advocacy groups cheered in 2009 when the federal government admitted shortcomings in the way it detains people awaiting deportation or hearings before immigration judges. In a lengthy report by Dora Schriro, the former director of the Office of Detention Policy and Planning, the feds acknowledged that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly called ICE, “is comprised primarily of law enforcement personnel with extensive expertise performing removal functions, but not in the design and delivery of detention facilities and community-based alternatives.”  

A new report card from three of those advocacy groups, released this month, paints a mixed picture of progress since then. Compiled by Detention Watch Network, the National Immigrant Justice Center and the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights, the report notes that ICE leadership “has continued to demonstrate a strong commitment to achieving systemic change within the next three to five years.” But it’s fallen short of loftier goals, failing to tackle alleged human rights violations within the detention system and to expand alternatives to incarceration."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:34 AM | Permalink

"Nowhere has the post-9/11 border-security framework been so enthusiastically adopted—and adapted—as in Texas, where local law enforcement, the state political leadership, and a contingent of the congressional delegation have taken border security into their own hands, albeit largely with federal funding."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:36 AM | Permalink

"Drawing from recently obtained immigration court records, this five-piece series describes how U.S. immigration agents turned a Canadian couple's vacation into a nightmarish trip through the labyrinth of immigration deportation proceedings."

Jacqueline Stevens, Sept. 2010.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 03:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"A Mexican journalist who was the target of death threats like those made by drug cartels says he has been granted asylum in the United States in a case believed to be the first of its kind since the country's bloody drug war began."

PAUL J. WEBER and OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ for the Associated Press, Sept. 23, 2010.

"Mexico's drug war, which has claimed more than 28,000 lives, has become one of the most dangerous stories in the world. Some journalists have taken the ultimate step: They have fled to the United States to seek political asylum."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 03:35 AM | Permalink

She made the journey mostly alone. She had friends who left El Salvador with her, but they scattered once they crossed into Mexico. She traveled a route rife with smugglers and sex traffickers and drug cartels, and says there were times she was afraid she would die. "I thought if something happens to me, I won't be able to see my mother again."

She avoided the dangers en route to America, but four years after she arrived, in 2009, she was blackmailed by a man who claimed to be an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent. Over several months, in dozens of ominous e-mails and text messages, he threatened to have her deported unless she had a sexual relationship with him.

Last October, Bedri Kulla, who was born in Canada but is a U.S. citizen, pled guilty in federal court on charges of violating her civil rights. As part of the plea agreement, the court can dismiss the blackmail charge. Kulla's sentencing hearing is scheduled for Sept. 24."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 02:56 AM | Permalink

"Ms. Castro later sued the government, saying the agents had no legal authority to detain, much less deport, her daughter. Nor should Border Patrol agents, she said, take the place of family-court judges in making custody decisions.

The last court to rule in the case, the full United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, rejected Ms. Castro’s arguments, over the dissents of three judges.

The brief unsigned majority decision, echoing that of the trial judge, said the appeals court did not “condone the Border Patrol’s actions or the choices it made.” But, the decision went on, Ms. Castro could not sue the government because the agents had been entitled to use their discretion in the matter.

Ms. Castro’s lawyers last month asked the United States Supreme Court to hear the case, in a petition bristling with restrained incredulity."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 09:47 AM | Permalink

""Passage of the Dream Act would be extremely beneficial to the U.S. military and the country as a whole," said Margaret Stock, a retired West Point professor who studies immigrants in the military. She said it made "perfect" sense to attach it to the defense-authorization bill."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:02 AM | Permalink

"Two fences - one concrete to block cars, the other barbed wire to block people - cut through a wide valley in the Tohono O'odham Nation Reservation west of Tucson.  Ground sensors and infrared night-vision cameras scan the vast terrain. Teams of Border Patrol agents comb dirt and concrete roads, perch at roadside checkpoints and search the Sonoran Desert by air and ATV.  Welcome to the nation's busiest border and epicenter of the U.S. immigration debate."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 03:07 AM | Permalink

"In a survey of immigration detention facilities nationwide, the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center found that more than half did not offer detainees information about their rights, and 78% prohibited private phone calls with lawyers.

More than 80% of detainees were in facilities that were isolated and beyond the reach of legal aid organizations, resulting in heavy caseloads of 100 detainees per immigration attorney, the survey found. Ten percent of detainees were held in facilities in which they had no access at all to legal aid groups."

KEN DILANIAN for the Chicago Tribune's Washington Bureau, Sept. 14, 2010.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:07 AM | Permalink

"Nearly three months after U.S. immigration officials dumped Luis Alberto Delgado in Mexico despite his insistence that he is a U.S. citizen, the 19-year-old was permitted to re-enter the country last weekend with the U.S. government's blessing."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:40 AM | Permalink

A three-part series on "Operation Streamline" by TED ROBBINS on NPR.

Part 1, Border Patrol Program Raises Due Process Concerns

Part 2, Claims of Border Program Success are Unproven

Part 3, Border Convictions: High Stakes, Unknown Price

Sept. 13-14, 2010. 

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 03:47 AM | Permalink

"A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a lower-court ruling striking down ordinances adopted by the City of Hazleton, Pa., that banned illegal immigrants from renting housing or being employed there.

The 188-page ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, is the broadest statement by a court to date on the vexing question of how much authority states and towns have to act on immigration matters that are normally the purview of the federal government, constitutional lawyers said."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 03:50 AM | Permalink

"A federal grand jury in Honolulu has indicted six labor contractors from a Los Angeles manpower company on charges that they imposed forced labor on some 400 Thai farm workers, in what justice officials called the biggest human-trafficking case ever brought by federal authorities."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:35 AM | Permalink

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:31 AM | Permalink

"Two years after arriving with his son at a U.S. border crossing at Antelope Wells, N.M. to seek asylum in the U.S., Gutiérrez still waits for an immigration judge to rule on his application and his residency status. The pre-dawn drive that led him to the border crossing — where he was handcuffed and whisked away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — marked the beginning of his exile, one that continues today. His plight, his attorney says, underscores a problem with U.S. reluctance to grant asylum to Mexicans for fear of alienating the Mexican government."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:55 AM | Permalink

"Deaths of illegal immigrants in Arizona have soared this summer toward their highest levels since 2005 - a fact that has surprised many who thought that the furor over the state's new immigration law and the 100-plus degree heat would draw them elsewhere along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:51 AM | Permalink

"Traveling from New York City to Buffalo on Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited last month, I wondered what I would say if Border Patrol agents showed up on the train at Syracuse or Rochester and asked, “Are you a U.S. citizen?”

My plan was to politely decline to answer, and see what happened next."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 12:19 PM | Permalink

"Some American-born passengers welcome the patrol. “It makes me feel safe,” volunteered Katie Miller, 34, who was riding Amtrak to New York from Ohio. “I don’t mind being monitored.”

To others, it evokes travel through the old Communist bloc. “I was actually woken up with a flashlight in my face,” recalled Mike Santomauro, 27, a law student who encountered the patrol in April, at 2 a.m. on a train in Rochester.

Across the aisle, he said, six agents grilled a student with a computer who had only an electronic version of his immigration documents. Through the window, Mr. Santomauro said, he could see three black passengers, standing with arms raised beside a Border Patrol van.

“As a citizen I’m offended,” he said. But he added, “To say I didn’t want to answer didn’t seem a viable option.”"

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:13 AM | Permalink

A 4-part multi-media package reported by ELIZABETH BAIER for Minnesota Public Radio.

Part 1: The strike the changed Austin

Part 2: Newcomers settle in Austin

Part 3. Fear and nostalgia in a changing community

Part 4: Bridging the gap

Broadcast editor: Kate Smith
Web editor: Jennifer Ehrlich
Photographer: Jeffrey Thompson
Web producers: Nathaniel Minor, Elliot deBruyn, Than Tibbetts

Audio Archivists: Sylvia Mohn and Jenel Farrell

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:20 AM | Permalink

"The detention of illegal immigrants brings in millions of dollars for counties in the state. Jobs, jails and upkeep are funded by dollars generated through federal contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement."

VALLERY BROWN in The Oklahoman, Aug. 29, 2010.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:35 AM | Permalink

"[A]s a practical matter, what would the removal of birthright citizenship mean for the country? Pierce the fog of rhetoric and you’ll quickly discover that nobody really knows, including the state and federal lawmakers yelling loudest for change."

MORGAN SMITH in the Texas Tribune.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:39 AM | Permalink

"The Obama administration, while deporting a record number of immigrants convicted of crimes, is sparing one group of illegal immigrants from expulsion: students who came to the United States without papers when they were children."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:42 AM | Permalink

"They could write chapters in history books about people like Joe Sing, a Chinese immigrant who blazed trails in Austin around the dawn of the 20th century, and his lay-down-the-law wife, Francisca, who helped him. Sing eclipsed one barrier after another poverty, a strange land and language, discriminatory laws to succeed as a businessman, husband and father.

But Sing apparently also was a modest man, and his gritty story went with him to his grave in 1927. There it probably would have stayed had his descendants not discovered a box 80 years after his death."

JUAN CASTILLO in the Austin American-Statesman.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 09:12 AM | Permalink

"Nearly a decade had passed since Zulma Arevalo last laid eyes on the baby boy she left behind in El Salvador.

She always knew that someday they would be reunited — and that moment came last year, after Enrique, then 9, was caught crossing illegally into the United States to join her. Because of Enrique's age, authorities summoned Arevalo, who was in Omaha.

“It was so strange,” the mom recalled. “I left my son as an infant, and I didn't recognize him. We just stood there staring at each other.

“Then we hugged.”

Arevalo, who has temporary protected status in the United States, was able to take the boy, pending the federal government's final decision on his deportation.

Enrique, who turned 11 this past weekend, easily transitioned into a household of mixed U.S. citizenry. He has lived there since March 2009, the middle of five kids.

His family time here could end, however, after a Monday immigration hearing."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"[A]lmost 15 years after his crimes, by applying for citizenship, Mr. Wu, 29, came to the attention of immigration authorities in a parallel law enforcement system that makes no allowances for rehabilitation. He was abruptly locked up in November as a “criminal alien,” subject to mandatory deportation to China — the nation he left at 5, when his family immigrated legally to the United States."

NINA BERNSTEIN in the New York Times.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Superior Forestry Service Inc., based in Tilly in southeast Arkansas, and the workers filed the class-action settlement proposal Thursday in U.S. District Court in Nashville, Tenn."

CHUCK BARTELS for the Associated Press.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"An Arizona sheriff said he planned to defy Washington's attempts to roll back his staunch enforcement of federal immigration law, a move that could put him on a collision course with the U.S. government."

MIRIAM JORDAN in the Wall Street Journal.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 09:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"In an order filed Friday, a federal judge in Austin questioned U.S. prosecutors for seeking criminal convictions in court against some illegal immigrants, writing that the practice "presents a cost to the American taxpayer ... that is neither meritorious nor reasonable."

The order by U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks comes as his docket, like others in Texas, is swollen with defendants charged with immigration crimes."

STEVEN KREYTAK in the Austin American-Statesman.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Though Los Angeles County law enforcement agencies and community organizations have made advances in responding to domestic violence in immigrant communities, attorneys and advocates say many victims still face obstacles in reporting abuse and seeking help.

Language barriers, financial dependence and lack of information keep victims from coming forward. And those here illegally worry about being sent back to their native countries.

Many victims do not know that they may be eligible for special visas for victims of crime and domestic violence."
ANNA GORMAN in the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by Ian Chestnut at 02:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Ian Chestnut at 02:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)