Newt Gingrich’s repugnant position on immigration should not be concealed by his faint use of the word “humane” during last week’s GOP primary debate. The mere fact his remarks are deemed compassionate is further proof Republican discourse on immigration continues to dangerously metastasize.
LOS ANGELES, CA – Today, the Los Angeles Superior Court rejected Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca’s attempt to block rights advocates’ request for information under the California Public Records Act. The Sheriff had sought to keep confidential information about the Sheriff’s participation in federal deportation programs. The lawsuit was brought by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC). Plaintiffs are represented by the Law Office of Sanjukta M. Paul.
Jessica Karp of NDLON said, “Today’s decision is a victory for the people of Los Angeles. We have the right to know how much of our tax dollars the Sheriff is spending to facilitate deportations that separate families and we will continue to pursue that right in this case.”
As Los Angeles County faces the likelihood of running out of jail space within the next month, the judge’s decision means that the Sheriff may soon be forced to reveal the number of inmates who are being held in county jail for purely civil immigration violations. The Sheriff may also be forced to reveal the cost of the County’s participation in the federal Se Communities deportation program and the number of people who have been deported through the County jails.
Carl Bergquist of CHIRLA added, “As we have seen in similar cases, both locally and nationally, these attempts to withhold information from the public may be undemocratic but ultimately they prove to be futile. We have a right to know how and why our elected Sheriff – in a time of declining crime – is collaborating with the Federal Government to deport community members who in no way, shape or form are threats to public safety.”
After years of requesting public documents through the California Public Records Act, the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) in June announced that they were taking legal action to obtain information about the Los Angeles County’s ties to federal immigration enforcement efforts. The lawsuit, which names Baca as a defendant, charges that the sheriff violated the California Public Records Act by refusing to disclose information about his dealings with ICE.
“Whether foreign or native born, Angelenos deserve to know how the Sheriff Baca – an elected official – has chosen to use his precious resources,” saidMelissa Keaney, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center. “Information about the Sheriff’s law enforcement priorities should be made public to all those living within this county. We hope Sheriff Baca and his attorneys will promptly comply with the law and shed light on his department’s secretive practices with ICE.”
Plaintiffs’ counsel, Sanjukta M. Paul, said, “I am very pleased by the Court’s order today, which overruled the County’s motion on each and every issue the County raised.”
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La Raza Centro Legal fights to address the issues raised by Occupy, and it needs support
OPINION – La Raza Centro Legal, an organization central to the empowerment of San Francisco’s low-wage immigrant workers, there finds common cause with the Occupy movement during a time when our programs combining legal services and worker organizing are in jeopardy. Our hour of need falls within a window of tough times, but heightened political awareness, and we are calling out to the community to join us in solidarity as members of the 99 percent.
La Raza’s resonance with Occupy shows on a bilingual sign printed for the movement. Under a day laborer’s face, the sign reads, “We are the 99 percent. I’m blamed for the economic crisis, but what about the Wall Street banks?” Immigrants pay more in taxes than they use in government services, generate revenue exceeding the services they receive, subsidize the Social Security system, and provide labor that supports entire industries.
Contrary to the red herring propaganda generated by the 1 percent, the scapegoated low-wage immigrant worker is not the cause of the financial crisis in the United States. Occupy has resuscitated public discourse with the plain facts of shocking economic inequity and the corruption of our democracy. Immigration debate can now rise to the surface after nearly drowning in the lies that spawned the recent legal abominations in Arizona, Alabama, and Georgia.
In the current political and economic climate, immigrant rights organizations face an intractable three-pronged challenge: dangerous policies born of anti-immigrant zeal, a crushing economic crisis that disproportionately impacts low-income communities of color, and dwindling funds from the government and foundations that used to support our work. The Obama administration’s Orwellian-named “Se Communities” deportation program creates an unprecedented stream of profits for privately contracted immigration detention facilities rife with human rights abuses. At the same time, employers take advantage of job scarcity to exploit low-wage immigrant workers. On the same days that our advocacy and services are needed more than ever, we’ve receive news that a grant that we depend on will not be renewed in the coming year.
Just like so many other members of the 99 percent, La Raza Centro Legal is in financial crisis. If the organization cannot find immediate support, some of La Raza’s programs that help so many people in the immigrant community could die. If La Raza is diminished, who will reunite a family unjustly torn apart, or take an employer to task for ripping off a day laborer so that the worker can feed his children? Who will organize the community so that, through La Raza’s Day Labor Program and Women’s Collective, low-wage immigrant workers can find their voice and build their own innate capacity for leadership in their community?
We aren’t giving up. Because the Occupy movement has pushed into public consciousness the well-established but long-ignored truth of how the status quo is hurting us all, it offers incredible hope. An October 20 community meeting kicked off a new fundraising drive for La Raza. San Franciscans and the city must join us in solidarity to help us find ways to support community nonprofits in declining economies and increasing civil rights abuses — which is when they are needed most.
Kate Hegé and Kate Deeny work in the Workers’ Rights Program at La Raza Centro Legal. For more information about how to help, contact Genevie Gallegos, Executive Director of La Raza Centro Legal at Genevie@lrcl.org.
Steve Dear, left, and minister Robert Campbell lead a gathering at Jones Ferry and Davie roads in Carrboro in late October to protest the town’s anti-loitering ordinance.
CARRBORO – The Board of Aldermen’s unanimous decision last week to repeal a 2007 anti-loitering ordinance won’t change how police respond to the intersection of Jones Ferry and Davie roads.Officers will continue to respond “proactively” when residents call, Chief Carolyn Hutchison said, although “in a perfect world, we would like additional personnel to respond to that corner.” The department also will continue to build community partnerships with residents, day laborers, and groups such as the Human Rights Center and El Centro Hispano, she said.
The anti-loitering ordinance has reduced the number of people at the corner but has done little to reduce crime in the area, Hutchison said. It prohibited people from standing at the corner – a popular pickup spot for day laborers – between 11 a.m. and 5 a.m. and was passed in response to complaints of harassment, trespassing, drinking and public urination.
The ordinance’s critics were jubilant after Tuesday’s vote. Chapel Hill and Carrboro Human Rights Center director Judith Blau said the group is focused now on leaving Abbey Court for a house nearby, where it can operate existing programs and possibly a workers’ center.
Since summer, members of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network also have been working with a local task force to site a permanent day laborer center with access to water, restrooms and help with employment issues like wage theft.
Most of those who spoke at Tuesday’s meeting said the anti-loitering ordinance was discriminatory, unconstitutional and reflected poorly on Carrboro’s reputation as a progressive community.
“I would oppose this ordinance if it were applied to my street or anywhere in town,” said resident Steve Dear, who has been eating lunch with other people at the corner every day since asking the board to repeal the law at its Oct. 25 meeting.
Dear said he decided to take action because he was disappointed with himself for not doing more and after hearing how the ordinance had affected the workers and their families. Mayor Mark Chilton said police did not stop the gatherings, because they were constitutionally protected political protest.
Some affected workers told the board how the ordinance limits the available jobs, since employers and residents often don’t seek help until later in the day, especially in winter. That leaves them with very little money to food and to provide for their families, they said.
Day laborer Santiago Hernandez said through an interpreter that he respects the police and respects the community but would like to be able to wait longer for work. Others echoed his request, and Jose Francisco Gonzalez said they also would like help with employers who refuse to pay.
Other residents who spoke said they were concerned that the neighborhood would return to its former state if the ordinance was repealed.
Bill Madden, who lived in Abbey Court before the ordinance and now lives on Fidelity Street, said he never felt threatened, but his female co-workers were hesitant to walk through the area, even to catch the bus.
“What I saw at the corner was that a lot of men would be drinking when they couldn’t get a job, when all the employers would leave in the latter portion of the morning, and the cops would chase them around Ridgewood, Abbey Court, behind the wooded area along Alabama [Avenue] and up and down Davie Road,” Madden said. “The community needs to take better action in self-policing. That if you see somebody out of line, call the cops, call 911.”
Sexual harassment, as well as drinking and public urination, were among reasons for the 2007 decision creating the ordinance. Alderwoman Jacquie Gist recommended the town find a way to pay for a community resource person and work next year to strengthen the anti-harassment ordinance so that lewdness directed at women would be considered hate speech.
“In any language, grabbing your crotch and saying, ‘You want some of this,’ I don’t think that that’s part of any culture,” Gist said. “That is a physical threat, and it is hate speech in the same way as, ‘I’m going to bash your head in because of your ethnicity.’ ”
The board voted unanimously to support Gist’s proposal and also to pursue Alderman Dan Coleman’s suggestion that the town collaborate with community partners to find the money for a full-time staff person at the corner.
Grubb: 336-380-1325
por Mabel Téllez | Source: Codigo06140.com
Click here to view the embedded video.
El proyecto Pulpo, stuff de Yoshua Okón, ed uno de los artistas mexicanos con mayor proyección internacional, se exhibe actualmente en el Hammer Museum. Fue este el motivo, aunado a la importancia de su trayectoria artística, el que nos llevó a platicar con él acerca de la obra y de sus próximos proyectos.
¿Cómo se gestó la idea para desarrollar un proyecto como Pulpo?
El punto de partida fue la combinación de El arte del asesinato político, escrito por Francisco Goldman, y la experiencia de contratar a trabajadores en el estacionamiento de un Home Depot en Los Ángeles. Goldman, un neoyorkino hijo de madre guatemalteca, cubrió la guerra civil de este país como periodista durante los años 80 y 90. Su libro, además de narrar el asesinato del obispo Geraldi, presenta el panorama de la guerra incluyendo el hecho de que la dictadura guatemalteca fue instaurada, financiada, dirigida y sostenida por EEUU para beneficio de sus intereses económicos. Después de que Arbenz, presidente electo democráticamente, fue ilegalmente derrocado por la CIA, el nuevo presidente, un militar, fue llevado al palacio de gobierno en un avión militar estadounidense.
A lo largo de mi estancia en Los Ángeles, en numerosas ocasiones contraté a trabajadores indocumentados. Éstos normalmente se juntan en el estacionamiento del Home Depot esperando que alguien los contrate. Como coincidencia, el Home Depot, que está cerca de la casa donde vivía, es donde los miembros de la comunidad Guatemalteca Maya se reúnen para buscar trabajo. De esta forma me di cuenta que quienes contraté para un trabajo de albañilería, son algunos de los protagonistas del libro que estaba leyendo: ex guerrilleros o ex militares indígenas Mayas de la región alta de Ixcán en Guatemala, la zona más afectada por la guerra. En ese momento surge la idea de la pieza.
Tiempo más tarde, ya de vuelta al DF, fui invitado por el museo Hammer de Los Ángeles para realizar una residencia de investigación y fue entonces que decidí profundizar más sobre el tema. Finalmente el museo me invitó a producir y exhibir la pieza.
En Pulpo, relacionas la situación actual en la que viven los inmigrantes guatemaltecos en EE.UU, con la situación que vivieron bajo el monopolio de United Fruit Company, ¿qué tanto han cambiado sus condiciones?
Creo que entender una obra de arte en estos términos puede ser muy engañoso. La pieza no es sobre la condición de los inmigrantes guatemaltecos ni sobre la dictadura en Guatemala; ese sería el papel de algún estudio socio-político. Más bien conecta ciertos puntos para así mirar desde un ángulo distinto. En el contexto de EEUU, estos trabajadores no solamente subsisten en terribles condiciones y llevan a cabo los trabajos más pesados por muy poca remuneración sino que también son maltratados y discriminados por no tener papeles. Si le preguntas a cualquier persona el por qué de su presencia, la gran mayoría te responderá que están ahí porque aspiran a ser gringos, porque quieren ser como ellos: la intervención, la destrucción del tejido social de sus comunidades por EEUU, el hecho de que estén ahí por necesidad económica, nada de eso entra en la ecuación.
En ese sentido, Pulpo no es una pieza sobre Guatemala, más bien es una pieza de sitio específico sobre EEUU y sobre percepciones generalizadas que se tienen del aquí y ahora en Los Ángeles.
Dentro de la video instalación, realizas una simulación de la guerra civil guatemalteca, cuál fue el proceso para establecer una dialéctica entre ficción, realidad y documental?
Me interesó hacer una recreación de la guerra con un alto nivel de abstracción. Apropiándome de métodos y estrategias militares, utilizo un conjunto de movimientos coreográficos que van dando forma al conflicto. Abordo el fenómeno de tal manera para que la obra se desarrolle desde diversos ángulos y promueva tensiones entre éstos: ficción y hecho histórico; acción y locación; recreación y registro, así como un espacio en el que se detonan situaciones propias al conflicto y que no pueden ser anticipadas por completo.
Por ejemplo, la locación se transfiere a suelo estadounidense, en un Home Depot, y la acción se lleva a cabo el 31 de marzo, misma fecha del golpe de estado guatemalteco (tradicionalmente las recreaciones de guerras se llevan a cabo en el mismo campo donde se libró la batalla original y en fechas que las conmemoran). Otra estrategia fue hacer que la producción fuera lo más discreta posible y sin permiso del local, para no perturbar el funcionamiento cotidiano del estacionamiento; con la finalidad de que compradores y empleados se comportaran como lo hacen normalmente y para que no se tuviera un control total de la situación generada. Así, escenas altamente escenificadas ocurren dentro de un contexto caótico y ex-combatientes de la misma guerra recreada, ocupan una posición liminal entre ser actores y representarse a sí mismos.
En este sentido, como bien lo planteas en tu pregunta, la ficción y el documento se mezclan de tal forma que es difícil distinguir entre ellos. Esta es una estrategia que utilizo a menudo y una clave para entender uno de los intereses principales de mi práctica. En el momento en que la mente no puede registrar de manera clara lo que está observando, pero al mismo tiempo se siente atraída, el mecanismo natural es indagar y analizar; como resultado, el espectador termina en una posición activa/creativa en la que formula sus propias interpretaciones.
¿Cuáles son tus próximos proyectos?
Este año tengo varias exhibiciones individuales y un par de colectivas. En la galería Kaufmann Repetto, en Milán, mostraré Hipnostasis, una instalación de 6 canales de video que hice en colaboración con Raymond Pettibon. Además, para esta misma exhibición, estoy preparando una versión distinta de Pulpo, donde utilizaré fragmentos de pequeñas casas prefabricadas de plástico, combinadas con proyecciones de video y pantallas planas. La estética de éstas, que normalmente son utilizadas para guardar herramientas de jardinería, simula el estilo de casas seriadas de suburbio y, como en el caso de Home Depot, la utilización de estas casa alude a la expansión mundial del modelo corporativo. Finalmente, la exhibición incluirá una serie de dibujos bastante grotescos basados también en la metáfora del pulpo como símbolo de la expansión del modelo Neoliberal.
Fotos: Cortesía de Andrea Belmont y Okón Studio
Hasta el 6 de noviembre.
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA.
November 24, s 2011 | 1:30 pm | Source: LATimesBlog.LATimes.com
REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY — A day laborer outside a Home Depot hardware store in northeast Los Angeles is riding in a bright orange ping cart in the store’s parking lot, peering through imaginary binoculars, as if he were on patrol in a dangerous jungle.
Others are crawling under parked vehicles as if squeezing below barbed wire, or diving and body-rolling as if evading gunfire. Before a display for storage sheds, two men lie still on the asphalt, their legs spread, as if dead.
The laborers are undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, and in an unsettling video installation by Mexican artist Yoshua Okon on view at a university gallery in Mexico City, they are war survivors playing themselves.
Before Okon’s cameras, the migrants are reenacting their days fighting in Guatemala’s long and catastrophic civil war.
The four-channel video piece, called “Octopus,” is Okon’s latest and possibly most provocative video in a career in which he frequently pushes against viewers’ comfort zones with the use of improvising non-actors.
A native of Mexico City, Okon has also lived part-time in Los Angeles. He bought a house in L.A. and came to participate in a rite of passage for many new U.S. homeowners in the last decade — hiring day workers.
The men he found at the Home Depot store in the Cypress Park district, it turned out, were indigenous Maya from Guatemala. They spoke a Mayan dialect and very little Spanish or English. They had escaped Guatemala’s war in search of work in the United States.
Some fought for the U.S.-backed military government and others for the leftist guerrillas. Some, he said, showed him scars of bullet wounds. Now, as laborers at the bottom of the U.S. social ladder, they fight for scraps of work in the slumping construction market.
“They’re more afraid of immigration than about talking about the war,” Okon said during a visit this week to the exhibition space in Mexico City’s Roma district. “To me, that’s what the piece is about. It’s the United States. The war is not over. The war is over there.”
Okon, 41, has made films with wanna-be Nazis in Mexico City, an isolated family in California’s high desert getting drunk on “White Russians,” and Mexican police officers who agree to make bawdy sexual gestures they probably shouldn’t in uniform.
While these works usually elicit in viewers a mix of chuckles and creeps, “Octopus” is different.
The new video is guided by a polemical stance, not self-parody. Home Depot customers amble past the bizarre scenes playing out with hardly a blink, showing that workers who build homes in the United States have “always been invisible,” Okon said.
The artist also had to work guerrilla-style in some form himself. He filmed on the store’s parking lot without proper permission. “I had to constantly negotiate with the security guards, until they finally kicked me out,” he said.
Over two days of filming in March, Okon said the men from Guatemala gradually stopped giggling through takes and began to seriously inhabit — or re-inhabit — their roles. ”It felt like a job,” one of the workers later told the LA Weekly. And indeed it was; Okon said he paid the men a double day-rate for their time.
“Octopus,” commissioned by the Hammer Museum at UCLA, will show at the Casa Jose Galvan exhibition space in Mexico City through January. Next year, Okon plans to take the piece toProyectos Ultravioleta, an arts space in Guatemala City.
A single-screen version of the 18-minute piece is viewable here. In one shot, as seen above, a motorist drives past Okon’s cameras with a bumper sticker that reads, “Voter for a new foreign policy.”
The shot was not staged.
– Daniel Hernandez
Photo: A screen-shot from “Octopus,” a video installation by Mexican artist Yoshua Okon. Credit: Yoshua Okon studio.
| Wednesday, patient November 16, s 2011 | Source: ConnectionNewspapers.com
For a long time, members of the Centreville Immigration Forum have worked to provide a safe place where the community’s day laborers could connect with employers to find jobs. It would take the laborers off the streets by the library and ping centers and make sure they’d be paid fairly for an honest day’s work.
And now, the once-distant vision of CIF President Alice Foltz, the CIF members and local day laborers is finally reaching fruition. The Centreville Labor Resource Center will open for business Monday, Dec. 5.
“It’s an exciting time and the fulfillment of a dream,” said Foltz. “This shows that problems can be resolved if people work together with open minds and open hearts.”
The center is at 5956 Centreville Crest Lane, beside Brick Pizza, on the lower level of the Centreville Square Shopping Center. It faces Route 29 and the Route 28 on-ramp. It’ll be open Monday-Saturday, from 6 a.m.-noon. CIF volunteers will participate in the day-to-day operation, under the guidance of a full-time, professional director, Shani Moser.
“I want this to be a place of confidence, security and stability that becomes part of the daily routine for the immigrant community,” she said. “I also want to show the [Centreville] community the benefit of having this center and that their support is well-founded.”
Al Dwoskin, who owns the Centreville Square Shopping Center, initially proposed the idea for the center, donated one of his storefronts for it and will pay for utilities. Funding for salaries and other items comes from grants and private donations.
Two upcoming events will introduce it to the public:
* Friday, Dec. 2, from 4-7 p.m. – Open House for tenants of Centrewood Plaza and Centreville Square businesses. CIF members will host the event, serve refreshments and greet the businesspeople who stop by. Supervisor Michael R. Frey (R-Sully) will speak at 4:30 p.m. For more information about the CIF, go to www.CentrevilleImmigrationForum.org.
* Saturday, Dec. 3, from noon-4 p.m. – Open House for the community, with refreshments and a ribbon-cutting at noon. Frey and other local leaders will be on hand at 2 p.m.
For more information, call the center at 571-278-1961 or e-mail info@centrevilleimmigrationforum.org.
Se trata de una cooperativa que importa café orgánico de Nicaragua.
Por Agencia EFE | 2011-11-01 | Source: La Raza
Café. Foto: Archivo archivo
Chicago (EFE) – Un grupo de jornaleros latinos ha creado Café Chicago, mind una cooperativa que importa café orgánico de Nicaragua, lo procesa y vende de manera creativa y exitosa para mejorar sus condiciones laborales, económicas y sociales.
“Buscábamos una forma alternativa para hacer negocios y el modelo vino de América Latina”, dijo Eric Rodríguez en una entrevista con Efe.
Para ello, inmigrantes procedentes de Ecuador, Colombia y México, y algunos puertorriqueños como Rodríguez, unieron recursos y conocimientos para enfrentar el mercado laboral sacudido por la crisis económica y “demostrar que somos capaces de la auto-suficiencia”.
“En nuestros países de origen la experiencia cooperativa ocupa lugares destacados, y creemos que Café Chicago puede sostenernos a largo plazo”, dijo Rodríguez, quien ha trabajado desde 2002 en la organización de los jornaleros de esta ciudad con la Unión Latina.
Rodríguez, licenciado en administración de empresas sin fines de lucro, cree en el “comercio justo” que se puede realizar a través de una cooperativa para favorecer a los sectores “más vulnerables”.
Uno de los ejemplos a seguir es la Fundación Entre Mujeres (La FEM) de Nicaragua, una cooperativa que produce y exporta café y además se dedica a la educación, salud y promoción de los derechos femeninos.
La FEM está ubicada al este de la ciudad de Managua, en el departamento de Estelí, donde la mayor parte de la tierra se dedica al tabaco pero igualmente hay espacio para que 132 mujeres produzcan desde 1996 un café de excelente calidad.
Cada dos meses llegan a Chicago 1,500 libras de café en grano verde, que los cooperativistas de Café Chicago procesan en una tostadora prestada que aprendieron a usar, empaquetan y venden a $15 por libra, o $40 por tres libras.
Al promocionar el producto en su página en internet la cooperativa menciona el trabajo de Tony e Iván en el tostado del café, a Norberto que recorre comercios en busca de clientes o Marisol que procesa los pedidos.
Pero también están Manuel, Pablo, Patricio, Salvador, José, Armando, Héctor, Jorge, Elisa, José Louis, Michael y David, cuyos apellidos prefieren mantener en reserva para evitar posibles problemas con Inmigración.
“Café Chicago” se presenta como una cooperativa de café de trabajadores inmigrantes, unidos en un nuevo modelo de creación de trabajo, capacitación y acción social, cuyos beneficios se dedican a apoyar a la Unión Latina.
“Creemos en la justicia en cada paso en el proceso del café, y vamos en serio”, afirman.
La Unión Latina surgió en 2002 después de una huelga masiva de jornaleros que detuvo el funcionamiento de 75 agencias de trabajo denunciadas por abusos contra los trabajadores temporales.
Los jornaleros hicieron una huelga de hambre que obligó a la Asamblea Legislativa de Illinois a aprobar la Ley de Servicios Laborales Diarios, modificada tres años después para permitir que esos trabajadores se organizaran y abogaran por sus derechos en el lugar de trabajo.
El gran problema de cientos de hombres que todas las mañanas se reúnen en esquinas de la ciudad a la espera de un trabajo en construcción, pintura, jardinería, carpintería, mudanza o remoción de escombros era el robo de salarios, el acoso de la policía y la exposición a las inclemencias del tiempo durante el invierno.
En diciembre de 2004 la Unión Latina abrió su primer centro para jornaleros de la construcción en el Medio Oeste, en un local del barrio Albany Park, como alternativa al tradicional “contrato de esquina”.
Quienes buscan ayuda van al centro, discuten el precio y firman un contrato con el jornalero y la ayuda de intérpretes, de ser necesario.
Según la Unión Latina, las denuncias de robo de salarios se redujeron al 1% y el salario promedio aumentó 50%.
Alabama’s ruling class has dug in against the storm it caused with the nation’s most oppressive immigration law. Some of the law’s provisions have been blocked in federal court; others won’t take effect until next year. But many Alabamans aren’t waiting for things to get worse or for the uncertain possibility of judicial relief or legislative retreat. They are moving to protect themselves, and summoning the tactics of a civil rights struggle now half a century old. – NY Times 11.13.2011
Late yesterday, defendants in the case NDLON v ICE filed an appeal and emergency stay to block a court order requiring the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to make public a legal memorandum detailing the agency’s rationale for converting Se Communities into a mandatory program.
Federal district court Judge Shira Scheindlin had ordered ICE to produce the memorandum by November 14. Advocates will continue to argue for immediate release of this key memo. It is the only document produced to date that, although heavily redacted, appears to comprehensively describe the legal authority claimed by ICE in support of its position mandating state and local participation in the program.
Said Jessica Karp of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON), “While ICE has sprinted to implement S-Comm across the country, they’ve done the opposite to comply with court orders that would bring transparency to the program. The fact that the agency is fighting so hard to prevent the public’s access to this key document forces the question of what ICE is hiding.”
Instead of complying, ICE is challenging Judge Scheindlin’s October 24 Order which stated, “Once an agency has adopted a legal analysis as its own…that analysis becomes the government’s ‘working law,’ and the public ‘can only be enlightened by knowing what the [agency] believes the law to be.’”
Said Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Sunita Patel, “ICE’s on-going strategy of delaying release of important Se Communities documents must be stopped. Lack of transparency continues to prevent needed scrutiny of Se Communities. The public deserves access to the program’s full scope and underlying rationale.”
Said Sonia Lin of the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic at the Cardozo School of Law, “States and localities around the country have opposed Se Communities and sought ways to limit the impact of the program on the safety and security of their communities. The public needs the truth about this massive deportation program now.”
The lawsuit was originally brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law with the law firm of Mayer Brown LLP on behalf of the National Day Laborer Organization Network.
Visit CCR’s NDLON v. ICE case page or the joint website, UncovertheTruth.org, for the text of the FOIA request, the lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York, and all other relevant documents.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change. Visit www.ccrjustice.org; follow @theCCR.
The mission of the National Day Laborer Organization Network is to improve the lives of day laborers in the U.S. by unifying and strengthening its member organizations to be more strategic and effective in their efforts to develop leadership, mobilize day laborers in order to protect and expand their civil, labor and human rights. Visit www.ndlon.org
The Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law was founded in 2008 to provide quality pro bono legal representation to indigent immigrants facing deportation. Under the supervision of experienced practitioners, law students in the Clinic represent individuals facing deportation and community-based organizations in public advocacy, media and litigation projects. Visit www.cardozo.yu.edu/immigrationjustice
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