)“You see a contractor managing a job one day and you think ‘Why not me?’” said Carlos Diaz. The day laborer was one of several dozen people gathered at Don Juan’s restaurant in Mount Pleasant on a weekend evening in April, to form a worker-owned cooperative, seeking to break away from the risk and uncertainty typical of their jobs on local constru
)“You see a contractor managing a job one day and you think ‘Why not me?’” said Carlos Diaz. The day laborer was one of several dozen people gathered at Don Juan’s restaurant in Mount Pleasant on a weekend evening in April, to form a worker-owned cooperative, seeking to break away from the risk and uncertainty typical of their jobs on local constru
Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Friday announced a policy change for its Se Communities program, hoping to address concerns raised by advocacy groups and an agency task force. Those critics were unimpressed, saying the reform did little to respond to complaints about the way ICE detects and removes undocumented immigrants. The announcement was in response to a task force report that called for reforms to Se Communities, an enforcement program President Barack Obama’s administration considers crucial to its removal effort. Five members of the task force resigned in protest because they did not support the final recommendation. “The task force recommendations themselves were wholly inadequate,” Sarahi Uribe, campaign coordinator for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said. “To take recommendations that were to start with inadequate and then to only adopt an even more watered-down version is absurd. It will have absolutely no impact.”
Congratulations to Eric Rodriguez for his Excellence in Community Service Award from MALDEF.
Quiere conocer cómo compartir información y promover su organización através del sitio de web de NDLON? Participe en un taller de cómo usar el nuevo website. B. Loewe de NDLON facilitará un “webinar” (taller por el internet)En el 11 de Mayo a las 2:00pm EST / 1:00pm Central / 11:00am PST El taller demonstrará cómo: …
Not content to let the fight against the SB 1070 be handled by the federal government alone, immigrant rights activists turned out across the country yesterday on the day the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case to demand an end to Arizona’s SB 1070. Outside the Supreme Court yesterday, hundreds gathered to protest Arizona’s law. A few h
Members of the Hispanic community of southern Arizona marched through the streets Tuesday to demand an end to the deportations and racism provoked by state laws like SB 1070. Hispanics “are the base and strength of the pyramid we live on, ” Raul Alcaraz, representative of the South Side Workers Center, told some 200 demonstrators carrying banners th
The more things change the more they stay the same. At least, online that’s the way it has been with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its despised Se Communities deportation program. Despite a task force assembled last year and its recommendations to reform the dreaded program, no meaningful change has taken place. “ICE has failed to make any substantive changes to its fundamentally flawed Se Communities program, site refusing even to establish a review panel to examine specific cases,” said Michelle Fei, co-director of the Immigrant Defense Project, which led the effort to suspend the program in New York through a coalition known as the New York State Working Group Against Deportation. “The agency has already deported over one million immigrants under President Obama’s watch by funneling immigrants into an unfair immigration system that only compounds the injustices of the criminal justice system,” added Fei. – NY Daily News
The U.S. Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement agency has taken much criticism for its “Se Communities” initiative, where participating local police departments give immigration officials access to the fingerprints of people brought into its jails. In September, for instance, a Department of Homeland Security task force released a report listing its concerns with the policy, mainly that it undermined police efforts at community policing and that ICE agents must more efficiently focus resources on targeting serious criminals over minor offenders. So last week, after months of review, ICE unveiled a plan for reform, which primarily centers on training memos and videos, new complaint filing process, and more than 700 “in-person or telephone meetings and presentations” regarding Se Communities. Immigration advocates see the reforms as a cop-out — no significant policy changes, just a promise to apply the old policies better.
Immigration officials say they will no longer immediately detain suspected illegal immigrants who are arrested only on minor traffic violations and have no criminal history. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez said Friday that immigration agents will now consider detaining people arrested on minor traffic offenses — provided they have no criminal history — only if they are convicted of these offenses. The change responds to recommendations from a task force that reviewed a federal program that checks arrestees’ fingerprints against immigration records. Immigrant advocates say the modifications are too minor to revamp a program they say leads to racial profiling and lands too many people without criminal records in detention.