A Look at Migrant Detention Under President Obama

Crossposted from The Sanctuary

The American Prospect lays out some numbers that show how little has changed with respect to migrant detention under the leadership of a new President, specifically through the usage of the Secure Communities initiative.

Secure Communities relies on police in jails like the one where Martinez was processed to enter fingerprints into a joint Department of Homeland Security and FBI database monitored by ICE. Federal officials then decide whether to take “appropriate action” and issue a detainer on an immigrant before he or she is released. The program began in Texas in late 2008, is now in place in 48 counties in seven states, and is set to reach full implementation nationwide by 2012. It receives a 30 percent funding boost in Obama’s proposed 2010 budget and has support from key Democrats such as Rep. David Price of North Carolina, who chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security and pushed for much of the new funding. “One thing liberals and conservatives and everyone in between can agree on is that truly dangerous people should be at the top of the list for deportation,” Price says.

The American Prospect

Programs like this sound good on paper, but those of us who happen to be brown know that we are in for unequal application of these types of laws. The country needs to stop pretending that immigration enforcement is about whether or not a person has their papers. People of color will always be targeted unfairly and beyond that, this is a central part of a long effort to eradicate migrant cultures.

Obama’s budget also maintains funding for the 287(g) program, though at a decreased level. Civil-rights advocates note the bulk of counties that signed up to participate in the program are in Southern states with rapidly growing Latino populations. “The program gets mediated by a history of racism and nativist hostility,” says Deborah Weissman, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who co-authored a study on the politics of local immigration enforcement. The study recounts how Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson told the Raleigh News & Observer that he applied to participate in the 287(g) program because Mexican “values are a lot different — their morals — than what we have here.” He linked the county’s growing Latino population with a rise in crime rates. Never mind that Latinos make up 10 percent of the population in Alamance County and account for about 12 percent of its criminal cases. About 70 percent of immigrants detained in Alamance County through 287(g) were guilty only of traffic offenses. (emphasis mine)

I would argue, of course, that “Mexican values” are indigenous to the United States, but when you’re dealing with a law enforcement officer who comes right out and states boldly that they are targeting people for being Other, why bother? The bigotry shines more strongly than the glean off the gold badge on his uniform.

With incarceration rates for Latinos and African Americans off the charts, media and political forked tongues that reinforce a false message that we are more criminally prone, and the gravy train of funding to the privatized prison industry continuing unabated, President Obama’s promise of change has yet to arrive with respect to migrant detention and deportations.

The abuses will continue unless we force D.C. to act. This week there is a huge gathering of immigration organizations in the nation’s capitol, will this diseased part of the immigration system go unchallenged?

Let’s hope not.

 

Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Concentration Camp

There’s not much difference between this:

and this:

What’s the endgame, America?

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose jurisdiction includes the Phoenix Metro area (the 5th largest city in the United States), continues to inch closer and closer to neon lines of historical unacceptability. Do undocumented workers need to be shot dead or baked in an oven en masse for public outcry to reach levels that bring Arpaio’s terrorism to a stop in Maricopa County?

Yesterday, Sheriff Joe staged a media orgy with a grin on his face. He welcomed the attention, in fact sought it, with a press release:

ARPAIO ORDERS MOVE OF HUNDREDS OF ILLEGAL ALIENS TO THEIR OWN TENT CITY

Electric Fence to Minimize Escape Risk

(PHOENIX, AZ.) At 1:00 PM tomorrow, Wednesday, February 4, 2009, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio will order of approximately 200 illegal aliens to be chained and marched into a separate area of Tent City, their new place of incarceration until their sentences are served and the illegal aliens are deported to their home countries.

The move to Tent City frees up much needed space in the Sheriff’s hard facilities serving as a management tool for potential jail overcrowding, Arpaio says.

More importantly, the move is a financially responsible alternative to taxpayers already over burdened by the economic drain imposed by a growing number of illegal aliens on social services like education and healthcare.

The move also facilitates security and transportation issues as well as provides easier and quicker access for foreign government visits to these inmates, the Sheriff says.

The move to Tent City also makes room for the future. Now that the Arizona state government has given Arpaio back his $1.6 million dollars slated for fighting illegal immigration, more arrests by the Sheriff’s human smuggling unit and crime suppression operations are anticipated.

Read the full release at The Sanctuary

The time has come to wipe the smile of the face of this racist and inhumane goon for good. Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox gives us a call to action:

Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox has vowed to seek a federal investigation of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s decision to segregate illegal immigrants in his Tent City Jail.

“It’s a brand new Washington, and we’re going to have to use the Justice Department to look into this abuse,” Wilcox said after Arpaio moved about 200 convicted illegal immigrants from the Durango Jail to a fenced area at Tent City Wednesday afternoon.

“You don’t have to make us the laughing stock of the United States by doing stunts like this, and you don’t have to abuse people. And that’s what everybody is feeling,” Wilcox said in the latest of several clashes between her and the sheriff.

Arpaio was not fazed.

“I would highly recommend that she volunteer to spend some time in the tents before she starts yapping away,” he said. “How about spending a couple of nights in the tents like I did? I slept in the tents with all these inmates.”

KTAR.com

It’s time to light up the switchboards in Washington, D.C., demanding Arpaio’s leash be yanked so actions like this will not be repeated. Here is a preliminary listing of numbers to call:

• Attorney General Eric Holder: (202) 514-2001
• Dept. of Justice Office of Intergovernmental Affairs & Public Liaison: (202) 514-3465
• Department of Homeland Security Comment Line: (202) 282-8495

America’s Voice also has a petition on its Arpaio page, calling for an investigation of human rights abuses to be conducted by the Department of Justice.

Enough is Enough. ¡Ya Basta!

 

Questions Remain Unanswered for Ana Romero’s Family

On August 21st, Ana Romero became the latest undocumented worker to die in custody. The Kentucky jail where she was being held ruled her death a suicide, as she was found with a sheet tied around her neck, but her family is demanding further investigation to the conditions of her imprisonment and the cause of death.

Preliminary media reports show that she was placed in solitary confinement due to not eating. The question is, why?

But Mario says for weeks, Ana complained about the jail food – saying it smelled, upset and her stomach and she often vomited.

“Thursday she died, Monday she called and said she wasn’t feeling well,” he says.

Now Ana’s dead and her sister can’t bear to tell their mother.

“She’s very old and she’s sick with heart problems. I’m not giving her the news yet, I have to go there personally and give her the news,” she says.

WHAS11.com

After grassroots outrage and family calls for a full investigation, a second autopsy has been granted.

State police are investigating her death as a suspected suicide but are awaiting autopsy results from the state medical examiner’s office in Frankfort.

Meanwhile, Dr. George Nichols II, a former chief medical examiner for the state, is examining Romero’s body in Louisville as well, according to Shelbyville attorney Matthew Pippin, representing Romero’s family.

“Just like everybody else at this point, we’re waiting for answers,” said Pippin on Thursday. “We’re making some steps right now because there is a grieving family that wants to bury their loved one.

“There’s a second opinion to be gotten. We would like to go ahead and get it and be prepared to allow this family to pay their last respects to their loved one. We are just waiting and want answers however we can get them. Hopefully someone will step up and provide definitive answers here very soon.”

Pippin said the family expected to get state preliminary autopsy results by Aug. 29.

The State Journal

As you can see by the time stamp of this post, August 29th has come and gone. The Romero family has still not received any information from authorities on the death of their loved one. A petition has been initiated, calling for authorities to release the results of the autopsy and answer the many questions involving Ana’s death (including the fact that they withheld medication from her).

Justice for Ana Romero Petition

The recent tragic death of Ana Romero while in the Franklin County, Kentucky jail raises many questions of morality, decency, and the humane treatment of persons awaiting deportation. Ana Romero (44 years old) was living and working in Shelbyville cleaning houses in order to support her 92 year-old mother and two grown sons in college in El Salvador.

In January, she was arrested at home and detained by state police for giving federal immigration officials a false identification card, along with a previous immigration-related violation. This type of police action is part of the nation-wide ICE dragnet operation being carried out in places like Shelbyville, Kentucky; Pottsville, Iowa; New Bedford, Massachusetts; and Laurel, Mississippi, in which immigrants are being subjected to raids and detentions. These operations have torn families apart, including many U.S. citizens, and has instilled pervasive fear in our communities owing to the terrorizing tactics used by the authorities and the lack of due process afforded the immigrants afterwards.

Whether or not you agree with the criminalization of immigrant workers and families who have entered the U.S. without documents, the consequences of the Ana Romero case should touch a nerve. During her nearly 8 month imprisonment in the county jail while awaiting deportation, Ana was distraught and suffered from medical ailments, refusing to eat the food which she told family members “…stinks and there is something wrong with it.”

Shortly before her death, she was placed in solitary confinement. Her jailers have yet to explain why this was done.

Although the state autopsy indicates that Ana Romero died of asphyxiation by hanging, the circumstances of her death continue to be investigated. Her family has requested a second opinion because they do not believe she took her own life, given that she was waiting anxiously to return to her country and her loved ones.

The delayed public disclosure of the autopsy results and the silence from the relevant authorities only highlights the potentially scandalous nature of this case. Is there something they are trying to cover up?

The family of Ana Romero and the general public deserve answers.

What kind of treatment do persons awaiting deportation receive in jail?

Why was Ana Romero placed in solitary confinement?

What was the true cause of her death?

How can deaths such as these be avoided in the future?

And finally the biggest question of all: While we all know that immigration policy needs fundamental reform, how many hard-working immigrants, many U.S. citizens, across the U.S. are going to have to suffer from the deepening climate of repression and fear created by the racist and exclusionary policies implemented by ICE? These policies continue to criminalize immigrants who have come to work from south of our border.

How much longer will low-paid, hard-working communities of immigrants be traumatized by raids and detentions?

More information can be found at http://anaromero.org – to sign on to the petition, please send an email with your endorsement to justice@anaromero.org

 

What Would You Ask Speaker Pelosi?

Next week, I will have the opportunity to travel to Austin, Texas to attend the Netroots Nation conference, thanks to a scholarship from Democracy for America.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will be attending and doing an “Ask the Speaker” session with participants. I just submitted the following question for consideration by the moderators:

Madame Speaker:

Thirty miles to the north of Austin, in Taylor, Texas, is the T. Don Hutto prison facility that is serving as one of many holding tanks for migrant worker families in the U.S., including children. Is Congress preparing any action that would immediately halt the violation of human rights of the children and other prisoners at these sites, such as blocking of habeas corpus protections, access to medical care, and family unification? Will the Democrats on a national-party level be endorsing the recently passed resolution by the Texas Democratic Party, calling on the end to family detentions at sites like T. Don Hutto?

The text of the resolution is listed below:

RESOLUTION FOR ALTERNATIVES TO DETENTION OF IMMIGRANT AND ASYLUM-SEEKING CHILDREN

WHEREAS border protection is important to the security of the nation as a whole;

WHEREAS immigration affects the economic and social well-being of both the United States and Mexico;

WHEREAS a private firm re-opened the T. Don Hutto Residential Facility in Taylor, Texas, for the purpose of detaining immigrant and asylum-seeking families who are awaiting immigration proceedings,

WHEREAS it is not appropriate to convert a medium-security prison and rename it as a family detention center where children are detained with their families and some children are separated from their families;

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Texas Democratic Party add to its platform that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security should consider all alternatives to the detention of immigrant and asylum-seeking families with children, and must reunite children with their families; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that a child who is brought into this country by a family member shall not be subject to criminal sanctions, and the child’s presence in the U.S. shall not be defined as unlawful.

linkage to vote for the topic

What would you ask the Speaker of the House if you had the opportunity?

 

Some Data Released On Migrant Detainee Deaths

This is a good thing because it shines the light on the rot, but even better would be to stop it from happening altogether. Just sayin’…

The articles, based on thousands of pages of internal documents, found that 83 detainees had died since ICE was created five years ago and that many more sick and mentally ill people have been denied the treatment to which they are entitled. The Post found medical staff shortages, treatment delays, sloppy record-keeping, poor administrative practices and cover-ups by employees aware of the poor care.

Yesterday’s hearing was partisan and testy. Myers said ICE has been working to improve the health-care system. But detainees, their lawyers and relatives, and advocates for immigrants offered graphic testimony about misdiagnoses, medical neglect and secrecy.

Washington Post

Fortunately my Congressman, Raúl Grijalva (AZ-07), is readying legislation to address the medical care of migrant workers who find themselves in the various concentration camps across the country.

House Resolution 5950 would set medical care standards for immigrant detainees.

The secretary of the U.S. Department of Health Services would be required to establish procedures for the timely and effective delivery of health care to detainees and to report the deaths of detainees to the agency and Congress. It would require any necessary medications be provided upon detention.

Grijalva may not he done yet. The congressman said he is considering co-sponsoring two more immigration bills that have bipartisan support.

KTAR.com

Thank you, Congressman. Thank you.

 

Book Profiles Italian Immigrants to Boston

Author Stephen Puleo is beginning a round of community talks in the Boston area regarding his recently published book The Boston Italians. It tells a story that is all too familiar to those of us that have studied the various periods of migration to the United States over the past couple of centuries.

Early decades of Italian immigrants traveled by steamship to work in America, sent money home, and returned to Italy when work was slow. Puleo quotes a well-known account of an Italian laborer who made $1.25 a day – and lived on 26 cents a day. Immigrants sought the intimacy of village life by replicating it in such places as, for example, Boston’s North End – “the enclave within the enclave,” Puleo said.

Italians faced early prejudice on two fronts: from those who doubted their commitment to America, and from detractors who said the “dark” southern Italian “race” was volatile, crime-prone, and untrustworthy. In World War II, Italian Americans who had not become citizens had to register as “enemy aliens.”

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I’m interested in reading the book as my great grandfather on my dad’s maternal side came from Italy in 1922 and was later rounded up with others from his home country in response to FDR’s issuance of the War Relocation Authority and related Executive Orders during World War II.

February 14, 1942: The U. S. Army’s Western Defense Command sends a memorandum to the Secretary of War recommending the evacuation of “Japanese and other subversive persons” from the Pacific Coast area. February 19, 1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt issues Executive Order 9066, which empowers the Secretary of War or any military commander authorized by him to designate “military areas” and exclude “any and all persons” from them. Shortly before signing the Executive Order, the President received a memorandum from his advisers which said, “In time of national peril, any reasonable doubt must be resolved in favor of action to preserve the national safety, not for the purpose of punishing those whose liberty may be temporarily affected by such action, but for the purpose of protecting the freedom of the nation, which may be long impaired, if not permanently lost, by nonaction.”

[snip]

March 18, 1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt issues Executive Order 9102, which establishes the War Relocation Authority (WRA) within the Department for Emergency Management. The WRA is empowered “to provide for the removal from designated areas of persons whose removal is necessary in the interests of national security….” The WRA is further empowered to provide for evacuees’ relocation and their needs, to supervise their activities, and to provide for their useful employment. Milton S. Eisenhower is named director of the WRA.

March 21, 1942:President Roosevelt signs Public Law 77-503, which makes it a federal crime for a person ordered to leave a military area to refuse to do so.

March 22, 1942: The first removal of people of Japanese descent from the designated Pacific Coast area occurs. The people are from the Los Angeles area; they are sent to the Manzanar relocation center in northeastern California. The center comprises a 6000 acre site, enclosed by barbed wire fencing, and within that site a 560 acre residential site with guard towers, search lights, and machine gun installations. During the next eighteen months, about 120,000 people of Japanese descent are removed from the Pacific Coast area to ten relocation centers in California, Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Arkansas.

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While these acts were mostly aimed at Japanese migrants and their families, others who hailed from sympathetic countries were ensnared in a xenophobic fervor that echoes what we are seeing today. It just goes to show that despicable government actions in the name of Homeland Security are nothing new to the United States.

Viewed as potential threats to national security, men and women, children, the elderly and the infirmed, primarily from the West Coast, were given just a few days to put their affairs in order, gather only the personal belongings they could carry, and report to assembly centers at local racetracks, horse pavilions and fairgrounds. There they remained for four to six months while ten internment camps were constructed to house them in remote parts of California, Arkansas, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado. The internees were imprisoned behind barbed wire, in inhumane conditions, guarded by armed soldiers.

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That reminds me of something.

Decades from now, perhaps longer, will we see apologies or retributions offered to the families and workers unfairly and unjustly targeted?

Only if we keep fighting for human rights.