The NCAA college basketball tournament began yesterday and as thousands of fans cheered on their favorite teams, one player found out he had more to handle than just making his free throw. Kansas State University freshman guard, Angel Rodriguez, had just been fouled by a player from Southern Mississippi University with a couple minutes left in the first half when members of the Southern Miss band started chanting "where's your green card?" Mr. Rodriguez, who was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, ignored the chanting and his team went on to win the game, 70-64.
Why is it we are locking up record numbers of immigrants, at tremendous cost to families, communities and taxpayers, with little gain to public safety?
This is just one excerpt from the hundreds of letters we receive at the Immigrants' Rights Project. Immigration detainees across the country have sent us their stories for years. We have letters from individuals who first wrote us in 2007 and again, three years later, still sitting behind bars while their immigration cases slowly move through the system.
The ACLU, along with a coalition of civil rights groups, yesterday filed a lawsuit against the anti-immigrant bill in South Carolina, the fifth state to pass an Arizona-style racial profiling law. Gov. Nikki Hayley's spokesman responded that she "understands that no American value is more sacred than the rule of law…And if the ACLU was really about what they claim to be, they'd stay out of our business and let us enforce our laws."
Two days ago, just after lunchtime, President Obama walked onto the stage at Benjamin Banneker High School in Washington D.C. to deliver his annual back-to-school speech. The 18-minute address sought to inspire all K-12 students to "test things out. Take risks. Try new things. Work hard."
During the same time that the President was speaking to a packed auditorium, U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn in the Northern District of Alabama was handing down a decision that makes the idea of even attending public school a distant dream for many young children in Alabama.
The ACLU was in a packed federal district court in Birmingham Wednesday arguing, with the U.S. Department of Justice and the bishops of the Episcopal, Catholic and Methodist churches, that Alabama's new anti-immigrant law, House Bill 56, should be blocked because it is unconstitutional.
Jane* is a single mother with three children. She's lived in Birmingham, Alabama, for over a decade, and works hard to provide a stable home for her kids. Jane is a responsible provider and resident of her community; she is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit we just filed against the state of Alabama.
Paul Bridges, the Republican mayor of Uvalda, Georgia, is as Southern as it gets. Growing up in a small town of a few thousand people in southeast Georgia, Mr. Bridges drives a pick-up truck, keeps 15 goats on his small dairy farm and speaks with a classic Southern drawl. It just so happens that Mr. Bridges is also a passionate advocate for immigrants' rights and is one of our plaintiffs in our case against Georgia's discriminatory anti-immigrant law, the "Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act," or H.B. 87.
