Enrique Soriano says he can "breathe a little" at his Pasadena home now that his deportation is no longer imminent.
DEAD SOLDIER'S DAD GETS REPRIEVE IN IMMIGRATION CASE
MOVE TO DEPORT HIM IS PUT ON HOLD WHILE HOUSE LOOKS AT BILL
By SUSAN CARROLL Nov. 15, 2007, 12:07AM Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
U.S. immigration officials have granted the father of a U.S.-born soldier killed in Iraq a reprieve from deportation while Congress considers a private bill that would give him a green card.
Enrique Soriano, an illegal immigrant and the father of Pfc. Armando Soriano, was facing deportation from Houston until U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials recently decided to grant him "deferred action," which will allow him to live and work legally in the U.S. for one year, said Maria Elena Garcia-Upson, a spokeswoman for USCIS.
Officials with the agency formally notified Soriano's attorney, Isaias Torres, of the reprieve by fax on Wednesday. It is effective for one year from the date of its request by the USCIS district director in Houston, meaning it will expire Sept. 10, 2008.
"It's a step forward, but it's not a long-term solution," Torres said. "At least he's not under the threat of being detained and removed anymore."
Enrique has lived with the fear that immigration agents would appear any day at his front door, decorated with a faded yellow ribbon in remembrance of his son. On Wednesday, the 47-year-old Pasadena resident said his worries have been eased.
"I can breathe a little now," Enrique said. "It gives me hope that my case is progressing."
The Soriano story has drawn widespread attention since the Houston Chronicle first reported on it in August. The family's plight highlighted the complicated issue of service members whose family members are illegal immigrants.
U.S. Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, has introduced a private bill that would grant Enrique and Armando's younger sister, Areli, legal permanent resident status. The bill, HR 3772, remains in committee. Jesse Christopherson, spokesman for Green, said they are optimistic about the bill's chances.
A private bill provides benefits to specified individuals. Immigration is one of the most common subjects of such legislation. Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Republican in East Texas, has a private bill pending to stop the deportation of an Albanian immigrant who fears his life could be in danger if he's deported.
The House Judiciary Committee has approved a handful of private bills in recent months.
Wife granted green card
Armando was killed in Iraq in February 2004 when a military vehicle he was riding in rolled off a road, according to the Army's account of his death. The South Houston High School graduate was 20 years old. He was buried with military honors and awarded the Bronze Star posthumously.
After his death, the Soriano family benefited from an unofficial policy that gives the immediate relatives of service members who die in war the chance to become legal residents, even if they came to the U.S. illegally.
Armando's mother, Cleotilde, was approved for lawful permanent resident status. But Enrique's petition for a green card was denied.
In 1999, Enrique was formally deported after falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen, but he sneaked back across the Rio Grande to rejoin his family in Houston. Immigration officials apparently didn't know he was back in the U.S. until his green card application was filed.
His application apparently alerted U.S. immigration officials that he was in the country illegally. He was facing deportation until the recent USCIS decision to grant "deferred action."
This distinction is granted at the district and regional level of USCIS, and does not offer a chance at a green card. It does, however, allow recipients to work legally in the U.S. — at least temporarily.
Enrique spends his days working in construction. Because he was tied up with work, he couldn't visit his son's grave on Veterans Day.
So he stopped by the cemetery on Wednesday afternoon before he heard about his case and wiped down Armando's marble headstone. About two hours later, Torres called to tell him that he didn't have to leave his family any time soon.
OREGON GOVERNOR STILL FOR DRIVER'S LICENSES FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
11/15/2007 By BRAD CAIN Associated Press
Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski still supports giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, even though New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has backed away from a similar proposal.
Spokeswoman Patty Wentz said Kulongoski believes life would be safer for all if illegal immigrants had to go through the process of getting licenses.
But the idea has drawn opposition from Democrats and Republicans in the Oregon Legislature.
The chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, Democrat Rick Metsger, said the consensus among lawmakers is that the public strongly opposes the idea. And he says he doubts such a plan would work.
"You could count on one hand the number of supporters there are for this in the Legislature — if there are even that many," Metsger said of Kulongoski's proposal to extend driving privileges to the thousands of undocumented workers who reside in Oregon.
Spitzer cited a similar wall of opposition among New York lawmakers as well as a public outcry against the idea in dropping his proposal earlier Wednesday.
Many lawmakers want Oregon to stop giving driving privileges to undocumented immigrants when it adopts new federal driver's license requirements, which require proof of citizenship or legal residence before someone can get a driver's license. The state is one of seven that do not require such proof to obtain driver's licenses.
An alternative proposed by Kulongoski would adopt the "legal presence" standard for driver's licenses but create a second-tier "driving only" card for those who can't prove their citizenship or legal residency. The card would not serve as identification for state or federal purposes, such as boarding an airliner.
Kulongoski, along with immigrants rights advocates and some agriculture industry officials, contends the current policy has worked well for the state because it encourages illegal workers who are driving anyway to undergo driver's training and pass a test showing familiarity with driving laws.
"Unlicensed drivers are more likely to get into accidents, because they haven't passed a test showing they know the rules of the road," Aeryca Steinbauer, coordinator for the immigrant rights group CAUSA.
Any move to create a "driving privilege only" card would have to be approved by lawmakers. Metsger said he doubts there's any support for bringing up the proposal in the Legislature's February session.
Kulongoski does plan to use his executive authority this week to enact tougher driver's license requirements. Motorists would have to prove they are in the state legally before they could be issued a license.
The Democratic governor first raised the issue last month, saying Oregon's loose rules have made the state a target for noncitizens who seek to obtain identification cards for "nefarious" purposes.
"Securing Oregon's driver's license is the governor's top priority, so that people can't come to Oregon with fake identification to get a driver's license," Wentz said.
An eight-year-old Honduran girl is left alone at an immigrant detention center in Williamson County. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials transferred the girl’s pregnant mother from the T Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor to another facility in Laredo in mid-October. According to ICE representatives, as reported by the Associated Press, the woman was transferred, “because she twice resisted deportation attempts and was potentially disruptive.â€
The child stayed in Hutto and ICE officials say she was watched over by guards at the family detention center. Attorney Barbara Hines with the UT Law Immigration Clinic says fellow detainees told attorneys with the clinic the little girl was by herself for about four days. Hines says she also understands from her clients held in the facility, the girl’s aunt, a legal resident, was not allowed to visit the child.
The mother and child are now back in Honduras. Their asylum request was denied. Hines says she does not if the woman gave birth while in the United States.
Background of T Don Hutto
T Don Hutto is run and owned by private jail firm Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and funded by the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE contracted with the county, which then contracted with CCA. The federal government and private jail firm do not have a contract between them. The county then acts as the administrator, and is paid $1 per detainee per day. According to County Judge Dan Gattis, Senior, the federal government sought this arrangement in order to avoid a lengthy bid-out process required when a federal agency contracts with private businesses. The contracts with ICE and CCA were approved by the previous commissioners court and signed by former County Judge John Doefler. A renewal of the contract with CCA was approved earlier this year by the current commissioners court and signed by County Judge Gattis. The current contract expires in January 2009
About 500 people can be detained at T Don Hutto. About half of those people are under the age of eighteen. T Don Hutto is one of a handful of family detention centers in the United States. The people held there are typically not from Mexico, but rather from Africa, South-east Asia, South America, the Middle East and Canada According to attorneys representing the people held there, the detainees are typically awaiting immigration status hearings. Some are seeking asylum and presented themselves to officers at airports, borders or shipping ports. Some have been in the U S for a period of time and did not appear for a scheduled status hearing.
INCIDENT CLOUDS FUTURE OF SHAWNEE NATIVE WHO LEADS FEDERAL AGENCY
By LYNN FRANEY The Kansas City Star
Myers By most accounts, Julie Myers was on a roll.
The federal agency she leads, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is deporting record numbers of illegal immigrants.
It is checking inmates’ immigration status at all federal prisons now, not just some.
And when it catches non-Mexican illegal immigrants sneaking over the southern border, it no longer releases them, hoping they’ll show up for immigration court hearings. Instead, it sends them home.
Three weeks ago, Myers, a 38-year-old Shawnee native, appeared to be cruising toward Senate confirmation for a permanent appointment.
Then came Halloween. Her picture was taken with an employee wearing a racially insensitive costume, and she applauded his originality.
She has since apologized, but the matter threatens to jeopardize her continued leadership of the nation’s second-largest investigative agency. She could not be reached for comment Friday. ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said Myers had done a “tremendous job†and should not be derailed because of one instance of poor judgment.
But the incident has raised concerns for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, his spokesman said Friday.
Reid plans to consult with Democratic caucus leaders, as well as the senators who lead the two committees that earlier voted to support the nomination. Then he will decide whether to bring Myers’ nomination to the Senate for a vote, spokesman Jim Manley said.
If the Senate does not approve her nomination, Myers’ emergency appointment will expire Dec. 31.
“The way things are going, we may not ever vote on her nomination,†Republican Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri said in a statement. “Our nation’s immigration enforcement agency needs noncontroversial leadership. That would be best served by going in a different direction with this nomination.â€
But Myers’ focus on ramping up the agency’s enforcement of immigration law has won her plaudits from senators, too.
Brian Nick, chief of staff for Sen. Elizabeth Dole, said Dole was “quite a fan of hers†after Myers led ICE to work more closely with sheriffs in North Carolina to find and deport more illegal immigrants.
The Halloween matter is “something that Secretary Myers explained very quickly and doesn’t affect all the good work she’s done over the past year,†Nick said.
An African-American employees group within the Department of Homeland Security is backing Myers’ continued leadership at ICE, saying she has worked hard to recruit more minority employees and reached out to them to apologize. In a letter to Reid, the group said it considered Myers “a friend and an ally.â€
The agency’s headquarters held an employee costume party. An employee attended in a striped costume-style jail outfit and a dreadlock wig and wore makeup, Myers wrote in a letter to Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri.
Myers said she and two other employees served as judges for the costume contest.
“Unfortunately, not realizing that this employee was wearing makeup, I and the other judges recognized this employee’s costume for originality,†Myers wrote. “… I and the other judges were not aware that the employee’s skin color was not as it appeared.â€
Myers said she found out about the makeup the next day and asked that the employee be disciplined. She said she deeply regretted the incident.
The agency’s photographer had taken Myers’ picture with the employee. But Myers said she had the photographer delete all photos of the employee in the costume so they would never make it into any ICE publication. She took that action, she said, even before she learned about the makeup because she quickly realized that the jail costume was inappropriate and offensive.
To reach Lynn Franey, call 816-234-4927 or send e-mail to lfraney@kcstar.com.
It's one of the toughest and most divisive issues facing the American people. And how we respond will have a profound impact on future generations. Yet many elected officials refuse to even talk about it. President Bush proposed a plan to deal with the issue but couldn't even get members of his own party to go along.
Congress blew its shot at reform in a flurry of distortions, sound bites and fear-mongering. And most of the presidential candidates won't go anywhere near the subject, perhaps sensing that it could cost them votes.
The issue, of course, is Social Security reform. And you probably thought I was talking about immigration.
But the immigration debate is minor league compared to the rough and tumble political environment surrounding America's most beloved entitlement program. Just ask Congress. As tough as immigration reform turned out to be, it was assumed that fixing Social Security would be even tougher.
Part of the reason is that people can't even agree that there's a problem, let alone how to fix it. There are those who are convinced that, because of the impending retirement of more than 78 million baby boomers, Social Security will be on the road to insolvency as early as 2016 - the point at which more money will be going out in benefits than coming in from payroll taxes. Others agree that there is a shortfall but they're more optimistic about when the dam breaks, insisting that the system will have enough money to pay all benefits until 2038. Then there's the last group, which insists there is nothing to worry about.
Sure. But if the issue isn't resolved, guess who'll foot the bill? Boomers' kids and grandkids.
Despite the myth that there is a kind of lockbox where the government stashes the money workers pay in Social Security taxes until they retire, that is not how things work.
Social Security is a huge transfer of wealth where every generation pays for the one before it. Seventy-eight million baby boomers had no problem paying the benefits that went to the World War II generation because, well, there are 78 million of them. Imagine the burden on younger workers - those who are now in their *****, 20s and 30s - who are expected to hold up their end of the bargain and keep millions of the boomers in a comfy retirement.
In 1946, the cost of supporting one retiree was spread among 42 workers. Now, we're rapidly approaching the point where the number of workers who support each retiree will be down to two. And, of course, that means more strain on those workers in the form of higher taxes.
Some tax hikes on future workers might be inevitable, but politicians would be wise to explore other options before traveling that route.
Someone should have told that to Fred Thompson, who raised the tax issue when he became the first presidential candidate in either party in this election to talk about saving Social Security. Front-runners Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton have run away from the issue and refuse to lay out specific plans. They speak only in generalities, perhaps because they fear incurring the wrath of AARP, the lobby that advocates for senior citizens and resists any tinkering with Social Security.
Of course, in politics, there can be a price to being specific. There are better ideas out there than raising taxes - such as raising the retirement age to 70, "means testing" the program so that anyone whose personal net worth is in the millions forfeits their benefits, creating personal retirement accounts, and slowing the rate at which benefits grow by tying them to inflation instead of wages. That last option did find its way into Thompson's plan.
Then there is Barack Obama, who said recently that he would push for higher Social Security income by raising the cap on payroll taxes. Currently, the first $97,500 of a person's annual income is taxed. Obama said that he is against pushing back the retirement age or cutting benefits.
We can argue the details. But at least Thompson and Obama had the guts to put something on the table. It doesn't reflect well on their opponents, who - on this issue - seem just as comfortable hiding under the table.
Ruben Navarrette is a San Diego Tribune columnist (e-mail: ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com).
Rodriguez, with whom I have crossed paths on occasion, has written a history which tells a far different tale of Mexican and Mexican American heritage. In "Mongrels," Mexican identity is no natural-born monolith, but rather a kaleidoscope crafted through creative strategies Mexicans used to resist and adapt to the rigors of white supremacy. Starting from the 1519 Spanish conquest of Mexico, his energetic saga recounts the ways in which Mexicans ingeniously absorbed the conventions of our conquerors by marrying with whites, sampling Anglo culture and even purchasing our way out of racial segregation up until the modern era. In these practices, Rodriguez, an opinion columnist for The Times, writes, Mexican Americans "have always confounded the Anglo American racial system, [and] will ultimately destroy it, too."
Since the first years of Cortes' appearance in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán (present day Mexico City), the Mexica have crossed color lines through cohabitation or marriage with whites. Rodriguez's initial chapters read like a novel when he tells how Cortes' lover and translator la Malinche, who was "as beautiful as a goddess," not only helped him annihilate the Aztec emperor Montezuma, but also "gave birth to [his] son, MartÃn . . . [who] was later made a Knight of the Order of Santiago, one of the most prestigious military orders of Spain." Such intermarriages were common in colonial Mexico, the 19th century Southwest, and 20th century California. ("By 1963, 25 percent of married Mexican Americans in Los Angeles County had wed non-Mexicans.")
The resulting children challenged racial lines, and the colonists of 18th century New Spain worked to preserve the fantasy of white racial purity by creating no fewer than 16 racial classes, including "moriscos," "albinos," "lobos" and "coyotes." Later, states enacted anti-miscegenation laws that applied to African and African/mestizo/Anglo unions, but usually not "Mexican-Anglo" marriages, as Mexicans were (often, but not always) classified as "white."
When intermarriage didn't fully integrate Mexicans into Spanish, then U.S. society, Mexicans adapted to (and altered) Anglo culture. For example, the Virgin of Guadalupe is a syncretic Mexican-Anglo phenomenon that personalized the Spaniards' Mary for many Latinos. But because she was brown-skinned and was sometimes called Tonatzin, after the Aztec mother of the gods, she was condemned by a leading Franciscan "as idolatrous." Facing off with racist colonials whose vigor and inventiveness matched their own, sometimes Mexicans didn't use nuanced approaches to integration, but simply bought themselves into prestigious racial categories: "In 1779, sculptor Pedro Huizar was listed as a mulatto in the census. But after amassing some money, he was labeled Spanish in 1793."
Impediments to "upward mobility," however, were violence (there were vast killings of Mexicans throughout colonial history) and repatriation back to Mexico. For example, Rodriguez writes compellingly of the INS' infamous 1950s "Operation Wetback" roundup of illegal immigrants in the Southwest, and the beefing up of the border that began in the 1980s (though not much time is spent on the recent heated debates over immigration reform.)
In the bulk of "Mongrels," Rodriguez describes Mexicans as a pragmatic people who have assembled racial categories that are "vague" and "situational," in part because of this history of racism. But he regards with trepidation the 1970s Chicano "brown power" movement, or movimiento, which represents a "fundamental break" from Mexicans' long-standing flexible attitude: "Inspired by an Aztec legend . . . the Spiritual Plan of Aztlán, was a call for ethnic unity and nationalism."
Rodriguez sees the movimiento as a perilous, but temporary, daydream of a uniform Chicano brand that has given way in the new century to the more traditional, fluid constructions of a pan-"Latino" identity: "The Chicano portrayal of Mexican Americans as a unified, downtrodden people preternaturally loyal to their ancestral culture was astonishingly similar to the way Anglo racists had been characterizing Mexican Americans for more than a hundred years."
Yet, was it really? How about an alternative way to frame the movimiento: We can see the Chicano movement's celebration of La Raza not necessarily as a backward, newfangled fiction, but rather as an extension of Mexicans' venerable race-innovations, and also as a corrective to some of the problems caused by some of the assimilationist practices that Rodriguez so skillfully describes.
Through intermarriage, culture sampling, and color- or class-jumping, Mexicans have recut race to fit our own imaginations. Chicanos' excavations of Aztec heritage may not rebut Mexicans' supple racial vision but simply provide another example of that creativity in action: We continue to dream ourselves into existence.
Moreover, the practices that Mexicans used to blur racial boundaries had their shadow sides. Rodriguez writes that many of the "marriages" that disrupted racial categories were really rapes: "While some women were 'given' to the Spaniards, others were taken by force." Also, the color and class jumps often exacerbated other social divides -- those between the wealthy and the poor, dark vs. light, and black vs. white. The movimiento used the imagination to rename race once again in a way that acknowledged the rape of our people by distancing ourselves from colonials, built bridges with African Americans by recognizing our debt to black leaders who laid the foundations for "Brown Power" and also worked to upend the color and class divides through unification.
Of course, Chicano fundamentalism would create dangers like any other sort of extremism. But the recent nationwide immigration rallies, in which some protesters invoked La Raza in the midst of pan-Latino (as well as Chinese American, Polish American, Irish American, African American and Native American) protests, may prove that persistent chicanismo can coexist with other practices that undermine a monolithic Mexica identity. The dream of Aztlan doesn't necessarily have to die for the Mexican American people to develop in a healthy way. I believe I can refresh myself with the dream that I hail from a concrete, transcendent past even as I enjoy a post-modern skepticism about the reality of any pure Mexicanidad (particularly as I am half-Anglo!).
Modern Mexican American identity is nourished by a belief in an ancestral heritage and an understanding that romantic genealogy has never been entirely possible or desirable. That is, in my dream-mind, my Aztec ancestor's gold shield continues to glitter in the sun and the quetzal feathers shimmer in her onyx hair. Simultaneously, my inner critic wryly observes that Mexican Americans are ethnic centaurs born of the marriages, rapes, lost and created language, genocide, litigation, heresies, sell-outs and pure acts of willpower that are detailed in Rodriguez's politically savvy and enchanting book.
Yxta Maya Murray is a professor at Loyola Law School and a novelist whose latest work is "The Queen Jade."
Mongrels, *******s, Orphans, and Vagabonds Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America
Gregory Rodriguez
Pantheon: 318 pp., $26.95
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ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ALREADY DRIVE. THE REAL QUESTION IS WHETHER TO PROMOTE SAFETY.
The Washington Post Sunday, November 18, 2007; Page B06
LISTEN TO the fumblings and ***blings of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, two otherwise canny and articulate senators, and you can hear a pair of candidates who probably know that granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants is smart public policy but maybe not such smart politics. Both Mr. Obama, who supports the idea, and Ms. Clinton, who now says she does not, have come in for derision by seeming to straddle an issue that is becoming a surrogate for the broader, unresolved problem of illegal immigration.
Eight states already grant licenses to undocumented residents, from Washington and Utah in the West to Maine and Maryland in the East. All adopted the stance for clear and convincing reasons of public safety and in many cases at least partly at the behest of law enforcement officials. None has come to tragedy because of it.
Who's Blogging» Links to this article At least 12 million illegal immigrants live in America, and many of them, probably millions, are already driving regularly or periodically. They drive to jobs, to schools, to hospitals, to shopping malls and to grocery stores. By making licenses available to them, states are not enabling them to drive more; they are encouraging them to get the insurance and training that will allow them to drive safely. Deny them licenses, and be prepared to pay the consequences.
A report prepared for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety gives a sobering assessment of those consequences. The report, based on data collected in the 1990s, says that unlicensed drivers are almost five times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than drivers with valid licenses and that 20 percent of all fatal accidents involve at least one driver without a valid license. Such drivers are also more likely to operate vehicles under the influence of alcohol.
While the Democratic front-runners have equivocated, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who signed legislation allowing illegal immigrants to be licensed four years ago, was lucid about his reasons. Speaking at the Democratic forum held Thursday in Las Vegas, Mr. Richardson, who may feel that he has less to lose by his honesty than the equivocating Democratic front-runners, put the matter succinctly: "When we started with this program, 33 percent of all New Mexicans were uninsured. Today it's 11 percent. Traffic fatalities have gone down. It's a matter of public safety."
That was also the logic that led Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York to announce in September that driver's licenses would be issued without regard to immigration status. He withdrew the plan last week following a firestorm of political protest, not least from the state's Democratic congressional delegation. It was notable that many of those who urged the governor to reverse course did so not because they thought the policy was foolish but because they worried about an electoral backlash.
Polls show that a majority of Americans believe issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants is a bad idea. Many fear that it will tempt more immigrants to enter this country illegally. That's hokum; people who sneak into the country or overstay their visas do so for jobs, not licenses.
A more serious concern is that granting licenses to illegal immigrants may give would-be terrorists a tool they would otherwise lack and that the licenses could be used to gain access to commercial flights. That could be addressed by making driver's licenses valid only for driving, not as all-purpose identity documents, and by creating for other purposes a separate national ID card, with stringent biometric and other safeguards -- much as European and other countries already have. Doing so would mean rethinking the federal Real ID Act, which requires states to adopt heavily vetted driver's licenses that would serve as all-purpose IDs. But with many states already balking at Real ID's onerous provisions, a rethink is in order anyway.
Rhetoric and reality already diverge on many aspects of the debate over illegal immigrants. Now driver's licenses are providing easy fodder for elected officials to prove their toughness and intolerance on the issue. By doing so, they ignore the everyday reality of safety on the nation's roadways. Illegal immigrants will continue to drive regardless of posturing by politicians. The important question is whether they will do so safely.
By LISA FALKENBERG Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
It seems like a simple notion: Children who haven't committed crimes shouldn't be locked up in a converted medium-security prison, especially when there are alternatives.
Congress has advised U.S. immigration officials not to do it. A decade-old settlement between immigration officials and human rights advocates says not to do it. The Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children has asked immigration officials to stop doing it. And the American Civil Liberties Union has sued the immigration officials to get them to stop doing it.
Yet — until the last few weeks — there's been no sign that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be forced to stop doing it.
Since May 2006, ICE has locked up immigrant children, about 200 at a time, at the T. Don Hutto "Family Residential Facility," a converted medium-security prison in the Central Texas town of Taylor.
The children are accompanied by parents, mostly from countries other than Mexico, who crossed our borders illegally or overstayed their visas. Many are asylum-seekers fleeing threats such as war, rape and political prosecution.
ICE officials maintain that Hutto is a humane alternative to separating immigrant families while they await asylum or deportation proceedings. The agency began detaining families after 9/11 when it scrapped the old "catch and release" method because many immigrants weren't showing up for court.
Good chance of winning
Detainees at Hutto, which is run by a private prison operator, have complained of a structured, prison-like environment complete with camera surveillance, inadequate medical care, substandard food and psychologically abusive guards. Children, the ACLU lawsuit claims, have suffered weight loss, bed wetting and nightmares as a result of the stress from incarceration.
In April, U.S. District Court Judge Sam Sparks ruled that the 10 child plaintiffs in the ACLU lawsuit were "highly likely" to prevail in arguments that immigration officials had violated legal standards for their treatment. The judge called the children's detention in "substandard conditions" an "urgent problem." The trial is set for August.
ICE officials claim reforms at Hutto, including changing the menu, allowing limited, supervised visitation and more hours of schooling.
Yet, just last month, when given a chance to show off their progress, they abruptly canceled a scheduled visit by a United Nations inspector. ICE officials later said "pending litigation" led them to deny access.
Meanwhile, the agency has largely refused alternatives to Hutto.
The Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, which involves electronic monitoring and telephonic reporting instead of detention, has resulted in an average 93 percent appearance rate at court proceedings for final orders of deportation. That's compared to 41 percent for other illegal immigrants. And it's a lot cheaper than operating Hutto, which costs $2.8 million a month.
Another alternative is for ICE to replace Hutto with a model similar to its Pennsylvania facility, the only other place in the country where ICE detains immigrant families. The Berks County Shelter Care Facility in Leesport is a converted nursing home. Refugee advocates say families at Berks seem to be treating families humanely.
Marching orders
But ICE may not be able to snub alternatives for much longer. Signs of progress are emerging, in the form of proposed congressional mandates.
Earlier this month, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., added an amendment mandating improved treatment of asylum-seekers to the Comprehensive Immig-ration Reform Act of 2007.
"There are documented cases of serious abuses against asylum-seekers here in the U.S.," said Lieberman. " ... When they come to America, longing to breathe free, they are treated like convicted criminals. We allow DHS to detain them in harsh prison conditions with no due process."
The provision's future is brighter after senators agreed last night to revive the stalled immigration bill.
Pressuring ICE
A surer sign comes from the congressional committee that holds ICE's purse strings. In a Homeland Security spending bill being debated this week, the committee tells ICE to prioritize alternatives.
And, for the first time, the committee directs — not advises or recommends — but directs ICE, in cases where detention is necessary, to "house families together in non-penal, home-like environments."
The measure could be the push ICE needs to start treating all undocumented families with some dignity. Hutto, no matter how much razor wire is removed, how many coats of paint are added to the cinderblock, will never be home-like. It will never be humane. It will never be a place for children.
Felipe Calderón MEXICO CITY – Mexican President
CALDERON TO CANDIDATES: DON'T USE IMMIGRANTS AS TALKING POINT
Mexican president calls on hopefuls not to use immigrants in speeches
08:40 AM CST on Friday, November 16, 2007 From Wire Reports
Felipe Calderón took the unusual step Wednesday of injecting himself into U.S. presidential politics, calling Mexican migrants "thematic hostages" of the race and urging candidates not to use them as a talking point.
Speaking at a conference here, Mr. Calderón criticized what he called "the growing harassment" of Mexicans in the United States and said his administration will finance a media campaign to underline immigrant success stories.
He made his remarks one day before his environment minister, Rafael Elvira Quesada, is scheduled to release a report concluding that a U.S.-Mexico border wall is damaging the environment.
Mr. Calderón's statement on the U.S. presidential race caught many people here by surprise. Addressing delegates at a conference sponsored by the Mexican government agency that assists migrants, he said: "It is my duty to make a respectful but firm call to the candidates of the various political parties in the United States for them to stop using Mexicans in that country as thematic hostages of their speeches and their strategies."
He has frequently criticized U.S. immigration policy, as do many Mexicans. But it is unusual for a Mexican president to make such a direct comment about U.S. presidential campaign strategies.
Immigration has emerged as a hot-button issue in the 2008 presidential contest, consistently ranking high on the list of voter concerns and figuring prominently in debates. Immigration also tops a list of issues that voters in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses want candidates to address, according to a CBS-New York Times poll released Tuesday. And 44 percent of caucus-goers want illegal immigrants to lose their jobs and leave the country, the poll said.
A poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released two weeks ago found that 65 percent of Republican voters and 50 percent of Democratic voters ranked illegal immigration as a "very important" issue.
Republican candidate Fred Thompson has proposed taking federal grant money from so-called sanctuary cities in the United States that do not report illegal immigrants to the federal government. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., has run television ads saying migrants cross the border "to take our jobs."
Given the national focus on immigration, it is very unlikely that candidates would heed Mr. Calderón's call, said Michael Dimock, associate director of the Pew Research Center.
"Good luck," Mr. Dimock said of Mr. Calderón's plea. "It's a potentially powerful voting issue for a significant segment of the electorate."
A CORPSE TAKEN FROM A MORGUE MAY BE THAT OF A KEY CARTEL FIGURE
SAN DIEGO -- Fifty heavily armed men cruised the streets of Ensenada on Wednesday night in an ominous show of force usually reserved for carrying out kidnappings of businessmen or organized crime rivals.
But this convoy of 14 vehicles pulled up in front of the city morgue on Calle Guadalupe. The attackers stormed the building, snatched a corpse, loaded it into a vehicle and sped off through the hills toward Tecate, where two police officers had set up a roadblock.
"They tried to stop them. The gunmen answered with bullets," said Edgar Lopez, a spokesman for the Baja California state police.
Even by the grim standards of violent crime in Baja California, the body-snatching incident set a bizarre precedent. Federal authorities are investigating whether the body is that of drug cartel figure Francisco Merardo Leon Hinojosa, nicknamed El Abulon -- The Abalone.
The gunmen fired more than 120 rounds from AR-15s and AK-47s at the officers, killing them before escaping near the wine-growing region of the Valle de Guadalupe. Hundreds of state and federal police officers followed in a fruitless manhunt.
In a crime-weary region where masked gunmen often leave a trail of beheaded or torture-marked bodies, people could only speculate on a motive.
"Maybe it was sentimental reasons," said David A. Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. The attackers, said Shirk and others, may have wanted to ensure that the man's funeral was attended by his friends. "If he was buried by authorities, they would expose themselves by coming out for any kind of public funeral," Shirk said.
The string of events occurred during the Baja 1000, which began Tuesday. The popular off-road race from Ensenada to Los Cabos draws hundreds of competitors from the United States. Among the last-minute entries were two men who registered a black pick-up truck called Azteca Warrior, according to media reports and Ensenada city spokesman Daniel Vargas.
One of the men, registered as Pablo Gonza***, was tracking the race team's progress in a helicopter when it crashed into high-tension wires, killing Gonza*** and another passenger and injuring two pilots.
Two people who said they were relatives of Gonza*** showed up at the morgue Wednesday and tried to claim the body, but were not allowed to take it, authorities said. A few minutes later, the gunmen struck.
Authorities are investigating whether Gonza*** was really Leon Hinojosa, an alleged lieutenant of the Arellano Felix drug cartel.
Mexican authorities believe Leon Hinojosa took on a larger role after the cartel's suspected leader, Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, was arrested last year by U.S. officials. He was sentenced this month to life in prison.
Dozens of federal and state police officers Friday guarded the morgue and the hospital where the two helicopter pilots were being treated. More than 1,000 mourners attended the funeral Mass for the two officers, one of whom had five children.
WAL-MART MAKES DONATION TO FLOOD RELIEF IN MEXICAN STATE
The Associated PressPublished: November 15, 2007
LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. donated $600,000 (€409,864) Thursday toward flood relief efforts in southern Mexico, as the world's largest retailer struggles to find 430 of its employees there.
Wal-Mart officials said their Mexican subsidiary will try to leverage a matching grant from the United Nations Development program, meaning $1.2 million (€820,000) could go to those in the Mexican states of Chiapas and Tabasco.
Wal-Mart's donation, double the amount of U.S. aid promised by President George W. Bush, comes as Mexico deals with what insurers call the costliest disaster to strike the nation since a hurricane devastated Cancun and Cozumel in 2005.
The company wants to make "what contribution we can to start a new phase of help to the families now that the emergency is over," said Antonio Ocaranza, a spokesman for Wal-Mart de Mexico, the retailer's subsidiary in the country. "But the emergency of getting back to normalcy is now more relevant."
Wal-Mart de Mexico has 22 locations in Tabasco, including smaller groceries, restaurants and a clothing store. Since the flooding began, Ocaranza said the large parking lots of Sam's Clubs and Wal-Mart Supercenters hosted Mexican army and navy forces responding to the disaster. Ocaranza said Wal-Mart stores also handed out 7,000 disaster-relief kits through an agreement with the U.N. and Mexican Red Cross.
Perishable foods at affected stores also went to feeding those escaping the floods, as did clothing, Ocaranza said. Mexicans also donated about 756 tons of goods at local Wal-Mart stores.
Ocaranza said about 3,500 employees are in the region, with 430 of those still missing. About 880 employees said their homes were damaged or destroyed. Many in the region remain in shelters.
Heavy rains in the southern Mexico state flooded rivers in the low-lying region against the Gulf of Mexico. At least 22 people died in the flooding or resulting mudslides, as half a million people saw their homes damaged.
Bush has offered $300,000 in emergency assistance to Mexico. The Mexican consulate in Little Rock, like others across the nation, has opened a bank account to help raise money for disaster relief. Consul Andres Chao said the account had received several thousand dollars in donations since opening.
World Vision, a Christian charity, will manage Wal-Mart's donation. The organization plans to put t
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