Her job: Stopping wage theft – baltimoresun.com

Julie Su doesn’t back down from fights when she thinks employers are cheating their workers. In her two years as California’s top labor law enforcer, Su has taken on scores of unscrupulous businesses. As state labor commissioner, she inherited an understaffed state agency that she recalled was overwhelmed with complaints of worker abuse, unpaid overtime and management retaliation. "I set out to make the promise of a just day’s pay for a hard day’s work a reality in every workplace in California," Su said in a status report to Gov. Jerry Brown being released Wednesday. Marshaling limited resources, Su has focused much of her enforcement efforts on working conditions for the often immigrant and first-generation Americans who pick crops, sew garments, build houses, clean buildings, wash cars, bus tables and perform other back-breaking tasks. Su has filed criminal charges and civil lawsuits and issued citations that identified more than $185 million in unpaid wages and other compensa…

Jose Maria Islas loses deportation appeal- The New Haven Register – Serving New Haven, Connecticut

Immigration and Custom Enforcement officials handcuffed and took away Jose Maria Islas Monday after he lost his appeal and was ordered deported to Mexico. Islas was taken to a deportation center in Massachusetts, said activist Megan Fountain of Unidad Latina en Accion. More than 800 people had signed a petition asking that ICE grant his stay of…

Restoring Latinos’ trust in police – The Denver Post

A report released this week by the University of Illinois at Chicago and PolicyLink should make all of us who are concerned about crime take notice. The team behind the report, stuff Inse Communities: Latino Perceptions of Police Involvement in Immigration Enforcement, site surveyed Latino communities in four major counties and found a disturbing mistrust of local police among Latino communities. Forty-four percent of Latinos surveyed, including almost 30 percent of U.S.-born Latinos, said they would be unlikely to contact the police if they had been the victim of a crime because they fear they will be asked about their immigration status or that of someone they know.