Recently in ICE raids Category

It's been years since I've sat down and wrote an op-ed to be published.  I had forgotten how hard it is.  I write my blog posts like I write emails.  I don't fret over every word.  I don't pay attention to the structure. 

With op-eds it's different.  There's a specific formula to them.  I'm sorry to say that my return to formal opinion journalism hasn't resulted in my best work, but it gets the point across.  Without further ado I link you to my first published piece with New America Media.

Over at the Sanctuary, Duke has posted the account of interpreter Erik Camayd-Freixas, who has gone into more depth then anyone about the proceedings in Postville, Iowa.  I think it's one of the most valuable first-hand accounts of what happened in Postville and it also busts the myth of the criminality of these migrants.  Some of my favorite quotes though, are the ones that humanize the migrants of which we have heard so little.  You should read the whole thing here, but I'll highlight some of them below:

Saturday, June 14 (Flag Day)

11:00 a.m. - 11:45 a.m.

at the Regional Transportation Center (Greyhound Bus and Amtrak Train Stations)

Join this lively, yet peaceful solidarity action

*  Distribute flyers  *  Inform travelers of their rights  * 

*  Show solidarity with those at risk of deportation  *  Hold Banners & Signs *

Crossing A Border is NOT a Crime, but a Civil Offense - Yet Families are being Torn Apart because of Border Patrol's activities at the Regional Transportation Center

All Those Who Show Up will Get an Attractive "United Nation's Blue" Wrist Band that says "Justice for Immigrants"

Bring a flag, help distribute "Know Your Rights" literature

We will supply you with a sign

Continue for Directions:

Roberto Lovato has been sounding the alarm for weeks now on the deaths in detention scandal that ICE is now trying to brush under the rug.  I have to admit I’ve not yet given the issue the attention it deserves in this small corner of the blogosphere. 

As is often the case, Nina Bernstein broke the story in the NY Times.  The Times’ editorial board, headed up on this issue by Lawrence Downes, followed up with an opinion piece citing Bernstein's article. 

Ms. Bernstein chronicled the death of Boubacar Bah, a tailor from Guinea who was imprisoned in New Jersey for overstaying a tourist visa. He fell and fractured his skull in the Elizabeth Detention Center early last year. Though clearly gravely injured, Mr. Bah was shackled and taken to a disciplinary cell. He was left alone — unconscious and occasionally foaming at the mouth — for more than 13 hours. He was eventually taken to the hospital and died after four months in a coma.

Nobody told Mr. Bah’s relatives until five days after his fall. When they finally found him, he was on life support, soon to become one of the 66 [ed. note: the Post reports the number is now 83] immigrants known to have died in federal custody between 2004 and 2007. Mr. Bah’s family still does not know the full story of when or how he suffered his fatal injuries.

There's always so much injustice that I feel like I should write on, but with a growing cadre of blogmig@s helping me out online, I'll outsource this story to A Dream Deferred.  Also check out Manny's post at The Sanctuary.

Sometimes I feel like I don't want to be part of a country that deports people like Mkoyan, but then I remember, such talk is an insult to undocumented youth that continue their fight to be recognized as humans in the only country they've ever known.

Watch this video (sombrero tip Latina Lista):

Leslie Kaufman and Dan Frosch at the Times have a story today about the effects on young FLDS children of separation from their parents after the Texas state government raided the compound.  

As they await a ruling by the highest court in Texas on whether child-welfare authorities had the right to take 468 children from the ranch early last month, the mothers have started speaking out more forcefully about what they think the separation has already done to their children.

The mothers and their lawyers are undoubtedly trying to make their best pitch for public sympathy as the Supreme Court of Texas deliberates on the fate of their children. Last Thursday, an appeals court in Austin found that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services had illegally removed the children without sufficient evidence that they were in immediate danger.

I think the state went too far in this instance, but my purpose here is not to get into the complicated issue of weighing the best interests of the children against the individual rights of members of the community.  (Though it appears that the state of Texas has not fully considered the scarring effects of separation from parents in its calculation of the children’s best interests.)

Instead, I want to focus on what the article says about the severe mental and emotional consequences of removal on small children.

A few weeks back, I ran across the story at RaceWire of Armando, a Honduran who had lived all but 9 months of his 26 years in the U.S.  Armando wrote to RaceWire's Raha Jorjani from immigration detention about his thoughts and experiences:

I have been “detained” by the Department of Homeland Security for over ten months now, as I had been fighting my deportation case and hoping for a second chance. I really don’t like the word detained because I feel it is a word used by “them” in an attempt to lessen the truth; that I am their prisoner.

It seems all I have been doing in my life is adapting to major changes, one after the other. From the loss of my father at seventeen, to adapting to military life, to getting used to a 6x9 cell. I have had to make some major adjustments and I have come to learn that change is inevitable.

However, I never would have guessed that I would now be getting ready to be deported to a country I know nothing about. I never thought I would be preparing to be banished from the only country I have known, the country I volunteered to fight for, and not to mention the country that my family lives in.

Julia Preston at the New York Times reported yesterday on an alarming development in the Postville debacle:

In temporary courtrooms at a fairgrounds here, 270 illegal immigrants were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents.

The prosecutions, which ended Friday, signal a sharp escalation in the Bush administration’s crackdown on illegal workers, with prosecutors bringing tough federal criminal charges against most of the immigrants arrested in a May 12 raid. Until now, unauthorized workers have generally been detained by immigration officials for civil violations and rapidly deported.

XP has an myth-slaying post over at Para Justicia Y Libertad clarifying some of the more outlandish charges that have been made in the Postville raid.  He's put together some of the best information on the supposed "methamphetamine lab" that I've been able to find.  Symsess already linked to this, but it deserves a second mention.  I look forward to part two.