President Barack Obama came to Phoenix on Tuesday to speak about the housing market, but dozens of activists showed up with their own agendas. Among them were critics of the President’s deportation policy. More than 40 immigrant rights activists gathered outside of the high school where the President spoke, some holding signs that called…
DetailsCut 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…
DetailsMag-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.
DetailsTo 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.
DetailsFor 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.
DetailsI’m in a waiting room in a large courthouse in San Francisco. Immigration court. Sitting next to me is Magdalena Martinez. She’s here for her mom: Bertha Mejia, online from El Salvador. Bertha’s undocumented. In 2011, immigration officers came to Mejia’s home in Oakland. There was raid in the neighborhood. Martinez remembers that morning. “I got a phone c…
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