Gabe Ortiz

New Jersey’s Cory Booker joined California farmworkers last week to harvest lettuce, plant tomatoes, and prepare leafy greens for selling, becoming the second U.S. senator to take part in the “Take Our Jobs” campaign.

To date, only Booker and California Senator Alex Padilla have accepted the challenge from United Farm Workers’ (UFW), UFW Foundation (UFWF), and farmworkers to work side-by-side with them for one day.

The Latino families that launched the landmark lawsuit that guaranteed a public school education to all children regardless of immigration status went to court at great risk to themselves. An NBC News report marking the 40th anniversary of the Plyler v. Doe case this week said that when one of the four Texas families went to court to testify, they took their belongings with them because they were afraid they’d be deported.

The case would eventually go to the U.S.

There’s a popular saying in Spanish that goes: dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres. In English, it translates to, show me your friends and I’ll show you who you are. It basically means that you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. 

That knowledge is essential when an entire political party has openly embraced white supremacist rhetoric and authoritarianism.

The Massachusetts legislature on Thursday easily overrode Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s veto of legislation opening driver’s licenses to undocumented residents. When the Work and Mobility Act goes into effect in July 2023, the commonwealth will join at least 16 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C., in making roads and communities safer by allowing undocumented residents to drive legally.

There’s shameless, and then there’s Fox News. Both Media Matters and LGBTQ blog Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters note that the propaganda outlet has aired a Pride Month promo purporting to celebrate the “incredible contributions” of LGBTQ people.

Illinois couple Maria Maltos Escutia and Gabriel Valdez Garcia entered a verbal agreement to rent a basement apartment in 2017, agreeing to pay Marco Antonio Contreras and Denise Contreras $600 a month. This verbal agreement continued on for several years until early 2020, when the Contreras’ asked for a signed contract, to which Maltos Escutia and Valdez Garcia agreed.

Civil rights advocates in Mississippi have added their voices to the call for freedom for Lladi Ambrocio-Garcia, Mississippi Free Press reports. The former food plant worker was deported following a retaliatory workplace raid in 2019. When she attempted to reunite with her family in the U.S., she was again detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). She has now been held for months across numerous dangerous facilities.

While the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino is still many years away from officially opening after being passed into law in Dec. 2020, museum-goers are set to get a preview of it beginning next month.

Mexico has been planning a trade railway that spans thousands of miles from Mazatlán to Winnipeg, with a connection in Texas. But while the T-MEC Corridor railway connecting the two nations is still happening, the stop in Texas is not.

Mexican officials have now decided to instead reroute the line through New Mexico, The Dallas Morning News reports. It’s a major loss for Texas, because border states thrive and depend on international trade.

Among the 25 recordings recently selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry are a number of milestone records by Latino artists, including Linda Ronstadt’s exquisite Canciones de mi Padre. The Spanish-language album covered songs by beloved Mexican composers, including Rubén Fuentes and Gilberto Parra.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it is changing the cutoff date for Ukrainian Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a welcomed decision that stands to greatly increase the number of immigrants eligible for relief.

The Biden administration initially announced that Ukrainian immigrants who are already in the U.S. as of March 1 would be eligible to apply. But this week, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced a new eligibility date of April 11.

In a victory for Black immigrants and Black-led organizations that have been leading this years-long fight, the Biden administration announced on Friday that it will designate Cameroon for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), citing “extreme violence perpetrated by government forces and armed separatists.” 

The decision stands to shield from deportation tens of thousands of Cameroonian immigrants who are already in the U.S., advocates said.

Florida Republican Marco Rubio’s response to valid criticism that he’s done nothing to permanently protect Venezuelan immigrants in the state is to say that Venezuelans calling him out on his inaction aren’t really Venezuelan.

“I would like to ask Mr.

The CoreCivic-operated Otay Mesa Detention Center in California is back in the news for the usual, but no less horrific, reason: it’s abusive treatment of people in its custody.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that a number of immigrants have reported sexual misconduct by a staff worker, who they say walked into their cells unannounced and stared at their groins and buttocks while making inappropriate remarks.

The former Border Patrol agent who in August 2019 pleaded guilty after intentionally hitting a Guatemalan man with his truck and then lying about it to investigators used text messages to call migrants “disgusting subhuman shit unworthy of being kindling for a fire” and “mindless murdering savages.

Reports last winter revealed that while the Biden administration was internally warned that Haitian deportations under Stephen Miller’s anti-asylum policy could violate human rights and international refugee law, they continued into the thousands. But just a few months later, the administration would then also issue a memo reminding U.S. border officers that they have the discretion to exempt Ukrainians from the policy.

The GOP-led effort to resurrect the cruel Remain in Mexico policy continues to endanger the lives of asylum-seekers. BuzzFeed News reports that the State Department urged the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to pause sending vulnerable people enrolled in the inhumane policy to a Mexican city where “heavily armed members of criminal group” have been operating “with impunity.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have made it purposefully difficult for detained immigrants to be able to access legal representation, and it’s all been right out there in the open.

In one example, ICE gladly used the pandemic to try to block lawyers from seeing their clients, by requiring them to bring their own face masks. This doesn’t seem like a big ask in March 2022.

The chairs of the House Committee on Homeland Security and the Subcommittee on Border Security, Facilitation, & Operations are the latest to call for the closure of the New Mexico immigration detention facility at the center of a recent, blistering watchdog report.

Among the advocates who have been urging federal lawmakers to designate a national COVID-19 Victims and Survivors Memorial Day are three Latinas who lost parents to the virus. Fiana Paulette Garza tells NBC News that her mom, respiratory therapist Isabelle Papadimitriou, declined retirement to help victims. She died from COVID-19 on July 4, 2020.

The Biden administration this week announced that it will make a program providing abused children and young people with a pathway to citizenship more accessible, including allowing applicants to be considered for work permits and protection from deportation if visas aren’t immediately available to them.

“Today, we are taking action to help immigrant children in the U.S.

Two nearly simultaneous—and conflicting—court rulings on Friday continued to make the case for why the Biden administration must once and for all end the debunked Title 42 policy, which has used the pandemic as an excuse to override U.S. asylum law and summarily deport vulnerable people. Early that day, the D.C.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is being asked to investigate the illegal misuse of a toxic chemical at a Florida immigration detention facility that already has a history of human rights abuses. More than two dozen groups are urging the agency to probe Florida’s Glades County Detention Center (GCDC), expressing worry the facility is miusing the chemicals at up to 50 times the permitted concentration.

Viktoriya, a U.S. citizen originally from Ukraine, tells CNN that she’s agonizing over what she can do to help loved ones who are also in the immigration process but have now had to flee their homes following brutal Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s invasion. “Right now, they are in different places, which makes us scared,” she said in the report. “They don’t know what to do.

Immigrants and their advocates testified on detention facilities before a New York City council hearing this week, detailing inhumane and abusive conditions that people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody are frequently subjected to in New York-area facilities (and around the country).

Testimony included people currently in detention. They submitted their experiences in written statements.

Affected individuals and advocates have in recent days renewed calls for the Biden administration to protect thousands of Cameroonian immigrants from deportation and imminent harm. While lawmakers led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Karen Bass urged the implementation of temporary protections last November, Cameroonians have not yet been able to access critical relief. Without protections, they risk being deported to imminent danger.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a memo that claims to limit the power of the shadow police units that have for years worked to cover up abuses by border agents, including the brutal death of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas in 2010. The Feb. 2 memo loops in the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), which investigates misconduct among federal employees.

Dozens of immigrant rights groups and legal service providers have issued a letter urging California leaders to use their available authority to protect immigrants in federal custody against the exploding COVID-19 numbers seen in detention facilities across the state and nation. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has claimed that if detained immigrants want a booster, all they have to do is ask. But a recent lawsuit has shown that’s a complete lie.

Georgia Sheriff Keybo Taylor campaigned—and won—on ending Gwinnett County’s harmful 287(g) agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This is the racist policy that allows local law enforcement to act as mass deportation agents. On his first day in office at the very end of 2020, Taylor kept his promise and terminated the agreement.

In Cobb County, Sheriff Craig Owens also won on the issue that same year.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have tried to push back on very legitimate criticisms that they’ve completely failed on pandemic safety response by claiming that if detained people want to be vaccinated or boosted against the virus, all they have to do is ask.

But a group of medically vulnerable immigrants says they have asked to be protected, and have been denied.