DHS Review of Immigration Cases Expands to Half Dozen New Cities
by Wendy Sefsaf, March 30, 2012
The Washington Post and Huffington Post are reporting that ICE’s ongoing review of existing deportation cases will expand to six new cities in the coming months. Initially launched in Baltimore and Denver in 2011, the initiative will soon expand to Seattle, Detroit, New Orleans and Orlando, followed by Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City. The idea behind the initiative is to clear historic backlogs in the immigration courts by administratively closing cases that ICE considers to be low priority. Read more
Demonstrators march in Illinois to protest proposed immigration detention center
By Antonio Olivo, Chicago Tribune reporter. April 1, 2012
About 40 people started out on a three-day march Friday from Chicago’s Little
Village neighborhood to Crete, a 40-mile trek that’s part of rising opposition
to federal plans to build an immigration detention center in the far south
suburb. Read more
Victory for undocumented students in Georgia
“This is the first
year in many years where no anti-immigrant measures passed in Georgia,” said
Azadeh Shahshahani, director of the Immigrant Rights Project at the ACLU of
Georgia. Read more
Detention Is No Holiday
By EDWIDGE DANTICAT March 27, 2012 NYT Miami
LAMAR SMITH, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is presiding over a hearing Wednesday on new guidelines for immigration detention that were issued last month and are now beginning to go into effect. The official (and facetious) title of the hearing is “Holiday on ICE,” in reference to the more humane treatment undocumented immigrants should now receive after being picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Read more
Reduce Wasteful Spending on the Incarceration of Immigrants
x223, etucker@detentionwatchnetwork.org
Congress to Follow President’s Lead and Reduce Wasteful Spending on the
Incarceration of Immigrants
is encouraged by the Obama Administration’s request for a reduction in
immigration detention beds in the recent FY 2013 budget proposal. Read more
Webinar on ICE’s New Detention Visitation Policy
Save The Date: Webinar on New Detention Visitation Policy
Friday, March 16, 1:00 pm EST
Join Detention Watch Network and Women’s Refugee Commission for a webinar on ICE’s
new visitation directive.
- How does the new policy change access to detention centers for members of the public?
- Why are these changes important?
- How can you and your community take advantage of them?
Register at:
http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/Visitwebinar
The Border Wall: The Last Stand at Making the US a White Gated Community
Sunday 11 March 2012 by: Mark Karlin, Truthout | News Analysis -(Photos by Mark Karlin)
This is the first in an occasional Truthout series on viewing the US “immigration” and Mexican border policies through a social justice lens, focusing on the lower Rio Grande Valley. Brownsville, Texas, area. Mark Karlin, editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout, visited the region recently to file these reports.
The physical Mexican-American wall starts as a newly fortified metal barrier extending 300 feet into the warm, balmy waters of Southern California and ends up some 2,000 miles later just east of Brownsville, Texas. But it would be wrong to think of it as continuous, because only about a third of that distance has some form of visible barrier running like a scar across the US border with Mexico. Read more
The Chief of Police Doth Protest Too Much -Escondido, CA
Posted by John Carlos Frey , March 12, 2012
The chief of police in Escondido, CA, insisted I interview him. Chief Jim Maher had “an immigrant-friendly agenda,” he said, and was a friend to Latinos. He had done nothing wrong, and the media and activists were just spreading lies. Read more
8 Creepy Spy Technologies Used by drones
By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet Posted on March 13, 2012, Printed on March 14, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/154534/8_creepy_spy_technologies_that_can_be_hitched_to_your_neighborhood_drones
Last fall, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s department got
together for a photo op showing off a new unmanned surveillance craft. The
$300,000 drone did not have an auspicious debut. Minutes after take-off, the UAV
lost touch with the control console and plummeted to earth, crashing into the
police officers assembled for the launch. No one was hurt, because police were
hanging out in their armored car (“the Bearcat”) another warzone weapon that has
crept into the arsenals of local cops around the country (the Bearcat came out
alright). Read more
Striking Down a Bad Law, Piece by Piece
NYT Editorial March 6, 2012
Arizona’s extremist immigration law has gone another round in federal court — and lost again. The judge who rejected several of its provisions in 2010 temporarily blocked another section last week, the one making it a crime for day laborers to look for work on the street. Read more