For anyone that has been following our blog on the past couple of days, you may have read over Matias’s post (found here) about Andrea and her case here in sunny Florida.

I am proud to say that once again due to efforts of activists across the country, endless calls, letters, faxes, and petition signatures, Andrea has been granted a six months to assemble her case on what has been denoted as a “stay of removal”!

Please read on the statement released to us by her friends from Politicorps and Bus Project :

After hearing word of her detention last Tuesday, an impromptu coalition of non-profits, advocates, students, lawyers and individuals from across the country came together in support of Andrea.  Hundreds of people were recruited to petition for Andrea’s release, putting phone calls into ICE offices in DC and Florida.

Andrea will be released on a “stay of removal” this afternoon and will have six months to assemble her case.

“We’ll continue to work closely with her during this next phase, but for now – we just want to express how grateful we are for the incredible outpouring of support, advice, resources, time, and love,” says Caitlin Baggott, Director of PolitiCorps, “Andrea deserves a chance to achieve her American dream.”

Our friends at SWER, who also moved swiftly on Andrea’s behalf,  had something to say about this victory:

Though it may be with great despair that DREAM Act students continue to get deported and Congress seems to move slow on legislation, Andrea’s victory gives me great hope!  It’s yet another example of the dedication, hard work, and efficiency provided by passionate DREAMer’s all across the nation.  Our immigrant rights movement, led by the undocumented youth of this nation, can shake the world and achieve the impossible! – Carlos Roa

Thank you all for all your help and support on this case, it is all of you who help us move forward and there are no words to express our gratitude. From SWER to our friends at Oregon, to all of you who have made a phone call, called your friends, signed petitions. You guys rock!

DREAM Act here we come!

For more information about the Andrea’s case, please contact Mollie Ruskin at 503.928.2988/mollieru@gmail.com or Caitlin Baggott 503.804.7644/ caitlin.baggott@gmail.com.

Or drop us a line in the comments!

No one could have ever prepared me for what I would see on the link posted by a fellow DreamACTivist. The link led to the Target website, where I witnessed an object for sale that still has me in a state of shock and awe.

The item is described as “Illegal Alien Adult Costume One Size,” and it depicts an extraterrestrial “alien” wearing an orange jumpsuit with the words “ILLEGAL ALIEN” stamped on the front, and to make matters worse, is holding a “Green Card.” I felt slapped with a heavy dose of WTF????

Where to start? First of all, why is the extraterrestrial being used as the face of the “illegal alien?” How can you reduce the entire undocumented population to a being, a myth, something that is NOT EVEN HUMAN? We are not even worth a human face, human eyes to acknowledge the injustice and racism and hatred in the world, as evidenced by the very existence of this so-called “costume,” or a human mouth to speak out against actions such as this that further widen the deep chasm in our society surrounding immigration.

Secondly, why the orange jumpsuit? Why the implication that we are all criminals? We do not need another sick and twisted reminder of the ineffective systems of our detention centers, where nursing mothers are separated from the children and humiliated by guards, where the children lack access to an education, where they are issued child-size jumpsuits and are only permitted a minute amount of time outside of a prison of walls and cells and bricks.

Thirdly, why the “green card?” Why taunt and insult our community with the one thing we have been denied, day after day, year after year? Why fuel the lies and misconceptions that already are a tremendous burden to bear? Why contribute to the cycle of oppression, of discrimination, of inequality? Never could I imagine that Target could stoop to this level.

People have begun to respond by leaving reviews on the Target site, which I encourage everyone who feels this is wrong to also do. One particular review stood out to me, and left me almost as speechless as the actual “costume” itself:

People are SOO sensitive! I think this is great. We now can understand what its like to be illegal in this country. Thank God most of us only have to do it for 1 night!! For those of you who do it every day, its causing way too much traffic and draining our economy. Come here legally and acclimate (means speak english) or stay where you are. Thanks!!

So now I’m being sensitive eh? I say I’m tired of my identity constantly being ripped away and the image of what America feels like I should look like handed to me in return, and I’m being sensitive? I say I’m worried about the message undocumented children will take away from this, that they will always be less than, will always be different, will never be normal, the one thing all children crave, and I’m being sensitive? I say I’m tired of people stepping on our community, only to turn around and make a profit from such treatment, and I’m being sensitive?

Well so be it Target, because this is just crossing the line. You’ve messed with the wrong movement.

In case you missed it:

His sibling was granted citizenship due to her younger age. He wasn’t.

Had the DREAM Act passed on this fateful day last year, Virgil Ciprian “Chip” Gilea would not be in jail.

His crime? He was brought here at the age of 15 by his parents who are now U.S. citizens, graduated from Boardman High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Youngstown State University.

His family is in the United States, he works and owns a car and home. Despite this, ICE has labeled him a ‘flight risk’ and refuses to release him from detention.

ICE officials wrote: “Your lack of regard for the immigration laws of the United States is blatant [...] along with facts that you have no equities in the United States, and little sponsorship if released, that you are considered to be a flight risk, and deemed likely to abscond.”

His parents are U.S. citizens along with a sibling. What kind of ridiculous U.S. immigration law renders one child an illegal while the other legal? Why doesn’t Chip, originally from Romania, have any sponsorship? Could it be because due to his Immigration Attorney filing his application 3 days late, he was rendered ‘illegal’ by the IJ? Once you are an ‘illegal alien’ in the United States without a 245-I, it is next to impossible to gain legal status.

Yet, ICE still shows a blatant ignorance of immigration laws. Michael Gilhooly, an ICE spokesman, stated, “It’s a crime to be in the U.S. illegally.”

Newsflash Gilhooly: Illegal presence is not a crime; it is a civic violation. Have they not given you a lesson in the ‘law of the land?’

Now why is a person in detention for a mere civic violation, separated from his family and community? Even if you believe that Chip should be deported, he does not deserve to be treated like a criminal.

If you live in Ohio and even if you don’t, consider contacting Senator Sherrod Brown who has taken interest in this case.

Read the whole story here.

How many is too many?

Parrish discovered he had an outstanding arrest warrant for a bad check and came to the jail to pay a small “no arrest” bond. But the 50-year-old father of five from Brooklyn said he was finger printed, strip searched, and sent to the inmate intake area because a deputy thought he was an illegal immigrant.

Full story is here

This is by no means and isolated incident.

Read the rest of this entry →

Source: HNA

Washington, DC – Last night, Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA) introduced legislation to protect U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents from being unlawfully detained and deported by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In the wake of sweeping immigration raids that have devastated communities across the country, the ACLU welcomes this bill, S.3594, The Protect Citizens and Residents from Unlawful Raids and Detention Act, as the first legislation to require DHS to follow due process standards in executing immigration raids.

“The Protect Citizens and Residents from Unlawful Raids and Detention Act is long overdue,” said Joanne Lin, ACLU legislative counsel. In recent years, immigration detention and deportation rates have grown exponentially: last year over 300,000 people were deported and over 30,000 people held in immigration detention daily. DHS?s immigration enforcement actions have been so sweeping and untargeted that they have ensnared U.S. citizens. Hundreds of U.S. citizens have been unlawfully detained by DHS, and at least one U.S. citizen was illegally deported to Mexico, a country he had never lived in. According to Lin, “These gross due process violations have occurred because there are no controls or regulations governing DHS?s conduct. This bill is a necessary antidote to DHS?s unchecked and unconstitutional immigration enforcement powers.”

. . .

These ACLU lawsuits highlight the urgent need for Congress to pass legislation that curbs ICE?s unconstitutional raids, detention and deportation practices. To this end, this legislation would do the following:

* Create due process protections, such as notification of immigration charges and access to counsel and phones, during immigration enforcement efforts;
* Require DHS to implement regulations to ensure that immigration detainees are treated humanely;
* Promote “alternatives to detention” programs that are more humane and cost-effective than traditional penal-style detention;
* Establish an ICE ombudsman to investigate complaints and to create DHS accountability; and
* Provide labor protections to ensure that ICE worksite raids do not undermine labor or employment law investigations.

Should these things not be a given, should we really need lawsuits and new legislation to make sure that a human being is treated as a human being?

Source: SF Gate

Hopefully no one is too surprised by these sort of stories, apparently an immigrant died recently due to the spread of his cancer which could have been prevented / treated had the detention facility not said getting a biopsy is an elective procedure.

The family of an illegal immigrant who died of penile cancer after pleading for treatment during 11 months in custody can sue government officials for allegedly violating his constitutional rights, a federal appeals court ruled today.

. . .

Castaneda, 36, died in February at his Los Angeles-area home, a year after doctors amputated his penis to try to stop the spread of the cancer that had developed while he was in custody. He testified in October 2007 to a congressional committee looking into complaints of shoddy care and preventable deaths at centers that hold tens of thousands of immigrants during deportation proceedings.

. . .

According to his lawsuit, a doctor first noticed a growth on his penis in 2005, while he was in state custody. While the lesions multiplied and his pain increased, doctors and immigration agency officials rejected staff recommendations for a biopsy, describing it as an elective procedure, the suit said.

A doctor finally ordered a biopsy in January 2007 and said Castaneda probably had cancer, but the immigration agency released him without treatment 11 days later, the suit said. He underwent amputation in a Los Angeles hospital.

Once again, a total disregard for human life.

Source: News & Record

GREENSBORO – Moises Campos Palencia made a left turn that changed his life – possibly forever.

Police last month stopped Palencia, saying the light had turned red before he made it through the intersection.

Palencia didn’t get a ticket, but they found he had a standing deportation order dating to when he was a child brought here illegally by his parents.

Now the Greensboro business owner is sitting in a Georgia jail, hoping he can stay legally and wondering when he’ll see his wife and 4-year-old daughter – both U.S. citizens – again.

Palencia said his life is here, not Mexico.

“I went to school. I graduated. I started my business. I paid my taxes,” he said, speaking from a phone at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga. “I know that I haven’t done anything wrong in this country.”

The sudden separation is hard on them, he said. Hundreds of miles separate him from his family. His wife, Nayelli Rojas Campos , worries about keeping their car audio business going. His daughter wonders where her daddy went.

“I grew up here. I don’t have anything in my country,” Palencia said. “My wife is here. My daughter is here. It’s hurting us a lot.”

His story illustrates an often-murky situation experienced by immigrants brought here as children.

They didn’t choose to come here, and often arrive at such a young age they have no memory of living in another country. For all practical purposes, they are Americans. If they had been born here, instead of brought here at a young age, they would be citizens.

But they often were not brought here in accordance with immigration laws, either, and make up a significant portion of the undocumented immigration population in the United States.

For foes of illegal immigration, issues such as education and other services for undocumented children are a hot button.

And once they are caught up in the immigration system, a path to citizenship can be difficult if not impossible.

Palencia arrived when he was 9. Not long afterward, his parents were caught and ultimately were deported. Palencia, though, never left, bouncing around different homes, ultimately winding up with his sister, said his attorney, Jeremy McKinney .

He ultimately wound up in removal proceedings himself, and while still in his early teens, went to court and agreed to voluntary deportation.

He faced a deadline to leave, but his sister worked to help him stay, and they won a postponement of the deportation. According to Palencia, he never got official notice of a date to leave.

In 2000, he married his high school girlfriend, a U.S. citizen, and filed under a Clinton-era provision, now expired, that would have cleared up his status. They divorced a few years later, though, scuttling that plan.

Then he got to know Rojas Campos, who also was brought here from Mexico as a child. Unlike Palencia, who had few options once his parents were set to be deported, she wound up on a path to citizenship.

Their situations now illustrate the contradictions of immigration policy. If Palencia had arrived in the United States today, he would be eligible for a green card. Instead, while his wife was sworn in as a citizen in early September, he awaits deportation.

Read the rest of this entry →

What an amazingly horrifying ordeal, it makes you wonder, if he can’t get asylum then who can?

Here is some history for his now pending case:

On the evening of Sept. 12, 1998, Hajdari was at the headquarters of the Democratic Party of Albania, in the capital city of Tirana. Hajdari had been leader of the student movement widely credited for toppling the Communist regime in Albania. He had been the Democratic Party’s first chairman. And he was serving his fourth term as a member of the Albanian parliament. At party headquaters, Hajdari was chatting with his personal bodyguard, Besim Cerja; with a volunteer doorkeeper, Xhemal Neza; and with Xhemal’s cousin Zenel.

“Hajdari was a man of great integrity and we respected him very much,” recalls Xhemal Neza in an affidavit of April 2007. “Shortly before 9:30 p.m. the telephone rang and Hajdari spoke to the caller. When he hung up the telephone, he told us, ‘We have to leave immediately,’ because Izet Haxhia had told us to come at once. Haxhia was the personal body guard of Sali Berisha, who had become president of Albania in 1992. Berisha was the main leader of the Party on 12 September 1998. I personally heard Hajdari say the call was from Haxhia.”

“I opened the door,” continues the affidavit of the volunteer doorkeeper, “and Hajdari, Cerja, and my cousin Zenel Neza went out and got into Hajdari’s car, which was inside the walled compound. Cerja was driving; Hajdari was in the front passenger seat, and Zenel Neza was in the back seat. While I was closing the gate the car traveled out and turned right onto the street; after it moved about four meters, a black Mercedes 500 with Vlora license plates moved up and blocked its path. There was a light gray Jeep SUV just behind the Mercedes.”

“At about 9:30 p.m. Hajdari was shot. News reports saying he was killed at 10:00 p.m. are mistaken. I was about four meters from Hajdari when they killed him. I saw the persons who fired the shots and saw them pull the triggers. There were four assassins in the two cars.” Three of the assassins got out of their cars carrying automatic rifles. They were all wearing police uniforms. Xhemal recognized them as people he had grown up with.

Hajdari and his personal body guard were killed on the spot. In the back seat, Zenel Neza was critically wounded. Xhemal called his brother Rrustem, and together with cousins Skender and Gani they managed to get Zenel to a doctor and then to safety in a nearby town.

The next day there was a demonstration. Police fired on the crowd, killing several people, and knocking Xhemal unconscious. There was yet another demonstration the next day. And this time, Rrustem Neza told the crowd of “about a thousand people” what Xhemal had seen and who the killers were. Xhemal went into hiding, moving every week. During one of the moves, his driver, cousin Skender, was killed.

“The police blasted Skender’s car with gunfire and began searching for me, but fortunately I had run in the opposite direction.” Meanwhile, cousin Gani was also killed. Of the four men who were part of the fateful rescue mission for Zenel Neza, two were dead. Zenel managed to escape the country. The other two, brothers Rrustem and Xhemal, eventually fled to Texas.

After all of this ICE, being the fabulous agency they are, tries to deport the man back the country that tried to murder him.

In late August 2007, ICE officials retrieved Rrustem from Haskell and forced him to board an Albania-bound airplane in Dallas. He screamed for his life, and ICE was forced to take him off the plane back to Haskell.

Ahh, I guess the one good thing about ICE is that they never give up, you put a stop to their inhumane practice and they just find a way to one up you.

On Sept. 11, 2007 Rrustem Neza made the Dallas Morning News as “Albanian who screamed himself off plane.” Completely unembarrassed by all this, the heart of ICE was hardened, and on Oct. 1, US officials asked for a federal court order to “dope and deport” Mr. Neza, rendering him pharmaceutically incapable of screaming next time around.

Note to self, if someone begs you not to deport them, as they think know they are going to be killed, then you should drug them first and then deport them.

Full article can be found on the Texas Civil Rights Review website.

Not that this should really be news to any of us but I just came across this article and it seems as though ICE is passing on the torch to one of its fellow contractors. . .

A new lawsuit filed against a private contractor who runs an immigrant child detention center claims nine teenagers were beaten and abused by employees who work for Cornell Companies. The company has been cited by immigration officials for safety problems in the past. The Hector Garza facility in San Antonio handles young immigrant “males with serious behavioral and psychological impairments”.

But as everything immigration related the public is all over this right? I am sure the agency, the contractors involved, and even the local leaders are all getting calls day and night about this injustice against innocent children. . .

“I think the general American has no idea these kids even exist,” said Susan Watson, Texas RioGrande Legal Aid attorney for the nine plaintiffs, “When our own government treats them this way, they deserve their day in court,” she said.

What exactly is alleged you say?

The plaintiffs claim they notified authorities of multiple beatings but no action was taken.

One of the plaintiffs is described in court documents as a 16-year-old Honduran male identified as C.C. Arriving at the border alone, C.C. was put into custody for a week by Border Patrol agents. He was later transferred to the Hector Garza Center, where court filings claim a teacher “severely battered C.C. punching and kicking him, then beating him with a chair as he lay on the floor.”

Lawsuit filings claim C.C. conveyed this to the authorities but nothing was done. A week later, court documents indicate C.C. came to the defense of another child who was being beaten. C.C. was hit again, this time losing consciousness and ended up in the hospital, according to the civil complaint.

Can I get some “illegal is illegal” please?

Now you have to know you have done something wrong when ICE calls you out on it!

This is not the first time Cornell Companies has been accused of safety problems. In September, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency pulled all 600 detainees from an Albuquerque jail run by Cornell.

ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said the agency, “had great concern over the health, safety and security of our detainees in the facility” but would not provide any more detail. News reports at the time described a dirty, crowded facility with excessive heat and poor medical conditions. Nantel said the agency terminated its memorandum of understanding with the company this winter.

But don’t worry, this is just ONE contractor at one detention center, not all contractors are this horrendous in their treatment of children. . .

Cornell Companies is just one of the companies that manages 36 ORR facilities nationwide. Documentation of care for immigrant detainee children in these detention centers across the country is poor according to a March, 2008 report from the Inspector General for Health and Human Services. The report found, based on a sampling of case files, that more than half lacked one or more required assessments for the children. Half did not contain education records and more than half did not include notes from counseling sessions. Auditors say this left it unclear whether children were receiving services at all.

Wow, so many detention centers across the country, so much money is spent on them and yet we are left with JUST a poor ranking? Would we continuously return children to the care of parents who abuse them? Why are we then making an exception for ICE and its contractors, who seem to have no regard for a human life?

Do children really deserve to be treated like this?

Link to Article