By Michael Tan, Staff Attorney, Immigrants' Rights Project, ACLU at 2:12pm
Alejandro Rodriguez’s parents brought him from Mexico when he was a baby. Prior to his detention, Alejandro earned his green card and lived near his extended family in Los Angeles, working as a dental assistant to support his two U.S. citizen children. The two convictions that gave rise to his detention and deportation case were minor and non-violent— joyriding when he was 19, and a misdemeanor drug possession when he was 24. Alejandro posed no flight risk or danger to the community and yet, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) locked Alejandro up for more than three years without a bond hearing. Bond hearings are a basic and guaranteed principle of due process in the American judicial system, but thousands of immigrants like Alejandro are denied this fundamental right on a daily basis.
By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:40pm
Sigh. As if we don’t have enough divisiveness in this country, a familiar subset of Congressional Republicans are trotting out yet another discriminatory bill papered over with hollow rhetoric about “unity,” “commonality” and shared national vision, which will be the subject of a hearing in the House Constitution Subcommittee today. (Here’s the ACLU’s statement, which focuses mainly on the civil rights and immigration issues in the bill; I’m just covering the First Amendment in this post.)
By Chris Rickerd, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:27pm
Secure Communities, the Obama administration's favored immigration enforcement program, has a track record that includes the unlawful detention of U.S. citizens. Antonio Montejano, for example, was held for four days after an arrest stemming from his children's handling of store merchandise. He remained in custody despite repeatedly proclaiming U.S. citizenship and arrived back home to his worried 8-year-old son, who asked "'Dad, can this happen to me too because I look like you?'"
The ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project has released an issue brief on the criminalization of undocumented immigrants. In recent years, states and localities around the country have increasingly attempted to use state and local laws to impose criminal penalties on undocumented immigrants, and the federal government has increasingly chosen to criminally prosecute individuals who violate federal immigration laws rather than rely on the extensive federal civil enforcement scheme.
There are 2.1 million of us. Then, there are our parents, friends, and neighbors—courageous, hardworking undocumented Americans. Together, we are 11.2 million. We’ve met and overcome great hardship.
Most reports on immigration focus on Latino workers and the southwest border. However, there are many faces and backgrounds of American immigrants, and the breadth of obstacles created as a result of our broken system are far-reaching. This week the Congressional Black Caucus ("CBC") and Howard University hosted a compelling discussion on immigration that highlighted the reasons why immigration is important to all communities, and is particularly relevant to Black Americans and all communities of the African diaspora.
Immigration reform must not be contingent on the false premise that an airtight 2,000-mile border is required. Instead, Congress should turn to ameliorating the tragedy of family separation along the southern border.
Thousands of families from San Diego to Brownsville have suffered the loss of people they love to deportation. Many of these families are comprised of members who are U.S. citizens, lawful residents and people who've lived here for years and tried unsuccessfully--sometimes for decades--to become residents or U.S. citizens.
In a front-page story published in today’s USA Today, the results of our investigation of the comingling of local law enforcement agencies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) in the southeast were made public. During a “seatbelt” checkpoint conducted last May by the Jackson County, North Carolina Sheriff’s Office, ICE implemented one of its many initiatives to ensure that the number of criminal deportations achieved the prior year’s level. In simpler terms: a quota.
Before opening the envelope, A.Z. was a typical all American, high achieving high school senior, getting ready for college. But after she read the letter inside, A. Z. felt like a second-class citizen watching her dreams of college crumble.
That letter changed her life. Despite the fact that she was born in New York and had been a Jersey girl since the age of four, the Higher Education Student Assistance Authority (HESAA) told her that she did not qualify for the financial aid she applied for. The reason? “Your parents are not legal New Jersey residents.” Although she appealed, the response essentially said the same thing: because your mother is not a legal resident, we will treat you like you have lived in Guatemala for the past 14 years, even though you actually lived in New Jersey the entire time.
