We already knew from an October 2020 Associated Press report that the flawed Title 42 public health order that’s used the novel coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to quickly deport asylum-seekers in violation of their rights was implemented under political pressure by the previous administration.
Tech companies are failing at combatting Spanish-language disinformation, lawmakers and advocates said during an online panel last week. NBC News reports that while tech companies flag or remove English-language posts, the same often doesn’t happen for Spanish-language versions of those posts.
“Platforms use the vast majority of their resources to (remove) misinformation within English language content,” New Mexico U.S. Sen.
A number of House Democrats have asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into the border “shadow police unit” that human rights groups said in a letter late last month has covered up agent abuses for years. The Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC) said in its Oct.
When detained immigrants are able to access legal help and gain representation, they are up to 10 times more likely to be able to stay in the U.S., the Vera Institute of Justice said earlier this year. “Lawyers make a big difference.” Maybe that’s one reason why Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have consistently set up roadblocks that make just trying to get a lawyer on the phone outright impossible.
On Oct. 27, a court determined that GEO Group violated Washington state’s minimum wage law by paying immigrants detained at the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPIC) just $1 per day for their forced labor. The next step was for the judge to determine how much the private prison profiteer “unfairly gained from its wage law violations spanning more than 15 years,” which could total millions, the Associated Press said.
A respected community leader who in recent months has been one of the foremost champions for vulnerable Haitian families seeking safety in the U.S. was this week awarded the 2021 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. Guerline Jozef, co-founder and executive director of nonprofit organization Haitian Bridge Alliance, accepted the honor outside California’s Otay Mesa Detention Center, calling attention to the continued, inhumane detention of immigrants in the U.S.
A leaked internal government report obtained by BuzzFeed News continues to confirm what advocates were long saying when the anti-asylum Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) policy was in effect: There were particularly vulnerable adults and children who under “guiding principles” should have been exempt from the program, but weren’t.
More than 70 legal service providers have condemned the Biden administration’s plan to restart the anti-asylum policy known as Remain in Mexico, writing in a letter to the president, vice president, and top officials that they “refuse to be complicit in a program that facilitates the rape, torture, death, and family separations of people seeking protection by committing to provide legal services.
We already knew that former White House aide and noted white supremacist Stephen Miller had reportedly been itching for a public health crisis to use as an excuse to keep out immigrants, and got it in the novel coronavirus pandemic. But The New York Times now also reports that Miller had also pursued a failed plan in early 2020 that had involved sending a number of troops to the southern border.
New Jersey’s Hudson County is set to end its contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by Nov. 1. But advocates tell northJersey.com that only five of the 45 immigrants recently detained at the county’s jail have been released. The remaining immigrants either remain detained, or have been transferred to other facilities. Transfers during a pandemic are particularly dangerous—a fact ICE knows perfectly well.
Affected individuals and groups continue to demand the Biden administration and Democrats fulfill their promise to deliver legalization, on Wednesday installing hundreds of enlarged green cards in front of the U.S. Capitol. The 400 placards, which read in part “United States of America Permanent Resident,” symbolized 400,000 Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders and families who need permanent relief.
Joe Biden’s criminal justice reform platform pledged to “end the federal government’s use of private prisons,” saying that if he were to be elected president, he would “make clear that the federal government should not use private facilities for any detention, including detention of undocumented immigrants.
The largest Latino civil rights organization in the U.S. announced last week that it’s cutting off ties with Facebook, following a recent whistleblower report confirming the social media giant intentionally puts profits over combatting the lies and hate speech rampant on its platforms. The group calls the report “the last straw.
Immigrant and Latino workers in Wisconsin plan to hold a statewide strike on Monday, Oct. 11, to both highlight the vital economic contributions of these communities and to continue calling on the Biden administration and congressional Democrats to deliver on their promise to pass a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.
Republican governors whose states continue to be hard hit by COVID-19 infections have been diligently working … at demonizing asylum-seekers at the southern border. Nine right-wing governors joined Gov. Greg Abbott for a photo op in south Texas on Wednesday. There, they were armed “with an array of military vehicles in the background,” USA Today reported.
A senior State Department official authored a memo slamming the continued use of the anti-asylum Title 42 policy, calling it “illegal,” “inhumane,” and “simply not worthy of this administration that I so strongly support.” The Washington Post reports that Harold Koh, who served in the Office of the Legal Adviser, left his position on Friday.
In a rare joint statement issued this week, four United Nations (U.N.) agencies appealed on “countries in the Americas” to “uphold the fundamental human rights of Haitians” and urged nations to “refrain” from deporting vulnerable people “without proper assessment of their individual protection needs.”
“The U.N.
The Biden administration has announced a new policy that is set to provide government-funded legal help to vulnerable asylum-seeking children in a number of U.S. cities, BuzzFeed News reports. This is a significant initiative: Unlike in criminal court, people in immigration court aren’t guaranteed an attorney. This includes most unaccompanied children, who have had to appear in court alone.
New Jersey has made major steps in dismantling mass Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention in the state, most notably the new law banning new contracts. Just this month, Hudson County also said it would be ending its ICE agreement. But rather than just releasing immigrants, immigration officials have been engaged in a steady campaign of transferring them elsewhere, sometimes to remote regions, and in the dead of night. Both of the state’s U.S.
Desperate to both get through a Republican primary and not talk about his disastrous COVID-19 response, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott claimed earlier this past summer that he would finish the previous president’s stupid border wall. This week, he claimed he built it … or something he’d like to call a wall. Abbott on Tuesday touted a “steel wall” consisting of state-owned cars lined up along the Rio Grande.
In a one-page press release Friday, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) watchdog said that U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) officials failed to conduct “regular and frequent physical checks as required” on Carlos Gregorio Hernández Vásquez, a 16-year-old Indigenous child from Guatemala who died alone while in U.S. custody in May 2019.
Last week, the Supreme Court’s right-wing justices issued a stunning, unsigned order that forces the Biden administration to revive the previous administration’s cruel and unlawful Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) policy or Remain in Mexico. Now, more than 100 organizations are calling on the Biden administration to take “all necessary legal steps” to attempt again to end the policy, including issuing a new memo.
Nearly 70 legislators led by anti-war stalwart Barbara Lee and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are calling on the Biden administration to raise the refugee cap for the 2022 fiscal year, citing “vulnerable Afghans who are in grave danger following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.” President Joe Biden has previously pledged to raise the cap to 125,000 in the next full fiscal year. Currently its 62,500. Legislators are calling on him to raise it to at least 200,000.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in May that the Georgia facility where immigrant women abused by a notorious gynecologist were held would be shuttered. It was a momentous victory for both immigrants and their advocates, who had been calling for the Irwin County Detention Center’s closure as part of justice for women traumatized by Dr. Mahendra Amin.
With the stroke of a pen, New Jersey has become the fifth state in the nation to severely limit or outright ban federal immigration detention. Advocates across the state (and country) celebrated when Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy on Friday signed a historic bill that bans new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contracts in the state and prohibits the renewal of existing agreements.
An appeals court late Thursday left in place a ruling that orders the Biden administration to restart the previous administration’s inhumane and unlawful Remain in Mexico policy. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, appointed by the previous administration, had last week ruled in favor of a Republican-led lawsuit, though he paused his decision for seven days, and the Biden administration very quickly appealed.
Following months of pleas from advocates including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Biden administration has escalated efforts to vaccinate detained immigrants against COVID-19. CBS News reports that 22,000 people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody have received at least one dose, “a 167% increase from early July, when 8,221 doses had been administered.
The Biden administration this week issued a directive instructing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to not target the undocumented immigrant victims of crime, barring “exceptional circumstances.”
The guidance instructs agents to refrain from sweeping up immigrants protected by special U-visas aiding the undocumented immigrant victims of crime, or are in the process of applying for one.
Following the advancement early Monday of an ambitious and historic budget resolution that includes funding for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented communities, dozens of leading organizations—including the American Federation of Teachers, MoveOn, and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund—are calling on legislators to remain firm and ensure legalization is passed through the reconciliation process.
A new report released on the second anniversary of mass immigration raids that targeted nearly 700 poultry plant workers in Mississippi reveals that while an estimated 230 workers were deported in the aftermath of the sweeps and hundreds of others who are still here continue struggling, no high-level poultry corporation executive faced charges.