Aaron Hurst: Going Face-to-Face With Day Laborers

and Century, Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; text-align: left;”>Pablo Alvarado came to the United States from El Salvador in the 1990s and worked for five years as an undocumented laborer. Today he works for the National Day Laborer Organization Network (NDLON) and helps to fight for the rights and dignity of day laborers. I learned of his story when the Taproot Foundation partnered with Pablo and NDLON and recently sat down to capture his inspiring story.

The immigration debate in this country has become really ugly in recent years.

Yes. Day laborers have become the public face of immigration. They have been demonized. Many people have described the day laborers as unwanted people and criminals. People who are murdering and harassing women. I think we are capable of having a debate in which people are not dehumanized in the process.

Groundbreaking Report Contradicts Homeland Security Departments’ Claims About Jail Deportation Program


  NDLON Calls on Sec. Napolitano to Stop Fearmongering 

and Start Addressing Civil Rights Crisis in DHS Immigration Policy

 

Chicago, IL. 05.16.2012.

Yesterday, WBEZ released a report on recidivism of individuals released under Cook County’s progressive immigration detainer policy, passed in response to dragnet federal immigration programs. The study “finds no evidence that inmates freed from jail against the wishes of immigration authorities reoffend or jump bail more than other freed inmates do.”  In response, Pablo Alvarado of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network issued the following statement:

Groundbreaking Report Disputes ICE Claims about Jail Deportation Program

sans-serif; line-height: 22px; border-width: 0px;”>napolitanoMore than eight months since it passed, ask an ordinance that ended the Cook County Jail’s compliance with immigration detainers keeps causing sparks. The detainers are requests that the jail hold inmates up to two business days extra to help federal officials put them into deportation proceedings. Sheriff Tom Dart and some county commissioners are pressing for the ordinance to be scaled back. So is President Obama’s administration. They all say their motive is to keep dangerous criminals locked up. Yet officials offer no evidence whether inmates freed by the ordinance endanger the public more than other former inmates do. A WBEZ investigation sheds the first light.

Immigration central issue in Democratic primary for Travis sheriff

As he seeks a third term as Travis County sheriff, Greg Hamilton would prefer the race be about issues like putting more deputies on the streets and ways to improve mental health resources for people booked into the county jail. But after criticism from Hamilton’s opponent in the Democratic primary, John Sisson, the focus has shifted almost entirely to one issue: immigration. More specifically, how the sheriff’s office deals with requests from the federal government to hold suspects with questionable immigration statuses for possible deportation. Sisson has emerged as a critic of the way the Travis County Jail handles Se Communities, a program that helps the federal government identify potential deportation targets by comparing fingerprints against immigration databases after they are booked. At the center of the dispute over Se Communities are two interpretations of the federal law behind it. Hamilton points to the part of the law that says if U.S. Immigration and Customs.

Sheriff: Won’t Jail Undocumented Non-Criminals – Watsonville, CA

Sheriff Phil Wowak told a group of Watsonville residents and leaders that enforcing deportation law was not the job of sheriff’s deputies or police officers in Santa Cruz County during an emotionally-charged forum about Se Communities Wednesday evening. The event—organized by County Supervisor Greg Caput—brought service providers, elected officials and law enforcement together to speak with residents about immigration issues and specifically Se Communities, a federal program that identifies illegal immigrants through county jail systems and deports them. “We do not ask for your citizenship when you are the victim of a crime or the witness to a crime,” Wowak said to those who gathered at the Veteran’s Memorial Hall on East Beach Street for the event. He added that local police should not be checking people’s immigration status; that is a federal issue.

Immigration measure OK’d by Amherst Select Board; heads to Town Meeting

The Select Board has thrown its support behind a resolution critical of a federal immigration enforcement program and the town’s participation in it – and now Town Meeting will weigh in on the matter. Residents concerned about the Se Communities Act sought to pass the resolution but town officials said the measure could jeopardize state and federal police grants. Town Manager John Musante worked with town counsel Kopelman & Paige to come up with a revised version of the resolution, which states the town’s intention to not participate in federal law enforcement programs related to immigration enforcement. The Select Board Monday unanimously supported the resolution. “It does reflect what Amherst is about,” said Select Board member Aaron Hayden. Ruth Hooke of Precinct 8, who drafted the original version, said she is satisfied with the revision. The intention of the article is to counter the Se Communities program run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which supporte

Asm. Ammiano formally introduces “TRUST Act 2.0” to counteract discredited deportation program

70,000 CA deportations under “Se” Communities program spark anger;

Bill puts state at forefront of movement to curb burdensome immigration detentions in local jails

Sacramento, CA – As the imposition of the scandal-plagued “Se” Communities or S-Comm deportation program in Massachusetts and New York today spurs fresh controversy, California Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-SF) formally introduced a revamped version of AB 1081, the TRUST Act, to reform California’s participation in the program. 

The new incarnation of AB 1081, which captured national attention last year, formally appeared “in print”  late yesterday and will pick up where the previous version left off, in the state Senate. The bill is expected to be heard in the Senate Public Safety committee next month. (Background information below.)

Feds Use Counter-Terrorism Laws to Fuel Deportation Machine

Jose Barahona says that he would have been killed had he refused to open his door when the armed guerillas occupying his town demanded he let them use his kitchen and sleep on his floor. He says that’s what happened to his father. Dead. And he says it was because of the fear of death during the war raging between the FMLN guerillas and the Salvadoran government that at the age of 24, with his new wife and baby boy, he left his Salvadoran mountain village and came to the United States where the couple would have two more children and where he’d spend the next two and half decades. He thought he’d left all the violence behind. Twenty six years after that departure, on March 22nd 2011, now 51-year-old Barahona was shuttled from a Virginia immigration detention center to an immigration court

Se Communities gear up is the mother of all flawed immigration policies

The announcement came just in time for Mother’s Day: Se Communities, the arbitrary and despised Department of Homeland Security program that requires states to identify immigrants for deportation, ed is expected to be activated across New York State, including in New York City, on Tuesday. In a brave gesture Gov. Cuomo, nearly a year ago, unsuccessfully tried to remove the state from the deportation program that is also strongly opposed by law enforcement officials and domestic violence groups across the country. These groups correctly believe Se Communities undermines public safety by compromising the trust between police and the communities they serve, in addition to encouraging racial profiling, separating families and even deports U.S. citizens. Despite the criticism, the calls for reform or for ending it, and Cuomo’s concern, the Obama administration has continued imposing the fundamentally flawed program in blatant disregard of the human cost and dire consequences.