While the Obama administration vowed to take on comprehensive immigration reform in 2009 and has now shifted its goal to legislation in 2010, several positive changes have recently begun to nudge the broken system towards increased fairness. On Wednesday, December 16, ICE assistant secretary John Morton stated that asylum seekers would no longer be detained indefinitely as long as they could prove their identity, that they were not a flight risk, and that they have a credible fear of persecution in their home country. (AILA Leadership Blog). Although this has been official policy since 1996, Morton’s statement in late 2009 intimated that asylum seekers would be evaluated as soon as they make their claims, rather than sitting in an ill-equipped, makeshift detention center, often with violent criminals serving sentences. Such a practice would begin to treat asylum seekers as we treat others in judicial proceedings – innocent until proven guilty. The administration also responded to the humanitarian crisis not simply by pledging financial aid and committing troops but by alleviating the immigration laws which were denying Haitians or even deporting them despite the catastrophic conditions of that island. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano announced on January 18 that the United States was extending humanitarian parole to Haitian orphans seeking care. The Department of State and Department of Homeland Security are working to get visas or paroles for these children, and once the unaccompanied minors arrive in the United States they will be in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services. Some of the children will qualify for permanent immigration status, while others will just be granted a visa, but either way these children will get the care they need in time. In an area of legislation that often takes decades to move, it is refreshing to see the Obama administration react quickly to the urgent needs of Haitians. (DHS Fact Sheet).
In addition to the humanitarian parole for children, Haitian adults now qualify for temporary protected status (TPS) if they have resided in the United States since January 12, 2010, and maintained a continuous physical presence here. For all the individuals in removal hearings, for all those awaiting an immigration decision with bated breath, for all those wondering when they would be put on a plane and send back to a country with few to none working airports, this announcement also reinstills hope that this year may be the year when comprehensive immigration reform escapes partisan politics and actually gets implemented. (Christian Science Monitor). Hopefully comprehensive, rather than cumulative, immigration reform will finally pass in 2010.
After listing off his numerous legal options over the phone and across the plexiglass, Fidencio looks right at me and says, “Yo quiero salir. Quiero regresar.” I translate to the Minnesota Detention Project attorney that he simply wants to leave, to return home. She explains briefly that this will result in a ten-year bar to his re-entry, that it will be very difficult for him to get back in again. Fidencio shuffles his feet, chains jangle, and he crosses his arms across his orange County prison jumpsuit. “No importa, I just want to get out. I can’t stay another week at Ramsey. Every day I stay in here I cannot make money for my family. Just get me out ahora.”
And so another father and husband is deported back to Honduras, his family left here to continue living in the shadows or to return to a country with little opportunity. About 8,000 people in Minnesota are currently in deportation proceedings, and some 200 to 300 are housed in one of five county jails where Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) rents space. The Ramsey County Jail in St. Paul typically houses 50-75 detainees, most of whom do not have any criminal conviction and are merely suspected of illegal entry. They share residence with indicted murderers, rapists, burglars, and drug addicts. Since most county jails are designed for one-night stays, few have outdoor yards and, as a result, detainees rarely see the light of day. At Ramsey County, detainees are incarcerated an average of 100 days. Most immigrants, by the time their day in Immigration Court finally arrives, will argue their case pro se before the Court and simply beg the judge to deport them back to their country of citizenship. [Aslanian, Sasha. MPR]
The number of immigrants detained each night in the United States is roughly 32,000. Many of that number have not been convicted or even charged with a crime but are, according to ICE, a flight risk. Immigrants represent the few civil court defendants incarcerated in such a way. Despite the obvious flight risk of certain delinquent fathers awaiting judgment on child support or traffic offenders awaiting their day in court, few other civil defendants are held in jail at all, let alone for months on end. Although anklet transponders are used by parole officers in oyhrt areas of law, ICE has so far rarely used such minimal safeguards for supposedly “innocent until proven guilty” immigrants, opting instead to pay $80/night for a total of $1.8 million/year. [Aslanian, Sasha. MPR].
Anklet Transponder
Nationally, the housing and transfer system is so haphazard that some detainees are moved to a new detention facility without ever being served a notice detailing why they are being held. From 1999 to 2008 some 1.4 million detainee transfers occurred, often moving longtime residents of New York and LA to remote jails in Texas or Louisiana, far away from friends, legal counsel, or evidence for their immigration case. These detainee transfders typically send immigrants to the Fifth Circuit, the most hostile jurisdiction toward immigrants and the worst ration of immigration lawyers to detainees. [Bernstein, Nina. “Immigration Detention System Lapses Detailed. NYTimes].
This week, Rep. Gutierrez from Illinois introduced the first of a new wave of comprehensive immigration reform bills, this one entitled C.I.R. A.S.A.P. As Congress wraps up healthcare debates and begin to take up the issue Obama shelved until 2010, any comphrensive bill must seek to alleviate and remedy the current system of criminal detention of civil immigrant cases.
With the tragic passing of Edward Kennedy this past week, countless individuals and organizations have eulogized his 47 years of service. Most eulogies have focused on his health-care bills and speculate how he would have impacted the current public debate. However, Kennedy will be missed for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is the immigration reform in which he so passionately believed and our country so sorely needs.
Maybe he was influenced by his big brother Jack’s bestselling book A Nation of Immigrants. In the introduction to that book, Bobby Kennedy wrote, “Our attitude toward immigration reflects our faith in the American ideal.” Perhaps Ted saw in immigrants a continuation of the fight for civil rights. Whatever his inspiration, Sen. Edward Kennedy was a champion of immigration reform in his later years. In 2006 he partnered with Sen. John McCain in crafting bipartisan legislation which nearly succeeded in passing Congress.
Edward Kennedy will most certainly be missed by all, both in the political arena that so badly needs bipartisan cooperation as well as in the immigrant community which needs real reform. While Obama once promised comprehensive immigration reform within the year, he has since moved the deadline back to sometime next year. For our President, Congress, and all the men and women in this great nation, Ted Kennedy’s “Introduction to A Nation of Immigrants” should remain a lodestone.
[W]e will have ample inspiration in the lives of the immigrants all around us. From Jamestown to the Pilgrims to the Irish to today’s workers, people have come to this country in search of opportunity. They have sought nothing more than the chance to work hard and bring a better life to themselves and their families. They come to our country with their hearts and minds full of hope. I believe we can build the kind of tough, fair and practical reform that is worthy of our shared history as immigrants and as Americans.
A young man in Arizona was convicted last week of littering and sentenced to probation and 300 hours of picking up trash. His petty misdemeanor – littering on national wildlife lands, also known as leaving water bottles for immigrants passing through the most lethal section of the borderlands. [New York Times]
This latest border incident highlights the sad paradox of our nation’s current border enforcement. Through lawsuits like this which target humanitarian aid to rerouted immigrants and the lack of apprehended drug runners and human traffickers, the modern motto of la policia de la frontera seems to be that if we can’t catch the few criminals crossing the border then at least we can nab a lot of others. Although the California Border Patrol just nixed its long-running quota system which incentivized agents to catch as many border-crossers as possible rather than focusing on the dangerous criminals, this philosophy still holds credence.
A similar lawsuit a few years ago involved another humanitarian aid being sued for illegally transporting an immigrant in critical condition to the local hospital. Until comprehensive immigration reform is passed (an act which Obama has now hinted might be delayed until next year), these acts of compassion for will be criminalized and more and more border-crossers will die as they turn to more desperate measures. The ever-lengthening serpentine border wall grows by the month, only serving to channel immigrants to the Scylla and Charybdis of human traffickers or Arizona’s arid desert.
There is more than a little irony in the fact that Walt Staton was sentenced with community service for his past service to the human community. Until comprehensive immigration reform is seriously discussed, littering will continue to trump human lives.
While the Obama administration did nominate the first Latino Supreme Court Justice [who was just confirmed today], they have been repulsing a lot of their immigrant and Latino advocates for helped them win the election last November. According to an article by Julia Preston in the New York Times, the administration’s decision to not only keep but also expand controversial Bush-era immigration enforcement measures has propelled several immigrant groups to begin a national movement to make them make good on campaign promises.
The Obama administration has initiated employee audits at more than 600 employers nationwide, expanded the E-Verify program, increased criminal prosecutions for immigrant violations [up over 30% since this time last year, according to a study by Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse], created a program that runs immigrant checks on everyone who enters a local jail in some cities, and extended the 287(g) program made infamous by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Secretary Janet Napolitano, formerly governor of Arizona, stated that she wouldn’t call of immigration raids entirely, though they have subsided since Postville, Iowa, little more than a year ago. Napolitano said, “We will continue to enforce the law and to look for effective ways to do it.”
The problem lies in the fact that some of these programs are not “effective ways to do it.” Immigrant and business advocates have sued to stop E-Verify because of its woeful inaccuracies. While the program touts a .3% error rate for the 137,000 employers now enrolled. With 6.4 million queries, however, a .3% error rate still means that over 19,000 legal immigrants or citizens have received false denials so far in 2009.
Additionally, the seriously flawed 287(g) program that deputizes local police agencies to carry out federal legislation encourages civil rights violations, racial screening, and vigilante justice. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, the self-titled “toughest sheriff in America,” is currently under investigation for his long laundry list of civil rights abuses, from parading prisoners through the streets in shackles, making prisoners wear pink underwear, feeding them green bologna, and racially profiling Latinos for “random” traffic stops.
While President Obama stated that immigration reform would be passed within the year, Napolitano’s actions with the Department of Homeland Security have been anything but. Perhaps it is political jiujutsu, designed to convince certain political affiliations that this administration will be hard on those who break the law and will not allow another 12 million undocumented immigrants to enter the country again. However, by not only maintaining but actually revamping failed immigration enforcement mechanisms, the administration is sending a very mixed message about what that “immigration reform” will resemble.
6 people sat around a dinner table in Oronoco township last night discussing the assets of immigrants. The dialogue was part of the Table Talk series funded by VOICES [Valuing Our Immigrants’ Contributions to Economic Success] and the Rochester Diversity Council. Rather than delving into the political or the emotionally charged aspects of immigration debate, this discussion centered on the assets immigrants bring to our community. “Community” was widely defined, as we had participants from Winona, Austin, and Rochester.
Table Talk in Oronoco
Throughout the two-and-a-half hours, we discussed the many seen and unseen ways in which immigrants add value to our community. We discussed how immigrants’ work ethic has enabled many American businesses to stay here in the U.S. rather than outsource. We discussed how immigrants bring a world perspective to any community, how international events and comity are much more real when one knows people from that region. We discussed how immigrants are forcing the United States to adapt and succeed in a globalized economy. Immigrants also bring globalization to the U.S. in the many different foods, languages, and customs they carry with them.
During the discussion, there were some probing questions about whether these assets actually had negative counterparts to them. One participant inquired whether immigrants are a drain on our economy, in that they use welfare, social services, and healthcare. The group addressed this idea, coming to the conclusion that immigrants, and particularly the undocumented immigrants at whom this question was directed, live in the shadows and are the last people to try to use public benefits. Additionally, since immigration doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it is overly simplistic and intellectually dishonest to conclude that immigrants strain or drain the economy without looking at the money they put back into the community through sales, purchases, work product, taxes, and tithes to the church.
Even in a small group of this size, the personal experiences of each individual with immigrants were extensive. From social service work with a Sudanese family to a clothing shelf geared to Latinos, from migrant farmworker legal issues to Vietnamese co-workers in a commercial cleaning agency, from ESL students and international college students to the previous VOICES for a where Somali and Hmong communities voiced their ideas about their contribution and integration in Rochester’s community – it was easy to see the multitudinous ways in which we had all been influenced and impacted by immigrants. And while it is a sweeping generalization to even use the word “immigrant,” most of us who had interacted with immigrants, asylum-seekers, refugees, and migrants all knew what amazing people they were and how much we had to learn from them. [For more information, read article by Christina Killion-Valdez in the Rochester Post-Bulletin]
While the 2009 spring session for the Minnesota Legislature just ended amidst a controversial decision by Governor Pawlenty to balance the budget by himself, many important immigration bills were debated in this past session. Admirably, the Land of 10,000 Lakes voted to prohibit state compliance with the Real ID Act, a catch-all piece of 2006 federal legislation which enabled the Department of Homeland Security to waive any and all laws in the construction of our border wall and would have required a national id card to be carried by everyone in the U.S., a thinly cloaked anti-immigrant measure. This bill, HF 988, will protect Minnesota’s growing immigrant community in this particularly vulnerable time of economic turmoil from an intrusive federal law.
SF 1514 was also passed on May 21 by the Minnesota legislature, recognizing the crime of sex trafficking for the first time with harsh penalties of up to 25 years in jail while also granting victims a means of legal recourse regardless of their citizenship status.
Also important were the bills rejected by Minnesota’s lawmakers, many of which were targeted specifically at the immigrant community. SF 505, which would have required the removal of all head coverings in order to procure state ids, was defeated, along with SF 144, which would have made government employees liable if they knew of an undocumented immigrant and failed to report it. SF 577 was also defeated in its efforts to make English the official language (interestingly enough, just before the turn of the 20th century the same debates were being had about making Norwegian the official state language).
A couple of important federal bills might also impact Minnesota. AgJOBS, reintroduced in the Senate by Senator Diane Feinstein (S. 1038) and in the House by Representatives Howard Berman and Adam Putnam (H.R. 2414), would allow immigrant farm workers the opportunity to earn the legal right to permanently stay in this country through continuing work in agriculture while also amending the current H2A guest worker program to grant growers a safer and more stable workforce. (Souza, Christine. California Farm Bureau Federation). Similarly, the Visa Recapture Bill (or the “Reuniting Families Act”) introduced by Senators Robert Menendez and Charles Schumer would go a long way in reforming the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act. First, Visas unused due to lack of governmnet action dating back to 1992 would be added to the current year limits, and prospectively any surplus would added to the new year’s allowable visa limits. Second, spouses and minor children of legal permanent residents would be able to obtain visas (whereas now only citizens can really petition for immediate relatives), and it changes the age of minor children from 18 to 21. Third, the overally level of family-sponsored immigrant visas would be expanded to 480,000/year, along with raising the number of employment-based visas to 140,000/year.
Advocates with the project Familias Unidas, along with the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, have worked to include Minneapolis on this collaborative’s national tour to 20 cities. In its attempt to encourage support for comprehensive immigration reform this year, Representatives Luis Gutierrez and Keith Ellison will hold a community forum at the Incarnation Church in Minneapolis on June 14 at 2:30. This multi-faith, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual event is aimed at getting Obama to follow through on his promise earlier this year to pass comprehensive immigration reform in 2009. The petition they will be signing at this event is as follows – feel free to print it off and send it to our President yourself:
The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Obama,
My name is _____________________________________, and I am petitioning on behalf of my
______________________ who has no realistic options to gain legal status under our current
immigration laws.
President Obama, as a result of our broken immigration system, my loved one is at risk of being
deported/ has been deported: causing the destruction and separation of our family.
This has caused us all to live with constant anxiety and fear about the future of our family.
As you eloquently stated in your inauguration speech,
“The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation:
the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their
full measure of happiness.”
On behalf of my family and the millions of other families like mine, I urge you to stop the
misguided raids and deportations that are tearing our marriages, our childrens’ lives, and
our communities apart.
We are hopeful that you will indeed fulfill your campaign promise to work with Congress to move quickly to enact just and humane comprehensive immigration reformthat includes
family reunification, faster due process, a reasonable path to citizenship, and workers’ protection.
We are hopeful that you will indeed fulfill your campaign promise to work tirelessly to bring forth the change necessary to ensure that all people have an opportunity to dream, to live, and to pursue their full measure of happiness.
We are hopeful that you will indeed fulfill your campaign promise of Si Se Puede; Yes We Can!
Every year for decades, migrant families have boarded up their houses, told friends to check their mail, taken final exams a few weeks early, packed up their cars, and headed north to weed, tend, harvest, and process the foods we buy in the produce section of our local grocery stores. Many families pay for the journey with their income tax return, arriving with scant assets and little more than a hope of a good growing season. Migrant workers fall into one of three categories. Some are recruited by a corporate employer, such as a processing or canning company. They receive written contracts, sometimes are granted free housing in a labor camp, and are guaranteed work. Others have a longstanding relationship with a particular farmer. While the agreement might not be oral, some of these relationships extend back to a handshake between grandfathers. This form of migrant work is more tenuous, however, than the corporate employer, as it hinges on good weather – if a drought or infestation should occur, the migrants could be 2000 miles from home with no money and no work. Finally, some migrant families head North with only a hope of work – no contract, no contact, no housing, no plan other than to find a farm and pitch their services.
Migrant farmworkers are not immigrants; instead, they are either legal visitors with temporary work permits, legal permanent residents or citizens migrating internally within the United States.
This summer looks to be a difficult one for migrant families. Fargo remains inundated after the Red River flooding, and is months behind its agricultural calendar. Other areas of the country are struggling with drought or other natural difficulties. More importantly, however, is the economic depression. Farmers that once employed workers are either hiring less or none at all, in hopes of saving even just a few dollars. Some farmers are using more pesticides or herbicides this year, in order to save money on paying migrant workers to weed or tend the rows. Other farms have filed bankruptcy. Many farmers that have hired migrant workers for decades have called to tell them they will not be needing their services this year.
While the migrant families working for corporate employers or specific farmers will surely find this year a difficult one, the workers who just leave their hometowns in the Rio Grand Valley for the possibility of work in the Midwest could face a devastating summer. Unable to find work and with little resources to return home, they will be easy prey for less-than-ethical employers. (Druley, Laurel. “Life on the Bottom Rung: No Place for Migrants”)
This summer, I will be working with the Migrant Farmworkers unit of Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services, Inc. Under my supervisor Ana Maria Gomez-Gomez, I will primarily be working in Rochester, Owatonna, Plainview, and Elysian, though I will be covering cases in Dakota, Steele, Olmsted, Le Seur, and Waseca counties. My work will focus on assisting migrant farmworkers with their adjustment to life in Minnesota, with any housing claims, employment wage claims, immigration questions, and any other legal questions that come up in the course of the summer.
I so look forward to working with migrant families from the Rio Grande Valley as they make their temporary homes here in southeastern Minnesota. Having made that same journey myself, from Brownsville, TX, to Rochester, MN, I hope to be able to offer them some meaningful support and aid. I wonder if any of the students to whom I gave early exams will be coming up with their families this season… Regardless, I hope to be able to help them get at least a minimum wage, secure decent housing, receive their security deposits at the end of the summer (something I have yet to ever receive myself), work in safe conditions, receive any public benefits to which they are entitled and require, renew or apply for new immigration status, and generally become adjusted to a new community. It’s going to be a busy summer, but certainly one filled with meaning.
My work with SMRLS this summer comes at a dynamic time in immigration law, with Obama pledging to make progress towards comprehensive immigration reform in his first year of presidency. It comes less than a month after the first anniversary of the first large-scale ICE raid in Postville, IA, just a few hours south of here. The work begins in a time when local law enforcement officers through 287(g) are attempting to enforce federal immigration laws in many of our nation’s cities and towns, resulting in racial profiling, arbitrary searches and arrests, and a terrified immigrant community unwilling to cooperate with the law enforcement they need and that needs them. (Moffett, Dan. “Cops aren’t Border Patrol”). My role as Summer Advocate with SMRLS also comes at a time when Ms. Sonia Sotomayor, a Latina woman from the Bronx, has been put forth as Obama’s candidate to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court. It also comes at a time that xenophobic individuals are seeking to place the blame of Wall Street on immigrants who don’t even own a bank account, when states and municipalities are balancing their budgets by cutting public welfare and other services to the indigent (in New York state, for example, elderly, disabled and blind legal residents will now get half of what they had previously received after the ruling in Khrapunskiy v. Robert Doar). But, my summer advocate role also coincides with bipartisan legislation like AgJobs, a bill supported by both the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and Farmworker Justice which seeks to relieve labor shortages while securing rights for migrant workers and discouraging agriculture’s exploitation of unauthorized workers (purportedly some 75% of the workforce by some estimates). (“Farms and Immigrants.” New York Times).
As I scan the cucumbers, corn, sugar, beets, potatoes, onions, asparagus, garlic, peppers, and tomatoes, I think of the migrant families making the drive to Minnesota and other states in the Midwest right now. I look forward to learning from them and advocating for them, starting next week.
Yesterday, immigrant rights advocates marched down the tiny streets of Postville, IA. They marched to remind the nation that workplace raids cause ongoing devastation, that immigrants deserve basic human rights, and that Obama must live up to his promise to tackle immigration reform in the next year. [Martin, Liz. “Postville story, a year later, told in photos”]
Local businessman Gabay Menahem joined the march and commented on the economic difference a year makes. “A year ago it was impossible to buy a house in Postville. Now there are 228 houses for sale out of 700 total.” More than 30% of the Jewish community left after the raid, and much of the Latino community was either deported after entering guilty pleas or fled in fear. [Love, Orlan] Some still remain, wearing transponders on their ankles more than a year later. Children still remain [local school attendance has only dropped about 3%], but they are in increasing need of mental health services, and many of them are missing at least one parent.
Father Ouderkirk and St. Bridget’s Church continue to minister to the Latino community of Postville. They currently care for 30 affected families, aiding them with housing and food and counseling as they seek to be reunited with their family members or as they wait for their day in court.
Most of the 389 workers arrested pled guilty last May. They were housed in a cattle-barn, expedited through a trailer-home courthouse ten at a time, and threatened with years in prison unless they pled guilty on the spot. Many of them were from Guatemala, and few of them spoke English. The majority of them had no idea what a Social Security number was, or why the leading prosecutor Stephanie Rose thought that they had used fake ones. Many of them had received fake numbers from their employer, Agriprocessor’s Inc., the largest kosher meatpacking plant in the nation.
Last week, the Supreme Court issued its ruling on Flores-Figueroa, ruling that to be convicted of aggravated identity theft, the person must know they are using another person’s identification. While this ruling does little for the 389 workers, most of whom pled guilty and have since been deported, but it is resulting in dropped charges against some of Agriprocessor’s administration. Last Tuesday, federal prosecutors dropped aggravated identity theft charges [a mandatory 2 years imprisonment] against human resources manager Laura Althouse, who was allowed to rescind a guilty plea she entered last year. [Preston, Julia. “Dismissal of Guilty Pleas is Sought for Immigrants”]
As the Supreme Court’s decision affects the sentencing of this dubious employer’s administrative staff, many are calling upon Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. to order a case-by-case investigation into the almost 300 guilty pleas entered last May in Postville. “The federal prosecutors used the law as a hammer to coerce the workers,” said David Leopold, vice president of American Immigration Lawyers Association. Others went farther, including Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-California), chairwoman of the House immigration subcommittee. She is calling on the Justice Department to start over, since these cases didn’t comport with the law. [Preston, Julia. “Dismissal of Guilty Pleas is Sought for Immigrants”]
Today marks the day after Postville’s raid last year. Postville no longer represents the largest ICE raid [Laurel, MS, now holds that dubious title]. This tiny town in northern Iowa has largely been forgotten by politicians and lawmakers, if not the general public. As life goes on and our courts begin to follow the new Flores-Figueroaruling, it is vital that we make sure it is evenly applied. There is an unpleasant aroma of injustice when the immigrants who worked in subhuman conditions were imprisoned five months and deported, while the employers were never made to stand accountable for their numerous employment violations [child labor laws, safety protocols, and pay] and look to walk on some of the harsher sanctions of identity theft and employing undocumented workers.
Having spent much of this past semester writing and researching my Legal Writing brief at the University of Minnesota Law School, I became intimately acquainted with the aggravated identity theft statute 18 USC 1028A. Today, almost a year since it was used to deport nearly 400 Latino immigrants after the ICE raid in Postville, the Supreme Court issued its decision on Flores-Figueroa vs. United States. Justice Breyer authored the opinion which explained that for aggravated identity theft, the defendant must have known they were misappropriating an actual person’s identity. All too often in the past, 1028A was used as a catch-all statute to compound the sentences of unwitting immigrants who were given papers and had no knowledge that their Social Security numbers belonged to a real person.[Stout, David. “Supreme Court Rules Against Government in Identity-Theft Case”]
In Postville, for example, local sources state that the management of Agriprocessors actively provided such false documents for the immigrant workers from Central America. Within a week of that raid in May of 2008, chained groups of immigrants were brought before a judge holding court in a trailer. They were told that they had stolen people’s Social Security numbers [a word few of them knew], and that they should accept the government’s offer of 6 months and then deportation. Most took the deal, though they understood little English and even less about the complex American immigration system.[Stout, David. “Supreme Court Rules Against Government in Identity-Theft Case”]
Ignacio Flores-Figueroa was a Mexican immigrant working in an Illinois steel facility. Unbeknownst to him, the papers he had procured bore the name and number of an actual person. When he was caught, Ignacio pled guilty to the immigration charges but refused to accept the aggravating sentence of identity theft. While the 8th Circuit upheld the conviction, the Supreme Court’s decision today means that Ignacio will serve less time before he is deported. However, this case, argued by Stanford University Law Professor Kevin Russell, will hopefully change, if not eliminate, ICE employer raids in the future. [Stout, David. “Supreme Court Rules Against Government in Identity-Theft Case”] While real identity thieves will still be subject to the compounding sentencing of 1028A, vulnerable immigrants will no longer be forced to spend extra time in prison before returning to their families. As Postville prepares for its first anniversary march of last year’s ICE raid, one can only think Flores-Figueroa came a year too late.
The administration also responded to the humanitarian crisis not simply by pledging financial aid and committing troops but by alleviating the immigration laws which were denying Haitians or even deporting them despite the catastrophic conditions of that island. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano announced on January 18 that the United States was extending humanitarian parole to Haitian orphans seeking care. The Department of State and Department of Homeland Security are working to get visas or paroles for these children, and once the unaccompanied minors arrive in the United States they will be in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services. Some of the children will qualify for permanent immigration status, while others will just be granted a visa, but either way these children will get the care they need in time. In an area of legislation that often takes decades to move, it is refreshing to see the Obama administration react quickly to the urgent needs of Haitians. (DHS Fact Sheet).
Smart Borders 