Detention

What’s Law Got To Do With It? Sheriff Arpaio Defies New DHS Enforcement Guidelines
The Department of Homeland Security recently standardized its 287(g) immigration enforcement agreements with local law enforcement, which allows specially trained local enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration laws. Among the new DHS rules, local law enforcement must now prioritize immigrants with serious criminal records, rather than spend scant time and resources going after undocumented immigrants who are charged with no other crime. These new enforcement provisions, however, leave long-time immigration enforcement abuser, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, with some important decisions to make. Read More

ICE Begins Immigration Detention System Overhaul
Today, the Department of Homeland Security announced some much needed changes to the immigration detention system. The ICE detention system, which has grown dramatically over the last several years, currently has 32,000 detention beds available at any given time, which are spread over 350 facilities across the country. ICE owns and operates their own facilities, and also rents bed space from county and city prisons and jails. These prisons and jails house serious criminals, yet immigration detainees—including asylum seekers, legal immigrants, victims of human trafficking, and immigrants with no criminal records—are mixed in with the local prison population. Read More

Senators Menendez, Kennedy, and Gillibrand Fix Immigration Detention
Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Edward Kennedy (D-MA) took action today to reform the Department of Homeland Security’s ever-growing immigration detention system. The need for reform could not be any more clear: several recent reports have documented both the poor conditions in detention facilities and violations of detainees’ due process rights. A delegation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called conditions “unacceptable” after visiting facilities in Florida and Texas. The National Immigration Law Center, the ACLU of Southern California, and Holland & Knight law firm published a system-wide report on the federal government’s compliance with its own minimum standards, finding “fundamental violations of basic human rights and notions of dignity” and calling for a halt to any further expansion of the current detention system. Read More

New Yorker Profile of Joe Arpaio is Not a Pretty Picture
The July 20th issue of The New Yorker paints a detailed portrait of Maricopa County, Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio—and it is not a pretty picture. The profile of “Sheriff Joe” that emerges from the story by journalist William Finnegan is that of a man obsessed with publicity and self-promotion, who has a deep streak of sadism and little regard for the U.S. Constitution, civil rights, actual crime-fighting, or protecting the safety of the public he ostensibly serves. While Arpaio persists in his personal crusade against unauthorized immigrants, serious crimes go unsolved, emergency-response times climb, and the rights of native-born Americans and immigrants alike are routinely trampled in the process. The most remarkable aspect of this story is that Arpaio is still legally permitted to carry a badge and a gun after more than a decade and a half of egregiously abusing his power. Read More

New Yorker Profile of Joe Arpaio is Not a Pretty Picture
Photo by TheRagBlog. The July 20th issue of The New Yorker paints a detailed portrait of Maricopa County, Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio—and it is not a pretty picture. The profile of “Sheriff Joe” that emerges from the story by journalist William Finnegan is that of a man obsessed with publicity and self-promotion, who has a deep streak of sadism and little regard for the U.S. Constitution, civil rights, actual crime-fighting, or protecting the safety of the public he ostensibly serves. While Arpaio persists in his personal crusade against unauthorized immigrants, serious crimes go unsolved, emergency-response times climb, and the rights of native-born Americans and immigrants alike are routinely trampled in the process. The most remarkable aspect of this story is that Arpaio is still legally permitted to carry a badge and a gun after more than a decade and a half of egregiously abusing his power. Read More

Department of Homeland Security Suspends “Widow Penalty”
Photo by Kratka Photography. This week, the Obama administration took another step toward restoring fairness and humaneness to the immigration system. On Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that she would grant a two-year reprieve to immigrants who were married to U.S. citizens but did not complete the permanent residency process because their American spouses died during the application process. Under U.S. law, a foreign-born spouse of a U.S. citizen is eligible for permanent residency, but must complete a two-year conditional residency period first. In cases where the U.S. citizen spouse died during the conditional residency status, the application for permanent residency was effectively revoked leaving the foreign spouses without legal immigration status and vulnerable to deportation. DHS’s decision also protects children of widowed immigrants from deportation for a two-year period. Read More

High School Teens Deported on the Way to School
Three high school students were deported to Mexico last week when they were swept up in a Transportation Security Agency (TSA) raid at the Old Town transit center on their way to school in San Diego, California. Border Patrol confirmed that 21 people were detained. According to reports, TSA and Border Patrol agents inquired about the 16-year-old girl’s and two boys’, ages 15 and 17, residency status before taking them into custody and eventually deporting them. The teens were allowed to speak with their U.S.-based parents and Mexican Consulate officials before being deported. Read More

Immigration Inching Towards Reform One Year After Postville Raids
Today, May 12, 2008, marks the one-year anniversary of the immigration raid in Postville, Iowa, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted the largest workplace immigration raid in U.S. history, arresting 389 immigrants at the Iowa Agriprocessors meatpacking plant for the crime of working without proper authorization. Aside from the tragedy of separating families and decimating a local economy, the raid symbolizes the failed enforcement-only policies of the Bush administration and serves as yet another grim reminder of the desperate need for fair and comprehensive immigration reform. Last May, undocumented immigrants in Postville were rounded up, charged as serious criminals for using false Social Security numbers or residency papers, and some even sentenced to five months in prison without being informed of their rights. An interpreter, Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas, who assisted as a translator during these below-the-belt trials described the event as a “twist in Dickensian cruelty:” Read More

Human Rights Organizations Say Immigrants “Caught in Detention Dragnet”
On any given day, more than 30,000 immigrants are detained in the U.S. More than 300,000 men, women, and children are detained by U.S. immigration authorities each year. ICE reported that the average stay in detention was 37 days; however many immigrants and asylum seekers are detained much longer – months or even years – until they are either deemed eligible to remain in the U.S. or are deported. International human rights organizations have turned their attention toward the detention and deportation of immigrants in the U.S. Yesterday, Human Rights Watch released a new report, “Forced Apart (By the Numbers): Non-Citizens Deported Mostly for Nonviolent Offenses,” which found that three quarters of non-citizens deported from the United States over the last decade after serving criminal sentences were convicted of nonviolent offenses, such as minor drug possession and traffic offenses. Furthermore, one in five of those deported had been in the country legally, sometimes for decades. Read More

American Citizens Illegally Detained and Deported
You probably can't imagine the horror and frustration of being detained in a jail cell just waiting to be deported—separated from your friends, family and your job—knowing full well you are an American citizen with every right to live in this country. According to a recent AP article, however, this gross injustice has been the reality for literally hundreds of US citizens. In a drive to crack down on illegal immigrants, the United States has locked up or thrown out dozens, probably many more, of its own citizens over the past eight years. A monthslong AP investigation has documented 55 such cases, on the basis of interviews, lawsuits and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. These citizens are detained for anything from a day to five years. Immigration lawyers say there are actually hundreds of such cases. Read More
Make a contribution
Make a direct impact on the lives of immigrants.
