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"A Honduran teenager gained fame as the star of a documentary film that showed the dangers faced by children who ride across Mexico atop freight trains to cross illegally to the United States. But the boy, Kevin Casasola, rode the trains again, and now he has been granted asylum in the United States, his lawyer said on Monday."
JULIA PRESTON in the New York Times on Feb. 22, 2011.
"At the law school, she was one of three speakers at a public-interest class and later a student social-action club. It was Ms. Castillo who captivated the students. She was their age, she dressed like them (when they had to look like lawyers rather than students), she spoke as they spoke and had the same quick intellect. She could have been one of them."
MICHAEL WINERIP in the New York Times on Feb. 21, 2011.
"Importing an Arizona-style immigration law to Indiana puts Gov. Mitch Daniels in a no-win situation politically. No wonder he hasn't said whether he'll sign it."
MARY BETH SCHNEIDER and SOPHIA VORAVONG in the Indianapolis Star on Feb. 19, 2011.
"The opponents of legislation that would outlaw so-called “sanctuary cities” argue that it would turn local police officers into immigration agents and divert resources from their primary job: preventing and solving crime. Law enforcement officers say it could have another, unintended consequence — silencing potential victims and witnesses who will be too afraid to identify themselves to cops."
JULIAN AGUILAR in the Texas Tribune, Feb. 17, 2011.
"A voluntary program to run all criminal suspects' fingerprints through an immigration database was only voluntary until cities refused to participate, thousands of recently released documents show. The Obama administration then tightened the rules so that U.S. cities had no choice but to have the fingerprints checked."
SUZANNE GAMBOA in the Canadian Press on Feb. 15, 2011.
"Immigration is poised to be a heated issue this year with Oklahoma lawmakers proposing nearly 30 bills ranging from restricting property rights of noncitizens to requiring school officials know the legal status of students."
VALLERY BROWN in The Oklahoman, Feb. 14, 2011.
"For almost four months, doctors and nurses at Advocate Christ Medical Center cared for the young Mexican laborer who had fallen from a roof and lost the ability to speak, breathe or move most parts of his body.
But Quelino Ojeda Jimenez was in the U.S. illegally, and just before Christmas he was taken from the Oak Lawn hospital, loaded on an air ambulance and flown to Oaxaca, capital of the Mexican state where he was born.
His abrupt departure, which Ojeda says was undertaken without his consent, outraged a group of Mexicans living in Chicago who had rallied to his aid, tending to him in the hospital and encouraging him not to give up."
JUDITH GRAHAM, BECKY SCHLIKERMAN and ABEL URIBE in the Chicago Tribune, Feb. 6, 2011.
"A federal judge who participated in controversial court hearings after the huge immigration raid in Postville says the 2008 legal proceedings were "a travesty."
District Judge Mark Bennett, who sentenced 57 of the 389 immigrant workers arrested at the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant, makes his allegations in a new documentary film about the raid's aftermath."
TONY LEYS in the Des Moines Register on Feb. 5, 2011.
"Thousands of immigrants from India have crossed into the United States illegally at the southern tip of Texas in the last year, part of a mysterious and rapidly growing human-smuggling pipeline that is backing up court dockets, filling detention centers and triggering investigations."
RICHARD MAROSI and ANDREW BECKER in the Los Angeles Times, Feb. 6, 2011.
"The little girl is captured in a photo taken after her mother's murder, dressed in a frilly pink dress and clutching a grape lollipop, her face nestled in her grandmother's chest.
The grandmother, Marisela Escobedo, looks determined in the snapshot, taken at one of many protests she staged to demand justice for her 16-year-old daughter, Rubi Frayre, whose presumed killer walked free despite confessing to her murder.
It was at one of those protests that a gunman hunted down Escobedo, 52, and shot and killed her just steps from the state capitol building in Chihuahua City on Dec. 16. And in that moment, 3-year-old Heidi Barraza Frayre, the toddler photographed in the pink dress, became — for the second time in her short life — both a victim and a symbol of the deadly violence consuming Mexico.
The little girl now sits in a Houston shelter for immigrant children, separated from her remaining family, surely unable to understand much about the asylum request that has been filed on her behalf."
SUSAN CARROLL and DUDLEY ALTHAUS in the Houston Chronicle, Feb. 2, 2011.
"State legislators intent on cracking down on the hiring of undocumented workers could be embracing a system so fraught with errors that some critics say it actually hinders employers who use it to check the eligibility of new hires. Employers could also be caught up in a constitutional legal battle in the process."
JULIAN AGUILAR in the Texas Tribune, Feb. 3, 2011.