"Enemy Alien" Screenings in CA, Toronto, OR

a Palestinian activist’s fight for freedom draws a Japanese American filmmaker into confrontation with detention regimes of past and present.

“Amazing...now that is what I call a ‘real’ documentary. An exposé of the first order.” -- Satsuki Ina, director, Children of the Camps & From a Silk Cocoon

"Enemy Alien is a must-see documentary! The filmmaker crosses boundaries and prison walls to tell the story of this peaceful Palestinian freedom fighter…a powerful and often scary real-life tale of the shared struggle between Japanese Americans and Muslim Americans." --Basim Elkarra, Executive Director, CAIR-Sacramento

Documentary, 2011, 82 minutes
A project of Life or Liberty
Directed by Konrad Aderer

Films of Remembrance
A one-day film series held in conjunction with the Bay Area Day of Remembrance
Monday, Feb. 20
2:00pm
Japantown, San Francisco
Screening to be followed by video chat discussion with the Enemy Alien director Konrad Aderer.

No One Is Illegal
March 16
7:30pm
Palmerston Library
Toronto, Ontario

The film is an official selection of the DisOrient Asian American Film Festival of Oregon, screening as the Saturday night feature on
April 28, at the Bijou Theater in Eugene, Oregon.

The film was also just screened Sunday, February 12, at World Community Film Festival, produced by CoDevelopment Canada, sponsored by the Canada Palestine
Support Network (CanPalNet), in Vancouver, Canada.

Enemy Alien, a first-person documentary, is the gripping story of the fight to free Farouk Abdel-Muhti, a gentle but indomitable Palestinian-born human rights activist detained in a post-9/11 sweep of Muslim immigrants. Told through the eyes of the filmmaker, the grandson of Japanese Americans interned during World War II, this documentary takes on unprecedented intimacy and historical resonance.

As the filmmaker confronts his own family legacy of incarceration, his involvement in the current struggle deepens. Resistance brings consequences: In retaliation for organizing a massive protest from inside detention, Farouk is beaten and locked in solitary confinement, and his American-born son Tarek is arrested in a counterterrorism investigation into the documentary itself.

Website: http://www.lifeorliberty.org/enemy-alien
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EnemyAlien
Twitter: @enemyalien

Distributor, educational distribution & screenings: Third World Newsreel

The New York Observer‘Exigent Times’: Konrad Aderer’s Enemy Alien
http://www.observer.com/2011/07/exigent-times-konrad-aderers-enemy-alien/

Radio interviews with director Konrad Aderer:
Asia Pacific Forum, WBAI 99.5 NYC (6/27/2011)
http://www.asiapacificforum.org/show-detail.php?show_id=234#655

Insight: Mike McGowan, Capital Public Radio KXJZ 90.9 Sacramento (2/18/2011)
http://www.capradio.org/news/insight/2011/02/18/insight-mike-mcgowan--enemy-alien--immortal-jellyfish--shayla-rivera

ICE Agents Shoot Other ICE Agents in California

Killing at Long Beach federal building: Details emerge of co-worker dispute

By Amy Taxin and Greg Risling, Associated Press
February 18, 2012

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- The director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is praising two agents involved in a workplace shooting, one of whom killed a gun-wielding colleague in an effort to save the life of another agent.

"Both of these men came to work yesterday never imagining if they would literally be fighting for their lives, but that is exactly what in fact happened, and they were tested in a very dangerous way and showed incredible fortitude," ICE Director John Morton said Friday. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_19994897

Occupying the Immigration Debate

If there's one thing we should have learned from the events of the past year -- from the Wisconsin protests to the Occupy Wall Street movement -- it's that we no longer have to let the one percent dictate our agenda.

By David L. Wilson. MRzine
February 14, 2012

People in the United States may not be as rabidly anti-immigrant as we've been led to believe.

An article posted on the Center for American Progress website in December, "The Public's View of Immigration," summarizes five recent U.S. opinion polls. Authors Philip E. Wolgin and Angela Maria Kelley find that while the media and the politicians frantically call for the mass deportation of "illegals," a majority of U.S. adults don't favor the idea of removing all 11 million of the country's unauthorized immigrants. And while immigrant rights advocates don't dare use the word "amnesty," the polls show a majority of the population supporting some form of legalization for many or most of the undocumented -- in other words, they support an amnesty. [...]

Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/wilson140212.html

Imprisoned Immigrant Dies in Hunger Strike

Lyvita Gomes Dies After Hunger Strike In Illinois Jail

Huffington Post
January 9, 2012

A woman who was being held in a suburban Chicago jail for missing a court appearance died Tuesday after going on a hunger strike.

Authorities are trying to locate the family of Lyvita Gomes, 52, who is originally from India but had been living in a Vernon Hills, Ill. hotel, the Associated Press reports. Gomes was arrested Dec. 14 after allegedly missing a court date, and began a hunger strike shortly after. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/09/lyvita-gomes-illinois-wom_n_1194437.html

See also Times of India, January 29, 2012:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/Goan-dies-in-US-jail-after-hunger-strike/articleshow/11670147.cms

Students Step Up Tucson Walkouts

Protest School District Folly and Mexican American Studies Banishment

by Jeff Biggers, Common Dreams
January 24, 2012

As the nation watches the Tucson Unified School District’s spiral into disarray, hundreds of students walked out of their Tucson schools Monday in a coordinated protest against the banishment of the district’s acclaimed Mexican American Studies program.

Pouring into the downtown Tucson area from Pueblo, Cholla and Tucson high schools, among other institutions, the students brought their march to the offices of floundering Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) administrators. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/24-2

Police Gang Tyrannized Latinos, Indictment Says

On Tuesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Sgt. John Miller and three of his officers — David Cari, Dennis Spaulding and Jason Zullo — on charges of conspiracy, false arrest, excessive force and obstruction of justice...

By Peter Applebome, New York Times
January 24, 2012

They were known as Miller’s Boys, police officers who worked the 4-to-midnight shift, patrolling the largely working-class town of East Haven, Conn., including the small but growing Hispanic community that has spread out in recent years from New Haven.

The officers were more than well known in that community; according to residents and federal authorities, they were feared. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/nyregion/connecticut-police-officers-accused-of-mistreating-latinos.html

FNS: Fewer but deadlier border crossings

Frontera NorteSur
January 24, 2012

Migrant crossings and Border Patrol apprehensions of undocumented immigrants might be sharply down, but attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border without the proper papers could be a much deadlier proposition than in the past.

Mexican consular reports reveal that while 369 Mexican nationals died during presumed border crossings in 2004- a year when much greater numbers of people were crossing the border- at least 310 still perished in 2011, a year the Border Patrol has classified as a historic low in terms of unauthorized crossings and detentions. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.riograndedigital.com/2012/01/24/fns-fewer-but-deadlier-border-crossings/