Talk about an affront to human life. In a bait-and-switch tactic to push the Right’s anti-immigrant message, FL Governor Ron DeSantis paid to send 50 migrants like cattle on an airplane from San Antonio, TX, to Martha’s Vineyard, MA. The migrants were told they’d land in Boston, where they could get expedited work papers. On top of that, hundreds of thousands of people across Puerto Rico are waiting for water and power to be restored after Hurricane Fiona knocked out power lines and collapsed infrastructure with massive flooding. A rough way for Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month to start. Read more →
10 posts categorized "Detained and Deported"
This year’s Human Rights Day marks the seventieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—the perfect day to reflect on the US’s treatment of the immigrant community. And let me tell you: It’s going to be a stark reckoning. Just look at some of this year’s headlines. Many migrant families are still separated. Border patrol agents fired tear gas at migrant families at the US-Mexico border to disperse them. This is inhumane treatment. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims the “inalienable rights which everyone is inherently entitled to as a human being—regardless of race, color, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” That’s not what we’re seeing. Where are the inalienable rights for this community? Read more →
A Q&A with Margaret Regan | On a blazing 99-degree day, I visited the US Port of Entry at Nogales, the border town sixty miles south of my Tucson home. On the Mexican side, I saw something I’d never before seen on the border: a refugee camp. I counted forty-eight people living outdoors on a tile floor, mercifully protected from the sun by an overhanging roof. Half of these asylum seekers were mothers or fathers, the other half were kids: babies, young children, teenagers. Read more →
By Margaret Regan: On her first day in an Arpaio jail, in the short-term holding pen at Fourth Avenue Jail, Mariana was locked up with twenty other women, most of them older than she was and a lot tougher. None of them had been convicted: they were being held for trial, innocent until proven guilty, but no one would guess that by the treatment they got. Mariana was in the packed cell from ten in the morning until eleven that night, and the only food she and the others got all day was a small bag of peanut butter—an Arpaio specialty—and bread and juice, delivered at 6:00 p.m. There was a single toilet, in a bathroom that had no door. Read more →
By Gayatri Patnaik
One of my sharpest memories as a girl was when an immigration officer came to our house in rural Finzel, Maryland when I was about nine years old. He showed up at our house unannounced and I still remember the stunned look on my mother’s face when she answered the door. I didn’t realize until much later how high the stakes were or how very close we had come to being deported. While I can’t share specifics, I can say that one of the things the officer asked for was the phone number of people my mother knew who could attest to her character. And I remember sitting there in our kitchen hearing the one-sided conversation as he called friends or acquaintances or colleagues of my mother’s, one after another. When he left, I walked with him to the door and he shook my mother’s hand and told her she was a remarkable woman and that if she didn’t hear from him in the next six months, she wouldn’t have to worry about her citizenship status further. Read more →By Margaret Regan
On a beastly hot June day, Jesús Arturo Madrid Rosas stood near the DeConcini Port of Entry, keeping a close eye on the street that transformed itself from Grand Avenue, Nogales, Arizona, into Avenida Adolfo López Mateos, Nogales, Sonora. The United States and Mexico jostled up against each other at the crowded crossing, and armed guards from the two nations—prowled just steps away from each other. Jesús was on the lookout for deportados. He was an officer for Mexico’s federal Repatriación Humana agency, and it was his job to welcome his deported compatriots back to their native land. Read more →By Margaret Regan
What if Donald Trump follows through on his vow to deport millions of undocumented immigrants as soon as he becomes president? Due process for the immigrants may slow him down, but he says he’s determined to get started right away with deportations of immigrants convicted of crimes. (He says the number is two to three million but others dispute that, citing a lower figure of 1.9 million.) In August 2016, in a blistering campaign speech in Phoenix, he vowed to create a “new special Deportation Task Force” to root out “criminal illegal immigrants,” but he didn’t spare immigrants not convicted of crimes. Read more →The results of the 2016 presidential election have left many people in shock and disappointment. In a time where people are fearing that a new administration will work to reverse much of the progress made in the last eight years, we are left wondering what the future holds. How do we continue to fight against climate change, fight for reproductive rights, LGBTQ protections, and racial and economic justice? Read more →
A Q&A with Margaret Regan
Starting in the 1980s, we began to have a policy of detaining immigrants. We didn’t really have detention centers ever since we shut down Ellis Island and Angel Island in the 1950s. 1980s policy changed. We were going to do detention centers. So, what do you do? You suddenly start needing prisons. You go to the private sector because they’re agile, they can do things. Corrections Corporation of America began around 1983. Their first project was an immigration detention center in Houston, Texas. And they quickly moved into the regular prison sector also. So they are a for-profit corporation. Read more →By Margaret Regan Photo credit: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Department of Homeland Security) Dilley, a small Texas city eighty-three miles north of the Mexican border, greets visitors with a cheerful sign. “Welcome to Dilley, Texas,” it reads. “A Slice... Read more →