S-Comm Under Fire in New Bedford – South Coast Today

Under the Se Communities program, fingerprints taken by local police are automatically sent to federal immigration authorities. If there is a match, police are authorized to hold the suspect for an extra 48 hours, not including weekends. The program is currently active in Suffolk County and will go into effect throughout the state in 2013. “The country has to have rules and we have to have laws that we follow,” Hodgson said. “If you think those laws are unfair, then change the laws.” Critics say Se Communities alienates immigrants from police and has resulted in a swell of deportation cases of otherwise law-abiding people who have lived in the country for decades. “I see it every day from a human perspective,” said defense attorney Rachel Self. “It’s a rare day that I have that a true criminal winds up actually being picked up in this.”

El corrido de la HB56 – Agave Norteno

Tema: EL CORRIDO DE LA HB56 / Cantante: El Compa “Tino Grupo: Agave Norteño / Autor: Antonio Compean Gonzalez Editor: Eric C. Resendiz / Productor Ejecutivo: Cesar Marfil “El corrido de la HB56” Vivíamos días muy felicessin preocuparnos de nada… Sí, todo era tan bonito,una vida cotidiana.Pero llegó el Bentley,a gobernar Alabama. Y que pondría…

Screening of “A Better Life” and a Panel Discussion With the Director – Long Island Wins

The National Day Laborer Organizing Network, together with the Ford Foundation, will host a special screening of the acclaimed film A Better Life, starring Academy Award-nominated actor Demián Bichir as a day laborer striving to provide better opportunities for his son. Following the screening, a panel of distinguished guests, including A Better

Guatemala Day Laborer’s Dream of Being Announcer Comes True – Latin American Herald Tribune

LOS ANGELES – The voice of Luis Gonzalez is heard Monday through Friday from 8:00 to 4:00 p.m. on Radio Centro Laboral, a Los Angeles-based online station over which this Guatemalan day laborer broadcasts a message of hope. Listening to him speak and hearing his tone of voice, story his cadence and diction, it sounds like his natural destiny in life was to be an announcer – but getting there took him 50 years. “I’m 52 years old and all my life I admired the great radio announcers, I dreamed of being one, but thought it was too hard because I only studied up to the sixth grade and I’ve always had to work hard to earn a living,” Gonzalez told Efe in an interview. He came to the United States in the year 2000 looking for a better life, and eventually came upon one of the day-laborer centers of the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California, or IDEPSCA, where immigrants from different countries gather every day hoping for contractors to show up and give them work.

S-Comm system: End it, not mend it – The Asheville Citizen-Times

Any day now the Department of Homeland Security will announce a second round of “reforms” to the disgraced S-Comm, order or “Se Communities, see ” program. The harsh reality is that S-Comm is too broken to be fixed. Opponents have long charged that the program, which requires state and local jails to run immigration background checks on any person booked into custody — regardless of the seriousness or ultimate disposition of their charges — is undermining community safety and jeopardizing civil rights. Hundreds of thousands of family members have been deported, and public safety has been damaged by making witnesses and victims of crimes fear contact with police. North Carolina ranks No. 5 in states that deport the most number of people because of S-Comm.

Panel opposes Se Communities – Yale Daily News

Community activists convened in Sudler Hall Wednesday night to oppose Se Communities, the federal government’s new program intended to deport criminals living in the country illegally. The panel was jointly hosted by the Yale College Democrats, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) de Yale and the University’s chapter of Amnesty International. Mayor John DeStefano Jr., order Yale Law School professor Michael Wishnie, Armando Ghinaglia of Connecticut Students for a DREAM, Fair Haven Alderwoman Migdalia Castro and Latricia Kelly, the director of development and programs for Junta for Progressive Action, along with around 30 students, gathered to discuss their concerns about the program and future steps as it is executed nationwide.