Recently in U.S. Immigration Law Category

There is more from Scott Fontaine at the Tacoma News Tribune on the story of the US citizen locked up for seven months in immigration prison and nearly deported due to standard government circumvention of due process.  Notice the contempt with which all the key decisionmakers in the process treated Castillo.

Still, the posture of the article and the reason this is a news item is not that a human being was treated so poorly.  It's that this happened to a U.S. citizen.  The problems that this article uncovers--the failure of the system to obtain accurate results, the inability of many migrants to navigate a complex process--exist for non-citizens as well.  These problems didn't arise by accident.  They have been built into the system to allow the government to imprison and deport more migrants for political gain.

And the idea that the issuance of two "A numbers" for a single individual is a bizarre glitch is just not true.  It happens All. The. Time. 

SCOTT FONTAINE; Published: August 19th, 2008 01:00 AM | Updated: August 19th, 2008 10:33 AM

Rennison Castillo broke the law. He was punished for it. And he thought he had served his time. Instead, the last day of an eight-month jail sentence was the start of a seven-month nightmare that almost ended two years ago with Castillo – a Lakewood resident, Army veteran and American citizen – deported to Belize, a country he left as a child.

He spoke publicly about the incident for the first time earlier this month.

Immigration officials say his case was a rare mistake and that it has prompted closer scrutiny of citizenship claims. But advocates say it’s the kind of mix-up that’s bound to happen as the federal government aggressively moves to deport more criminal immigrants while limiting their access to the legal system.

The migrant-rights organization Immigration Equality scored a major victory today in ushering through the Senate a repeal of the HIV immigration and travel ban.  From Immigration Equality’s press release (I’ll post the link as soon as it goes up on their website) (Update: here it is):

Immigration Equality hails the Senate's vote to lift the HIV immigration and travel ban.  The Senate voted today to repeal the language that bars people with HIV/AIDS from entering the U.S., as part of the legislation reauthorizing the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).  The Senate approved PEPFAR by a vote of 80 to 16.

"Congress has finally moved to end the HIV ban - a ban based on myth and misinformation," said Rachel B. Tiven, Executive Director of Immigration Equality.  "For twenty years, the United States has barred HIV-positive travelers from entering the country even for one day.  Today the Senate said loud and clear that AIDS exceptionalism must come to an end." 

HIV is the only disease excluded by Congressional fiat; all other decisions on communicable diseases are left to the discretion of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).  The repeal provision in the PEPFAR bill will remove the anti-HIV language from the Immigration and Nationality Act, and restore the determination of whether HIV is "communicable disease of public health significance," to the discretion of HHS.

Important Update: Note that the bill has not yet become law, so the waiver requirement is still in place until it does.  From Immigration Equality's website:

The Senate’s version of PEPFAR has not yet become law.  Right now, if you are HIV positive and planning to travel to the U.S. or planning to apply for legal permanent residence status you must still obtain a waiver of inadmissibility.  For more information on HIV Waivers please read this section of our website.

Second Update: It's been a while since I linked to Andrew Sullivan, but take a moment to read his moving post about what the repeal means to him (via). 

I'm not exaggerating when I say that it's one of the happiest days of my whole life. For two and a half decades, I have longed to be a citizen of the country I love and have made my home. I now can. There is no greater feeling.

And I should also note that one of the co-sponsors of the bill was Gordon Smith (R-OR), a prominent Mormon in good standing in the faith.  I hope that the era of reflexive alignment of religious conservatives with anti-gay politics is coming to an end (I say "anti-gay" on the premise that the HIV ban had its roots in animus against the LGBT community).

[End updates]

In yet another case highlighting the fact that the U.S.'s broken immigration system is affecting everyone, NECN did a report on a local New England couple where a Canadian wife was an unauthorized migrant to the U.S. without even knowing it.  As a result, the usual stories repeat themselves:  families have been separated and needless suffering endures. 

Mark and Barbara Myers will not be together for their 25th wedding anniversary. Barbara may, in fact, be barred from the United States for five years, and the resulting economic hardship might result in the loss of their home. Watch the video, if you get the chance.

The latest volley in the immigration culture war came yesterday from Kentucky:

A jury rejected the federal government's unprecedented prosecution Friday of a Lexington landlord who rented to illegal immigrants, finding him not guilty of 62 criminal counts.

. . .

The case is thought to be the first time that the government has prosecuted a landlord merely for renting to illegal immigrants.

“I'm just relieved,” Hadden said after the trial. “I am relieved for all the landlords in the country. This jury saved a lot of landlords from a lot of worries.”

Hadden's attorney, Russ Baldani, said the verdict sent a message.

“These are not illegals; they're human beings,” Baldani said. “You can't solve immigration problems by choking off basic necessities for people that are here.”

I'll be posting over the next few days from Vancouver, where I am attending the annual American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) conference.  In Canada, even the buses are polite.  When unavailable, they carry the message "Sorry, Not in Service."  

In the meantime, I have my third and final (for now) guest post up at the DMI Blog.  This one talks about how sealing the border keeps migrants in who might otherwise return home the way migrants always have. 

Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse has another important study out.  From the NY Times this morning:

Criminal prosecutions of immigrants by federal authorities surged to a record high in March, as immigration cases accounted for the majority — 57 percent — of all new federal criminal cases brought nationwide that month, according to a report published Tuesday by a nonpartisan research group.

The federal government has apparently decided that enforcing the misdemeanor charge incurred after someone crosses the border without permission is the number one law enforcement priority nationwide. 

Today I have another post up over at the DMI Blog about some of the connections between the ICE deaths in detention scandal and Tom Lasseter's recent McClatchy article investigating the dozens, possibly hundreds, of innocent people wrongfully imprisoned at Guantanamo. 

Check it out!

Picture from the Loudon Times (sombrero tip to Anti-BVBL)

13-year-old Jose Andrade, from El Salvador, doesn't understand why he can't be with his mother in the United States.  He says children should get to stay with their parents.  It's not going to happen, according to the Loudon Times.  This 13-year-old boy scout is getting deported.

The truth is most U.S. citizens probably don't understand that, "U.S. immigration law prohibits children not born in the United States from living here unless their parents are U.S. citizens".  But such is the nature of a complicated and broken U.S. immigration system that migrants are frequently the victims of.  It's also another of the many cases in which the legal/illegal dichotomy that nativists love so much is blown out of the water.

If you get a chance, click on over to the Drum Major Institute Blog, where I've got a post up about the effects of immigration raids on children of migrants. 

You can even leave a comment if you wish.  But make sure not to let slip your dark desire to "kill all whites."  That outcome would be especially unfortunate for this white blogger.

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.