Youth wins stay of deportation, DREAM stays strong

Now, let’s continue pressing Pres. Obama and Congress to suspend all detentions & deportations and investigate the abuses

NNIRR thanks her members, partners, allies and friends who made calls and/or signed the petition to support Marlen Moreno-Peralta’s now successful bid to stop the Department of Homeland Security from deporting her. Marlen Moreno-Peralta is a DREAM-eligible community member in Tucson, Arizona. Her deportation was stayed as a result of DREAM-led efforts. We believe that today she is more determined than ever to fight for justice – for her family and her community. This is a significant victory for Ms. Moreno-Peralta and her family. This is also a sign of hope that only vigorous community-based organizing and solidarity can prevent an injustice from taking place.

Marlen’s situation, unfortunately, is not unique. Thousands of members of our communities, both documented and undocumented, are languishing either in immigrant jails awaiting deportation or are being deported as you read this update. Hundreds of thousands have already been deported. ICE tears families apart, disappears co-workers and neighbors and U.S.inhumane immigration laws and system continue shredding our rights.

The overwhelming majority of those in ICE deportation proceedings have had their rights violated where they lived and worked. Their rights are also violated and abused in the legal process, where ICE and other immigration enforcement officials coerce immigrants into signing away their rights, deny or have inadequate legal representation and/or jail and deport them with impunity for the smallest of offenses.

Since President Obama was elected to the U.S. Presidency, NNIRR has been calling on his administration to suspend all detentions and deportations, end all immigration-police collaboration programs, demilitarize immigration control and border communities. But this is not enough. The U.S. must also address the root causes of international migration by creating fair trade policies abroad and socially just economic development in the U.S. that promote sustainable communities, strengthens labor and civil rights protections. Fair and just immigration reforms are impossible without fair and just trade policies.

Click here to read the letter to Obama.

The struggle of DREAM youth and student activists and leaders, their courageous civil disobedience and organizing, has been inspiring. The rising movement against immigration-police collaboration, the national civil resistance being lead by the Puente Movement in Phoenix against SB1070, and the DREAMers’ demand for rights and legalization raise critical issues of how to stop the U.S. government humanitarian crisis now being imposed upon immigrant communities and people of color.

The U.S. federal government has created laws, policies, measures and practices that are fueling immigration policing in almost every social sphere of the country. Immigration checkpoints, usually associated with the border region, are cropping up everywhere. “Checkpoints” are being used by schools, landlords, employers, public and private social services, banks, stores, and others who feel empowered to ask a person for their papers to receive services or – in some cases – to turn them over to the police or ICE. U.S. immigration enforcement is fomenting xenophobia and racist violence, too.

NNIRR’s strategy of working to link our communities from the border to the interior has become more salient with the deepening U.S. militarization of immigration control and border communities and the extension of immigration policing. Why? Communities everywhere are facing the same immigration-police onslaught. U.S. federal immigration-police collaboration programs and border security spawned SB1070, Arizona’s anti-immigrant, racial profiling law. Other states are already excluding immigrants from services and as many as twenty states are considering copycat laws. Anti-immigrant hate is much easier to legalize and codify where the federal and state governments are implementing polices, laws, practices and measures that criminalize status and use outlawed forms of racial discrimination.

The U.S. federal immigration-police collaboration programs are no better than its offspring, SB1070. SB1070 and Arizona police may be the most notorious version of police collaboration that unabashedly uses racial, ethnic/nationality and religious profiling. But the federal programs, 287(g) and “Secure Communities,” are using the same methods and producing the same results: Immigration-policing destabilizes communities; people live in fear and anyone who is perceived to be or is an immigrant is more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

Stopping Marlen Moreno-Peralta’s deportation, at least temporarily, gives her and her family a brief respite. Our communities also won a small breathing space that we can use to continue envisioning how we demand and get the U.S. to suspend all detentions and deportations and stop the abuses and restore our rights.

If we can stop one deportation, we can eventually get the Obama Administration to suspend all detentions and deportations. Why? The DREAMERs and our communities continue rising up; they are keeping the fires of resistance blazing. Anything is possible when you dream in community.

Justice & Human Rights for All: Stop the deportation of Marlen Moreno-Peralta

Three days left for Aspiring Teacher and Mother of Two, Marlen Moreno-Peralta

Supporters to Announce Next Steps and Where the Case Stands

Contact: Rigo Padilla, (773) 614-9668

Tucson, Arizona. On August 5th, Marlen Moreno and supporters will gather to announce where her case stands after an outpouring of community support that has drawn the attention of local and national media. Her supporters will also discuss the next steps they will be taking to ensure that Marlen will not be separated from her husband, her sons, and her dream of going to college and becoming a teacher.

To this date, support to stop the deportation of Marlen Moreno has come from over 40 organizations nationwide and includes America's Voice, Coalicion de Derechos Humanos, No More Deaths, American Immigration Lawyers Association, National Council of La Raza, Center for Community Change and diverse organizations across the state of Arizona.

WHEN: Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 11:00 a.m.

WHERE: El Tiradito Shrine, 420 S Main Ave; Tucson, Arizona

WHO: Marlen Moreno, Arizona DREAMer facing deportation; Margo Cowan, Marlen's attorney; Tucson youth and community leaders.

Read more...

ACT NOW!! to stop Marlen Moreno's Deportation this Sunday, August 8!!

We ask that all friends and allies help spread the word about Marlen's situation-- please distribute widely!!

ACT NOW!! to stop Marlen Moreno's Deportation this Sunday!!

* Call Secretary Napolitano, and tell her to stop Marlen's deportation:
(202) 282-8495

* Call Assistant Secretary John Morton and tell him to stop Marlen's deportation:
(202) 732.3000

YOU SHOULD SAY: "I am calling to leave a message of support for Marlen Moreno who is being deported on August 8th. Marlen is eligible for the DREAM Act when it passes and should not be deported. I ask that Secretary Napolitano and/or Assistant Director Morton please step in to defer her deportation, she is an asset to this country. Thank you."

THIS IS ONLY FOR ORGANIZATIONS:

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE SIGN ON LETTER
http://action.dreamactivist.org/marlen/signon/

[EVERYONE] SIGN THE ON-LINE PETITION:
http://bit.ly/marlenpetition

Check out the FaceBook page:
http://bit.ly/marlenfb

Marlen's entire story is here:
http://bit.ly/marlenstory

Also, you can:

1. Call Rep. Grijalva (202-225-2435) and ask that he introduce a private bill on behalf of Marlen. Ask that he contact DHS and ICE immediately urging them to stop Marlen's deportation.

2. Call Rep. Gutierrez (202-225-8203) and ask that he also introduce a private bill on behalf of Marlen. Ask that he contact DHS and ICE immediately urging them to stop Marlen's deportation.

Script for speaking to member of Congress:

"Hi, my name is ____. I am calling about Marlen Moreno. She is a bright and talented DREAMer from Arizona. She is married to a legal resident and has two U.S. citizen children, but yet still faces an August 8th deportation. I am calling to ask that the representative step up to the plate and introduce a private bill for Marlen, in addition to directly contacting John Morton and Janet Napolitano, urging the both of them to immediately halt Marlen's deportation. Please do not allow for Marlen to be deported! Thank you."

BACKGROUND:

Marlen Moreno, 26-year old DREAMer is set to be deported on August 8th - this next Sunday!

Marlen is DREAM Act-eligible, is the mother of two US citizen sons and the wife of a Lawful Permanent Resident. Please follow the instructions below and act now to help keep Marlen in the United States . Please join us for a Press Conference tomorrow, 8/3, at noon at Southside Presbyterian Church to call on Secretary Napolitano to terminate Marlen's deportation proceedings.

Arizona- On Sunday, August 8th, less than a week from today, Marlen Moreno will no longer be in this country. She is a wife, married to a legal permanent resident, and a mother to two wonderful U.S. citizen children, Freddy Alan who is 3 and Leobardo, Jr. who is just 10-months old.

Marlen was brought to the United States when she was only thirteen years old. She has been living in Tucson, Arizona for over thirteen years and, like many DREAMers, considers this country her home. Since the start, her parents told her to value her education and, through hard work, she was the first person in her family to graduate from high school. Marlen aspires to become a pre-school teacher because she believes education is the key to success.

In 2008, as she slept with her 8-month old son in her hands, ICE showed up at her house to detain her. She would spend the next four months in jail and detention all because she needed to work to provide for her family. She now faces deportation from the only country she knows. Worst of all, she faces separation from her husband, a legal resident, and her two sons, both American citizens.

This action alert was provided by Coalicion de Derechos Humanos; Tucson, Arizona.