Fence, Camera, Drone.

Back in March, a few weeks before the Senate’s Gang of Eight filed their bill, Senator John McCain invited three of the other Senators to join him for a visit to the border. This sub-Gang of four was admiring the border fence separating Nogales, Arizona from Nogales, Sonora when a woman clamored over the top and made a run for it. Sen. McCain sent out a tweet about the exciting international event.

The reactions to the woman climbing up and over the 18-foot high galvanized steel fence varied. They were:

1. That danged fence isn’t high enough. We need to invest more money, on a double fence patrolled by megalodons.
2. See? Fences don’t work. Stop wasting money on a border fence that’s nothing more than a symbol.
3. I really need to get back to the gym.

maryland juice: Time for Maryland Democrats to Speak Out for End to Mass Deportations // U.S. Ejecting Residents At Fastest Rate Ever

After the heaviest of lifts, s the comprehensive immigration reform bill that passed the Senate is now languishing in the House of Representatives. It’s easy to see why, since House Republican leadership is already awful busy giving the middle finger to the Affordable Care Act and proposing a renewed food stamp program that cuts $40 billion from S…

maryland juice: Time for Maryland Democrats to Speak Out for End to Mass Deportations // U.S. Ejecting Residents At Fastest Rate Ever

After the heaviest of lifts, the comprehensive immigration reform bill that passed the Senate is now languishing in the House of Representatives. It’s easy to see why, since House Republican leadership is already awful busy giving the middle finger to the Affordable Care Act and proposing a renewed food stamp program that cuts $40 billion from S…

President Obama Has Duty to Fix Arizona Crisis He Helped Create

  Cut off Se Communities Program, Grant Relief to Victims of Sheriff Arpaio   August 6, 2013 – Phoenix, AZ In response to President Obama’s visit to Maricopa County, Arizona, Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network issued the following statement:   “While Congress has the responsibility to rewrite immigration law, the President…

The Immigrant Rights Movement: Advancing Media and Cultural Strategies

Mag-Net hosted a call on media and cultural strategies within the immigrant rights movement. Listen to the discussion:

May 1st marks May Day, also known as International Workers Day. On May 1st, 1886, nearly a half a million immigrants went on a general strike to fight for a 8-hour workday.  Over a hundred years later, starting in 2006, again millions of immigrant workers and supporters participated in May Day protests against H.R. 4437, a draconian anti-immigrant bill.   Even today, the majority of May Day protests are led by immigrants.

Operation Streamline

To understand Operation Streamline, it helps to visit the Judge Roy Bean Saloon & Museum, 60 miles north of Del Rio. This corner of Texas needed a local justice of the peace in the 1880s and Roy Bean took the job. Bean deemed his saloon a courthouse and dispensed what the state’s tourism department now describes as “his own brand of justice … with strange, but expedient decisions.”

Efficiency was king. Judge Bean had a saloon to run, after all. When he needed a jury, he called one from among his customers.  Whatever fines he imposed, he pocketed.

Once, when an Irishman killed a Chinese railroad worker and was sent to Judge Bean to be tried for manslaughter, a mob of 200 white people demanded the Irishman’s immediate release. Judge Bean set the Irishman free, holding that while homicide was the killing of a human being, there was no law against killing a Chinaman.

44,000 can’t wait for immigration reform in Congress

For the 44, 000 people expected to be expelled from the country during Congress’ August recess, here immigration reform won’t come soon enough and executive action is already overdue.

While the end result of the immigration debate in Congress is uncertain when in session, we know that nothing will move while legislators are on vacation. Nothing, that is, other than the gears on the deportation machine that has been assembled and placed on overdrive under the Obama administration.