Immigrant Rights

Back in the fall of 2006, after two men arrested for hate crimes committed at a Laguna Beach day laborers work center were freed by that city's District Attorney's Office, many voiced concerns about the increasing level of violence directed at the immigrant and Latino community in what has quickly become ground zero in the war over immigration: Orange County California.

But more importantly, it raised serious questions about who was actually behind this increased violence.

While certainly no hotbed for liberal thinking, increasing evidence seems to point to a covert campaign by small group of influential residents, community leaders, and some of the nation's most virulent hate-groups to fan the fires of hatred in order to make OC the most immigrant unfriendly place in the nation.

Later this week, the Laguna Beach day laborer center will once again be drawn into the national spotlight when yet another lawsuit filed by anti-immigrant groups will attempt to shutter its doors. But perhaps more important than what goes on in the judge's chambers, is what's gone on behind the scenes to make this lawsuit possible in the first place.

I am opening a chat session and I will also be liveblogging Univisión's Presidential Forum. This is going to be incredibly interesting since the forum will be conducted in English.

LIVEBLOGGING
María Elena Salinas' first question seems odd : Is it a political risk to appear in this forum. This is an obvious jab at all the republicans that have refused to appear before a latino audience.

Jorge Ramos asks Kucinich, Dodd and Richardson if they would support making Spanish the second official language of the United States. Richardson used the opportunity for ragging on Univision for not allowing him and the other Spanish-speaking candidates to do so.

Kucinich has gotten the most applause with his answer about ending the war in Iraq.

I can't believe they went there : Salina's has asked why build a wall on the Mexican border and not build one with on the border of Canada?

More than two thousand questions were polled at Univision and about 70% of the questions were about immigration; which is why more than half of the forum is focused on immigration.

Now that last part of the forums is focused on America Latina ---please notice they didn't say 'hispanic' america.

Another incredibly interesting question : Do you believe Hugo Chavez is a dictator?

What do you think is going to happen in a Cuba without Castro and what would you do to aid that transition.

New America Media, Commentary, Domenico Maceri, Posted: Sep 04, 2007

Editor’s Note: The father of U.S. Private Armando Soriano, 20, who died in Iraq is facing deportation. Many parents of U.S. soldiers who are fighting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan are facing the same fate. Domenico Maceri, Ph.D, teaches foreign languages at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, Calif. His articles have appeared in many newspapers and some have won awards from the National Association of Hispanic Publications.

Three years after U.S. Army Private Armando Soriano, 20, died fighting in Haditha, Iraq, his father is facing deportation. Soriano is now buried in Houston, Tex., his hometown, where his parents, undocumented workers from Mexico, are currently living.

Before his death Soriano had promised his parents he’d help them get green cards. He only succeeded partially before losing his life. Although his mother was able to obtain a green card, his father did not qualify and is on the verge of being deported.

Enrique Soriano, Armando’s father, is not the only person to have lost a son or daughter in the Iraq war and face deportation. There are more than 3 million people born in the U.S. with parents who came into the country illegally. Those born in the U.S. are automatically citizens and have all the rights and duties enjoyed by Americans. That includes military service with the possibility of losing one’s life.

Criminalizing Immigrants Makes Them Easier to Deport

New America Media, Commentary, Paromita Shah, Posted: Aug 10, 2007

Editor’s Note: The current spate of immigration raids and harsh ordinances did not come out of the blue but is the fruition of the careful build-up of an immigration law enforcement infrastructure for over a decade. Paromita Shah is associate director of the National Immigration Project (NIP) of the National Lawyers Guild. NIP is a member of Detention Watch Network, a national coalition working to reform the U.S. immigration detention system. IMMIGRATION MATTERS regularly features the views of the nation's leading immigrant rights advocates.

Immigration reform is dead – at least for the time being – but more raids, detentions and deportations continue.

But we also face a new emerging “deportation” strategy – one from local and state governments that seek to pass laws that essentially “deport” immigrants from the towns and the states in which they live.

The concept is simple: pass laws that make the lives of immigrants so miserable that they will be forced to leave, turning them into internal deportees in the United States.

According to the Washington Post, state and local governments have filed over 1,000 such bills. While most empower local police to act as immigration agents, a significant number obstruct immigrants' ability to obtain jobs, use necessary medical services, send children to public schools, find housing, get driver's licenses and receive many other government services. For example, the notorious Hazelton town ordinance required tenants obtain an occupancy permit from the city before renting a unit. One had to prove lawful residence or citizenship to get the permit. The town imposed hefty fines, $1,000, for violation of the ordinance.

Denied Medication, AIDS Patient Dies in Custody;

Victor Arellano's Fellow Detainees Staged a Protest Over His Treatment

By Sandra Hernandez

Daily Journal Staff Writer

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 9, 2007 - The handful of prescription drugs Victor Arellano took each morning kept him alive.

But Arellano, in the throes of full-blown AIDS, was denied that medicine when immigration officials locked him up at the San Pedro detention center, other detainees said.

Two months later Arellano, 23, died in custody - too weak to walk to the bathroom alone, but shackled to a hospital bed.

Arellano's family and his fellow detainees said the detention center's staff denied him his critical medication despite repeated requests.

"He called me two weeks before he died and told me he was afraid," said Arellano's mother, Olga. "He kept telling me how frustrated he felt because he wanted to see a doctor. He asked for his medicine but no one listened to him."

Victor came to the United States from Mexico as a child. A transgender person, he was known as Victoria Arellano to his fellow detainees, who routinely referred to him as her.

"She was so sick that if you tried to move her she would scream," said Walter Ayala, another detainee, recalling her final two weeks.

Arellano spent most days in a bunk bed, complaining of debilitating headaches, back pain, nausea and stomach cramps, Ayala said.

US to probe death of immigration detainee
Sister says police refused medicine for Milford man

By Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff | August 9, 2007

A Brazilian national arrested Tuesday afternoon on a deportation warrant in Rhode Island died shortly after he was taken into federal custody, outraging family members who said authorities ignored their warnings that he had epilepsy and needed to take his medication daily.

Edmar Alves Araujo, 34, of Milford, called his sister to say he had been detained by local police after a traffic stop. Irene Araujo said she immediately brought his medication, Gardenal, to Woonsocket police headquarters, where he was being held, only to be turned away by officers who refused to accept it.

"I told them he needed the medication, and I told them he had seizure problems," Irene Araujo said yesterday. "He can't skip a day without medication."

According to Irene Araujo's account, authorities told her that if her brother had a medical condition, he could inform them himself. She said that officers then ignored her repeated pleas that it was urgent.

"They didn't give me a chance to show them or nothing," she said. "They didn't say anything."

A spokeswoman for the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency confirmed yesterday that Edmar Araujo died Tuesday while in federal custody. But she declined to comment on the family's assertion that authorities were warned of Araujo's epilepsy and his need for Gardenal, a phenobarbital-based drug that helps control seizures in epileptics.

New America Media, Commentary, Michele Deitch and Sunita Patel, Posted: Jun 14, 2007

Editor’s Note: When the U.S. government denied a United Nations expert access to two immigrant detention lock-ups it sent a worrying message about secrecy and lack of transparency in a system already being condemned as woefully inadequate. Michele Deitch teaches at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin and is an expert on independent oversight of prisons and jails. Sunita Patel, a Soros Justice Fellow with the New York Legal Aid Society, is a human rights attorney focusing on immigrant detention issues. She is a member of Detention Watch Network, a national coalition working to reform the U.S. immigration detention system. IMMIGRATION MATTERS regularly features the views of the nation's leading immigrant rights advocates.

Lost in the news about the immigration reform package was an incident with diplomatic implications. Recently the U.S. government shamefully denied a United Nations expert access to two immigrant detention lock-ups during the expert’s three-week fact-finding mission to the United States.

Jorge Bustamante, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, was invited by the U.S. State Department to observe and investigate immigrant detention in the United States. Yet on April 30, he was denied access to the T. Don Hutto detention facility, a private Texas prison that holds entire families, even small children, behind bars. Then, on May 14, the official was refused access to the Monmouth County jail in New Jersey, which houses almost 150 immigrant men and women pursuant to a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).