Aggregated Immigration Stories

"One Saturday evening in February, Gumercindo was chatting with a friend outside his central Phoenix apartment complex when a man walked up and demanded $100 from each.

"We told him we didn't have any money," recalled Gumercindo, who declined to give his last name because he is undocumented.

The man threw a large rock at Gumercindo, hitting the 31-year-old Guatemalan immigrant in the head above the right eye. Gumercindo fell to the ground, blood pouring down his face, as the man ran away. He now has a scar the size of a hockey puck where doctors operated to relieve pressure on his brain.

Gumercindo did not report the crime to police. He said that although he is afraid of criminals, he is even more afraid of being deported."

Daniel González in the Arizona Republic.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 01:35 PM | Permalink

Camden County, Mo. - "Sometime within the next few weeks, the Morgan County Justice Center will reach an important milestone - a total of $5 million will have been generated through holding ICE detainees. In 2003, the county signed an extensive contract with the federal government to house U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement inmates. Before then, Morgan County Sheriff Jim Petty said the county’s new justice center was much too large to be supported just by local prisoners. “We didn’t have the money to pay for it based on the size and its use,” Petty said. After the county reviewed and signed the ICE contract, it created a new stream of revenue into the Sheriff’s Office. A little more than five years later, Petty said $5 million has been added to the county’s coffers."

DEANNA WHEELER in the Lake Sun Leader.

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"These 37 men spent 525 years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. Then came the hard part: freedom."

MICHAEL HALL in Texas Monthly.

[Disclosure: One of the men featured in the piece, Carlos Lavernia, was my client.  He did even more time in immigration custody after being released from prison.  A team of lawyers finally got him out.  That saga is here and here. DK]

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"Federal authorities have released a Los Angeles man from immigration detention after acknowledging that he is a U.S. citizen."

ANNA GORMAN in the Los Angeles Times.

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"Supporters say the increase in federal DNA collection would help law enforcement more quickly and efficiently solve crimes, particularly those involving illegal immigrants. But dozens of organizations have questioned the legality and fairness of collecting and storing people's unique genetic makeup when they are merely under suspicion of a crime or immigration violation."

SUSAN CARROLL and STEWART POWELL in the Houston Chronicle.

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U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Dolinger ordered the owner of several popular Vietnamese cafes to pay more than $4.6 million in back wages and overtime dating to 1999, plus fines and penalties, to a group of former employees who said they had received substandard wages."

DAVID B. CARUSO for the Associated Press.

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Last week in San Francisco, a federal judge ordered back pay to braceros, the original guest workers from Mexico who laid track for American rail companies in the World War II era.

A few days earlier in Atlanta, another federal judge ruled that 3,000 pineros, the "men of the pines" who plant the massive pine plantations of the deep South, have been grossly underpaid and subjected to capricious industry rules made possible by the workers' social and physical isolation. The court also ordered compensation.

The rulings offer troubling insights into how US industries, especially in the South, exploit foreign guest workers under the loosely regulated H-2B visa program."

PATRIK JONSSON in the Christian Science Monitor.

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"Jane Doe — a petite woman in her 60s or 70s, with dementia so advanced she no longer walks or talks — is one of an untold number of anonymous older people in state custody across the country whose long-term care is confounded by federal Medicaid policy concerning immigrants."

ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS and ANGELICA MEDAGLIA in the New York Times.

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"Authorities under fire from immigration activists and legislators for dragging out the process are responding to class action lawsuits filed by Muslim immigrants in several states claiming discrimination. They say they are redoubling efforts to clear old cases by November.

And, authorities anticipate once that backlog is eliminated, newer citizenship applications should move through the system swiftly, thanks to additional resources from the federal government."

MADHU KRISHNAMURTHY in the (Chicago) Daily Herald.

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"[R]ecent complaints paint a picture of an ad hoc detention facility, at times housing up to 100 men during the day and dozens of immigrants at night. ICE has standards that apply to detention centers but none that affect staging centers."

SANDRA HERNANDEZ in the Daily Journal.

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"Sheriff Joe Arpaio traded angry words and accusations with Mesa officials Thursday after 60 deputies and posse members armed with search warrants stormed City Hall and the public library in the middle of the night in a hunt for illegal workers. ... About 30 deputies and 30 volunteer posse members in bulletproof vests and carrying semi-automatic weapons prepared for the operation in Pioneer Park across from the Mormon Temple shortly after midnight."

GARY NELSON, MICHAEL KIEFER and JJ HENSLEY in the Arizona Republic.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:47 AM | Permalink

"Tens of thousands of Mexicans who labored in the United States under a World War II-era guest worker program will be eligible to collect back pay under a settlement to a long-fought lawsuit."

PAM BELLUCK in the New York Times.

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"Kyle Brown strode into the job-training class at Goodwill of Greater Washington and smiled at the black men and women he was about to hire as part of his construction company's effort to diversify its mostly Latino workforce."

N.C. AIZENMAN in the Washington Post.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:22 AM | Permalink

"Changing immigration enforcement policy has left federal authorities struggling to cope with rapidly rising numbers of detainees. A controversial partnership in Farmville, Va. proposes to address the crisis with a 1,040-bed, for-profit immigrant detention center. ...

A partnership between ICE, the city of Farmville and a private company proposes to address this crisis with a new 1,000-plus bed immigrant detention center in the small, southside Virginia town. Immigration Centers of America - Farmville (ICA) plans to break ground on Oct. 15 and be operational by June of 2009.

Information about ICA and their qualifications to run a detention facility has been withheld from the public. The company, owned by two real estate developers and the CEO of a company that sells industrial mixers to bakeries, does not have a web site."

JEFF WINDER in Facing South.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 11:50 AM | Permalink

"Offering a haven for gays and lesbians is an emerging field of law in the United States and around the world, lawyers and advocates say, awakening foreigners to the option to live in the United States that was previously unknown. But the practice is raising concerns, as critics cite the potential for fraud and advocates worry that possible homophobia or lack of international experience might lead some judges and government officials to send foreigners back to dangerous lands."

MARIA SACCHETTI in the Boston Globe.

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There wasn’t much to see. It was a standard Monday hearing. Eighteen detainees filled half the seats. Across the aisle, the pews were bare – except for Colleen Waterhouse.

Waterhouse, the chairwoman of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tacoma and Pierce County, has sat in the same spot in the back corner most Mondays over the past three years. She listens, takes notes and fills out stacks of surveys for the National Lawyers Guild’s court watch program."

SCOTT FONTAINE in the News Tribune.

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"The scope of the current exodus has historians and policymakers delving deeper into the almost-forgotten history of the 1930s deportations."

DIANNE SOLíS in the Dallas Morning News.

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"The crackdown on immigrants living here illegally has spread to nearly every corner of the United States. States, counties and private citizens frustrated by federal inaction have taken matters into their own hands.

Here in Ohio, state lawmakers this fall must decide: Will this state crack down, back down or find some middle ground on an issue that has befuddled Congress for years?

In this four-day series, The Dispatch and its Spanish-language weekly, Fronteras de la Noticia, examine the issue."

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:37 PM | Permalink

"Secrecy is an essential part of America's promise to refugees.

When they apply for asylum, they are by definition seeking to escape persecution on the basis of their race, religion, nationality or political views. The law says that everything they write will be kept private. "No information indicating that you have applied for asylum will be provided to any government or country from which you claim a fear of persecution," the instructions for asylum applications state.

When refugees have face-to-face interviews with immigration officials, the promise is repeated, says one local expert on the process. "Everything you tell me will be kept confidential. It won't be shared with your home government," says Regina Germain, legal director of the Rocky Mountain Survivors Center in Denver. "It doesn't say 'unless you're rejected.'"

Sometimes, though, secrets leak out. Especially for those refugees the government decides to send back home. In Peter's case, it began with a mere paperwork error."

LISA RAB in Westword.

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"The D.C. Circuit Court blocked, for at least eight days, the entry of 17 Guantanamo Bay detainees into the U.S., putting on hold a federal judge’s order for their release.  In a three-paragraph order, the Circuit Court said it was issuing a stay only to give it more time to consider the Bush Administration’s not-yet-filed plea for a delay of the entry until it can pursue a full appeal.  The Court said its order “should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits” of the issue of a longer delay pending the appeal."

LYLE DENNISTON in ScotusBlog.

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DURHAM, N.C. - "Angela Guerrero knew she might be overwhelmed for a few weeks, possibly a month, juggling work, child care and the daily grind of family life when her husband set out for the U.S. consulate offices in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

She never expected to be in the predicament she is in - her husband of five years banned from this country for at least a decade, her family torn between two countries and a tangle of immigration issues to unsnarl."

ANNE BLYTHE for McClatchy Newspapers.

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"Sixteen immigrants and seven lawyers from New Haven burst into applause outside of the Hartford Federal Court building, celebrating a small victory in their battle against deportation. ... The targets argue that the feds violated their constitutional rights in the raids. Now they’ll have the chance to make that case in court."

THOMAS MACMILLAN in the New Haven Independent.

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CIUDAD HIDALGO, Michoacan: "After nearly seven years in the United States, Edgar Gutiérrez was back in a hometown he hardly recognized.

Returning as a 16-year-old, Gutiérrez found relatives he couldn't remember. Kids thought he was stuck up because he had lived in the U.S. Teachers scolded him when he pronounced his name with an American accent.

Gutiérrez had spent his early life in these mountains of Central Mexico, but now he felt like a stranger."

JEREMY SCHWARTZ in the Mexico City Bureau of the Austin American-Statesman.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:59 AM | Permalink

"In February, a Senegalese magazine published photographs of what was reported to be an underground gay marriage and said that Mr. Mbaye, who appeared in the photos and is gay himself, had organized the event. In the ensuing six months, Mr. Mbaye said, he was harassed by the police, attacked by armed mobs, driven from his home, maligned in the national media and forced to live on the run across West Africa.

In July, the United States government gave him refugee status, one of the rare instances when such protection has been granted to a foreigner facing persecution based on sexual orientation."

KIRK SEMPLE and LYDIA POLGREEN in the New York Times.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 01:10 PM | Permalink

"The 1,040-bed facility will be unique not only because it will dwarf many of Virginia's jails but also because it is a private venture aimed at capitalizing on the massive influx of detainees into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement system over the past year. A small group of Richmond investors looks to reap millions of dollars in profit by building what has been described as the "mid-Atlantic hub" for ICE operations in a town just three hours south of the nation's capital."

JOSH WHITE and NICK MIROFF in the Washington Post.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:19 AM | Permalink

"A delegation of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was in Austin on Wednesday on a fact-finding mission on the treatment of immigrant families and asylum seekers at the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor and other Texas facilities.

The commission, a body of the Organization of American States, monitors compliance by members, including the U.S., with human rights obligations established by international law."

JUAN CASTILLO in the Austin American-Statesman.

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Sylvia Wong, a human relations specialist with GEO Group Inc., the private contractor that runs the Northwest Detention Center, was charged in U.S. District Court on Tuesday with lying to federal investigators when she claimed in April she did not falsely generate documents."

GENE JOHNSON for the Associated Press.

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