'Just News' Blog

The appearance of separate justice that arose during federal authorities' surprise morning raid at Action Rags USA on Houston's east side fits a nationwide pattern."

STEWART M. POWELL in the Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau.

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School officials say it would make a mockery of the very mission of the university: promoting close ties between the U.S. and Mexico."

CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN for the Associated Press.

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"Zapeta was carrying $59,000 in cash when he was stopped at a security checkpoint at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in 2005. He told authorities he was returning home to Guatemala with the money he had saved working illegally as a dishwasher over 11 years.

But federal law requires that anyone leaving or entering the country with $10,000 or more must declare it. Because Zapeta had not done so, he was detained, and his money was seized.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that the judge who fined Zapeta applied an incorrect standard in determining the amount to be forfeited. The appeals court ordered a hearing to set a new fine."

PATRICK OPPMANN in CNN.

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"A judge Wednesday threw out a lawsuit filed by a Los Angeles resident who wanted to repeal a long-standing LAPD order that restricts when police officers may ask people about their immigration status.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu, granting a motion from the city and the American Civil Liberties Union, said Harold Sturgeon had failed to prove that Special Order 40 was in conflict with federal and state laws that dictate the flow of information between local and federal agencies regarding people's immigration status."

JOEL RUBIN in the Los Angeles Times.

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"In ... immigration raids, citizens and legal, permanent residents have been taken to jail. Jesus Garcia, a former Texas poultry worker, was handcuffed and spent more than 30 hours in ICE custody this year, part of that time in jail. Two co-workers, both citizens, also were arrested. No charges were filed against them.

In April, the Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law, a public interest law firm here, filed claims for damages on behalf of 114 MSE employees, all citizens or legal permanent residents, also called green-card holders. The claims allege that they were subjected to "false imprisonment" and "detention without justification" and seek $5,000 each in damages from the federal government."

EMILY BAZAR in USA Today.

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"An extended family of Ecuadorean immigrants, who worked for years in the back room of an Italian bakery in New Haven, has filed a federal lawsuit alleging members were cheated out of overtime wages, sexually harassed and threatened with deportation if they complained. ... The lawsuit, brought under the "Trafficking Victims Protection Act," paints a picture of women and children dragging heavy bags of flour, operating industrial machines and fending off the lewd advances of their boss."

KIM MARTINEAU and MONICA POLANCO in the Courant.

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"Immigrant rights advocates criticize the screenings, saying that the sheriff's custody assistants are not adequately trained in complex immigration law and that there is room for error that has led to the deportation of at least one U.S. citizen. They also say it discourages ... immigrants from reporting crimes to the Sheriff's Department."

ANNA GORMAN in the Los Angeles Times.

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Fresno, California - "Erasto Vasquez was surprised to see a forklift appear one morning outside his trailer near the corner of East and Springfield, two small rural roads deep in the grapevines, ten miles southwest of Fresno. He and his neighbors pleaded with the driver, but to no avail. The machine uprooted the fence Vasquez had built around his home and left it smashed in the dirt. Then. the forklift's metal tines lifted the side of one trailer high into the air. It groaned and tipped over, with a family's possessions still inside. "We were scared," Vasquez remembers. "I felt it shouldn't be happening, that it showed a complete lack of respect. But who was there to speak for us?"

DAVID BACON in Truthout.

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"By all accounts, Hutto is no longer as oppressive as it was when Elsa and her family first arrived from Honduras. But why didn’t CCA get it right from the start? Or to put it more bluntly, why did a rich company—one with $388 million in revenues last quarter—have to be told by the ACLU to cease treating innocent children like criminals?

“The point I’d like to make is that none of these changes were done voluntarily,” says Hines, the attorney. “When you look at CCA and ICE, the question is, how would this facility have been if no one found out about it?”

The apathetic treatment of Hutto’s immigrants was hardly an anomaly. CCA also operates a detention facility in San Diego that drew a separate ACLU lawsuit last year."

MATT PULLE in the Nashville Scene.

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"[S]ome lawyers argue that the push is overwhelming a federal court system with limited resources and higher priorities.  Even so, administration officials announced this month that they would be funneling more resources toward the effort, called Operation Streamline."

NICOLE GAOUETTE in the Los Angeles Times.

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"A federal appeals court ordered reinstatement Monday for 33 janitors in Los Angeles who were fired because their Social Security numbers did not match the government's database, a ruling that could strengthen unions' case against a Bush administration proposal to pressure employers to get rid of suspected illegal immigrants.

The decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco did not address the legality of the administration's so-called no-match rule, which a federal judge blocked in October. That rule would threaten employers with civil fines and criminal prosecution unless they fired workers who failed to clear up discrepancies between their Social Security numbers and government records.

But in ordering the Los Angeles janitors rehired with back pay, the court said employees can't be fired merely because the Social Security number they submit differs from the number in the government's files - a major issue in lawsuits over the administration's plan."

BOB EGELKO in the San Francisco Chronicle.

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"With $860 million spending sprees, high-tech surveillance towers that don't work and Operation Streamline show trials, it's still the same old catch-and-release game."

MARC COOPER in the LA Weekly.

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"In a scathing opinion, a federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled on Wednesday that immigration judges and the appellate system established as a check on their decisions committed “obvious errors” by denying asylum to three Guinean women who claimed that they were victims of genital cutting [a.k.a. "female genital mutilation," or "FGM"] back in Africa.

The three women — Salimatou Bah, Mariama Diallo and Haby Diallo — had all appealed their asylum cases from lower courts to the Board of Immigration Appeals last year. While they had told the board that they feared for their own safety (and, in two of the women’s cases, for that of their daughters) if they were sent back to Guinea, the board, in separate decisions, ruled that because their genitals had already been cut, they had nothing more to worry about."

ALAN FEUER in the New York Times.

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"I documented thirty-one cases from across the country of US citizens, eight born here, incarcerated as aliens for one month to five years. Fourteen were deported. Five remain in detention."

JACQUELIN STEVENS in The Nation.

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"[B]ecause the government does not pay for court-appointed lawyers, the majority of the children must rely on attorneys willing to work for free to help them, and the surge in the number of illegal immigrant children has strained the availability of free legal help, leaving some teens to face the system on their own.

More than 10,000 children will be detained by the end of the year, the government estimates, compared with 4,615 in 2000."

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"The workers, who walked off jobs in Gulf Coast shipyards in early March, say they were victims of human trafficking when they were brought to the United States under a temporary guest worker program."

JULIA PRESTON in the New York Times.

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"Native Texan Monica Castro thought she had found the perfect way to get custody of her baby girl after breaking up with her undocumented Mexican boyfriend: she called the Border Patrol.

But instead of retrieving the little red-head, Castro stood by helplessly as U.S. authorities arrested her boyfriend in Lubbock and sent their child along with him to Mexico in 2003. It would take three long years before Castro regained custody of the girl.

Now, nearly five years later, Castro is seeking $5 million in damages from the federal government for sending their daughter, a U.S. citizen, with the boyfriend to Mexico."

JAY ROOT in the Star-Telegram's Austin Bureau.

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"Arthur Mkoyan's 4.0 grade-point average has made him a valedictorian at Bullard High School in Fresno and qualified him to enter one of the state's top universities.

But while his classmates look forward to dorm food and college courses this fall, Arthur Mkoyan may not make it.

He is being deported."

Vanessa Colón in the Fresno Bee.

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"Melissa Wagoner, a spokeswoman for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), said there is a shortage of jail beds and public defenders in areas where the program is operating. "Operation Streamline in its current form already strains the capabilities of the law enforcement system past the breaking point," she said.

Others note that, historically, immigration violations have been processed by U.S. administrative courts. Criminalizing illegal immigration while turning a blind eye to employers who provide the jobs that lure migrants makes for good election-year politics but poor policy, said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council."

SPENCER S. HSU in the Washington Post.

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"Three South Texas environmental groups are to sue the Department of Homeland Security in a bid to restore environmental laws along the Texas-Mexico border.

In a statement, the Frontera Audubon Society, the Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, and the Friends of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge said they are suing Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for waiving 36 federal laws in order to speed up construction of border fencing."

STEVE TAYLOR and JOEY GOMEZ in the Rio Grande Guardian.

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