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October 30, 2010

Shaping State Laws With Little Scrutiny

"ALEC is a membership organization. State legislators pay $50 a year to belong. Private corporations can join, too. The tobacco company Reynolds American Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp. and drug-maker Pfizer Inc. are among the members. They pay tens of thousands of dollars a year. Tax records show that corporations collectively pay as much as $6 million a year.

With that money, the 28 people in the ALEC offices throw three annual conferences. The companies get to sit around a table and write "model bills" with the state legislators, who then take them home to their states."

LAURA SULLIVAN for NPR on Oct. 29, 2010.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 11:45 AM |

October 28, 2010

Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law

"NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.

The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them."

LAURA SULLIVAN for NPR on Oct. 28, 2010.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 06:30 AM |

October 25, 2010

Immigrant Vets Can Face Deportation

"When Rohan Coombs joined the U.S. Marine Corps, he never thought he would one day be locked up in an immigration detention center and facing deportation from the nation he had vowed to defend.

Mr. Coombs, 43, born in Jamaica, immigrated to the United States legally as a child with his family. He signed up to serve his adopted nation for six years, first in Japan and the Philippines, then in the Persian Gulf during the first war with Iraq."

JULIANA BARBASSA for the Associated Press on Oct. 25, 2010.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 04:05 AM |

October 21, 2010

Lawless [Immigration] Courts

"As long as adjudicators process a high volume of cases, the agency will ignore and even cover up serious misconduct, including deportations of US citizens or people who have other avenues of relief. One immigration judge told me, "I'm afraid there's a premium on quotas and productivity, and not the truth.""

JACQUELINE STEVENS, The Nation magazine, Nov. 8, 2010.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 07:57 PM |

Deportation orders for Austin mom, son dismissed

"Valquires Geraldes' fear that she and her son, Wilson, would one day be deported from their Austin home to their native Brazil was no fleeting concern. It hung over her head more than 20 years.

"It was a nightmare," Geraldes said of their extraordinary legal case, which raised humanitarian concerns about 24-year-old Wilson Geraldes, who has severe autism, learning disabilities and limited communication skills.

Now her anxiety has been lifted, Geraldes said Wednesday. Late last month, an immigration judge in San Antonio terminated deportation proceedings for her and Wilson, their attorney Simon Azar-Farr of San Antonio said."

JUAN CASTILLO in the Austin American-Statesman, Oct. 20, 2010.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 05:18 AM |

October 11, 2010

Report Finds Feds Falling Behind in Promised Reform

"Immigrant advocacy groups cheered in 2009 when the federal government admitted shortcomings in the way it detains people awaiting deportation or hearings before immigration judges. In a lengthy report by Dora Schriro, the former director of the Office of Detention Policy and Planning, the feds acknowledged that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly called ICE, “is comprised primarily of law enforcement personnel with extensive expertise performing removal functions, but not in the design and delivery of detention facilities and community-based alternatives.”  

A new report card from three of those advocacy groups, released this month, paints a mixed picture of progress since then. Compiled by Detention Watch Network, the National Immigrant Justice Center and the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights, the report notes that ICE leadership “has continued to demonstrate a strong commitment to achieving systemic change within the next three to five years.” But it’s fallen short of loftier goals, failing to tackle alleged human rights violations within the detention system and to expand alternatives to incarceration."

JULIAN AGUILAR in the Texas Tribune, Oct. 11, 2010.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:32 AM |

October 04, 2010

At War In Texas

"Nowhere has the post-9/11 border-security framework been so enthusiastically adopted—and adapted—as in Texas, where local law enforcement, the state political leadership, and a contingent of the congressional delegation have taken border security into their own hands, albeit largely with federal funding."

TOM BARRY in the Boston Review, Sept/Oct 2010.

Posted by Dan Kowalski at 08:33 AM |