By Seth Freed Wessler
Color Lines
April 25 2011
One year ago, late on the Friday night in April when Arizona’s governor signed SB 1070 into law, I found myself looking north at that state. I’d traveled to see some friends on the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca and was there while the infamous bill became law. Almost every conversation I had included at least a passing comment about SB 1070: a sense of disgust, confusion or fear. Sitting in plastic chairs at a food stand on the edge of the city’s colonial center, one friend, a young Oaxacan political nerd and student, said, “It’s amazing that they despise us so much.” He pointed at the apronned women laying strips of chorizo on the cooking fire and to the dozen others lined up to eat there and said, “From here, we think we’re talking about normal people who travel there, and then maybe travel back. In Arizona, they look like monsters.”
North of the border, all across the United States, non-citizens have just survived a year during which their status as “normal people” has been aggressively challenged. On April 23, 2010, when Gov. Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 into law, it seemed that the situation could get no worse: a state had passed a bill that facilitated racial profiling while criminalizing the very existence of a whole population of people. In the following months, other states—at least 24 of them—began to consider similar laws. It appeared that a checkerboard of anti-immigrant laws might be passed, one legislature at a time, until they consumed the country.
But for all the attention Brewer’s law and its spawn have drawn, and despite all of its toxic implications, the SB 1070 wave of the past 12 months isn’t what’s made the day-to-day lives of non-citizens in places like Arizona so unstable lately. Indeed, before SB 1070 took effect, a U.S. District Court judge blocked most of the law. Two weeks ago, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that injunction. And most of the copycat bills in other states have failed to pass. (See map below.)
Rather, the perils immigrants face today are mostly the result of an increasingly aggressive approach to immigration enforcement pursued primarily by the federal government. Contrary to the claims of anti-immigrant state-level politicians such as Brewer, the Obama administration has led an unprecedented expansion of mass deportation and racial profiling, lethal border enforcement and opaque detention centers. What’s becoming clear is that the president, his government and the bulk of Congress are all interested primarily in detaining and deporting massive numbers of people—and not just instrumentally, as a means of looking tough enough on immigrants to garner support for broader reform, but also in principal. The federal government’s demonstrable commitment today is terrorizing immigrant communities.
The Deadly Divide
Just a few hundred dusty yards south of the border check point into Nogales, Ariz., close to 100 people packed 10 to a side at picnic tables in a blocky concrete and corrugated metal structure. It was an Arizona morning in February that was so cold the cactus had started to freeze and the men, women and some children, small ones who grasped tightly to their mother’s fingers, had come there for a hot meal at the Kino Border Project comedor, a Jesuit-run respite for recently deported people. They’d all been deported days or hours before, some at 4 a.m. that morning. Many had spent months in detention centers before their eventual deportation and others were picked up by border patrol officers while attempting the journey north through the desert. Before filling their stomachs, a priest led those gathered there in prayer. Tired and hungry, the space was quiet as they ate.
When the meal was over, most everyone walked back to the street, prepared to make another difficult trip to the cities and towns they’d come from. For some, this meant heading back into Mexico and for others it was a return north, over the border, into the United States where their lives remain.
Santiago Urbina was one of the men who had not made it north on this attempt. The 22-year-old sat alone at a table after the others had filed out, his face covered in creeping scabs and long red scratches, like a map of his horrific journey from southern Mexico near Oaxaca to the northern border.
At midnight, three nights earlier, in a clearing among the cactus and shrubs, two men carrying cuernos de chivo, which translates to “goat horn” but means Ak-47, chased him down, beat him and left him for dead, after they’d taken the $40 in his pocket. Border Patrol found him, carried him into their wagon and detained him for the night, before throwing him back to Mexico in the morning. A nun had just wrapped Urbina’s arm in bandages and given him a sling.
Urbina had come north to find work picking vegetables in the Arizona fields, so that he could send money to his wife and baby. He says he will not try to cross again, feeling lucky to still be alive this time.
Risks grow daily for hundreds of thousands of people like Urbina—determined, desperate fathers and mothers who are willing to endure the hard life of migrant labor in order to feed their families on the low-wage jobs our economy has created for them. Our creaking, restrictive immigration system leaves them with no route to those job but to cross the desert on foot; there they meet armies of people, both official and illicit, who threaten their lives as much as the desert heat.
Customs and Border Patrol officers make up the largest uniformed federal law enforcement agency in the country. Last year, in addition to providing hundreds of millions of dollars in added funding for the agency, the Obama administration sent 1,200 National Guard troops to the border. In Urbina’s case, Border Patrol found him and brought him out of the desert, but it was the militarized border buildup that pushed him further into the dangerous terrain in the first place.
Just down the road from the Nogales soup kitchen is a parking lot that’s been transformed into another gathering site for deportees. There, No More Deaths, an organization run by young American volunteers, provides basic medical care for migrants who have spent days walking through the desert and collects information on their treatment by Border Patrol. As I arrived at the gates leading into the lot, two young men and two young women stood together chatting in English. I assumed they were all volunteers but soon found out that one of them had been deported just a couple weeks earlier. The man, who asked his name not be used, was at work at his Phoenix tattoo parlor when a group of deputies for Maricopa Country Sheriff Joe Arpaio rushed through the doors and began arresting the men inside.
Dressed in baggy pants and a hoodie, the tattoo artist has no childhood memories of Mexico. He’d come to Phoenix when he was 2 years old. His 1-year-old daughter is now an impossible four hour drive north.
The federal government’s culpability for this man’s deportation—and the deportations of almost 400,000 people in fiscal year 2010, which is a record—gets obscured by the glam notoriety of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Arizona’s anti-immigrant lawmakers. And it was Arpaio’s deputies who, the man says, barged into the tattoo parlor, guns blazing. But he exists with the feds’ support; until recently, the federal government authorized Arpaio’s antics by deputizing his officers as immigration officers. The deputizing program, called 287(g), makes local cops into immigration agents. Apraio’s clear abuses of that power have forced Immigration and Customs Enforcement to suspend partly his authorization under the program, but he continues to act as if it’s in place.
And ICE continues, happily, to deport the people he rounds up.
It’s a similar situation in Georgia, the first and only state to have actually passed an SB 1070 copycat bill through both legislative houses; the bill currently awaits Gov. Nathan Deal’s signature. Four Georgia counties and the state police have signed 287(g) agreements and those deputized by with immigration enforcement powers have engaged in unchecked racial profiling, according to ACLU of Georgia. This has been possible in Georgia because the federal government has authorized it. As in Arizona, the courts will likely block the most aggressive parts of Georgia’s own show me your papers law, but the federal programs that preceded and will live beyond these laws do the trick on their own.
‘They’re Leaving in Droves’
All of this is not to suggest, however, that SB 1070 has done no harm. It has done plenty. And so will the law in Georgia, even if it is partially blocked by the courts, too. The impact of these bills, even if they never go into effect, is that they send waves of fear and confusion into immigrant communities, indeed into whole states. In the period since SB 1070 passed, uncounted numbers of immigrants have fled their homes in Arizona. Social service providers and community organizers there told me that, since the bills passed, families have just disappeared—packed their bags and left the state. A worker at a Head Start in Phoenix said that numerous children of undocumented parents have been left with documented family members because undocumented parents felt they had to flee the state or risk deportation. And the provisions in the law that were not blocked by the court, including one that makes it a crime to harbor or transport undocumented immigrants, put everyone at risk.
There are now 12 states, in addition to Georgia, where SB 1070-like bills are still being considered. Versions of the law have died everywhere else they’ve been introduced. While the bills are unlikely to pass in most of these places—eyes are still on Alabama, South Carolina and few others hot states—their introduction in the first place and serious debate about their passage function as a sort of threat, a tool of intimidation that can be nearly as powerful of a tool for terrorizing immigrant communities as actually passing bills.
The core supporters of SB 1070 applaud this. Russell Pearce, the right-wing Arizona state senate president, said joyously to the Arizona Daily Star, “They’re leaving in caravans”
“I’ve talked to a U-Haul dealer,” Pearce continued. “He said business has never been better.”
Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s deportation pipeline keeps pumping. President Obama has refused pleas that he halt deportations of the young people who would gain a path to citizenship if Congress passes the DREAM Act, which the administration vocally supports. If the president were to change his posture, the young tattoo artist I met in the No More Deaths parking lot would likely have remained in his home. Now, he must figure out a life in a place he left as a toddler.
The administration has also lifted a moratorium on the deportation of Haitians, which it put into place following the country’s earthquake in 2010. A recently deported man died of Cholera while locked up in the Haitian prison that deportees are held in when they arrive there.
In a county jail in northern Florida, a petite 21-year-old women whom I’ll call Natalia sat at a metal table in the center of her cell block, which holds a few dozen detained women. Natalia told me that she was born in the Bahamas, but to Haitian parents. Because of Haitian and Bahamian laws, she is a citizen of Haiti. She came to the United States, she says, at 2 days old. Natalia, whose girlish voice is accented by her southern upbringing, pushed off tears and told me that she had to leave her 1-year-old baby with her mother near Miami. She and her boyfriend, the baby’s father, were both arrested after stealing clothes from a mall. Her appointed public defender, a private attorney with a state contract, told her to take a plea to get a lower sentence. The lawyer failed to tell Natalia that the plea would result in detention and likely deportation.
When I met her, she awaited deportation to Haiti—a place she has never been and in which she has no remaining family. She speaks no Creole. If she’s deported, she does not expect to see her baby again. It’s a remarkable penalty for shoplifting. In the room with her were at least two other women who similarly feared that they’d be separated from their children.
Natalia’s passage from the criminal justice system to deportation is an increasingly common route. By 2013, the Department of Homeland Security hopes to have activated a program to facilitate this process in every jail in the country. It’s already operating 1,210 jurisdictions in 41 states. The program, misleadingly called Secure Communities, sends print data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement on anyone booked into any participating jail. While ICE claims it is meant to target people convicted of serious crimes, only a relatively small number of those deported fit into that category. The majority are convicted of a low-level violation like shoplifting, or of no crime at all.
For the last year, the country’s stare has focused on Arizona as it has vied for most fantastically anti-immigrant state in the country. This month, that designation has shifted to Georgia, and the fight is on to ensure that it’s the last place where this show unfolds. But whehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifther or not the SB 1070 wave has finally crested, little will change unless immigration policy changes at the federal level, where the ultimate the power lies.
At the Nogales soup kitchen, a man named Lucio talked about his home in Oaxaca, where he had not been in a decade. “I don’t know what is there for me to go back to. My family is in California, my wife and my kids,” he said, describing his terribly normal life in the home from which he’d been ejected. It was hardly the story of the monster he must be to deserve this.
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/04/a_year_after_sb_1070_the_deportation_pipeline_still_begins_in_washington.html
Showing posts with label Deportation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deportation. Show all posts
Monday, April 25, 2011
Friday, August 6, 2010
Deportations Before Reform: Anatomy of an Immigration Bust
By Marianne McCune
WNYC
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
The men and women who knock on illegal immigrants’ doors and take them away in handcuffs are members of what are called fugitive operations teams. They often meet up before dawn in some dim parking lot near the homes of the immigrants they're looking for.
The job of fugitive operations teams is to find and arrest "fugitive aliens," or people who've officially been told to leave the U.S., but have not. As lawmakers continue to debate immigration reform, President Barack Obama is pushing for a path to citizenship for people who are here illegally. But at the same time, the Department of Homeland Security is deporting more immigrants than ever –- around 400,000 a year. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says its priority is to deport those who’ve committed serious crimes. But more than half of the immigrants arrested do not have convictions. And among those who do, many of the crimes are minor. Critics say the government is breaking up families for crimes that should be forgivable and that people should be given a chance to make amends.
On a Tuesday morning earlier this year, Fugitive Operations supervisor Darren Williams met his colleagues from the New York office at a Queens diner. By 5:30 a.m., they were gathered around team leader Raul Concha to get briefed on the plan.
"All right, this morning we’re going to be going after three targets," Concha told the team. First on the list: a Moroccan couple living in East Elmhurst, Queens, Abe and Fatima (they asked that WNYC leave out their last names for fear that talking to the media would somehow count against them in immigration court). Concha told the group that Abe and Fatima were both convicted felons. Their crime: immigration fraud.
As Darren Williams leads half a dozen fugitive operations vehicles toward Abe and Fatima’s apartment building, he prepares to meet the individuals behind the case descriptions. "Everyone has a story," Williams says. "Everyone has their own individual story that’s unique to them. And I listen. I’m not going to say I believe every story. But I do listen to the stories.”
Abe and Fatima’s story has many layers, but we’ll start with their crime: marriage fraud. When Fatima moved to the U.S. to be with Abe, he was working legally and waiting for a green card, but the green card fell through. By that time Fatima was pregnant with their first child. The two had been married in a mosque, but there was no official record. So when an American friend offered to get Fatima a green card by becoming her legal husband, they went for it. And they got caught: Fatima, for the fake marriage, Abe for paying off the friend.
When it was time to begin court proceedings, the couple had a one-month old baby. The prosecutors offered what Abe thought was a pretty good deal. He says they told him, “the deal is plead guilty, no jail time.” So they did. What they didn’t know was that marriage fraud is a felony and under current immigration law, a conviction means an automatic order of deportation, regardless of the circumstances. “Every lawyer we go to, they say, 'you know it was a big mistake to plead guilty,'” Abe says.
After two years on probation, the two were officially told to leave the U.S. By that time they already had two American children, and they chose to stay. And that’s how, almost a decade later, Abe and Fatima ended up a target of a fugitive operations team.
Last spring, at six in the morning, the agents gather in front of their building. The landlord lets them in, they head upstairs, press the bell on the couple’s apartment and Fatima appears. She's wearing jeans, a white sweatshirt and a tangle of morning hair.
”So, six o’clock in the morning, I’m trying to do my breakfast, I open,” Fatima says. She says she’d been expecting this day for years. “I say good morning, come on in!”
She went immediately to wake Abe up. “I told her, so we’re leaving? She told me, yes, I think we’re leaving,“ Abe says.
That morning, the two were are calm. But, to Abe and Fatima, the idea of going back to Morocco is horrifying. This next layer of their story will give you an idea why. Fatima says she grew up in a lower class, traditional family in Morocco, under the rule of her father and six brothers. She couldn’t choose her own clothes, watch television or listen to music. When she tried to learn guitar, she says her father came in and broke it. “Because I have no right,” she says. “He told me, 'why? You gonna go play in the bars?'”
When she was in her 20s, Fatima moved to France, but she was under her brother’s strict command. She says she dreamed of coming to the U.S. "For me it’s freedom," Fatima says. She believed it's a place where a woman "can have all her rights, she can do whatever she wants.”
Abe was already living in the U.S. at the time. He was separated from his first wife –- a Haitian-American –- and he says he was longing to start a family with someone more like him. So when his cousin in France told him about Fatima, he courted her over the phone.
Fatima says the first time she talked to Abe, he told her he trusted the cousin who’d said good things about her. And Abe remembers telling her, “Listen, I’m not trying to have a girlfriend, or pass time with you. If you are willing to put your hand in my hand and walk together, I would love to get married with you and run a family together.”
Fatima’s recalls thinking, “Wow, that’s the perfect man for me! I’m going to go to America. I’m going to be free and I’m going to raise my kids different than I was raised in Morocco.”
On the pretense of visiting family friends, Fatima made two secret trips to see Abe. And on the second, they got married on the way home from the airport. When Abe told his family, they disapproved of his choice, so he cut off ties with them. And when Fatima called her brother, she says he was very upset. “He threatened me,” she says. She says he told her if he saw her again, he would kill her. Being from Morocco himself, Abe says he knows how it is. “For them it’s like a black spot on the family honor.”
Before immigration agents entered Abe and Fatima’s home, they didn’t know the couple had children. After 10 minutes of explaining to the couple what’s going on, team leader Raul Concha comes out to the stairs to explain to Williams that there are two girls in the apartment, ages 9 and 12.
“We’re going to leave the mother here,” Concha says. “And I’m going to bring the husband with us.” They take Abe downstairs –- away from his family –- before they handcuff him.
"We try to make it as smooth as possible for everyone concerned,” Williams whispers.
As her husband is led out the building’s front door, Fatima follows him to the bend in the stairs, finally losing hold of her calm and letting tears pour down her cheeks. As he leads Abe out into the morning, Concha assures her he’ll be fine.
“It’s a tough job,” Concha says later, “But we enjoy it. It’s our daily routine.”
In the car on the way back to immigration headquarters at 26 Federal Plaza, Williams says there are stories that move him. “I’m human,” he says. “There are situations that are heart-wrenching. Anytime you deal with kids it’s touching. Anytime.”
But when asked whether he thinks it’s unfair, as advocates charge, to deport people who’ve been here 10 or 20 years, paying taxes and raising American children, Williams argues that there are wait-lists across the world for would-be immigrants to come to the U.S. legally.
"Is it fair to have individuals who are here illegally jump over those folks who’ve been waiting all this time?” Williams says “I don’t think so! What would you tell all those family members out there that are waiting?”
At 26 Federal Plaza, Abe is fingerprinted and photographed, but Williams has discretion over whether or not to detain him. And because Abe is the sole-breadwinner and does not seem likely to runaway Williams sends him home. However, he’ll have to wear an electronic ankle bracelet and report weekly to immigration officials. Fatima has only to report once a month.
Sitting on their couch some weeks later, the two say they’re making a last-ditch effort to re-open their cases, anything to delay being sent home to Morocco.
"I do this mistake. It’s a big mistake,” Fatima admits. “It’s a crime! So I’m paying for it.” But she says she cannot go back to Morocco.
Until now, the couple had never told their children they were here illegally. But the older daughter, Selma, says she figured it out when she heard them say deportation in Arabic. “Because sometimes, to be honest, I eavesdrop on what they’re saying on the phone in Arabic,” she says. When she heard the word "deportation," she says she ran to look it up in the dictionary. “I just kept it to myself until they told us.”
Selma says she hasn’t told a single friend. “I’m 12. I don’t know about this stuff yet,” she says. “I’m not old enough to go through this yet. So it’s a little weird.”
All their lives, Abe says, these girls have been asking about Morocco: "What is our family? Who we have in our family? What is Morocco, how is Morocco?"
Now Selma says, “I don’t think I have any family in Morocco. So we don’t know who we’re going to live with and we don’t know who’s going to take care of us.”
"Where is home? Back home where?” Abe asks repeatedly. “Those girls have a right to a life, a basic life, that they will not have at all back home.”
There are many more layers to this story, but under current immigration law, none are relevant. Abe and Fatima are fugitive aliens. They lost their right to stay in the U.S. when they were convicted of immigration fraud. And as lawmakers debate immigration reform, some are likely to push for more discretion for immigration judges, especially when American children are involved.
As things stand, Abe and Fatima are likely to be deported. And they’ll have to decide whether or not to take their American daughters with them.
http://beta.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2010/aug/03/deportations-reform-anatomy-immigration-bust/
WNYC
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
The men and women who knock on illegal immigrants’ doors and take them away in handcuffs are members of what are called fugitive operations teams. They often meet up before dawn in some dim parking lot near the homes of the immigrants they're looking for.
The job of fugitive operations teams is to find and arrest "fugitive aliens," or people who've officially been told to leave the U.S., but have not. As lawmakers continue to debate immigration reform, President Barack Obama is pushing for a path to citizenship for people who are here illegally. But at the same time, the Department of Homeland Security is deporting more immigrants than ever –- around 400,000 a year. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says its priority is to deport those who’ve committed serious crimes. But more than half of the immigrants arrested do not have convictions. And among those who do, many of the crimes are minor. Critics say the government is breaking up families for crimes that should be forgivable and that people should be given a chance to make amends.
On a Tuesday morning earlier this year, Fugitive Operations supervisor Darren Williams met his colleagues from the New York office at a Queens diner. By 5:30 a.m., they were gathered around team leader Raul Concha to get briefed on the plan.
"All right, this morning we’re going to be going after three targets," Concha told the team. First on the list: a Moroccan couple living in East Elmhurst, Queens, Abe and Fatima (they asked that WNYC leave out their last names for fear that talking to the media would somehow count against them in immigration court). Concha told the group that Abe and Fatima were both convicted felons. Their crime: immigration fraud.
As Darren Williams leads half a dozen fugitive operations vehicles toward Abe and Fatima’s apartment building, he prepares to meet the individuals behind the case descriptions. "Everyone has a story," Williams says. "Everyone has their own individual story that’s unique to them. And I listen. I’m not going to say I believe every story. But I do listen to the stories.”
Abe and Fatima’s story has many layers, but we’ll start with their crime: marriage fraud. When Fatima moved to the U.S. to be with Abe, he was working legally and waiting for a green card, but the green card fell through. By that time Fatima was pregnant with their first child. The two had been married in a mosque, but there was no official record. So when an American friend offered to get Fatima a green card by becoming her legal husband, they went for it. And they got caught: Fatima, for the fake marriage, Abe for paying off the friend.
When it was time to begin court proceedings, the couple had a one-month old baby. The prosecutors offered what Abe thought was a pretty good deal. He says they told him, “the deal is plead guilty, no jail time.” So they did. What they didn’t know was that marriage fraud is a felony and under current immigration law, a conviction means an automatic order of deportation, regardless of the circumstances. “Every lawyer we go to, they say, 'you know it was a big mistake to plead guilty,'” Abe says.
After two years on probation, the two were officially told to leave the U.S. By that time they already had two American children, and they chose to stay. And that’s how, almost a decade later, Abe and Fatima ended up a target of a fugitive operations team.
Last spring, at six in the morning, the agents gather in front of their building. The landlord lets them in, they head upstairs, press the bell on the couple’s apartment and Fatima appears. She's wearing jeans, a white sweatshirt and a tangle of morning hair.
”So, six o’clock in the morning, I’m trying to do my breakfast, I open,” Fatima says. She says she’d been expecting this day for years. “I say good morning, come on in!”
She went immediately to wake Abe up. “I told her, so we’re leaving? She told me, yes, I think we’re leaving,“ Abe says.
That morning, the two were are calm. But, to Abe and Fatima, the idea of going back to Morocco is horrifying. This next layer of their story will give you an idea why. Fatima says she grew up in a lower class, traditional family in Morocco, under the rule of her father and six brothers. She couldn’t choose her own clothes, watch television or listen to music. When she tried to learn guitar, she says her father came in and broke it. “Because I have no right,” she says. “He told me, 'why? You gonna go play in the bars?'”
When she was in her 20s, Fatima moved to France, but she was under her brother’s strict command. She says she dreamed of coming to the U.S. "For me it’s freedom," Fatima says. She believed it's a place where a woman "can have all her rights, she can do whatever she wants.”
Abe was already living in the U.S. at the time. He was separated from his first wife –- a Haitian-American –- and he says he was longing to start a family with someone more like him. So when his cousin in France told him about Fatima, he courted her over the phone.
Fatima says the first time she talked to Abe, he told her he trusted the cousin who’d said good things about her. And Abe remembers telling her, “Listen, I’m not trying to have a girlfriend, or pass time with you. If you are willing to put your hand in my hand and walk together, I would love to get married with you and run a family together.”
Fatima’s recalls thinking, “Wow, that’s the perfect man for me! I’m going to go to America. I’m going to be free and I’m going to raise my kids different than I was raised in Morocco.”
On the pretense of visiting family friends, Fatima made two secret trips to see Abe. And on the second, they got married on the way home from the airport. When Abe told his family, they disapproved of his choice, so he cut off ties with them. And when Fatima called her brother, she says he was very upset. “He threatened me,” she says. She says he told her if he saw her again, he would kill her. Being from Morocco himself, Abe says he knows how it is. “For them it’s like a black spot on the family honor.”
Before immigration agents entered Abe and Fatima’s home, they didn’t know the couple had children. After 10 minutes of explaining to the couple what’s going on, team leader Raul Concha comes out to the stairs to explain to Williams that there are two girls in the apartment, ages 9 and 12.
“We’re going to leave the mother here,” Concha says. “And I’m going to bring the husband with us.” They take Abe downstairs –- away from his family –- before they handcuff him.
"We try to make it as smooth as possible for everyone concerned,” Williams whispers.
As her husband is led out the building’s front door, Fatima follows him to the bend in the stairs, finally losing hold of her calm and letting tears pour down her cheeks. As he leads Abe out into the morning, Concha assures her he’ll be fine.
“It’s a tough job,” Concha says later, “But we enjoy it. It’s our daily routine.”
In the car on the way back to immigration headquarters at 26 Federal Plaza, Williams says there are stories that move him. “I’m human,” he says. “There are situations that are heart-wrenching. Anytime you deal with kids it’s touching. Anytime.”
But when asked whether he thinks it’s unfair, as advocates charge, to deport people who’ve been here 10 or 20 years, paying taxes and raising American children, Williams argues that there are wait-lists across the world for would-be immigrants to come to the U.S. legally.
"Is it fair to have individuals who are here illegally jump over those folks who’ve been waiting all this time?” Williams says “I don’t think so! What would you tell all those family members out there that are waiting?”
At 26 Federal Plaza, Abe is fingerprinted and photographed, but Williams has discretion over whether or not to detain him. And because Abe is the sole-breadwinner and does not seem likely to runaway Williams sends him home. However, he’ll have to wear an electronic ankle bracelet and report weekly to immigration officials. Fatima has only to report once a month.
Sitting on their couch some weeks later, the two say they’re making a last-ditch effort to re-open their cases, anything to delay being sent home to Morocco.
"I do this mistake. It’s a big mistake,” Fatima admits. “It’s a crime! So I’m paying for it.” But she says she cannot go back to Morocco.
Until now, the couple had never told their children they were here illegally. But the older daughter, Selma, says she figured it out when she heard them say deportation in Arabic. “Because sometimes, to be honest, I eavesdrop on what they’re saying on the phone in Arabic,” she says. When she heard the word "deportation," she says she ran to look it up in the dictionary. “I just kept it to myself until they told us.”
Selma says she hasn’t told a single friend. “I’m 12. I don’t know about this stuff yet,” she says. “I’m not old enough to go through this yet. So it’s a little weird.”
All their lives, Abe says, these girls have been asking about Morocco: "What is our family? Who we have in our family? What is Morocco, how is Morocco?"
Now Selma says, “I don’t think I have any family in Morocco. So we don’t know who we’re going to live with and we don’t know who’s going to take care of us.”
"Where is home? Back home where?” Abe asks repeatedly. “Those girls have a right to a life, a basic life, that they will not have at all back home.”
There are many more layers to this story, but under current immigration law, none are relevant. Abe and Fatima are fugitive aliens. They lost their right to stay in the U.S. when they were convicted of immigration fraud. And as lawmakers debate immigration reform, some are likely to push for more discretion for immigration judges, especially when American children are involved.
As things stand, Abe and Fatima are likely to be deported. And they’ll have to decide whether or not to take their American daughters with them.
http://beta.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2010/aug/03/deportations-reform-anatomy-immigration-bust/
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Poll: Majority doesn't favor deportation
By Peggy Fikac
San Antonio Express-News
February 15, 2010
AUSTIN — More Texas voters think unauthorized immigrants should be allowed to stay in the U.S., through either a path to citizenship or work visas, than favor deporting them, according to a new San Antonio Express-News-Houston Chronicle poll.
But the poll showed division on the issue, with 38 percent of respondents favoring deportation. Of the three possibilities offered, that was the answer that got the most support.
Twenty-nine percent favored a way for unauthorized immigrants to attain citizenship, and 23 percent supported work visas.
Pollster Mickey Blum attributed some of the responses to the structure of the question: “Two of them involved staying; one seemed a little bit like a middle road. ... Some people could have grabbed that so they didn't have to say either deport them or give them a path to citizenship.”
There was a partisan split on the answers, with 45 percent of Republicans supporting deportation, compared with 28.4 percent of Democrats.
“The young seem to see this as kind of, ‘Yes, just let them have the path to citizenship,'” Blum said. A total of 42.3 percent of those under 30 supported that option, compared to 27 percent of those over 30.
She also noted that African Americans gave the most support to a pathway to citizenship: 39.6 percent, compared with 26.7 percent of Anglos and 32.1 percent of Hispanics.
“There have been times when people have thought that minorities would be in competition with each other or would not be supportive of each other,” Blum said. African Americans “were clearly supportive of that (path to citizenship). They were not looking to say, ‘Oh, wait, that's competition for us and send 'em back.' ... The groups that are in favor of deportation are whites and Republicans.”
Among Anglo voters, 43.5 percent favor deportation.
In Bexar County, 28.1 percent favored deportation, 31.5 percent favored a path to citizenship and 33.8 percent chose work visas.
In the Houston area, 37.3 percent favor deportation, 33.7 percent a path to citizenship and 19.1 percent work visas.
The question was among several asked on issues in advance of the primary elections. The poll of Texas voters was conducted for a consortium of Texas newspapers by Blum & Weprin Associates Inc. from Feb. 2 to 10. Among other findings:
• Given a menu of options to balance the state budget, 41 percent picked cuts in highway funding, 20 percent chose higher state taxes and fees, 11 percent would cut health care for the poor and 7 percent would cut education.
• To pay for more needed highway construction, the most popular choice was to increase toll roads, at 21 percent, followed by borrowing money using state bonds at 17 percent, increasing the state gasoline tax at 16 percent, taking money from other programs at 15 percent and allowing “local option” gas taxes in metro areas at 10 percent.
• Three out of four respondents favored a term limit on the time someone can serve as governor.
• Likely GOP primary voters said state issues that the governor has to deal with are more important to their votes than sending a message to Washington, 71 percent to 25 percent.
• Jobs and the economy were the most important issues to those who plan to vote in the GOP primary, followed by the budget and taxes.
The issue of immigration also was polled in Texas by Blum & Weprin four years ago. Then, when asked whether unauthorized immigrants hurt or help the U.S. economy, 56 percent said hurt and 33 percent said help. Also, 47 percent opposed a proposal to build a 2,000-mile security fence along the U.S.-Mexico border; 44 percent favored the idea.
In the new poll, Rice University political science Professor Mark Jones said, the results seem a bit high on deportation. But he said there's more support for deportation in Texas than in the country as a whole.
Nationally, he said, 67 percent generally support a path to citizenship, depending on how the question is posed and whether qualifiers are put on the idea, such as granting such status to those who don't have criminal records and who pay a fine.
Jones also said the issue isn't as simple as a percentage.
“The intensity varies on those two sides,” he said. It's a “very intense and salient” issue for those who favor deportation, while those who favor a path to citizenship might not have the same strength of feeling.
The issue plays into a potential November matchup between GOP Gov. Rick Perry and former Houston Mayor Bill White, who is vying for the Democratic nod for governor, and into the future of the Republican Party overall, Jones said.
“The Republicans have had the luxury over the past dozen years of essentially not worrying about the Latino voters. George W. Bush did quite well with Latino voters, but since then you've seen a policy more by the Republican Party that, if anything, it alienates Latino voters here in Texas,” he said.
Lawmakers of opposing parties mentioned the political ramifications.
“Why would Democrats not want to give 20 million illegal aliens amnesty with a pathway to citizenship? Because if they do ... they will create 20 million instant voters with a tendency to vote for Democrats, because they will continue to need health care and free education in the United States, and the Democrats are more than willing to give it to them,” said Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, who has pushed bills targeting unauthorized immigrants.
The Homeland Security Department has estimated that the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. was 10.8 million in January 2009.
State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, said, “From a Democratic standpoint, it behooves the Democratic Party to have Republicans like Leo Berman spew their hateful rhetoric. That's (creating) the next generation of Hispanics that will never vote Republican.”
The poll's questions were asked by phone of a random sample of 1,508 registered voters. Of them, 464 were likely Republican primary voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points for registered voters and plus or minus 4.5 percentage points for likely GOP primary voters.
http://www.sacultura.com/Poll_Majority_doesnt_favor_deportation.html
San Antonio Express-News
February 15, 2010
AUSTIN — More Texas voters think unauthorized immigrants should be allowed to stay in the U.S., through either a path to citizenship or work visas, than favor deporting them, according to a new San Antonio Express-News-Houston Chronicle poll.
But the poll showed division on the issue, with 38 percent of respondents favoring deportation. Of the three possibilities offered, that was the answer that got the most support.
Twenty-nine percent favored a way for unauthorized immigrants to attain citizenship, and 23 percent supported work visas.
Pollster Mickey Blum attributed some of the responses to the structure of the question: “Two of them involved staying; one seemed a little bit like a middle road. ... Some people could have grabbed that so they didn't have to say either deport them or give them a path to citizenship.”
There was a partisan split on the answers, with 45 percent of Republicans supporting deportation, compared with 28.4 percent of Democrats.
“The young seem to see this as kind of, ‘Yes, just let them have the path to citizenship,'” Blum said. A total of 42.3 percent of those under 30 supported that option, compared to 27 percent of those over 30.
She also noted that African Americans gave the most support to a pathway to citizenship: 39.6 percent, compared with 26.7 percent of Anglos and 32.1 percent of Hispanics.
“There have been times when people have thought that minorities would be in competition with each other or would not be supportive of each other,” Blum said. African Americans “were clearly supportive of that (path to citizenship). They were not looking to say, ‘Oh, wait, that's competition for us and send 'em back.' ... The groups that are in favor of deportation are whites and Republicans.”
Among Anglo voters, 43.5 percent favor deportation.
In Bexar County, 28.1 percent favored deportation, 31.5 percent favored a path to citizenship and 33.8 percent chose work visas.
In the Houston area, 37.3 percent favor deportation, 33.7 percent a path to citizenship and 19.1 percent work visas.
The question was among several asked on issues in advance of the primary elections. The poll of Texas voters was conducted for a consortium of Texas newspapers by Blum & Weprin Associates Inc. from Feb. 2 to 10. Among other findings:
• Given a menu of options to balance the state budget, 41 percent picked cuts in highway funding, 20 percent chose higher state taxes and fees, 11 percent would cut health care for the poor and 7 percent would cut education.
• To pay for more needed highway construction, the most popular choice was to increase toll roads, at 21 percent, followed by borrowing money using state bonds at 17 percent, increasing the state gasoline tax at 16 percent, taking money from other programs at 15 percent and allowing “local option” gas taxes in metro areas at 10 percent.
• Three out of four respondents favored a term limit on the time someone can serve as governor.
• Likely GOP primary voters said state issues that the governor has to deal with are more important to their votes than sending a message to Washington, 71 percent to 25 percent.
• Jobs and the economy were the most important issues to those who plan to vote in the GOP primary, followed by the budget and taxes.
The issue of immigration also was polled in Texas by Blum & Weprin four years ago. Then, when asked whether unauthorized immigrants hurt or help the U.S. economy, 56 percent said hurt and 33 percent said help. Also, 47 percent opposed a proposal to build a 2,000-mile security fence along the U.S.-Mexico border; 44 percent favored the idea.
In the new poll, Rice University political science Professor Mark Jones said, the results seem a bit high on deportation. But he said there's more support for deportation in Texas than in the country as a whole.
Nationally, he said, 67 percent generally support a path to citizenship, depending on how the question is posed and whether qualifiers are put on the idea, such as granting such status to those who don't have criminal records and who pay a fine.
Jones also said the issue isn't as simple as a percentage.
“The intensity varies on those two sides,” he said. It's a “very intense and salient” issue for those who favor deportation, while those who favor a path to citizenship might not have the same strength of feeling.
The issue plays into a potential November matchup between GOP Gov. Rick Perry and former Houston Mayor Bill White, who is vying for the Democratic nod for governor, and into the future of the Republican Party overall, Jones said.
“The Republicans have had the luxury over the past dozen years of essentially not worrying about the Latino voters. George W. Bush did quite well with Latino voters, but since then you've seen a policy more by the Republican Party that, if anything, it alienates Latino voters here in Texas,” he said.
Lawmakers of opposing parties mentioned the political ramifications.
“Why would Democrats not want to give 20 million illegal aliens amnesty with a pathway to citizenship? Because if they do ... they will create 20 million instant voters with a tendency to vote for Democrats, because they will continue to need health care and free education in the United States, and the Democrats are more than willing to give it to them,” said Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, who has pushed bills targeting unauthorized immigrants.
The Homeland Security Department has estimated that the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. was 10.8 million in January 2009.
State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, said, “From a Democratic standpoint, it behooves the Democratic Party to have Republicans like Leo Berman spew their hateful rhetoric. That's (creating) the next generation of Hispanics that will never vote Republican.”
The poll's questions were asked by phone of a random sample of 1,508 registered voters. Of them, 464 were likely Republican primary voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points for registered voters and plus or minus 4.5 percentage points for likely GOP primary voters.
http://www.sacultura.com/Poll_Majority_doesnt_favor_deportation.html
Friday, November 14, 2008
Five immigrant workers arrested
Five immigrant workers arrested
By Dan McLean
Burlington Free Press Staff Writer
November 14, 2008
Working from a citizen's tip, the U.S. Border Patrol arrested five illegal immigrants walking across an Essex parking lot Thursday morning.
A union analyst said the immigrants were subcontractors working on the Lowe's in Essex. Mark Henry, an operations officer with U.S. Border Patrol in Swanton, declined to disclose the illegal immigrants' nationality, gender or age, citing agency policy.
The Border Patrol has established through interviews, record checks and an investigation that the five individuals are in the U.S. illegally, Henry said. They will be turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation proceedings, Henry said.
The arrests took place in an Essex parking lot at about 8 a.m. Thursday morning near where Lowe's Cos. Inc. is building a store, Henry said. He did not know the parking lot where the arrests took place.
Damon Hall, a Burlington-based industry analyst for Ironworkers Local 7, which covers most of New England, said the five people arrested worked for a drywall subcontractor that is working on the Lowe's in Essex. "They were seen walking to and from the job site," he said.
Karen Cobb, Lowe's Cos. Inc. public relations manager, said the home improvement store is "continuing to review this situation."
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20081114/NEWS02/811140313/1009/NEWS01
By Dan McLean
Burlington Free Press Staff Writer
November 14, 2008
Working from a citizen's tip, the U.S. Border Patrol arrested five illegal immigrants walking across an Essex parking lot Thursday morning.
A union analyst said the immigrants were subcontractors working on the Lowe's in Essex. Mark Henry, an operations officer with U.S. Border Patrol in Swanton, declined to disclose the illegal immigrants' nationality, gender or age, citing agency policy.
The Border Patrol has established through interviews, record checks and an investigation that the five individuals are in the U.S. illegally, Henry said. They will be turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation proceedings, Henry said.
The arrests took place in an Essex parking lot at about 8 a.m. Thursday morning near where Lowe's Cos. Inc. is building a store, Henry said. He did not know the parking lot where the arrests took place.
Damon Hall, a Burlington-based industry analyst for Ironworkers Local 7, which covers most of New England, said the five people arrested worked for a drywall subcontractor that is working on the Lowe's in Essex. "They were seen walking to and from the job site," he said.
Karen Cobb, Lowe's Cos. Inc. public relations manager, said the home improvement store is "continuing to review this situation."
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20081114/NEWS02/811140313/1009/NEWS01
Monday, August 4, 2008
Jump in fast-track deportation orders raises alarm among immigrant advocates
Jump in fast-track deportation orders raises alarm among immigrant advocates
Many detainees don't understand their rights, supporters say
By Vanessa Bauzá Chicago Tribune reporter
9:52 PM CDT, August 3, 2008
When Emanuel Franco was arrested two years ago during a federal raid at a Chicago pallet company, he said, an Immigration officer urged him to sign an order to speed up his deportation rather than "waste the judge's time" with a hearing."He's like: 'You have no right to be here. You have two options: get deported now or get deported later,' " Franco, 24, recalled.
Franco refused to sign. He came to the United States illegally as a child 20 years ago, and his lawyer told him they would fight the deportation. A judge put an end to the deportation proceedings after Franco married his fiance, a U.S. citizen. He is now awaiting a green card.Like Franco, Roberto Mazariegos was arrested after living illegally in the United States for years. But he had no access to a lawyer and signed the deportation order.
"It was in English and I didn't understand it," said Mazariegos, 29, who was deported to his native Guatemala in April. He left behind his fiance, who is a legal permanent resident, and their 16-month-old daughter.
Such fast-track deportation orders have increased fivefold since 2004, prompting concerns among immigrant advocates and lawyers that detainees are being rushed out of the country at the expense of their due process.
The federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said its officers fully explain the orders after interviewing detainees. It also offers interpretation and contact information for free legal services, said agency spokesman Tim Counts."
I want to be very clear this is not something they are pressured to sign," Counts said. "It's done slowly, it's done clearly. We want to make sure the person understands all options and all consequences."
According to the National Immigrant Justice Center, immigrant detainees nationwide signed 31,000 fast-tracked deportation orders—known as "stipulated orders of removal"—last year, up from 5,500 in 2004. About 16 percent of the orders were signed in Chicago, making it the jurisdiction with the second-largest number of stipulated orders, according to the center, which analyzed federal statistics.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-deportation_orderaug04,0,2397644.story
Many detainees don't understand their rights, supporters say
By Vanessa Bauzá Chicago Tribune reporter
9:52 PM CDT, August 3, 2008
When Emanuel Franco was arrested two years ago during a federal raid at a Chicago pallet company, he said, an Immigration officer urged him to sign an order to speed up his deportation rather than "waste the judge's time" with a hearing."He's like: 'You have no right to be here. You have two options: get deported now or get deported later,' " Franco, 24, recalled.
Franco refused to sign. He came to the United States illegally as a child 20 years ago, and his lawyer told him they would fight the deportation. A judge put an end to the deportation proceedings after Franco married his fiance, a U.S. citizen. He is now awaiting a green card.Like Franco, Roberto Mazariegos was arrested after living illegally in the United States for years. But he had no access to a lawyer and signed the deportation order.
"It was in English and I didn't understand it," said Mazariegos, 29, who was deported to his native Guatemala in April. He left behind his fiance, who is a legal permanent resident, and their 16-month-old daughter.
Such fast-track deportation orders have increased fivefold since 2004, prompting concerns among immigrant advocates and lawyers that detainees are being rushed out of the country at the expense of their due process.
The federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said its officers fully explain the orders after interviewing detainees. It also offers interpretation and contact information for free legal services, said agency spokesman Tim Counts."
I want to be very clear this is not something they are pressured to sign," Counts said. "It's done slowly, it's done clearly. We want to make sure the person understands all options and all consequences."
According to the National Immigrant Justice Center, immigrant detainees nationwide signed 31,000 fast-tracked deportation orders—known as "stipulated orders of removal"—last year, up from 5,500 in 2004. About 16 percent of the orders were signed in Chicago, making it the jurisdiction with the second-largest number of stipulated orders, according to the center, which analyzed federal statistics.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-deportation_orderaug04,0,2397644.story
Friday, August 1, 2008
Devastating result of deplorable law By Pimentel
http://www.arizonarepublic.com/
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC
Phoenix, Arizona, USA T
hursday, November 12, 2002 http://www.arizonarepublic.com/special03/articles/1112pimentel12.html
Devastating result of deplorable law By Pimentel
Alejandra Arias Garcia, 20, is about to be forsaken by her country. Many will argue that the United States isn't her country.
This would be the equivalent, however, of arguing that up is down.
She has lived here since she was 6 months old. She attended public schools here and got her green card at age 18.
Her father is a naturalized U.S. citizen, her mother in the process of becoming one. Her seven brothers and sisters are either U.S.-born or permanent legal residents.
This is an American family by any stretch. Tragically, however, it is about to become a family torn apart unless a legal miracle occurs.
Arias is about to be deported to Mexico.
But then this is an old story. It's the story of U.S. immigration policy. It's a policy that puts a premium in most cases on family reunification but can contain very little by way of compassionate discretion in individual cases.....
Reach Pimentel at ricardo.pimentel@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8210
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC
Phoenix, Arizona, USA T
hursday, November 12, 2002 http://www.arizonarepublic.com/special03/articles/1112pimentel12.html
Devastating result of deplorable law By Pimentel
Alejandra Arias Garcia, 20, is about to be forsaken by her country. Many will argue that the United States isn't her country.
This would be the equivalent, however, of arguing that up is down.
She has lived here since she was 6 months old. She attended public schools here and got her green card at age 18.
Her father is a naturalized U.S. citizen, her mother in the process of becoming one. Her seven brothers and sisters are either U.S.-born or permanent legal residents.
This is an American family by any stretch. Tragically, however, it is about to become a family torn apart unless a legal miracle occurs.
Arias is about to be deported to Mexico.
But then this is an old story. It's the story of U.S. immigration policy. It's a policy that puts a premium in most cases on family reunification but can contain very little by way of compassionate discretion in individual cases.....
Reach Pimentel at ricardo.pimentel@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8210
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