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"A new Arizona law aimed at denying public benefits to undocumented immigrants could hurt U.S. citizens as well.
Pastors, community activists and non-profit directors in Arizona are warning that the bill which took effect last Tuesday could have a chilling effect on immigrant communities and their U.S born children in need of health care, food and housing services."
VALERIA FERNANDEZ in New America Media.
"It took 15 years and the help of a savvy, compassionate immigration official, but the girl who arrived from Guatemala as a toddler to an eager U.S. couple is now an American citizen."
ARLENE MARTINEZ in the Morning Call.
"The federal government said it was revamping its deportation agreements with local sheriffs to focus on ridding the country of dangerous felons. But some North Carolina sheriffs who signed the agreements have not been asked to change their practices.
Lawyers and advocates say the controversial program, which allows sheriff's departments to help identify illegal immigrants and begin deportation proceedings, is operating virtually unchanged - resulting in the deportation of people charged with offenses as minor as disorderly conduct and driving without a license."
KRISTIN COLLINS in the News & Observer.
"Each time Houston writer Pablo Chapoy packed for a trip to Mexico, he carefully counted out his daily doses of his HIV medication, mixing them in with his vitamins and supplements in clear, plastic baggies.
Mindful of the United States' long-standing restrictions on the admission of HIV-positive immigrants and visitors, the 61-year-old green-card holder felt it was too much of a risk to just pack medication in its original prescription bottles. What would happen, he wondered, if U.S. Customs inspectors stopped him on his return trip to Houston and questioned him about his pills?
But no longer."
SUSAN CARROLL in the Houston Chronicle.
BRADY McCOMBS and STEPHEN CEASAR in the Arizona Daily Star produced a multi-part series on Operation Stonegarden:
Operation Stonegarden raises concerns of racial profiling
A multi-part series by Emily Ramshaw in The Texas Tribune on the deplorable state of health "care" in Texas' immigration jails.
Detaining Care, Part One: Mental Hell
"Law enforcement officials around the country say they have noticed a spike in recent years of robbers preying on Hispanics. They say Hispanics have become targets because they often carry cash, are less likely to report crimes, and witnesses and victims are likely to be tough to find or reluctant to testify."
KATE BRUMBACK for the Associated Press.
"According to the State Department, as many as 800,000 men, women and children are trafficked around the world each year, as many as 17,000 in the United States. Lured with false promises of well-paying jobs, victims are forced into prostitution, domestic servitude, farm or factory labor, or other types of work.
According to a 2008 Texas attorney general report, the state is considered a major hub for human trafficking. Nearly 20 percent of victims found nationwide have been in Texas, the report said."
JUAN CASTILLO in the Austin American-Statesman.
"A shelter in Arizona offers a rare, bilingual, culturally-sensitive haven for battered immigrant Latina women. Now, it's turning away women due to crushing demand."
Valeria Fernández in WeNews.
"The federal government is paying $1.2 million to settle the cases of five Muslim immigrants who sued over their detention and treatment in a Brooklyn jail after 9/11, when hundreds of noncitizens were rounded up and held for months before being cleared of links to terrorism and deported."
NINA BERNSTEIN in the New York Times.
"[M]ost detainees with a legal claim to stay in the United States are routinely transferred to more remote jails before they can be helped. The lawyers say their effort has laid bare the fundamental unfairness of a system where immigrant detainees, unlike criminal defendants, can be held without legal representation and moved from state to state without notice.
In a report to be issued on Monday, the association’s City Bar Justice Center is calling for all immigrant detainees to be provided with counsel. And an article to be published this month in The Fordham Law Review treats the Varick jail as a case study in the systemic barriers to legal representation."
NINA BERNSTEIN in the New York Times.