'Just News' Blog

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO this week separately assailed a new White House-backed crackdown on illegal immigration, warning of massive disruptions to the economy and headaches for U.S. citizens if the proposal goes ahead as planned in the coming days.

The Bush administration intends to begin writing to 140,000 employers on Tuesday regarding suspect Social Security numbers used by an estimated 8.7 million workers, as a way of pressuring them to fire illegal immigrants. President Bush disclosed the plan three weeks ago as part of a repackaged, 26-point enforcement program after Congress failed to overhaul U.S. immigration laws this summer. SPENCER HSU in The Washington Post.

Posted by Amanda Becker at 04:57 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Virginia Republicans announced legislation Wednesday that would prohibit public colleges and universities from accepting illegal immigrants even if they attended a public high school and were brought to the United States at an early age by their parents.

GOP leaders, who control both houses of the legislature, suggested that some Virginia residents are being denied access to college because too many illegal immigrants are taking available slots.  TIM CRAIG in The Washington Post.

Posted by Amanda Becker at 04:54 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Years after Hurricane Katrina and subsequent flooding caused a mass evacuation of New Orleans, a growing population of Latinos is moving into the city.

Exact numbers are hard to come by, but by some estimates the Hispanic population in the area may have doubled or tripled, while the overall population has fallen by more than a third.population of Latinos is moving into the city. 

TOM BEARDEN for PBS NewsHour.

Posted by Amanda Becker at 08:01 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"A native Texan spent the night in the Arlington Jail, missed her children's first day of school and feared being deported after authorities mistook her for an illegal immigrant.

Alicia Rodriguez, an accountant and mother of three, has the same name and date of birth as a woman deported to Mexico three times. ...

Arlington and federal immigration officials say they made a mistake and apologized. ...

Law enforcement experts say similar situations may happen again as the government creates more databases of names to fight illegal immigration, terrorism and other crimes."

PATRICK McGEE in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:01 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Five-thirty a.m. A damp chill in the air. Figures hunched on the pavement outside a locked trailer, hoods up, waiting. A man approaches on a bicycle, nearly invisible in the dark. "Hola, 'mano."

Headlights pass. Faces turn sharply, then relax.

Finally, the car they've been waiting for. It's Fernando Garavito, the manager, with the key. The men scramble up the steps and crowd inside. The trailer is flooded with warm light. Someone turns on the coffee pot, the weather report. Someone passes around a sign-up sheet with two numbered lists: "Labor" and "Skilled."

PAMELA CONSTABLE in the Washington Post.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:28 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"A coalition of labor and immigrant rights groups sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday to block the agency's planned crackdown on employers who hire undocumented workers.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, contends that the rules would lead to mass firings of workers who are U.S. citizens and to discrimination against employees who look or sound foreign."

ANNA GORMAN and NICOLE GAOUETTE in the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:41 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"Attorneys representing immigrant children in a lawsuit against the federal government over conditions at an Austin-area detention center have reached a settlement designed to improve treatment of the youngest detainees, officials said today."

SUSAN CARROLL in the Houston Chronicle.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:55 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"On a desolate stretch of the Rio Grande, two Border Patrol agents chased a fleeing suspect and opened fire, wounding him from behind. But they didn’t arrest him, and they didn’t report the shooting to their supervisors. In fact, they covered it up. So why are they being celebrated as heroes?"

PAMELA COLLOFF in Texas Monthly.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 12:36 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"It's time for a few reality checks about what this enforcement scheme will and won't accomplish."

DAVID BACON in The Nation.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:11 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 09:13 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"A man who was mistaken for a deported felon and held in a Los Angeles County jail for 25 days may sue the state for negligence, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday.

Rejecting lower court rulings, the state high court said Lenin Freud Perez-Torres, 35, may sue on the grounds that authorities knew or should have known they had the wrong man.

Perez-Torres was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving in April 2000. Two months later, immigration agents and a parole agent burst into his home at 7 a.m. and threw him in jail for parole violation and possible deportation because a state database identified him as another man -- Lenin Salgado Torres, a parolee deported to Mexico two years earlier."

MAURA DOLAN in the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:58 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 11:42 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"How many of these young Latino recruits are illegal immigrants? “Nobody knows,” says Flavia Jimenez, an immigration policy analyst at the National Council of La Raza. “But what we do know is that recruiters may not be up to speed on everybody’s legal status. … We also know that a significant number of [illegals] have died in Iraq.” The recruitment of illegal immigrants is particularly intense in Los Angeles, where 75 percent of the high school students are Latino."

DEBORAH DAVIS, In These Times.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 09:32 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"When teenage brothers Juan and Alex Gomez were awakened at dawn on July 25 and arrested by U.S. immigration officials, they simply became two more among the thousands of kids who get snared in deportation dragnets along with their parents. But this week Juan's Internet-savvy high school friends in Miami have turned his case into a cause celebre in Washington — and even if the brothers eventually do get deported, the publicity they've garnered may well boost the passage of a federal immigration bill that would keep other young people like them from suffering the same fate in the future.'

TIM PADGETT in Time Magazine.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:45 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"Proposition 300 cost Silvia, an ASU junior who asked that her last name not be used, an academic scholarship of $5,000, she said. That's enough to cover in-state tuition for a full school year. Her tuition has tripled. Now, she will shell out close to $18,000 for next years' tuition.

Silvia lined up $16,000 in private scholarships, not covered under the law, to help make up the difference.

"They took away my scholarship, they increased my tuition. But it doesn't matter what obstacles come in my way," said Silvia, 20, whose parents brought her to the U.S. from Mexico as a young child. "If I really, really want an education, I can get it, no matter what proposition or what laws get passed."

YVONNE WINGETT and MATTHEW BENSON in the Arizona Republic.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:36 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"The U.S. government has violated its own immigrant detention standards, denying some Salvadoran detainees access to legal materials, telephones and attorney visits, a federal judge in Los Angeles has ruled."

ANNA GORMAN in the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:02 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)