America's Voice Blog

Posted 08/27/10 at 03:44pm By Dara Lind

ICE Won’t Deport People Already About To Get Legal Status. “Free Pass,” Or Common Sense?

For a year and a half, Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief John Morton has been saying that he wants his agency to target “the worst of the worst” when it comes to immigration enforcement.  In recent weeks, we've finally begun to see this stance reflected in policy, though there’s still more to be done.

Last week, the agency issued new guidance directing field offices to halt the deportations of a narrow group of immigrants who have “active applications in the system” and are about to become legal residents, according to the New York Times:

“The memo encourages ICE officers and lawyers to use their authority to dismiss those cases, canceling the deportation proceedings, if they determine that the immigrants have no criminal records and stand a strong chance of having their residence applications approved.

“The policy is intended to address a 'major inefficiency' that has led to an unnecessary pileup of cases in the immigration courts, Mr. Morton said. The courts have reported at least 17,000 cases that could be eliminated from their docket if ICE dismissed deportations of immigrants, like those married to United States citizens, who were very likely to win legal status, the memo says.”

The rationale here is good law enforcement policy, but it also happens to jive with common sense.  Surely everyone in America would think it’s smarter to spend ICE resources going after dangerous criminals than immigrants who have applied for residency under the current system and are about to be granted a green card, right?

Well, apparently, not everyone.  Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is seeing red when it comes to the new memo.  Despite his reputation as a budget hawk, he’s bound and determined to oppose every change in immigration policy the Obama Administration makes, even one that would make efficient use of taxpayer resources.

Here's what Grassley told the Times:

“Actions like this demoralize ICE agents who are trying to do their job and enforce the law. Unfortunately, it appears this is more evidence that the Obama administration would rather circumvent Congress and give a free pass to illegal immigrants who have already broken our law.”

It's important to understand that this memo covers only a small fraction of immigrants in the U.S. illegally — the 17,000 who are in active deportation proceedings and have also applied for immigration status through existing laws, like the family-based immigration system.  It won’t give a benefit to anyone who doesn’t qualify for one already; it won’t prevent anyone whose application is denied from being deported in the future; and it won’t end deportation proceedings for the majority of people who are in them.

The policy change simply says that we’re not going to tie up deportation resources going after someone who’s about to become a legal, taxpaying resident —something that most Americans would agree makes good sense.

Most, that is, except Senator Grassley and his crew.  Grassley also doesn’t agree with the vast majority of Americans who support congressional passage of comprehensive immigration reform that requires undocumented immigrants to register with the government, undergo background checks, and get in line for legal status. Americans don’t call that “amnesty,” they call it “accountability.” And they like it.

What they don’t like are leaders who pretend we can deport our way to an immigration solution, or whose strategy on immigration is to block progress at every turn and label every change pursued by the Administration as “amnesty.”

Posted 04/05/10 at 09:31am By Marjorie Valbrun

A Helping Hand, Then a Slap in the Face: U.S. Immigration Enforcement Policies Cause More Suffering

Cross-Posted at Huffington Post:

Haitian-Americans, myself included, have been especially proud that our adoptive homeland not only took the lead in recovery and relief efforts in Haiti after the massive January earthquake, but also temporarily suspended deportations of undocumented Haitian immigrants and granted them work permits so that they could earn income and help affected relatives in Haiti.

Obama took these steps in short order while consistently voicing support and sympathy for the Haitian people, not to mention providing $930 million in aid to Haiti after the earthquake. Just last week the U.S. pledged $1.15 billion more in rebuilding aid at the International Donors Conference for Haiti. These moves only intensified the immense goodwill Haitians here and in Haiti have for Americans in general and for Pres. Obama in particular. 

So it was with deep disappointment, and distress, that we learned from the New York Times last week that some of the people who were evacuated from Haiti by U.S. Marines in the chaotic days after the earthquake had been jailed in immigration detention centers from the first day they arrived here. Some of them were even kept in shackles. None had been deemed criminals or a security threats; they simply had no papers proving they were legal immigrants.

That many of the evacuees lost everything in the disaster and arrived with little more than the clothes on their backs was apparently beside the point to U.S immigration authorities. But for Haitian-Americans and non-hyphenated Americans too, this was the point – and an outrageous one at that. How can the very administration that urged Americans to show compassion and charity towards Haiti and its traumatized people turn around and jail some of those very same people?  It was more than a cruel slap in the face; it was bureaucratic kick in the gut.

Click here to read more.
Posted 03/04/10 at 04:58pm By Jackie Mahendra

One More Reason to March: Immigrant Detention

As we gear up for the March for America in D.C. on March 21, it’s important to remind ourselves what we are marching to Washington for.

An editorial in the New York Times Tuesday argued:

The country needs to confront the [immigration] issue, to lift the fear that pervades immigrant communities, to better harness the energy of immigrant workers, to protect American workers from off-the-books competition. What’s been happening as the endless wait for reform drags on has been ugly.

Today, it got a little bit uglier.  According to the New York Times:

When the Obama administration vowed to overhaul immigration detention last year, its promise of more humane treatment and accountability was spurred in part by the harrowing treatment of two detainees who died in the Bush years.

In one case, captured by security cameras in 2008, a Chinese computer engineer was dragged from a Rhode Island immigration jail and mocked by guards as he screamed in pain from undiagnosed cancer and a broken spine. In the other, a Salvadoran detainee held for two years in a California detention center was denied a biopsy for a painful penile lesion, though government doctors suspected the cancer that eventually required amputation of his penis.

But on Wednesday, the administration argued in federal court that the government had no liability for neglect or abuse by private contractors running the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, R.I., where the computer engineer was held.

We must continue to demand accountability in our sprawling immigrant detention system. In addition, we must work to pass real immigration reform that creates an ordered, legal process for undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows, register, and obtain the same rights and responsibilities as all Americans. Right now, there are millions of workers and families for whom that process does not exist, and so we continue to face a crisis in which employers can arbitrarily exploit workers, families can be separated without notice, and an increasing number of men and women are sent to languish in these unaccountable detention facilities.

If that's not a reason to hit the streets, I don't know what is.

Captain Kirk Williamson listened to the students, and commented:

 

“I think it’s We Have the Freedom to Speak Out”

 

 

Why march now, for immigration reform?

 

Today, reason #101: because people should not be dying gruesome deaths because our immigration laws are broken.

 

 

As we gear up for the March for America in Washington on March 21, it’s important to remind ourselves what we are fighting for. , a number of other immigration reform supporters are voicing their opinion, telling the rest of American know that our current, broken immigration system needs a good fixin’.  In an editorial to the New York Times today:

  

The country needs to confront the issue, to lift the fear that pervades immigrant communities, to better harness the energy of immigrant workers, to protect American workers from off-the-books competition. What’s been happening as the endless wait for reform drags on has been ugly.

 

Conventional wisdom in DC insists that immigration reform is dead, though we know differently. The challenges of twelve million undocumented persons – a significant portion of the population – cannot go ignored, and immigration champions in Congress are daily doing their part to help President Obama keep his promise on immigration reform, which also means helping the President keep his promise to create jobs for all Americans and boost the economy. Here’s an argument for reform from David Gushee, a university professor at Mercer University:

 

Moving millions of workers out of the shadows and into the light would end this black-market economy. It would restore fairness to this part of the labor market and would also increase tax revenues. To the extent that these immigrant workers would gain health insurance, it would also reduce the financial pressure on hospitals and emergency rooms that now provide unreimbursed care in emergency situations. It would also lead to currently illegal immigrants paying for other social services that they now receive at the expense of legal taxpayers.

 

As Americans lose their jobs in this frighteningly frail economy, deporting immigrants and their families, which costs approximately ______ a year, is not only extraordinarily harmful to the economic health of our country, but also incredibly “un-American,” as Nancy Pelosi so cleverly put it.

 

How can it not be? This week it was reported that Charles Washington, an American citizen, will soon lose his Australian wife, Tracy, and her two children. The reason? Her 13 year old son jokingly punched another boy and stole 46 cents.

 

Talk about the punishment not fitting the crime…the San Francisco Chronicle reports San Francisco Chronicle reported on the difficulty Mr. Washington faces trying to keep his family together:

 

Washington said he can't move to Australia because he would lose contact with his daughter, whose custody he shares with her mother. He said the situation is particularly hard on his 5-year-old stepson - "I'm the only one he's known as dad" - and he hopes to visit them in Australia.

 

So this year, for the millions in this country who consider America their home, many of whom live with the threat of losing their loved ones every day, join us in standing up for keeping families together and march for immigration reform. 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted 03/01/10 at 04:51pm By Mahwish Khan

Dignity, Not Detention: Calling Congress to Task on Immigration and Detention Policy

Detention Watch Network’s current campaign, “Dignity Not Detention: Preserving Human Rights and Restoring Justice,” aims to protect human rights by putting an end to the expansion of the US immigration detention system, with these four goals in mind:

  1. Reduce detention spending by the Obama Administration
  2. Demand the use of secure release options as a meaningful alternative to detention
  3. Restore due process to immigration laws
  4. End expansion of enforcement programs (i.e. ICE ACCESS) that are contributing to the growth of the detention system

Watch the video that accompanies Detention Watch Network’s campaign, in which lawyers and former detainees describe, in vivid detail, how immigrants are unjustly treated in the various detention facilities around the country:

Click here to read more.
Posted 01/20/10 at 10:11am By Jackie Mahendra

“Secrets of Immigration Jails” a Disturbing Call For Reform

Here's another damning piece from the New York Times exposing the nation's shadowy immigration detention system, which exploded under the Bush administration. The editorial is called, "Secrets of Immigration Jails," and begins:

Americans have long known that the government has been running secretive immigration prisons into which detainees have frequently disappeared, their grave illnesses and injuries untreated, their fates undisclosed until well after early and unnecessary deaths.

What we did not know, until a recent article in The Times by Nina Bernstein, was how strenuously the government has tried to cover up those failings — keeping relatives and lawyers in the dark, deflecting blame, fighting rigorous quality standards, outside oversight and transparency. These deficiencies endure today.

It took digging by The Times and the American Civil Liberties Union to unearth the evidence. A detainee with a broken leg killed himself; his pain had been unbearable but never treated, and someone later faked a medication log to show that he had been given Motrin. A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement told a reporter asking after a mortally injured African detainee that nothing could be learned, even though the spokesman and top managers already knew the man had fallen, fractured his skull, lain untreated for more than 13 hours, was comatose and dying. The officials fretted by phone over how to avoid unflattering publicity.

Here, as evidence of the agency mind-set, is a spokesman’s warning to his supervisors about a Washington Post reporter who was looking into detention deaths and the story of a man whose fatal cancer had been ignored and untreated:

“These are quite horrible medical stories, and I think we’ll need to have a pretty strong response to keep this from becoming a very damaging national story that takes on long legs.”

Click here to read more.
Posted 01/11/10 at 11:19am By Jackie Mahendra

Devastating Details Emerge in Immigration Detention Deaths, NYT Reports

This devastating piece appeared on the front page of the New York Times yesterday. It's a blunt reminder of just how broken our immigration system has become-- and that every day we wait to fix it, the stakes get higher and higher. It's worth reading in full.

Another article published the same day, "Documents Reveal Earlier Immigrant Deaths," begins:

Over the last two years, the news media and Congress have brought attention to many deaths in the immigration detention system that appear to have involved substandard medical care or abuse. But a trove of documents obtained over recent months by The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union sheds light on even more fatalities. [...]

One example is the case of Miguel J. Rodriguez Gonzales, 43, a longtime legal resident of California who was detained for immigration violations on Feb. 22, 2006. He had end-stage renal disease, diabetes and chronic heart failure, and was receiving dialysis at a hospital three times a week.

Records show that Mr. Rodriguez fell at least five times during his first 10 days in detention and reported “intense pain all over.” By March he was unable to shower by himself, and “for hygiene issues” he was sent to a disciplinary isolation cell. Soon he had to be taken to the clinic in a wheelchair because he was unable to walk. [...]

On April 10, 2006, after two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents returned him to the San Pedro detention center after dialysis, Mr. Rodriguez told a supervisor that the agents had made him stand up from the wheelchair and let him fall to the ground several times, laughing and insisting that he could walk.

“He asked why they were treating him that way,” the supervisor wrote in a report about the allegations. “They picked him up from the ground and harshly shoved him into the transporting vehicle. One used his feet to shove or kick him into the vehicle.”

The piece goes on to present more shadowy details in the deaths of immigrant detainees in federal detention. It cites the lawyer for Hiu Lui Ng, who passed away in April 2008:

“There are tremendous acts of cruelty, and these are not just rogue individuals,” said Joshua Bardavid, a lawyer who represented Mr. Ng. “If there’s a common thread, it’s the system. It really is a systemic problem.”

Click here to read more.
Posted 12/02/09 at 04:28pm By Dara Lind

Reports Call on ICE to Stop Playing “Musical Chairs” with Detainees

detentionThe New York Times writes today that new reports from Human Rights Watch and the bipartisan Constitution Project say the immigration detention system "lacks basic fairness." From the article:

The bipartisan group, the Constitution Project, whose members include Asa Hutchinson, a former undersecretary of Homeland Security, called for sweeping changes in agency policies and amendments to immigration law, including new access to government-appointed counsel for many of those facing deportation.

In its report, the human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, revealed government data showing 1.4 million detainee transfers from 1999 to 2008. The transfers are accelerating, the report found, sending tens of thousands of longtime residents of cities like Philadelphia and Los Angeles to remote immigration jails in Texas and Louisiana, far from legal counsel and the evidence that might help them win release.

“I.C.E. is increasingly subjecting detainees to a chaotic game of musical chairs, and it’s a game with dire consequences,” said Alison Parker, deputy director in the United States for the human rights group, and author of its report.

These are only the most recent in a long line of reports documenting the abuses of the detention system. Good to see these issues being brought to the public's attention, but it is time for real, lasting change in immigrant detention policy-- not more of the same.

Posted 11/02/09 at 12:15pm By Mahwish Khan

NYT: Immigration Detention Raises More Questions

A front-page article in today's New York Times takes a peek into an immigration detention center in the heart of Manhattan and finds that the detention system continues to have serious problems. Here's how former detainees describe conditions at the Varick Street Detention Facility:

...cramped, filthy quarters where dire medical needs were ignored and hungry prisoners were put to work for $1 a day.

In the article, a government spokesperson says the Obama administration "inherited an inadequate detention system" from the Bush administration, and promises what the Times calls a "complete overhaul." In the meantime, 400,000 immigrants and asylum seekers a year find themselves in immigration detention, many in conditions like those on Varick Street.

Fixing the mangled detention system can't happen soon enough.

Posted 10/06/09 at 03:11pm By Mahwish Khan

Plans for Detention Reform Underway

The Obama administration today revealed their plans for the anticipated immigration detention make-over -- much-needed reform of a system that is itself primarily based on a broken immigration system.

This is, no doubt, a step in the right direction. The New York Times reports:

Ms. Napolitano and Mr. Morton say that they want to make the system more efficient, more accountable and less costly. The whole point of detaining immigrants, after all, is to quickly figure out which ones should be deported and to deport them, not to let them languish and certainly not to inflict punishment or undue suffering.

That sentiment was not exactly embraced during the Bush administration, which took a hard line against undocumented immigrants. And their staunch position on the issue also resulted in human rights abuses, such as not providing immigrant detainees with basic medical care, and by oftentimes housing immigrant detainees with dangerous criminals.

Click here to read more.
Posted 08/18/09 at 01:15pm By Mahwish Khan

Deaths in Immigration Detention Went Unreported

Yet another reason many advocates are outraged with the current immigration enforcement system.

Today, the New York Times reports that one in every ten immigration detainee deaths goes unreported on the ICE "death roster," with the grisly death total now at 104 - a significant increase from the 90 that were reported to Congress in the Spring.

An investigation into the undisclosed detainee death situation was launched by the A.C.L.U after news of immigrant detainee, Tanveer Ahmad, a Pakistani taxi driver from NY, died in the detention system - a death that, according to the New York Times article, was difficult to confirm and speaks largely of the poor treatment, if any treatment at all, that these innocent detainees are handed; in fact, a fellow detainee said that Ahmad's symptoms of a heart attack "had gone untreated until too late."

Click here to read more.

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