Customs and Border Protection’s acting Internal Affairs chief said Friday that he is unaware of any Border Patrol agent or CBP officer being formally disciplined for killing someone through the use of force since at least 2004.
Source: www.azcentral.com
Insisting that factors beyond his control had created an untenable political situation, President Obama said Saturday that he would postpone his promised executive action to make drastic changes to the immigration system — a delay that leaves tens of thousands of immigrants open to deportation and millions more in limbo.
Source: www.latimes.com
January 1, 1892, Annie Moore, a teenager from County Cork, Ireland, was the first immigrant processed at Ellis Island. She had made the nearly two-week journey across the Atlantic Ocean in steerage with her two younger brothers. Annie later raised a family on New York City’s Lower East Side.
Some of America’s first settlers came in search of freedom to practice their faith. In 1620, a group of roughly 100 people later known as the Pilgrims fled religious persecution in Europe and arrived at present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, where they established a colony. They were soon followed by a larger group seeking religious freedom, the Puritans, who established the Massachusetts Bay Colony. By some estimates, 20,000 Puritans migrated to the region between 1630 and 1640.
A larger share of immigrants came to America seeking economic opportunities. However, because the price of passage was steep, an estimated one-half or more of the white Europeans who made the voyage did so by becoming indentured servants. Although some people voluntarily indentured themselves, others were kidnapped in European cities and forced into servitude in America. Additionally, thousands of English convicts were shipped across the Atlantic as indentured servants.
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Source: www.history.com
This article mentions the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 but fails to mention the Asian Exclusion act of 1924.
It also fails to mention that non-Europeans were not allowed to become citizens at many points in U.S. history.
People born in India were not allowed to become US citizens till 1946.
All Asians were allowed to become citizens in 1952 with the Walter–McCarran Act.
If we do not talk about citizenship rights when we talk about immigration, we are missing half of the discussion about dignity, respect and humanity.
Today’s social injustice issue is still about who is allowed to immigrate and become a citizen.
History shows that humans were allowed to (im)migrate to the U.S. for both religious and economic reasons.
Today’s (im)migrants move for reasons of survival (like the Irish did).
And they also move as war refugees, climate refugees, economic refugees and political refugees.
No human is illegal.
“It’s funny how much people hate
to see me standing at the Gates,
presuming I can give expression
to real, system-wide oppression.
To them I say,” Well you tell me
why nothing here applies to me.
Why every fundamental right
applies to everyone in sight
except for those you single out
as people who just do not count.”
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Source: electricinthedesert.wordpress.com
Check the whole post to get the full impact.
It’s haunting and powerful.
“A man brutally beaten by police in June after he surrendered and lay down on the ground is now at risk of being deported.
Police officers in Santa Ana, California, beat Edgar Vargas Arzate on June 20, according to surveillance video of the incident and interviews with Arzate’s attorney. Arzate, who has struggled with addiction and mental health issues, went to visit the house of a friend, apparently not realizing that the friend no longer lived there, according to his attorney, public defender Frank Bittar. The new residents saw Arzate mumbling incoherently outside their house and called police.
Arzate ran when he saw the officers, leading them on a roughly four-block chase before he surrendered in the front yard of a neighbor’s home, Bittar said. In the video, Arzate can be seen lying facedown on the ground. The officers then begin to savagely beat Arzate, punching, kicking and swinging a flashlight at him.
“He’s lucky he wasn’t put in a wheelchair,” Bittar told HuffPost.
Once he was taken into custody, Arzate was charged with assaulting a police officer. The charge was then enhanced to a higher-level felony when police accused him of having “personally inflicted great bodily injury” on one particular officer who claimed to have broken his hand, according to the charging document.
On Monday, Arzate, 27, who came to the U.S. without documentation as a teenager, was riding with family members to a preliminary hearing to face the charges. Suddenly, three unmarked cars pulled the family over and Arzate was quickly taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
“They stopped them and made everyone get out of the car and then arrested my brother,” said Araceli Vargas, Arzate’s younger sister. “Right now he’s under immigration hold and we’re just waiting on a bail so we can get him out of jail again. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, honestly.”
“My mom told me that the ICE agents made her feel less than human,” Vargas continued. “My dad was so disappointed in the system. My grandpa was so scared, he’s been in bed since. My aunt started crying. Nothing had happened since June, he was just living his normal life, but we have cameras here and we saw the cars that stopped my brother yesterday morning — it was a gray Chevy Impala — they didn’t have markings, but they had been spying on us. They passed by the house at least four times that morning, so they knew what they were doing. Why did they wait until we were leaving the house and going to court?””
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Source: www.huffingtonpost.com
August 12, 2014, Los Angeles, CA – The Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans (PAAIA) was today informed of a suit filed against the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) by Judge Ashley Tabaddor, an immigration judge for the U.S. Immigration Court. In this suit, Judge Tabaddor challenges an order that indefinitely recuses her from hearing cases involving Iranian nationals, citing that the order violates her First Amendment rights of free speech and association. The suit also notes that the order is racially discriminatory under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The suit, Tabaddor v. Holder et al., charges that the DOJ based its disqualification order on racially-motivated and discriminatory criteria, specifically Judge Tabaddor’s Iranian heritage and her leadership role within the Iranian American community.
Source: www.payvand.com
Video: Graphic Warning
A Weather Channel Original Documentary
Producer’s Note, by Solly Granatstein
In “The Real Death Valley,” we tell the story of Fernando Palomo, a 22-year-old Salvadoran who happened to be a talented artist, and who was beaten within a centimeter of his life when he refused to design a gang’s tattoos. He and his older brother, like tens of thousands of others, fled their homeland and journeyed north to what they saw as the relative safety of the United States. They made it across the Rio Grande into Texas, but that hardly put an end to their troubles.
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Source: soboco.org
Texas has become the deadliest state in the US for undocumented immigrants. This four-part series from the Guardian and The Texas Observer looks at the lives affected by the humanitarian crisis.
…
In Brooks County alone, the bodies of at least 294 people who died trying to hike around the Border Patrol checkpoint were recovered from February 2011 to March 2014.
Source: www.theguardian.com
America’s anti-drug policies didn’t stop the production of narcotics, they just shifted it overseas.
Source: www.businessweek.com
The war on drugs is really a war on people. There can not be a war on inanimate objects.
Outside the chambers and hallways of the Capitol, the immigration reform debate isn’t political. It’s personal. When Washington, D.C. resident Cindy Monge saw the images of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border it hit home. Eight years ago she was one of them.
Source: abcnews.go.com