May 15, 2008

Immigration and gang violence propel crusade

The Los Angeles Police Department was one of the first in the nation to institute a procedure that prohibits officers from initiating contact with people for the sole purpose of learning their immigration status. The procedure, known as Special Order 40, was designed in part to reassure illegal immigrants who historically had shied from reporting crimes and assisting police investigations.

But in the context of contemporary immigration politics, the procedure is now perceived in black neighborhoods and beyond as a roadblock to using immigration laws as a tool against Latino gang violence. A push to reverse the procedure is viewed by many as a symbol of deeper racial conflicts in South Los Angeles and has inflamed tensions between many blacks and Hispanic immigrants, as shifting demographics and a smattering of racially motivated killings have racked South Los Angeles. JENNIFER SEINHAUER in The New York Times.

Posted by Amanda Becker at 08:52 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

May 14, 2008

Immigration enforcement fund slashed in AZ

A fight has erupted in Arizona, pitting the state’s governor against a county lawman known as "America's Toughest Sheriff,” and the hunt for illegal immigrants against the hunt for felons on the loose.

According to several reports, Gov. Janet Napolitano has signed an executive order shifting $1.6 million out of the budget for a task force set up to unravel human smuggling networks in the state, and reassigning the money to a new effort to round up tens of thousands of fugitives.

The cutbacks were not shared across Arizona’s 15 counties. Rather, they were aimed at just one county — Maricopa — and its controversial sheriff, Joe Arpaio. MIKE NIZZA for the Lede in The New York Times.

Posted by Amanda Becker at 08:06 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

May 13, 2008

Many Hispanics Hit Hard by Economic Downturn

The economic downturn unfolding across the United States is imposing a particularly punishing toll on Hispanics, a group that was among the primary beneficiaries of the expansion in recent years. What had been a story of broad and steady advances has given way to growing joblessness, diminishing paychecks and lost homes. PETER S. GOODMAN in The New York Times.

Posted by Amanda Becker at 05:15 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

May 11, 2008

Bittersweet Reunions Span U.S. Border

"You can walk to the U.S. border, Francelia Menchaca's immigration lawyer advised her, but don't put your fingers through its fence. It may hinder her immigration paperwork, the lawyer said."

ASHLEY SURDIN in the Washington Post.  [And be sure to watch the slide show.]

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Careless Detention

Follow this 4-day series on immigration jails by award-winning Washington Post reporters DANA PRIEST and AMY GOLDSTEIN including links to videos, graphics and background documentation.

"The most vulnerable detainees, the physically sick and the mentally ill, are sometimes denied the proper treatment to which they are entitled by law and regulation. They are locked in a world of slow care, poor care and no care, with panic and coverups among employees watching it happen, according to a Post investigation.

The investigation found a hidden world of flawed medical judgments, faulty administrative practices, neglectful guards, ill-trained technicians, sloppy record-keeping, lost medical files and dangerous staff shortages. It is also a world increasingly run by high-priced private contractors. There is evidence that infectious diseases, including tuberculosis and chicken pox, are spreading inside the centers.

Some 83 detainees have died in, or soon after, custody during the past five years. The deaths are the loudest alarms about a system teetering on collapse."

Link to full package.

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May 09, 2008

Juan Crow in Georgia

"[T]he younger children of the mostly immigrant Latinos in Georgia are learning and internalizing that they are different from white--and black--children not just because they have the wrong skin color but also because many of their parents lack the right papers. They are growing up in a racial and political climate in which Latinos' subordinate status in Georgia and in the Deep South bears more than a passing resemblance to that of African-Americans who were living under Jim Crow. Call it Juan Crow: the matrix of laws, social customs, economic institutions and symbolic systems enabling the physical and psychic isolation needed to control and exploit undocumented immigrants."

ROBERTO LOVATO in The Nation magazine.

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