Fence, Camera, Drone.

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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.

The Immigrant Rights Movement: Advancing Media and Cultural Strategies

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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

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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.

For CCA and Country (A visit to Eloy Detention Center)

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Visitors to Eloy Detention Center are greeted by a mural of three flags. They are, from left to right, there the stars & stripes of the United States, the rising sun of Arizona, and the maroon corporate logo of CCA. The three flags are painted as if they are being flown on the same level, with the Corrections Corporation of America’s flag flying to the right of the flag of the United States of America. This is, as any cub scout knows, a terrible violation of decorum, and highly disrespectful of the U.S. flag. 

It is also a violation of the Federal Flag Code, 4 U.S.C. §§ 4-10, for which CCA should be instantly deported.

The Dream 9 were in Eloy when I visited the for-profit prison in the middle of the Arizona desert. All of the nine young people had been brought to the United States as children and would have qualified for DACA relief, the legalization-lite the Obama administration had conceded after three years of escalating pressure from Dreamers. But seven of the Dream 9 had lost hope and left the country before DACA was announced, and so they no longer qualify. The other three – Marco Saavedra, Lulu Martinez and Lizbeth Mateo – did something almost beyond comprehension: they voluntarily left the U.S. a few weeks ago to go fetch the others back. In doing so, Martinez and Mateo made themselves ineligible for DACA. When the nine Dreamers presented themselves at the Nogales port of entry, they were arrested and ended up in Eloy.

Border Patrol Overkill

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SAN DIEGO — San Diego is a town surrounded by military might. To the north is Camp Pendleton and its 37,000 active duty Marines. To the west, Naval Base Coronado is the command center for the Navy SEALS. To the east, the military trains its elite special forces in the Mountain Warfare Training Facility.

And then to the south, there’s the border and Tijuana.

Given the geographic proximity to all these Marines and Special Forces machos, it’s no wonder Border Patrol agents stationed in San Diego in the early 1990’s felt a bit chagrined at their inability to stop national security threats like dog whisperer Cesar Milan from unauthorized entry into the United States.

NDLON Calls for Improvements to Senate Bill

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In response to the cloture vote on the Corker-Hoeven amendment, Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, issued the following statement:
 
“The equality of eventual citizens is not something to be bought and sold in exchange for Republican votes, and that’s exactly what Senate Democrats have done with the Corker amendment.   At this early stage, lawmakers should be focused on getting the best bill possible from the perspective of those who got them elected, not by sweetening the deal for our nativist opponents.   We only need 60 votes in the Senate to move this process forward and to galvanize our community.  

¿Apoyar o No Apoyar? Opinión Sobre la Reforma de Inmigración debajo de un vehículo de la Patrulla Fronteriza

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El 17 de febrero, online policías locales aplicaron la ley racista SB 1070 y llamaron a la patrulla fronteriza; un padre de seis hijos fue llevado bajo custodia en Tucson, Arizona. Siendo testigo de una separación de familia, case yo espontáneamente corrí hacia el vehículo de la Patrulla Fronteriza y me metí debajo de ella…