By Tyler Ray, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:07am
The post-election immigration policy focus has rightly been on the pressing need to establish a path for aspiring Americans to become full members of their communities.
However, one of the most dire aspects of the immigration system is the ongoing crisis in mass immigration detention. Detained immigrants face widespread abuse and denial of basic rights, at enormous taxpayers’ expense. The number of detainees is unnecessarily high and must be drastically reduced.
As part of Detention Watch Network’s Expose and Close campaign calling for the immediate closure of the10 worst Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, the ACLU and its allies have sent a letter to President Obama urging him to take these vital first steps toward reforming a detention system where immigrants suffer in deplorable conditions.
By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:41pm
The war on America's immigrants can lead to some very strange results. In a classic example, last year Republicans actually said, when it comes to immigration at least, new government regulations actually create jobs. But these attacks on immigrants cause real harm to ordinary Americans who don't think that immigration affects them. We've already talked about how mistakes in E-Verify, the federal database of eligible workers, can keep Americans from getting jobs. Tomorrow the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing that highlights another problem with E-Verify.
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 Michael Tan, Staff Attorney, Immigrants' Rights Project, ACLU at 10:18am
This week and next, the House and Senate will hold hearings (including this one today) to address the reported release of between several hundred and several thousand immigration detainees from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") custody. Although complete information about the releases is not yet available, ICE's justification that it had determined these individuals could be "placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release" raises a fundamental question, posed among others by Secretary Janet Napolitano herself: why were these individuals detained in the first place?
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.
“This,” said Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez, “is about real people with real dreams.”
Yesterday, Perez joined the Department of Education’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali and a distinguished panel at the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office to commemorate the 30th Anniversary of Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court decision that guaranteed equal access to a public education to all children, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. In their remarks, Perez and Ali highlighted the stories of real people: the many children whose access to education—and their dreams—are being threatened as a result of Alabama’s HB 56 and other anti-immigrant state laws.
By Chris Rickerd, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:20pm
This afternoon, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement is holding a hearing called "Holiday on ICE: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's New Immigration Detention Standards." (webcast here, ACLU statement here). The hearing's title and premise insult the U.S. Constitution by denigrating Immigration and Customs Enforcement's belated attempt to introduce basic, constitutionally required standards of care for the nearly 400,000 people held annually in immigration detention facilities. These men and women are detained for alleged civil, not criminal, immigration violations; many of them have U.S. citizen children and other relatives.
By Joanne Lin, Washington Legislative Office at 3:02pm
Excluding immigration detention from prison rape standards that prevent, detect and respond to sexual assault in custody is unjustifiable and unconscionable.
On Monday, “Hardball with Chris Matthews” on MSNBC featured an interview with former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, and the discussion turned to immigration. Matthews asked Crist about his views on immigration enforcement and said that part of being a Democrat (Crist’s new political party) is being weak on enforcement.
