By Laura W. Murphy, Director, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:44am
Watching President Obama take the Oath of Office four years ago was a historic moment I will never forget. I remember meeting him when he was an Illinois state senator...
Ever since I came to this country as an eight-year-old child, I have been raised just like any other young American. My family left Lebanon for the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1999 to secure their personal safety and a short time later, my parents were faced with another conflict and had to make the difficult decision to come here to avoid the war and danger unraveling around us. My father thought of his family’s safety first, so that we could live in a place where we could be safe and pursue our dreams. He knew this was the country where we could live out our dreams by going to school, working hard and contributing to our community.
Today is International Migrants Day, a day to reflect on the human rights of immigrants and migrant communities. As the ACLU blogged last week, despite accomplishments on some key human rights issues, the U.S. still has a long way to go to fulfill its promises to vulnerable members of our society such as immigrants and racial and ethnic minorities.
Last Monday, the ACLU brought these concerns to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, a body of independent experts that next year will examine the United States’ report on its compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a fundamental human rights treaty the U.S. ratified in 1992. Our submission suggests critical questions the committee should pose to the U.S. during its review next October.
By Chris Rickerd, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:24am
Border Patrol agents work in dangerous situations which can lead to tragic consequences like the shooting death and wounding of agents in Arizona this week. There is no justification for such violence targeting law enforcement officers. Yet there is also a crisis regarding use-of-force by Customs and Border Protection that is severely damaging the agency’s integrity (CBP is the Border Patrol’s parent and includes officers who work at ports of entry). The many recorded incidents of CBP fatalities and abuses demand a comprehensive, independent investigation of CBP policies and practices, as requested by members of Congress, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. A permanent, arm’s-length oversight commission for CBP must also be created.
By Kade Crockford, Director, ACLU of Massachusetts Technology for Liberty Project at 3:36pm
Yesterday Andy Greenberg of Forbes published some shocking information, courtesy of a FOIA project done by our friends over at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC): US Customs and Border Protection is sharing our license plate information with private insurance companies, without any public debate or even forthright public disclosure.
In the summer of 2007, the Prince William County, Virginia Board of Supervisors passed a first-of-its-kind anti-immigrant resolution with a “show me your papers” clause. It required police officers to check the immigration status of anyone they had probable cause to believe was an undocumented immigrant. A pair of documentarians, Annabel Park and Eric Byler recorded—in real time—the heated debate that transpired surrounding the passage of the resolution, documenting the division it created in the community of Prince William County.
In the midst of an election year in which Democrats and Republicans seem prepared to fight about whether the sky is blue, here’s one thing that both parties actually agree on: the lifeline President Obama extended last week to America’s undocumented youth is not a permanent solution.
Last week the president used well-established executive authority to institute“deferred action” for this class of DREAMers—promising students who are American in all but status—which will halt their pending or future deportations for a period of two years. Although Republicans have criticized the measure as an expedient, short-term solution, the president has made clear this policy is not a permanent fix: “This is a temporary stop-gap measure that lets us focus our resources wisely while giving a degree of relief and hope to talented, driven, patriotic young people.” Indeed, the president ended his announcement by calling on the only branch vested with the ability to grant DREAMers longstanding relief: Congress.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 12:15pm
(Updated below)
LA Weekly has published an investigative report on the use of License Plate Scanners in Southern California. In addition to reporting that the rapid embrace of the technology by local law enforcement has led to “one of the most densely concentrated license plate recognition systems in the United States,” the article includes this signficant piece of news:
By David Shapiro, ACLU National Prison Project at 11:21am
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the world’s largest for-profit prison company, planned to contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to build a new private detention center. Resistance by the local community gained momentum. Then the plan unraveled.
These sentences describe two entirely different stories—stories that unfolded last week in communities 1300 miles apart.
