Haitian-Americans, myself included, have been especially proud that our adoptive homeland not only took the lead in recovery and relief efforts in Haiti after the massive January earthquake, but also temporarily suspended deportations of undocumented Haitian immigrants and granted them work permits so that they could earn income and...
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Mar 4, 2010
We must work to pass real immigration reform that creates an ordered, legal process for undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows, register, and obtain the same rights and responsibilities as all Americans. Right now, there are millions of workers and families for whom that process does not...
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Detention Watch Network's current campaign, "Dignity Not Detention: Preserving Human Rights and Restoring Justice," aims to protect human rights by putting an end to the expansion of the US immigration detention system, with these four goals in mind: 1. Reduce detention spending by the Obama Administration 2. Demand...
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Jan 24, 2010
A day after being released from federal custody in Pennsylvania, a Haitian immigrant whose detention in December touched off protests told supporters at a Manhattan church on Sunday that he was so close to being deported this month that friends were waiting for him at the airport in Port-au-Prince.
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Here's another damning piece from the New York Times exposing the nation's shadowy immigration detention system, which exploded under the Bush administration. The editorial is called, "Secrets of Immigration Jails," and begins: "Americans have long known that the government has been running secretive immigration prisons into which detainees have...
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This devastating piece appeared on the front page of the New York Times yesterday. It's a blunt reminder of just how broken our immigration system has become-- and that every day we wait to fix it, the stakes get higher and higher. Real, enforceable standards for how we detain...
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Dec 23, 2009
Nineteen months after the infamous Postville raid plucked 389 immigrant workers from their jobs at Agriprocessors meat-packing plant, about four dozen will spend their second Christmas here, in limbo.
Twenty already served five months in prison and are slated for deportation. They'd been ordered to remain to testify in the...
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Dec 18, 2009
When Venezuelan military officers José Antonio Colina and Germán Rodolfo Varela arrived at Miami International Airport on the night of Dec. 19, 2003, they told passport control officers they were fleeing from persecution in Venezuela and wanted asylum.
They hoped authorities would let them go to a hotel and show...
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The Border Patrol has hit on an idea to discourage undocumented immigrants from entering southern Arizona, the nation's busiest illegal border crossing. When agents catch them, they put them on a bus and send them 570 miles away to the remote port of entry between Presidio, Texas, and Ojinaga,...
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Dec 16, 2009
The Obama administration said Wednesday it will stop detaining asylum seekers who have a credible fear of persecution in their home countries.
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