Posts Tagged ‘ICE’
Secure Communities : New Numbers Show Same Old Problems
7:36 am By Maegan La Mala · Cities|Immigration|Secure Communities · 34 Comments
25 Mar 2011Yesterday, a coalition of organizations, including the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, Center for Constitutional Rights and the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, who have been pressing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be real and transparent as to how Secure Communities actually works, released some new numbers and analysis of those numbers. The specific focus of the analysis is ICE’s claim that Secure Communities (S-Comm) focuses on “dangerous criminal immigrants”. The new analysis shows that claim to be completely false.
“Nationally, 1 in 4 people deported under S-Comm haven’t been convicted of any crime. That ratio jumps to over 50% in Boston, certain areas of California, and in multiple examples across the country..” Explained Bridget Kessler of Benjamin Cardozo School of Law
25 percent overall non-criminal deportations and in an urban area like Boston as jump to over half shows that the focus of ICE and of immigration policy under Obama overall, is deport as many as you can so you can claim success in “the war against illegals“.
When questioned during a recent House Appropriations Committee Hearing on March 11th, Director of ICE John Morton admitted,, “we do in fact remove non-criminals through Secure Communities.”
In other words it’s a shell game with words and lives. You can take a peek at some of the numbers below and they are disturbing, especially when looking at larger urban areas with large Latino immigrant populations. With the focus on rapid expansion of Secure Communities, it becomes clear whose security is being prioritized and it is not that of the families whose lives are torn apart.
Read more…
U.S. Helped Create Toro’s Situation, Now They Want to Rid Themselves of It via Deportation
9:45 am By Maegan La Mala · Activism|Chile|Immigration · 5 Comments
15 Mar 2011Local NYC and international Chilean activist Victor Toro lost his bid for asylum. He is set to be deported to Chile, a country he left during the U.S. sponsored dictatorship of Pinochet, a country where he is legally dead.
From the NY Daily News :
ICE took Toro to court after he was arrested on an Amtrak train near Buffalo in 2007 for not having immigration papers.
Toro, a longtime advocate for immigrant rights who waded across the Rio Grande in 1984 to enter the U.S., claims he was afraid to turn himself in and request asylum, citing U.S. support for Pinochet’s brutal regime.
A democracy replaced the regime in 1990, but some of the leaders who had Toro tortured remain powerful, his lawyer says. They expelled Toro from Chile in 1977, declaring him dead.
Judge Sarah Burr said in a written ruling that Chile is a changed country and a safe place for Toro.
The Pinochet regime imprisoned Toro because he co-founded the Revolutionary Left Movement, known as the MIR, an anti-Pinochet group briefly labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S.
He was blindfolded for months at a time and had electric shocks applied to his genitals. He twice faced firing squads that shot blanks to scare him.
With President Obama set to visit the capital of Santiago later this month, Toro and Moreno are begging the White House to intervene. They argue the U.S. owes Toro because it tacitly backed Pinochet for years.
The Not So Silent ICE Raid in Mississippi
8:21 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Mississippi · 16 Comments
24 Feb 2011There has been much talk of the Obama administration moving towards more “silent” immigration raids, that is targeting workplaces. The perception and narrative is that targeting immigrants and their employers in this way is kinder and gentler. But the reality looks more like what went down in the Jackson, Mississippi metro area this past weekend.
ICE agents were “knocking on doors, saying they were selling Avon or with Domino’s,” said Glenda Arevalo, who lives in the complex. “They said, ‘Come out, come out, y’all are going back to your country.’”
When some responded they were in the country legally, she said ICE agents replied, “We don’t care. You’re going with us.”
Angella Rector said she saw an ICE agent put a gun against the head of one Hispanic and say, “If you move motherf—er, we’re going to kill you.”
The father of her three young children was among those arrested by agents, she said. “He was in his boxers. They told him, ‘You’re f—ing illegal.’”
Her husband is being taken back to Mexico, she said. “Now I have to raise the kids by myself.”
Attacks on Immigrant Workers Cross Party Lines
7:50 pm By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Labor|Politics · 10 Comments
9 Feb 2011Just last month, I wrote about how I.C.E., a division of the Department of Homeland Security announced that it was stepping up so called “silent raids” or audits of companies suspected of hiring undocumented workers. This announcement, which really was just an official announcement of what I.C.E. has already been doing (besides “loud” raids in communities), certainly can be related to the mass firings and investigations into the employees of faux Mexican chain Chipotle.
Fact : Department of Homeland Security is run by Janet Napolitano, Democrat, appointed by Democrat President Obama. In fact here is what Napolitano had to say about E-Verify on C-Span.
ICE Ends It’s Year by Detaining Holiday Travelers
12:50 pm By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|New York · Comments Off
1 Jan 2011
In the name of “Homeland Security”, ICE is in the business of protecting the United States from dangerous students daring to travel to NY to celebrate the new year.
On Thursday, December 30th, 5 Latino youths from Illinois were traveling to New York to celebrate the new year on Amtrak. They are all students and unfortunately 3 of them live in the reality of being undocumented. ICE did a sweep on the train and took 3 of them into custody. Two of the young girls from this group are US citizens and were not arrested but are now in New York alone and waiting for bonds to be paid in Chicago. Two young men are being held in a Buffalo NY Federal Detention Facility. A girl is being held in another facility, location unknown to me.
As soon as I learn more information, if I learn more information, I will be sure to pass it on, but the message that ICE is sending is clear. Immigration and Customs enforcement wants to imprison undocumented young people and will go out of it’s way to do so by stepping up checkpoints on domestic travel venues or by instilling so much fear causing young people to stay locked up inside their homes.
NYS Says No To Secure Communities
10:50 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|New York|Secure Communities · 3 Comments
9 Dec 2010
While D.C. is focused on the DREAM, in NY today, eyes shift to a different but equally important immigration matter : the criminalization of migrants and the merging of local police with Federal enforcement efforts.
This morning, at the same time that a cloture vote on DREAM is expected in the Senate, there is going to be a rally in front of Governor Paterson’s Manhattan office today to demand rescission of New York’s agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to bring a deportation program called “Secure Communities” to New York State.
With no public input, New York’s Division of Criminal Justice Services signed an agreement with ICE in May this year to bring Secure Communities to New York. Under the program, law enforcement agencies in the state are required to automatically forward to federal immigration databases the fingerprints of every arrested person. Undocumented immigrants, US citizens, and lawful permanent residents alike are subject to these database checks. Based on often unreliable and incomplete information, ICE then transfers people suspected of being deportable directly into the detention and deportation system, separating them from their families and communities.
Read more…
DREAMs, Moratoriums, Censorship & Non-Profit Politics in Brooklyn
2:56 pm By Maegan La Mala · DREAM Act|Immigration|New York City|Politics|Secure Communities · 11 Comments
24 Nov 2010
Declaimer/Disclosure : I know organizers from NYSYLC and from MRNY. This is not personal. I am not representing either org nor endorsing or denouncing either org but rather stating my opinion on what I witnessed and based on my own years as a grassroots organizer outside of the non-profit realm.
This past Sunday NYC Council Woman Melissa Mark-Viverito, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, Rep. Nydia Velázquez and other New York City area politicians and heads of non-profit organizations including Make the Road NY and the NY Immigration Coalition, held a townhall meeting in the basement of St. Brigid’s Church in Brooklyn on the next decisive steps the pro-migrant community needs to take. Yours truly was there. The message was meant to be a threefold one.
1: Work on getting the DREAM Act passed
2: Stop the Deportations and Push Obama on signing a moratorium
3: Stop the criminalization of immigrants by getting ICE out of Riker’s Island (NYC’s main municipal detention facility) and getting NYC out of Secure Communities.
Every single politician mentioned the DREAM Act: NYC Councilwoman Christine Quinn, NYC comptroller John Liu, Congress people Nydia Velasquez and Luis Gutierrez. The organizational representatives mentioned it. But to be completely honest with you, the importance of passing it in this session of Congress was not the main focus. It seemed like an add-on that was important as a talking point but I sure wasn’t convinced of it’s centering.
Revisiting The Gender Problem of Deportation
9:10 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Violence|Women · 21 Comments
24 Nov 2010Earlier this month, la Macha brought to our attention Maria Bolaños and how her reaching out for police assistance in a domestic violence situation resulted in having the “justice” system turning against her.
Last Christmas Eve, Maria Bolaños made a decision she would later regret: During a fight with her partner, she called the Prince George’s County police and sought their protection.
The call for help had disastrous consequences for Bolaños, a 28-year-old undocumented immigrant from El Salvador. Within months, she found herself ensnared in an increasingly controversial immigration enforcement program designed to deport undocumented criminals.
Bolaños now faces deportation and possible separation from her 21-month-old daughter, who was born here and is a U.S. citizen
This double injustice aroused bravery in Bolaños when she confronted David Venturella, director of the immigration enforcement program, “Secure Communities, at a forum last week.
ICE Raid in Nashville Shows U.S.’s Immigration Agenda
6:40 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Nashville · 3 Comments
30 Oct 2010While the Tea Party and the candidates they support constantly twist the U.S. Constitution to fit their agenda, the current administration seems to have it’s own constitutional issues especially with how it treats those suspected of being undocumented.
On October 20th Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a raid at The Clairmont, a South Nashville, Tennessee apartment complex. As is the usual line, the raid was supposed to target the “dangerous” or “bad” undocumented, in this case alleged “gang” members from MS-13 and SUR-13.
From the Tennessean:
“In this case, ICE’s Fugitive Operations Team was assisting local law enforcement with field interviews of suspected street gang members and targeted ICE fugitives,” said ICE spokesman Temple Black from the New Orleans field office.
Except residents and advocates have a different perspective.
Read more…
ICE checkpoints at Netroots Nation
10:45 am By la Macha · Immigration|race · 15 Comments
24 Jul 2010The following is going viral in a big way on the facebook/twitter rounds. Activists at Net Roots (where our own Mamita Mala is!) conducted ICE checkpoints to check for “illegal European immigrants” throughout the conference as a way to demonstrate how the immigration debate is a specifically race based one, how ICE is used to terrify specifically racialized communities, how you could be *doing nothing wrong* and still considered suspect.
I don’t know, I think it’s a good idea–but I also think that I saw too many white people smiling, thinking isn’t this so funny/cute! Here! Here’s my ID! Haha!
It’s a lot different being asked by activists trying to prove a point for your ID than it is being asked by official government agents with their machine guns drawn for your ID. It sorta makes me think of Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez Pena’s series of museum tours where they imprisoned themselves in a cage and posed as “exotic Indians” from a fake country. Some people got it, other people thought it was cute. I wonder how many Native peoples or Latin@s are laughing and smirking their way through ICE checkpoints?
When there is no power in the work to terrify–you are relying as “artists” on irony to make your point, and some people will get irony others won’t. Hopefully in the whitened halls of Netroots, more people got it than didn’t.
What do you think?
Hola!
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