'Just News' Blog

"He was born on the Fourth of July, an irony he would only appreciate later, during the dark period of his life, when liberty and freedom became far more than mere words in his high school history book.

Daniel Guadron has been fighting the odds all his young life, mostly as a happy warrior, winning admirers and supporters at every turn.

It's not just that he excelled in school: The straight-A student mastered English within months of emigrating from Guatemala at 13, then mastered French. He's aced every math test he has ever taken."

HELEN O'NEILL for the Associated Press.

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"While the nation’s understaffed immigration courts strain under a backlog that has grown to more than 200,000 cases, thousands of new border agents have been hired and the number of government attorneys who argue for deportation has increased by 35 percent, pushing more cases onto an already overburdened system.

As a result, cases often take months if not years to complete, leading to more immigrants being held in a growing network of detention facilities and jails. On any given day there are more than 30,000 people in immigration lockup."

ANDREW BECKER and HUGO CABRERA in collaboration with the Center for Investigative Reporting.

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"The Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled that the state acted improperly when it terminated a Guatemalan woman’s rights to her two American-born children after she was detained on charges of falsely identifying herself to a police officer and then deported."

GINGER THOMPSON in the New York Times.

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ARIVACA, Ariz. — "“Somebody just came in and shot my daughter and my husband!” the woman shouted to the 911 dispatcher. “They’re coming back in! They’re coming back in!”

Multiple gunshots are then heard on a tape of the call.

The woman, Gina Gonzalez, survived the attack after arming herself with her husband’s handgun, but both he and their 10-year-old daughter died.

The killings, last month, have terrified this small town near the Mexican border, in part because the authorities have now tied them to what they describe as a rogue group engaged in citizen border patrols."

JESSE McINLEY and MALIA WOLLAN in the New York Times.

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"Paulo Monte admits contemplating suicide several times as an escape from the "nightmare" he lived through under the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

Monte, 40, a legal permanent resident of the United States since he was five months old, spent the last 18 months in jail fighting relentlessly against his deportation to Portugal.

In addition to the complex legal battle he faced trying to preserve his right to stay in this country, he claims he was subject to abusive treatment and inadequate medical care during his detention and often threatened with retaliation if he sought to seek medical attention.

"No one wants to listen to us in there [ICE detention]," Monte told O Jornal. "I thought of suicide. My family and daughter kept me going."

On June 1, he was released after a U.S. Immigration Court judge terminated his case without prejudice, finding him "not removable" from the United States and waving an appeal.

Monte said the whole experience has left him deeply disturbed."

LURDES C. da SILVA in O Jornal.

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"Janet Reyes graduated magna cum laude from the University of Houston in May with a master’s degree in social work.

And then, the 26-year-old said, her life essentially came to a standstill.

Like tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, Reyes found that her job prospects after graduation are nonexistent without legal status.

“We’ve got a diploma in our hands, but we are unable to use it,” said Reyes, whose parents brought her to the U.S. from Mexico illegally when she was 8 years old."

SUSAN CARROLL in the Houston Chronicle.

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