Home

« June 2009 | Main | August 2009 »

July 28, 2009

Report: Immigration detention violated standards

"Immigrant advocates say the federal government has failed to meet its own standards for detaining immigrants, making it unduly difficult for immigrants to defend themselves in court and fight to remain in the country.

A report released Tuesday says detainees face limited access to phones, mail and law libraries in violation of federal standards. The authors based their findings on more than 18,000 pages of documents that showed facilities across the country limited detainees' access to legal materials and transferred them without proper notice."

AMY TAXIN for the Associated Press.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:54 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

Suits for wrongful deportation by ICE rise

"Citizens who have been wrongfully locked up in immigration jails can't reclaim the months or years they spent behind bars, but some of them are seeking restitution and suing the U.S. government."

TYCHE HENDRICKS in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:29 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

July 27, 2009

U.S. citizens tell of ICE lockup, deportations

"When Brian Lyttle got word on April 22 from the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala that his brother Mark had been deported to Mexico and bumped around Central America for three months, he was floored.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 01:39 PM | | TrackBacks (0)

Harvard Grad Hits Immigration Roadblock

"Back in the concrete suburb of Los Angeles where he grew up, they call him “Harvard.’’ He is the pride of a neighborhood of children who grew up just as he did, bouncing from one crowded apartment to the next, sleeping on sofa cushions on the floor, wired to the constant threat of violence.

Alan was not just a street-smart kid in a baseball cap but a gifted student who breezed through math problems and quoted Milton and Dante. He was a voracious reader, the high school salutatorian, and last month, he graduated from Harvard with a degree in the humanities.

But now Alan has hit a dead end, because one night 19 years ago his mother led him across the Mexican border into California, making him an illegal immigrant. His only legal employment option as a college graduate now is to return to Mexico, where he has few contacts and fewer prospects."

MARIA SACCHETTI in the Boston Globe.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:55 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

July 26, 2009

U.S. citizens wrongly detained, deported by ICE

"The son of a decorated Vietnam veteran, Hector Veloz is a U.S. citizen, but in 2007 immigration officials mistook him for an illegal immigrant and locked him in an Arizona prison for 13 months.

Veloz had to prove his citizenship from behind bars. An aunt helped him track down his father's birth certificate and his own, his parents' marriage certificate, his father's school, military and Social Security records.

After nine months, a judge determined that he was a citizen, but immigration authorities appealed the decision. He was detained for five more months before he found legal help and a judge ordered his case dropped.

"It was a nightmare," said Veloz, 37, a Los Angeles air conditioning installer.

Veloz is one of hundreds of U.S. citizens who have landed in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and struggled to prove they don't belong there, according to advocacy groups and legal scholars, who have tracked such cases around the country. Some citizens have been deported."

TYCHE HENDRICKS in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:02 PM | | TrackBacks (0)

Why are U.S.-allied refugees still branded as 'terrorists?'

"Almost every day for three years, prison guards at one of Saddam Hussein's most notorious prisons tortured Sami Alkarim.

Now, in a cruel twist of fate, the accomplished Iraqi artist is being treated like a terrorist by the U.S., the country where he sought refuge.

U.S. officials have told him they can't give him permanent residency in Denver because of messenger work he did as a teenager for the same political party that counts the current prime minister of Iraq as a member."

MARISA TAYLOR for McClatchy.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 11:09 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

July 24, 2009

Girl bears brunt of immigration sweep that took parents

"Katherine does not have a detailed opinion on immigration reform. Or the effectiveness of workplace raids. Or local police agencies enforcing immigration laws.

She just knows how her parents' arrests have upended her life. She's not living at home anymore. She went weeks without seeing her mom and dad. And she doesn't know how long it will be before her parents are beside her every day."

RICHARD RUELAS in the Arizona Republic.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 09:29 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

July 23, 2009

Fla. hospital defends secretly deporting patient

"All sides agree on one thing in the case of a South Florida hospital that secretly repatriated a seriously brain injured patient back to Guatemala.

During the early hours of a steamy July 2003 morning, Martin Memorial Medical Center chartered a private plane and sent Luis Jimenez back to the Central American country without telling his relatives in the U.S. or Guatemala — even as his cousin and legal guardian, Montejo Gaspar, frantically sought to stop the move.

There, things get murky. Gaspar is suing the hospital for essentially deporting Jimenez, who was an illegal immigrant. The hospital, which spent more than $1.5 million on his care over three years, says Jimenez wanted to go home.

Underlying the dispute is the broader question of what Americans expect a hospital to do with a patient who requires long-term care, is unable to pay and doesn't qualify for federal or state aid because of his immigration status. Health care and immigration experts across the country are watching the case, which could set precedent in Florida and possibly beyond. Lawyers for Jimenez said this appears to be the first time a lawsuit has been filed in such a case."

LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ, AP Hispanic Affairs Writer

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 02:22 PM | | TrackBacks (0)

Deported migrants left in limbo at border

"They are the collateral effect of America's stepped-up immigration enforcement, dividing families and leaving expelled migrants on a fence between Mexico and the United States - between past and future.

Nogales is not home, not even familiar to most. In the heat of summer, its streets overflow with aimless deportees."

DENNIS WAGNER in the Arizona Republic.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:59 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

July 22, 2009

Report Says Immigration Agents Broke Laws and Agency Rules in Home Raids

"Armed federal immigration agents have illegally pushed and shoved their way into homes in New York and New Jersey in hundreds of predawn raids that violated their own agency rules as well as the Constitution, according to a study to be released on Wednesday by the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law."

NINA BERNSTEIN in the New York Times.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:47 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

Most Mexicans in U.S. Stay Put Despite Recession

"Despite the recession, the flow of Mexican immigrants out of the United States and back into Mexico has stayed level, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center."

TARA BAHRAMPOUR in the Washington Post.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:16 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

July 13, 2009

ICE program is casting a wide net

"[C]ritics see a troubling trend in the data

Nationally, only 15 percent of the 6,130 suspects that authorities filed paperwork to detain after finding a match in the system were classified as “aggravated felons” — the agency's primary target group. The percentage was even lower in Harris County, with fewer that one in 10 suspects falling into that category, according to ICE statistics from late October to the end of April, the most recent available."

SUSAN CARROLL in the Houston Chronicle.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:14 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

Mentally ill immigrants have little hope for care when detained

"Sanchez was one of the lucky few: His siblings pooled their money to hire an attorney, who made a compelling case to an immigration judge. Sanchez went from the detention center to a San Antonio psychiatric hospital, where he should have been all along.

But most mentally ill immigrants aren't so fortunate.

They get limited mental-health care while in detention, advocates say – and that's only if they're diagnosed.

They aren't entitled to competency hearings before standing trial. And the majority of them face judges without legal counsel, and with little recourse to defend themselves from deportation."

EMILY RAMSHAW in the Dallas Morning News.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:07 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

'No justice, no pizza!' protestors tell Pizza Hut

CHICAGO: "“I have spent my whole life – since I was 17 years old – working at Pizza Hut. Instead of respecting my hard work, Pizza Hut has thrown me on the street with nothing,” said Leonidez Contreras, now 33 years old.

Contreras is among over 200 workers in the Chicago area who have been fired by Pizza Hut since February after they were told to re-verify their eligibility for employment allegedly on the basis of “no-match letters” or face termination. The workers, mostly immigrants and Latinos, were given no notice and no opportunity to contest the information."

JOHN BACHTELL in the People's Weekly World.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:22 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

A race between protection and deportation

"Roughly 50 applicants for U-visas are being held in immigration detention centers around the country, racing the clock to get their visas granted before they are deported. Hundreds more who are not in detention are involved in removal proceedings in Immigration Courts. Immigration attorneys said detention and the threat of deportation undermine the law that Congress passed in 2000 creating the U-visas, which are designed to bolster law enforcement's ability to investigate and prosecute certain crimes while offering protection to undocumented victims and their families."

ANNA GORMAN in the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:00 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

July 06, 2009

More men victims of human trafficking

"The soft-spoken Salvadoran man bears no resemblance to the iconic images of human-trafficking victims, young girls whose faces are plastered on billboards alongside 1-800 numbers to report crimes."

SUSAN CARROLL in the Houston Chronicle.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 09:14 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

July 01, 2009

Born on the 4th of July

"He was born on the Fourth of July, an irony he would only appreciate later, during the dark period of his life, when liberty and freedom became far more than mere words in his high school history book.

Daniel Guadron has been fighting the odds all his young life, mostly as a happy warrior, winning admirers and supporters at every turn.

It's not just that he excelled in school: The straight-A student mastered English within months of emigrating from Guatemala at 13, then mastered French. He's aced every math test he has ever taken."

HELEN O'NEILL for the Associated Press.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 03:51 PM | | TrackBacks (0)