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January 30, 2008

Yearlong investigation uncovers flaws in Ohio's DNA testing program

A yearlong investigation by The Columbus Dispatch found that Ohio s DNA testing program for inmates seeking to prove their innocence is so flawed that police and courts routinely discard evidence after trials. The five-part series found that judges also ignore requests for DNA testing, leaving inmates in legal limbo, and nearly a third of the denials examined by the newspaper failed to cite a specific reason, as required by state law.

Presented with the findings, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland called for an overhaul that would speed up the review process, open up testing to more inmates andestablish statewide standards for preserving evidence. GEOFF DUTTON and MIKE WAGNER in The Columbus Dispatch.

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From green card to SAG card: Expatriate's path to Hollywood star

"He died thousands of miles from home, but like hundreds of other entertainers who came before him, Heath Ledger had left his native land to carve out a career in Hollywood.

In doing so, the Australian-born actor, who died last week in New York City of still-undetermined causes, joined a long list of expatriate entertainers that includes Spain's Antonio Banderas, Canada's Mike Myers and even the man who paid tribute to Ledger at Sunday's Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Englishman Daniel Day-Lewis.

With immigration as a hot-button issue in an election year, the internationalization of Hollywood—nine of the 20 acting or supporting Oscar nominations this year went to foreign-born movie stars—begs the question: Is it easier for an actor to get a U.S. work visa than, say, a dishwasher?"

JOHN ROGERS for the Associated Press.

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January 29, 2008

Citizenship backlog to curb Latino vote

"The unprecedented 1.4 million surge in U.S. citizenship applicants won't translate into an equal number of new voters come November's presidential election because of a processing backlog."

DIANNE SOLíS in the Dallas Morning News.

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January 28, 2008

Judge urges common sense in border fence land disputes

BROWNSVILLE, Texas: "A federal judge urged the government Friday to use common sense and "good neighborness" in working out access to 12 pieces of private property in Cameron County that it says it needs to study land for the border fence.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen did not rule Friday, but an order was expected early next week granting the government access but with some guidelines.

Hanen's handling was markedly different from the way U.S. District Judge Alia Moses Ludlum handled an almost identical case in Eagle Pass. In that case, the government filed its lawsuit and Ludlum ordered the city to surrender 233 acres before it could muster a response."

CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN for the Associate Press.

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January 25, 2008

Mukasey sounds warning about early release

Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey on Thursday attacked plans to roll back the sentences of thousands of federal prisoners convicted under harsh crack cocaine laws, saying that the move could return many violent offenders to the streets and increase the crime problems of U.S. cities.

Mukasey told the U.S. Conference of Mayors that about 1,600 convicted criminals -- "many of them violent gang members" -- could be released as early as March under a decision by the U.S. commission that sets sentencing guidelines for federal crimes. RICHARD B. SCHMITT in the Los Angeles Times.

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January 24, 2008

Immigration officials detaining, deporting American citizens

"Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he's never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack's claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona."

MARISA TAYLOR for the McClatchy Washington Bureau.

Coda: Warziniack was released from ICE custody on Jan. 25, 2008. 

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New rules of the road for Michigan

Only U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens (a.k.a. "green card" holders) will be permitted to obtain new driver licenses in Michgan, according to an Opinion issued by Michigan's Attorney General, Mike Cox, and promulgated by Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land.

That effectively forces thousands of legal temporary visa holders - students, teachers, H-1B workers, L-1 managers, E-2 investors, refugees, asylees, etc. - into pedestrian mode.

Does this mean "economic suicide" for Michigan?

The local chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association filed a response. 

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Arizona Border Patrol targets 40 per day for federal criminal prosecution

"Border Patrol officials are sending as many as 40 illegal entrants a day for prosecution and jail time under a downsized version of the agency's zero- tolerance initiative.
 
Even though the process and the consequences for the selected illegal border crossers are the same as Operation Streamline — the program's name in the Yuma and Del Rio and Laredo, Texas, sectors where it's also in use — officials in the Tucson Sector are calling it an "enhanced enforcement operation," until they get approval from headquarters, said Jesús Rodriguez, a Tucson Sector spokesman.
 
"Once the numbers start to increase for prosecution, it will be called 'Streamline,' " said Rodriguez said.
 
The agency must be able to prosecute every single person caught in a designated zone, something that isn't happening yet in the Tucson Sector, for it to be called Operation Streamline, said Lloyd Easterling, a Border Patrol spokesman in Washington, D.C."
 
BRADY McCOMBS in the Arizona Daily Star.

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January 20, 2008

Birmingham's King Day event to spotlight immigration debate

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama: "The keynote speaker for the Martin Luther King Unity Breakfast on Monday is a Kansas native and the daughter of Mexican immigrants.

Organizers said they chose Janet Murguía, the president and chief executive officer of the National Council of La Raza, because of her message of unity and her opposition to a resurgence of hate speech in the immigration debate."

Associated Press.

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"Virginia is for lovers..." - unless you're an immigrant?

The official motto/slogan for the Commonwealth is "Virginia is for lovers."

But in General Assembly, "[t]he number of immigration bills in the 60-day legislative session is the highest in recent years and, some lawmakers say, is more than the total addressing any other topic, including the abusive-driving fees and mental health reform.

House members have introduced more than 100 immigration bills; senators had filed about 25 as of Friday, the deadline for legislators to file bills for the season."

ANITA KUMAR in the Washington Post.

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"Green card" holders naturalize faster than before

"According to a new and unprecedented analysis from the Department of Homeland Security, newer immigrants are moving more quickly into citizenship than those who became permanent residents in the 1970s and 1980s."

MIKE SWIFT for the Mercury News.

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"Will I need a passport to get into my own back yard?"

SAN BENITO, TEXAS: "Nydia Garcia looked over the 80 acres of riverfront farmland that has been in her family for centuries and pointed to where a tall security fence would snake through the middle of her property, a half-mile from the Rio Grande.

"My grandfather farmed this land," Mrs. Garcia said. "As kids, we'd ride horses back here and swim in the river. ... What's going to happen now? Will I need a passport to get into my own back yard?"
 

Mrs. Garcia and her family are among 71 Texans who just said no to the Homeland Security Department's firmly written request for access to their property along the Rio Grande as a potential site for a proposed border security fence.

This week, the reality of that defiance struck close to home."

DAVID McLEMORE in the Dallas Morning News.

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January 18, 2008

Attack in Ohio suburb raises long-forgotten questions of race, integration

A week after six black teenagers nearly beat her husband to death, Marybeth McDermott looked out her big living room window at the neighborhood she loves, pursed her lips, then looked away.

The attack on her husband, Kevin McDermott, a 52-year-old white lawyer, has raised concerns about safety, race and integration that many people here thought were laid to rest long ago. CHRISTOPHER MAAG in The New York Times.

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Facing Deportation but Clinging to Life in U.S.

“People came to me and said, ‘Father, when did we become the enemy?’ ” said the Rev. Gary M. Graf, a Roman Catholic priest whose Waukegan parish includes many Latino immigrants.

JULIA PRESTON in the New York Times.

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January 17, 2008

NYC Mayor hails city's immigrants

Mayor Bloomgber, looking at once to close a multibillion-dollar deficit and burnish his national profile as an innovator, unveiled a mix of tough education and anticrime measures while embracing the virtues of immigration on Thursday at his annual State of the City address. DIANE CARDWELL in The New York Times.

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January 15, 2008

Tucson courts brace for increased migrant prosecutions

The nation's busiest border patrol sector has begun a new program to prosecute apprehended migrants, rather than just deport them back across the border.

Operation Streamline was piloted in border towns in Texas. In Tucson, where border patrol agents arrested and deported an average of 1,000 illegal immigrants a day last year, the program's startup will be limited to 40 cases a day.

But even that small amount is expected to put a huge strain on the local judicial system and cost millions of dollars a year for housing, transporting, prosecuting and defending those who are charged.  TED ROBBINS on NPR's All Things Considered.

Posted by Amanda Becker at 09:22 PM | | TrackBacks (0)

U.S. to speed deportation of jailed criminals

Federal authorities expect to identify and deport more than 200,000 immigrants this year who are convicted criminals serving time in prisons and jails across the country, the country’s top federal immigration enforcement official said Monday. JULIA PRESTON in The New York Times.

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Fear Factor

TANEYTOWN, Md. - "There are fewer than two dozen foreign-born residents in this historic but ailing town of 6,700 near the Pennsylvania border, including a Mexican landscaper and a Chinese family that owns a restaurant on Main Street. There are no store signs in Spanish, no crowded boarding houses, no men looking for jobs on the corners.

Yet this month, the bitter regional and national debate over illegal immigration has reached remote Taneytown. It has divided local officials, drawn activists and TV crews to town meetings and exposed deep emotional fault lines in a small, largely white farming community that feels both afraid it might be overwhelmed by poor Hispanics who are in the country illegally and ashamed it might be tarred as racist and intolerant."

PAMELA CONSTABLE in the Washington Post.

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Race plays a role in Obama's pursuit of Latinos

As the Democratic candidates have moved from courting the overwhelmingly white voters of Iowa and New Hampshire to an expanse of 25 contests facing them in the next few weeks, they confront an electorate that is increasingly Hispanic.

Although the two candidates aggressively court those voters, who could be vital for Democrats this year and for years to come, the challenge is especially complex for Mr. Obama, who confronts a history of often uneasy and competitive relations between blacks and Hispanics, particularly as they have jockeyed for influence in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. ADAM NAGOURNEY and JENNIFER STEINHAUER in The New York Times.

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Race enters the Democratic fray

Jarvis Jenkins and Kytu Ivory are two black voters with two very different ideas about the racial tensions that have flared between presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But like many other African American voters in Atlanta, the men could agree on one thing: In a presidential contest featuring perhaps the most viable black candidate in history, it was inevitable that race would emerge. It was just a matter of time. RICHARD FAUSSET and JANET HOOK in The Los Angeles Times.

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January 14, 2008

Broken Promise Land: 4-part series

A four-part series in the Waco Tribune-Herald; story and photos by J.B. SMITH.

"This project examining the perilous crossings of illegal immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border was made possible by a World Affairs Journalism Fellowship from the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C.

For three weeks last summer, Tribune-Herald staff writer J.B. Smith traveled to three towns in Mexico to interview families of dead illegal immigrants identified in Waco by Baylor University forensic DNA scientist Lori Baker.

He also spent five days in September visiting southern Arizona, where all of those immigrants died. He traveled into the desert with Border Patrol agents and volunteers from a locally based humanitarian group and visited the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Smith continued his research well into December, conducting interviews with anti-illegal immigration activists and policy-makers, including the head of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and the Center for Immigration Studies.

Beginning today and running through Wednesday, this series explores the causes and effects of illegal immigration through the stories of real people on both sides of the border."

Link to Part One, Jan. 13, 2008.

Link to Part Two, Jan. 14, 2008. 

Link to Part Three, Jan. 15, 2008.

Link to Part Four, Jan. 16, 2008. 

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January 12, 2008

ICE Will No Longer Sedate Deportees

"U.S. immigration agents must not sedate deportees without a judge's permission, according to a policy change issued this week.

Immigration officials have acknowledged that 56 deportees were given psychotropic drugs during a seven-month period in 2006 and 2007 even though most had no history of mental problems. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit over the practice in June.

An internal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo issued Wednesday and obtained Friday by The Associated Press said that effective immediately, agents must get a court order before administering drugs "to facilitate an alien's removal."

"There are no exceptions to this policy," said the memo by John Torres, detention and removal director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement."

PETER PRENGAMAN in the Associated Press.

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January 10, 2008

Field laborers sue over wages

"Two Haitian field workers, including a grandmother in her 70s, filed a federal lawsuit against a South Miami-Dade farmer Tuesday, alleging they and hundreds of others were paid less than minimum wage for picking beans in recent harvest seasons."

TERE FIGUERAS NEGRETE in the Miami Herald.

 

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Strict immigration law rattles Okla. businesses

""I've already had customers who came in here and told me they've fired employees because they didn't know if they were here legally," says Tim Wagner, an owner of Cocina De Mino, a Mexican restaurant in Oklahoma City. He predicts industries such as agriculture will face worker shortages."

EMILY BAZAR in USA Today.

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Feds take border fence fight to court

"The Justice Department as early as next week will go to court to force 102 property owners along the U.S.-Mexico boundary, including 71 in Texas, to allow surveyors to determine if the border fence should be built on their lands.

The 102 land owners — including 20 in California and 11 in Arizona — either rebuffed or ignored a 30-day deadline given by the Department of Homeland Security to provide access to their lands for the fence, which has been particularly hotly contested in the Rio Grande Valley."

MICHELLE MITTELSTADT in the Houston Chronicle's Washington Bureau.

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January 08, 2008

As ICE cracks down on workplaces, ID scams crank up

"He went by the name Chilango – Spanish slang for a resident of Mexico City.

For a price, he could provide "pantalones," or pants, for men and "faldas," or skirts, for women – his codes names for the all-important work documents that illegal immigrants needed to land a job at the rural East Texas plants of Pilgrim's Pride, the nation's largest poultry processor.

Now, "Chilango," or Daniel Totosaus Rodriguez, along with nearly two dozen others, is facing criminal charges of selling or using stolen or freshly fabricated work documents, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Texarkana Division, in December."

DIANNE SOLíS in the Dallas Morning News.

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January 07, 2008

Citizenship requirement for law enforcement hurts immigrants

"A citizenship requirement to become a police officer or firefighter in many states, including Tennessee and Georgia, keeps recent immigrants here from qualifying for those jobs."

PERLA TREVIZO in the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

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