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.
Today is International Migrants Day, marking the anniversary of the passage of a United Nations resolution adopting the landmark International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.
By Kate Desormeau, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project at 2:07pm
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claims that its recently announced new policy on immigration detainers is a major step toward “smarter immigration enforcement,” and it seems to have convinced some editorialboards that that’s true. But serious problems remain.
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 the Department of Justice released the long-awaited Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) regulations, representing the first time that the federal government has issued national standards to help end sexual abuse in correctional facilities. The regulations are two years late and a lot of harm has been done in their absence, but now that they’ve finally been released they can help us protect important constitutional and human rights and ensure safe and fair correctional facilities that assist prisoners in rehabilitation rather than needlessly brutalizing them. The ACLU supports the Department’s efforts to protect and prevent sexual abuse in places of detention, although we regret that immigration facilities are not yet included in these standards.
If most employers learned that their employees had been falling asleep on the job out of sheer boredom, the last thing they would do is hire more people to do the same work. That, however, is just what U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has done in recent years — as spending continues to balloon in spite of a dramatic decrease in the number of apprehensions along the border.
Today, the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee will hold a hearing on a proposed budget for CBP in 2013, featuring testimony from Michael Fisher, Border Patrol chief, and several CBP assistant commissioners. Unfortunately, the Department of Homeland Security's 2013 budget request continues down the same path of excessive, wasteful spending that has characterized the last decade.
By Jenny Zhao, Liman Public Interest Fellow, ACLU of Northern California at 4:01pm
This week a federal judge ordered a bond hearing for a woman who has been detained without due process by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for nearly a year and a half. Bertha Mejia, a grandmother with deep family ties in California and with no violent criminal history, was classified by ICE as a “mandatory detainee” because of misdemeanor convictions for stealing groceries. That classification made her ineligible for a hearing before an immigration judge where she could present evidence that she posed no danger to the community or risk of flight—even as her immigration case dragged on for months with no end in sight.
By Michael Kaufman, Staff Attorney, ACLU of Southern California at 11:45am
Apparently as a result of sequester-induced budget cuts, Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently released hundreds of immigration detainees that it found were not risks either to flee or endanger public safety. The fact that these detainees were locked up in the first place confirms a startling truth about our immigration detention system: the government routinely detains people for no good reason. Even Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano promised to examine why these detainees were in jail, saying: "That's a good question. I've asked the same question myself...so we're looking into it."
By Amshula Jayaram, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:07am
Last week, nearly four years after President Obama closed the CIA’s Detention, Interrogation and Rendition Program, the American public is one step closer to learning the truth about a program that sanctioned the torture of terrorism suspects. To date, it has remained shrouded in secrecy, tarnishing our international reputation and severely damaging our nation’s security. Under the leadership of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has voted to adopt a 6000-plus page report, based on an analysis of more than six million pages of CIA records, detailing the findings of the committee’s three-year investigation into the program. We urge the committee to publicly release the document with as few redactions as possible.
