Immigrant Rights News – Thurs, April 3, 2008
Immigrant Rights News – Thurs, April 3, 2008
Visit www.nnirr.blogspot.com for IRN and other National Network posts.
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1. Star-Ledger: "Lawsuit claims immigration raids are unconstitutional"
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/lawsuit_claims_immigration_rai.html
2. Two from
A. "The right kind of immigration raid: Law enforcement and immigrant advocates are working together to make for kinder crackdowns."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-ice3apr03,0,101460.story
B. "Divided by death and the Mexican border. Illegal immigrant families are torn apart when someone dies. Survivors are afraid to follow a loved one home for burial."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-burial2apr02,0,532370.story
3. The Courier Journal: R20;Feds to Fly More Drones Along US BordersR21;
4. New York Times: "How Immigrants Saved Social Security"
5. CNN.com: "Many illegal immigrants nameless in death"
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/02/anonymous.immigrants.ap/index.html
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Star-Ledger [NJ]
Lawsuit claims immigration raids are unconstitutional
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/lawsuit_claims_immigration_rai.html
by Brian Donohue/The Star-Ledger bdonohue@starledger.com
Thursday April 03, 2008, 11:30 AM
Warrantless immigration raids that have led to the deportation of hundreds of illegal immigrants living in New Jersey in recent years violate the U.S. Constitution, a human rights group associated with Seton Hall University
The lawsuit, filed by
Based on eight home raids that occurred across
In some cases, the plaintiffs charge, they arrested and detained people living legally in the
"This is the first lawsuit in the country to focus on the consistency of these abusive home raid practices across an entire state, and over a significant period of time,'' Bassina Farbenblum, an attorney at the Seton Hall Center for Social Justice, said in a prepared release.
"Our complaint shows that what happened to our plaintiffs in the middle of the night was not exceptional," she added. "It was part of a routine, widespread practice, condoned at the highest levels of government, that tramples the rights of citizens and non-citizens alike."
None of the raids involved valid warrants and none of the eight gave consent for agents to enter their homes, the lawsuit says.
In one case, Maria Argueta, a legal
In
The program once set a goal of making criminals comprise 75 percent of its arrests. But government auditors found that, in order to boost arrest statistics and meet the 1,000-arrests-per-year quota set by their bosses, agents turned their attention away from criminals and other tough targets, such as illegal immigrants who use fake or stolen identities, government auditors found last year.
In a story published in December, The Star-Ledger reported the four
<><><> 2 A
The right kind of immigration raid
Law enforcement and immigrant advocates are working together to make for kinder crackdowns.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-ice3apr03,0,101460.story
April 3, 2008
Before U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took 144 men and women into custody at Micro Solutions Enterprises in Van Nuys a few weeks ago, the agency sent advance notice to civil rights groups. It put social service agencies on standby in case children whose parents were detained needed help. Once the suspected illegal immigrants were identified, ICE agents asked if they had chronic health conditions, child-care issues or other urgent personal situations. Those who did were released and given an order to appear in court at a later date. Lastly, ICE handed out a list of attorneys who would take cases pro bono.
It should have been the perfect immigration raid -- considerate, humanitarian, efficient, the agency's standard since the debacle in
This is the reform of immigration enforcement far from the halls of Congress. It is being cobbled together bit by bit, with compromises, cooperation and confrontation by naturally opposing forces -- those charged with enforcing the law and deporting illegal immigrants and those who advocate on their behalf.
Tuesday afternoon, outraged immigration activists picketed ICE's downtown intake station, protesting the detention of about 30 suspected illegal immigrants taken in what they believed were "raids" on warehouses. Even a well-conducted raid is a hypocrisy, they said, illustrating contradictions between immigration enforcement policies and immigration law: A humane raid would not separate mothers from their young children for a long time, but the law allows the harsher separation of deportation.
It turns out, however, that the people picked up Tuesday were taken in routine port customs security inspections of freight warehouses. Those businesses have to comply with a lengthy list of security requirements, one of which is to not hire illegal immigrants, who are particular security risks because their status makes them vulnerable to coercion. All reasonable. So Wednesday morning, immigration advocates and ICE officials were on the phone together, examining and clarifying Tuesday's events -- and preparing for the next time.
<><><> 2B
COLUMN ONE
Divided by death and the Mexican border
Illegal immigrant families are torn apart when someone dies. Survivors are afraid to follow a loved one home for burial.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-burial2apr02,0,532370.story
By Anna Gorman
April 2, 2008
Alberta Trujillo felt the baby coming. She woke her fiance, Margarito Garcia, and told him they needed to get to a hospital.
Neither had a car or a driver's license. So they bundled up and started walking to
They knew they were having a girl and had already chosen a name: Nicole.
But now the baby's heartbeat was dropping, so as soon as the doctor arrived,
"I was worried," Garcia said. "I didn't know what was going to happen."
Nicole was born at 4:22 a.m on Jan. 25. But she wasn't breathing, and her heart had stopped. Doctors were unable to save her.
Garcia was holding
"Don't let what happened to our baby happen to me,"
The doctor took
"I wanted to die too," Garcia said.
His troubles were not over. As he mourned the deaths of his fiancee and daughter, Garcia soon found that his decision to sneak across the border four years earlier was about to backfire.
At a time when most families come together to grieve, families like Trujillo's are separated -- by their initial decision to illegally cross the border, by their desire to bury relatives back home, and by their fear of never being able to return if they travel to Mexico.
The Mexican Consulate in
"It is the most direct experience of human suffering," he said.
But Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said that is the price illegal immigrants pay for breaking the law.
"We have borders and we have immigration laws," he said. "People who choose to jump the line have to deal with the consequences of that."
Garcia wanted to bury
"My sister always fought to have a better life here," said Elizabeth Trujillo, who lives in
Alberta Trujillo left her
In 1999,
But after four years,
Ramos, now 22 and still in
"More than anything, I wanted her to be happy more than I wanted her to be with me," he said.
On Christmas Eve 2006 in
"I wanted her to have a life of kings and queens," Garcia said.
For the first time in many years, her siblings said,
"We were expecting this baby with such excitement," Garcia said.
The coroner determined that
Each night, family and friends gathered for a rosary beneath a white tent in the driveway of the East Los Angeles home where Garcia and
They prayed. They sang. And as they ate tamales and drank hot chocolate, they told stories of
Garcia and four of
"Here she lived, here she died," said her brother Fernando Trujillo. "But there, people are waiting for her too."
Garcia sought help at the Mexican Consulate, which agreed to pay for the expenses and referred him to a local funeral home.
One evening, Garcia went to the funeral home to deliver clothes for
"This is, I don't know, a little hat?" Garcia said, holding it tightly.
The viewing and Mass took place on a Thursday night. At the front of the chapel, Nicole lay cradled in her mother's arms in a plain, black casket.
Standing before a mural of Jesus above the clouds, a priest sprinkled water on Nicole's head and baptized her into the Roman Catholic faith. Then he called Garcia up to the casket.
It was the first time he had seen his fiancee and child since they had died. Garcia made the sign of the cross and quickly returned to his seat, trying to hold back tears. At the mortuary the next morning, Garcia held his baby in his arms and looked at her pale face. "I didn't want this to happen to you, precious," he whispered as he kissed her forehead. "Sleep, my baby. I love you very much, my love."
Then he walked over to the casket. He lightly touched
"One day we will be together," he said, his voice quivering. "I am now married to you. You are the love of my life."
In
"Of the pine, which is the cheapest?" Artemio asked one of the mortuary employees.
"That one, 4,800 pesos" -- about $450, the man responded. "That's very simple. . . . This one is pretty. How much is it?"
"6,000 pesos," he said.
Felicitas put her hand on top of the casket, which had a relief of a sorrowful Virgin Mary. Artemio took a photo of the casket on his cellphone and sent it to siblings in
The bodies traveled on a cargo flight from
As the men transferred the body into the new wood casket, they handed the dead child to her aunt. Felicitas Trujillo held the baby briefly, saying only, "chiquita" -- little one. Then she held her sister's hand before turning away.
Felicitas said that she knew Garcia wanted her sister to be buried in the
"I thank him for all the time he made my sister happy," she said. "But here is all the family. . . . Here there are other traditions that they don't do there."
In Pericotepec, a pueblo of 700 residents,
"Applause!" one woman shouted, prompting the others to clap and yell, "
The sad homecoming underscored the difference between how illegal immigrants are viewed in
They arranged white roses and gardenias inside the casket, along with a thorny rose stem so
"She would have been very poor, but she would have been close to us," said her mother, Delfina Hernandez, 66. "And I could have seen her one more time alive."
Her father, Eduardo Trujillo, 70, said he did what he could to make his children happy in
"We would like all of our children here, in their land, in their country,
Throughout the night, neighbors and friends came to the house. Every few hours, someone led the crowd in prayer in front of the casket. Women cooked and washed dishes under a large mesquite tree. Men huddled around a fire, drinking arroz con leche. Pigs and roosters roamed nearby.
At one point, some of
"Margarito?" said
On the day of the burial, two young girls sprinkled flower petals as they led the procession down the main road of town toward the cemetery. Dozens of mourners, holding incense, candles and flowers, walked alongside men carrying the casket. As they walked past the elementary school and houses, the church bells chimed and a warm breeze blew dust through the crowd. Mariachis -- dressed in sharp suits and red bow ties -- sang songs of love and loss.
Metal crosses, dried flowers and handwritten headstones dotted the small cemetery.
Few words were spoken as friends and relatives kissed
"I ask you, God, care for her soul," she cried.
The gravediggers used thick ropes to lower the coffin deep into the ground.
"Little by little,"
Women rushed to arrange bouquets of lilies, roses and gardenias. Everyone held hands and said a final prayer.
Miguel Ramos leaned against a tree with his fists clenched. He wished everyone could be together during this time of mourning, but he has grown used to the fact that his family is separated by the border.
"In moments when we need support, we are united," he said. "It doesn't matter if we are here or there."
anna.gorman@latimes.com
Life in the Shadows is one in a series of occasional articles.
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Courier Journal
Feds to Fly More Drones Along US Borders
By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN | Associated Press Writer
April 2, 2008
SIERRA VISTA,
He gets clearance from the control tower, throttles forward and -- from the ground -- guides his unmanned aircraft into the sky along the Mexican border to watch for drug traffickers and illegal immigrants, part of a bird's-eye patrol that authorities hope to expand.
Four Predator B drones have become fixtures over
Once those six are in place, the agency wants Congress to fund six drones along the Canadian border and six more on
"You're talking about really, really vast spaces and our ability to get to some of the remote spaces efficiently," Koupash said recently.
The Predator Bs used for these missions are unarmed civilian adaptations of missile-toting drones used by the
The border agency's fully loaded, $10.5 million Predators carry long-range cameras, but even at night, operators using the drones' radar imaging and infrared capabilities can light a target with a laser visible only through the night vision goggles of helicopter crews who intercept some of the border crossers.
"That's like a little red finger from God coming down and saying, 'Hey, there's some guy under that tree right there.' Very effective," McNall said.
From October 2006 through Feb. 16, the drones had helped in the apprehension of 3,857 illegal immigrants and the seizure of more than nine tons of marijuana, according to the most recent statistics available. Those numbers don't include apprehensions and seizures credited to different kinds of drones tested in Arizona in 2004 or to a Predator B that flew from October 2005 until it crashed the following April; the National Transportation Safety Board ruled pilot error as the likely cause.
Officials say intelligence gathering drives each flight, but critics question whether the aerial surveillance doesn't abuse the privacy of American citizens.
Lee Tien, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in
His organization has not received any complaints about Predators, but Tien said he assumed "that's because they can't see them or aren't aware of them."
"It's Catch-22," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Technology and Liberty Project. "How can you tell if you're being pictured if you can't tell whether you're being surveilled or not?"
Koupash said he hasn't dealt with any specific inquiries over privacy concerns, but noted the drones are flown primarily over remote border territory, not large cities.
The first flights outside
Koupash said authorities eventually want to branch out over the
"The challenge on the northern border is the vast wilderness and number of trees," he said. "We may have to work with our technology partners to see if we can adapt different types of sensors" to see through the forests.
The drones deployed to
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New York Times
April 2, 2008
EDITORIAL
How Immigrants Saved Social Security
Immigration is good for the financial health of Social Security because more workers mean more tax revenue. Illegal immigration, it turns out, is even better than legal immigration. In the fine print of the 2008 annual report on Social Security, released last week, the program's trustees noted that growing numbers of "other than legal" workers are expected to bolster the program over the coming decades.
We're not talking chump change. According to the report, the taxes paid by other-than-legal immigrants will close 15 percent of the system's projected long-term deficit. That's equivalent to raising the payroll tax by 0.3 percentage points, starting today.
That is not to suggest that illegal immigration is a legitimate fix to Social Security's problems. It is another reminder, however, of the nation's complex relationship with undocumented workers. Would the people who want to deport all undocumented workers be willing to make up the difference and pay the taxes that the undocumented are currently paying?
It is also a reminder of Social Security's dynamism. As society and the economy evolve, so does the system, responding not only to changes in immigration and fertility, but also in wage growth and other variables.
As such, it is adaptable to the 21st century, if only the political will can be found to champion the necessary changes. Those include modest tax increases and moderate benefit cuts that could be phased in over decades - provided the country gets started soon.
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CNN.com
updated 2:43 p.m. EDT, Wed April 2, 2008
Many illegal immigrants nameless in death
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/02/anonymous.immigrants.ap/index.html
Story Highlights
· A year after his death, the identity of a man known as "No. 8" remains a mystery
· Many illegal immigrants carry no identification, making them anonymous in death
· DNA and help from relatives can help identify unknown immigrants
BLANDING,
He might be Mexican. He might be Guatemalan. But he's simply called "No. 8," a man with no name because his identity is still unknown a year after he was killed in a car wreck with seven other illegal immigrants in southeastern
"This is the Garden of Eden of
More than 2,000 illegal immigrants have died in the Southwest since 2002, and many are nameless in death -- buried as anonymous victims of heat stroke, car crashes or other calamities.
They typically carry no identification, just the clothes on their back and the dream of a life better than the one they left behind.
More than half of the border-crossing deaths in the Southwest since 2002 have occurred in
Bruce Anderson, a forensic anthropologist in
"They die in the middle of nowhere,"
In the case of No. 8, he apparently died in
It's unknown when or how he entered the country. But on the night of April 15, 2007, he piled into a sport utility vehicle in
They crossed the Arizona-Utah state line at 3:30 a.m. At some point, the driver drifted out of his lane, overcorrected and lost control of the vehicle, sending it spinning onto its side.
The SUV rolled several times, and seven passengers were thrown from it. Eight people, all illegal immigrants, were killed.
The driver, Rigoberto Salas-Lopez, told agents he was paid $1,000 to drive the group. He pleaded guilty to transporting illegal aliens resulting in death and will be sentenced June 5 in federal court in
The body of No. 8 was transported more than 300 miles north to the Utah medical examiner's office in Salt Lake City, where doctors took fingerprints, photographs and samples from his body. But prospects for identifying him became increasingly bleak.
"You can have a very fresh body, and still the person is unidentifiable because there are no leads as to who they might be," said Dr. Todd Grey, the state's chief medical examiner. "There's certainly not going to be a missing person's report filed."
Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said agents worked with the Mexican and Guatemalan consulates. The bodies of three other unknown crash victims were eventually identified and sent home for burial, but No. 8 remained.
In
Experts said DNA will be the key to solving difficult cases in the future.
Lori Baker at
The process relies on relatives in
At a minimum, Baker hopes to develop a "genetic map" using indicators within DNA that could help identify someone's native country.
"What we're hoping is that by having this genetic profile and then having information from
But to many coroners, the DNA process seems expensive and the technology intimidating, Baker said.
By last fall, No. 8's body had been in
That's when Danny Palmer, funeral director at San Juan Mortuary, was called to pick up the body and return it to southeastern
Palmer stored the body in the mortuary garage for about a week while the grave was prepared.
"It felt a little bit hollow that there was no family. There was no noise," Danny Palmer recalled.
A local man who assisted, Mike Moses, said: "There was a heaviness that was there. All of us felt pretty helpless about what to do."
"That'll be his spot," Philip Palmer said.
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National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
Red Nacional Pro Derechos Inmigrantes y Refugiados
Tel (510) 465-1984 ext. 305
Fax (510) 465-1885
www.migrantdiaries.blogspot.com
posted by Arnoldo Garcia | La carpa del FEO @ 4:03 PM
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