Archive for the ‘Justice’ Category
Lawsuit filed Against U.S. for Wrongfully Deporting U.S. Citizen
12:37 pm By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Justice|North Carolina · 7 Comments
14 Oct 2010Yesterday the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and a number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E) officers over the wrongful deportation of 33 year old Mark Lytlle, a U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican background who has mental disabilities.
According to the complaint( PDF File), in the fall of 2008, Lyttle was detained by I.C.E. in North Carolina, identified as a Mexican national and subsequently deported to Mexico. Lyttle had no ties to Mexico and spoke no Spanish. For four months he lived on the streets and in the shelters and prisons of Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala.
From the ACLU :
Lyttle’s entanglement with immigration authorities began when he was about to be released from a North Carolina jail where he was serving a short sentence for inappropriately touching a worker’s backside in a halfway house that serves individuals with mental disorders. Despite having ample evidence that Lyttle was a U.S. citizen – including his social security number, the names of his parents, his sworn statements that he was born in the United States and criminal record checks – officials from the North Carolina Department of Correction referred him to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as an undocumented immigrant whose country of birth was Mexico. Lyttle had never been to Mexico, shared no Mexican heritage, spoke no Spanish and did not claim to be from Mexico.
Luis Ramirez Federal Hate Crime Trial Underway
8:13 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Justice|pennsylvania · 3 Comments
9 Oct 2010The Federal Hate Crime trial against Brandon Piekarsky and Derrick Donchak, accused of beating Luis Ramirez to death because he was Mexican/Latino is underway.
This trial comes after indictments in December of last year that charge the two men and three police officers in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania of violating Luis Ramirez’s civil rights and conspiring to cover up that violation. In the original criminal trial held last summer, Piekarsky was found not guilty of third degree murder, while Donchak was acquitted of aggravated assault.
In other words, they got away with murder and will continue to get away with murder.
DREAMAct 8 in Court Today
8:51 am By Maegan La Mala · DREAM Act|Immigration|Justice · 1 Comment
1 Oct 2010Eight undocumented youth and students today will be appearing in a Washington D.C. court on charges stemming from sitting in the offices of Senator Reid (D-NV) and Senator McCain (R-AZ) on July 20th of this year. The eight: Reyna Wences from Illinois, Dulce Matuz from Arizona, Myrna Orozco from Missouri, Tania Unzueta from Illinois, Erika Andiola from Arizona, Nicolas Gonzales from Illinois, Laura Lopez from California, and Isabel Castillo from Virginia were charged with “illegal entry” and if found guilty could face up to a year in prision and $1000 fine. Additionally once the criminal trial is over, Department of Homeland Security could get involved and place the students in deportation proceedings.
The eight are expected to present their own defense including presenting testimony, interrogating witnesses, and making closing arguments.
Via / DREAMActivist
578 Orgs Call on Obama to End Dangerous Merger of the Federal Immigration System with State Criminal Justice System
9:15 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Justice · 1 Comment
29 Sep 2010Today, President Obama, the Department of Homeland Security’s Secretary Janet Napolitano, Attorney General Eric Holder and members of Congress will receive a letter signed by representatives from 578 civil rights, labor, criminal justice, immigration, and faith organizations from around the country demanding that the Obama administration stop the devolution of federal immigration responsibilities to state and local law enforcement. VivirLatino is one of those.
“The Obama administration’s overreliance on local law enforcement agencies to arrest, detain and deport immigrants legitimizes the racial discrimination that persists in the criminal justice system,” said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “For all our communities, this marriage of convenience between the immigration system and the criminal justice system will only serve to further deter immigrants from cooperating with the police, and sever the already tenuous ties between law enforcement and vulnerable community members.”
Miercoles Movie : Face the Truth, Racial Profiling in the United States
6:36 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Justice|Media|Movies · 1 Comment
29 Sep 2010Here at VivirLatino, We have written about racial profiling, especially the impact it has had on Latino immigrant communities and how racial profiling by both local and federal law enforcement across the United States has helped to foster anti-immigrant violence by civilians.
The Restore Fairness campaign and the Rights Working Group, have just released a documentary short, Face the Truth, showcasing the devastating impact of racial profiling on communities around our country, including the African American, Latino, Arab, Muslim and South Asian communities.
The documentary brings to life a new report by the Rights Working Group released along with 275 local and national partners on the one year anniversary of the Face the Truth campaign to end racial profiling. Both the documentary and the report urge Congress to pass the End Racial Profiling Act (ERPA), highlighted in a Congressional briefing on Thursday, September 30th in Washington D.C.
Face the Truth: Racial Profiling Across America from Breakthrough on Vimeo.
NYC Candlelight Vigil In Memory of Iman Morales 9/23
1:19 pm By Maegan La Mala · Justice|New York City · 3 Comments
13 Sep 2010
Iman Morales was a loving son, brother and friend.
Please join his family as they remember his life and denounce his death at the hands of the NYPD.
The vigil will mark two years since Iman Morales, a 35-year-old man with mental illness was tased to his death by NYPD officers on September 24th, 2008.
After receiving the tasing order from NYPD Lieutenant Michael Pigott, despite an NYPD procedure forbidding tasing someone on an elevated surface, NYPD Sergeant Nicholas Marchesona tased Iman.
Iman, who stood naked on the ledge of a store front awning 10 feet above ground when he was jolted by the taser, was propelled to his death in front of his horrified mother as her cries for help to couch his fall were repeatedly ignored.
Lieutenant Michael Pigott who gave the taser order took his own life days later. Sergeant Marchesona, who fired the taser that killed Iman was promoted to Detective six weeks after the Killing.As Iman’s family, community members and activists, we are outraged by yet another instance of police brutality against our community and in particular against a person with mental illness. Iman’s death once again highlights the blatant misconduct exhibited by the police when responding to mental health crisis calls and underscores the lack of consideration and empathy not only for communities of color but for their own members of the New York City Police Department.
Please Join Us
Date: Friday, September 24, 2010 6:30pm – 8:00pm
Location: 489 Tompkins Avenue btwn. Decatur St.& Macdonough St. Brooklyn, NY
Directions: C Train to Kingston-Throop Station or the B25 bus to Brooklyn Ave.
Sponsored and organized by the Justice Committee
For more info contact justicecommittee@gmail.com or 212-614-5343
U.S. Justice Department Investigates Southern Cali City for Targeting Latinos
6:12 am By Maegan La Mala · California|Immigration|Justice · Comments Off
11 Sep 2010
Early this year we told you about how law enforcement in parts of California were setting up sobriety checkpoints that seemed to be more about racial profiling than public safety.
Yesterday, the U.S. Justice Department launched an investigation targeting the Southern California City of Bell. The investigation will determine whether city officials violated civil rights of Latino residents by aggressively towing cars and charging residents exorbitant fees to get their vehicles back.
From Southern California Public Radio:
Some Bell residents have complained police officers pulled over motorists and towed their vehicles if the drivers didn’t have licenses. Bell has a large immigrant population, as well as many illegal immigrants.
Image Via / by ChrisDag
Seattle Police Videotaped Beat Down Not a Crime
1:26 pm By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Justice|Seattle|Violence · 2 Comments
7 Sep 2010Remember this incident caught on video…..
Apparently in Seattle, two officers beating an unarmed man and calling him “a Mexican”, and not as an identifier but rather as a slur, is not a hate crime.
From Colorlines:
King County prosecuting attorney Dan Satterberg wrote in his decision:
Cobane will not be charged with the felony crime of malicious harassment because prosecutors have found that he did not intentionally target or assault a person because of their race or national origin, as required under the State’s hate crime statute.
Satterberg explained that in order to charge Cobane with a hate crime, the 15-year Seattle Police Department veteran would have had to “maliciously and intentionally target[ed] Mr. Monetti due to his ethnicity.” Cobane merely “lawfully detained Mr. Monetti and the other two men because they had a reasonable belief that the men were involved in two armed robberies.” The prosecutor acknowledged that Cobane detained Monetti and his companions because they fit a description of Latino males who had been involved in a robbery nearby.
Satterberg also defended Cobane’s verbal and physical abuse. Cobane’s actions toward Monetti were not racially motivated, the prosecutor wrote, because he did not also beat up the two Latino men Monetti was with. The prosecutor also wrote that police have the right to use physical force “beyond what an ordinary citizen would be allowed to use so long as the force is reasonable in the performance of their duties.”
Leaving Water Bottles for U.S. Bound Migrants Not Criminal
7:57 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Justice|U.S.-Mexico Border · 1 Comment
7 Sep 2010
Last year, activists from the organization No More Deaths were convicted of
“knowingly littering” by leaving water bottles for migrants crossing the U.S. border.
Last week, that conviction was overturned. From Colorlines:
Dan Millis, a volunteer with the humanitarian aid group No More Deaths, was convicted in a federal court of littering when he and three other volunteers left water for border crossers in 2008 along a section of the Arizona desert that was a designated wildlife refuge. He faced a $5,000 fine and six months in jail for refusing to pay the $125 ticket.
On Thursday the Ninth Circuit overturned his conviction and ruled 2-1 that the statute was vague enough such that water did not constitute garbage. The dissenting opinion was written by Judge Jay Bybee, a former Bush administration assistant attorney general who co-wrote that administration’s torture memos. Bybee wrote: “Leaving plastic bottles in a wildlife refuge is littering under any ordinary, common meaning of the word.”
Viernes Video : Sean Bell’s Parents Speak
6:00 am By Maegan La Mala · Justice|New York City|race|Violence · 2 Comments
27 Aug 2010I cannot even begin to fathom the pain of a parent who loses a child to state sponsored violence and then finding the strength to struggle for justice in the name of that child, day after day. In this video testimony, the parents of Sean Bell, killed by the NYPD in 2006, speak out on what justice looks like to them.
Video gracias a the Justice Committee
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