News (Noticias) Tagged ‘deportation’

With federal authorities stepping up raids and local police joining enforcement efforts, illegal immigrants and their advocates say that preparing for possible deportation is becoming a common feature of life in their underground world.

They are designating who should take custody of their children, indicating what should be done with cars and homes, ensuring that relatives have power of attorney to access bank accounts and key documents, and memorizing phone numbers they might need to call from jail. Some are sending their U.S.-born children for visits to their home countries so they could adapt more easily if the family is suddenly forced to move back. “*

An Ecuadorean college student who alleges her relatives were targeted for deportation because of her immigration activism said Friday they are again being punished by being placed into an expanded house arrest program.

Gabriela Pacheco’s father and sister were ordered to wear ankle bracelets to monitor their movements.“*

Sheriff’s officials, who have been trained by federal authorities to screen for illegal immigrants at the jail, have interviewed nearly 20,000 inmates since the controversial program began more than two years ago. They have referred 10,840 people to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for possible deportation.

Last week, the Sheriff’s Department received $500,000 in county funding to expand the jail screening and to increase the number of interviewers from eight to 13. “*

Imran Ahmad (a pseudonym), a 29 year-old Pakistani computer scientist who can see the Statue of Liberty from his studio apartment in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood, says he no longer believes in the symbol of freedom cast in copper. “Freedom is relative. It depends on things like where you’re from and what you look like” says Ahmad. He reached this conclusion, he says, because of what happened to him as a orange-uniformed detainee held for more than 3 years in numerous federal detention facilities: the denial of habeas corpus (his constitutional right to plead his case before a judge), facing growling dogs, watching friends languish and die while in custody, the “subtle torture” of living for months in a tiny, windowless white room while a nearby TV set blared American Idol or “24.”

After a fellow detainee died under mysterious circumstances, which were covered up by detention facility authorities, Ahmad says he was threatened with lines like “We don’t want you to tell or speak to anyone about this” and “We have cameras and people [detainees] who are watching you, monitoring you.” Though Ahmad was released, he is still in deportation proceedings.”*

A former policeman was found not guilty Tuesday in the death of a homeless illegal immigrant from Guatemala who had a long history of arrests in the officer’s jurisdiction.

Former Mount Kisco Officer George Bubaris, 31, was acquitted of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. He could have faced up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

The case has brought attention to the relationship between officers and immigrants as police departments nationwide consider whether to take on increased deportation duties.”*

Above all, do not give police false documents, and never lie to them.

That’s the message Hispanics received from senior officials of Casa de Maryland in Frederick on Saturday.

The Silver Spring-based organization, whose ‘‘primary mission is to work with the community to improve the quality of life and fight for equal treatment and full access to resources and opportunities for low-income Latinos and their families,” according to its Web site, came to Frederick to continue its campaign against a four-month-old deportation program.”*

Boy Scouts are expected to be prepared, but no child should have to be prepared for what 13 year old scout Jose Andrade and his family faces. Jose Andrade faces being deported, alone. “*

Authorities say they have arrested more than 100 gang members and associates across Georgia, including seven on charges of illegally re-entering the country after deportation.”*

More immigrants than ever are signing away their rights to a day in court before they are deported. But do they understand what they are doing?

The National Immigrant Justice Center recently received more than 80,000 records from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) profiling the U.S. government’s use of stipulated orders of removal since 1997. Stipulated orders are deportation orders that immigration officers ask detainees to sign to agree to be deported without taking their case before an immigration judge.

NIJC and other immigration legal aid providers have long suspected, based on stories that our clients tell us, that immigration officers frequently pressure detainees into signing these deportation orders and often do not translate them properly. We have heard numerous stories about the orders being used following raids, when detained workers are too frightened to question what the papers mean. Many immigrants sign the orders without fully understanding the consequences, which include a 10-year bar from reentering the United States.”*

A national backlog will probably delay one main element of Governor Carcieri’s controversial executive order — deputizing state troopers and corrections officers with immigration enforcement powers — through at least next year, federal authorities say.

Rhode Island must first qualify for the so-called 287(g) initiative. Approval is not a certainty, but authorities say there are other federal options.

The directive in question, one of six in the executive order Carcieri issued in March, asks state police and the corrections department to join the 287(g) initiative with the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The program speeds deportation of criminals and suspects who are illegal immigrants.”*

Every day Mexican citizens work in the United States. For instance, these hardworking individuals toil in the fields, assist and bathe babies and old people, clean homes, wash dishes, mow lawns and even build homes and businesses destroyed by fire, flood and hurricanes in the sun, cold and rain. In some of the Katrina states, police would pick up Mexican citizens at the local home building store in buses to take them to work cleaning up the toxic waste left behind by the storms. The police would make sure that they were taken to places they were needed most. Today, those same police now arrest for deportation the same workers that helped to rebuild their communities.

In Lodi California last week, a 17 year old Mexican citizen working in a field (so that you could have wine grapes) died in 95 degree heat from lack of water. She worked for a contractor who denied all the fieldworkers regular access to potable water and adequate rest in severe heat conditions. He may be the direct reason for her death, but what about the indirect influences? Are we all the real culprits? Are you silent when it comes to assuring that vulnerable workers like Mexicans, who do hard labor that we do not wish to do, have decent working wages and conditions? [Spring break used to be necessary when communities worked together to harvest its fields and all hands were needed – especially the strong hands of teenagers! How long would your teenager last in a field in these conditions without water?] She and her unborn child died for our strawberry shake, our tree bean salad, our farm fresh corn; so we can eat organic and drink wine with our dinner!

Here is the question of the day - why is it that the Mexican worker is suddenly the devil incarnate in the United States?”*

Because when they come back across the border to see their families or look for the work that is non-existent at home, Republicans and hardliners will be the first to blame the Democratic party, if it’s in power, of letting all these criminals into the country.

They won’t be wrong. Each undocumented immigrant who has been deported previously will now be a bona fide felon in the eyes of the law — perfect scapegoats for those who want to make an example of anyone who advocates compassion or leniency for undocumented immigrants.

Homeland Security officials claim that by branding all these people as criminals it is a deterrent for them to return. For some, yes. For the vast majority who come from abject poverty, you’ve got to be kidding.”*