Trump Targets NY Immigrant Rights Activists

The administration is now taking aim at a faith-based New York activist coalition. This morning ICE detained the New Sanctuary Coalition's executive director, Ravi Ragbir, during his scheduled check-in at the federal building in Manhattan. This followed the January 3 detention of another New Sanctuary activist, Jean Montrevil. The message was clear: the Trump regime is cracking down on the resistance.

At least 400 people gathered outside the federal building starting at 9 am today to show support for Ragbir as he attended his appointment inside. Supporters marched silently for more than an hour and then, at 10:30 held hands for a few moments, forming a chain around the building. When word came out that the activist was being detained and removed from the ICE office, the crowd rushed to the driveway leading into the building’s garage. A number of protesters attempted to block the vehicle carrying Ragbir out; the first attempts were beside the building on Duane Street and then continued for several blocks down Broadway, trying up traffic for about twenty minutes.

Duane Street: protesters surround vehicle carrying Ravi Ragbir

New York City police arrested a total of 18 demonstrators, mostly on Broadway in full view of City Hall; New York claims to be a “sanctuary city,” but its police persist in helping ICE agents carry out their detentions. Arrestees included two City Council members, Ydanis Rodriguez and Jumaane Williams, along with Rev. Micah Bucey, Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz, and other faith leaders. BuzzFeed News posted footage of the protests; among other police violations, the tape shows Jumaane Williams wincing in pain from tight wrist restraints.

As activists protested in Lower Manhattan, Trump was meeting with lawmakers in the White House to discuss immigration issues. During the gathering, the president reportedly described immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and Africa as “people from shithole countries.” According to sources familiar with the meeting, Trump added: ““Why do we need more Haitians? Take them out.” As Jonathan Katz, formerly the AP correspondent in Haiti, pointed out, Trump’s remark came one day before the eighth anniversary of the 2010 earthquake that killed tens or even hundreds of thousands of people, including Haitian-American citizens, in southern Haiti.

The New Sanctuary Coalition is asking for phone calls to legislators and government officials demanding Ragbir’s release.—TPOI editor

ICE detains immigrant rights leader Ravi Ragbir, prompting Manhattan protests

Ragbir displays his handcuffs

 By Nicole Brown and Lauren Cook, AM New York

January 11, 2018

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center on the Lower West Side Thursday, chanting "ICE out now" and demanding to know the whereabouts of a prominent immigrant rights leader, just hours after two city councilmen were arrested during a similar protest in Foley Square.

City councilmen Ydanis Rodriguez and Jumaane Williams were among 18 people who were arrested during the Foley Square protest sparked by the arrest of Ravi Ragbir, the executive director of faith-based immigrant rights group New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City. Ragbir was detained when he showed up for a check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, organizers of the rally said.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.amny.com/news/ravi-ragbir-detained-ice-1.16117103

Immigration activist Jean Montrevil detained

By Tequila Minsky, Caribbean Life

January 11, 2018

With the piercing sounds of sirens and traffic, immigration activists, local politicians, and clergy braved bitter weather at the prayer vigil and rally protesting the detention of Jean Montrevil.

Montrevil was picked up during his lunch break — van transport entrepreneur — outside his home near Far Rockaway. He was on a deportation order.

Demonstrators prayed and then spoke. They held placards that read: “Free Jean Montrevil Now and Let Haitians Stay.”[...]

Read the full article:

https://www.caribbeanlifenews.com/stories/2018/1/2018-01-12-tm-jean-montrevil-detained-cl.html

The New Sanctuary Coalition Requests Phone Calls to Support Ravi Ragbir

The New Sanctuary Coalition’s executive director was detained today when he made his regularly scheduled check-in visit to ICE offices at the New York federal building. The coalition is requesting phone calls to support Ravi.—TPOI editor

Ravi Ragbir

By New Sanctuary Coalition

January 11, 2018

Please, make phone calls NOW to ICE and to your elected officials to demand Ravi’s freedom. Click here for a PDF with names, numbers and instruction for making these calls. When you make these phone calls, please be respectful, not confrontational.

HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO:

CALL the following:

NYC ICE Field Office Director: 212-238-4530

NYC ICE Field Office: 212-264-4213

ICE Office of Policy: 202-732-4292

CALL SENATOR CHUCK SCHUMER: 212-486-4430

CALL KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND: 212-688-6262

Locate Your Elected Officials:

https://council.nyc.gov/districts/

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/NY#representatives

Varick ICE officers (212) 863-3401 extension

D.O. Berndt 3525

D.O. Attanasio 3569

D.O. So 3536 D.O. Folajaiye 3452

D.O. Kow 3582

D.O. Williams 3540

D.O. De Leon 3447

D.O. Syed 3566

D.O. Shnider 3456

D.O. Paoli 3586 Supervising

D.O. 212-863-3438

Script: “Hello, my name is ___, and I am requesting that ICE release my brother Ravi Ragbir, A Number: 044-248-862. Ravi was detained today in New York City. I respectfully ask you to release him from detention and grant him a new stay of removal. Thank you.”

NYC, 1/10/18 and 1/11/18: Two Important Actions

Rally for a Clean DREAM Act at Sen. Schumer's Office

Join the New York Immigration Coalition and our partners outside New York Senator Chuck Schumer's office to demand he take strong action to pass a clean DREAM Act!

Wednesday, January 10,  5:30 pm - 7:30 pm

780 3rd Ave, New York, NY

Information: https://www.facebook.com/events/162330631199676/

Congress failed to pass a clean DREAM Act in 2017. 

Thousands of young immigrants have already lost their status and thousands more will lose their protection in 2018. 

We need a clean DREAM Act NOW!

Co-sponsors (list in formation): Asian American Federation, Arab American Association of New York, Chayya Community Development Corporation, CUNY DREAMers, Indivisible Nation BK, MASA, New York DREAMers, New Immigrant Community Empowerment, New York State Immigrant Action Fund, SUNY DREAMers, 32BJ SEIU

Solidarity Vigil Against Deportation at Foley Square
Arrests by ICE have escalated in the past few months.  One of the New Sanctuary Coalition co-founders, Jean Montrevil, was arrested and detained by ICE outside his home this past week. New Sanctuary Coalition may be a target. The executive director, Ravi Ragbir, has his check in this Thursday January 11th at 9 am.

Thursday, January 11, 2018, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm

Foley Square, 111 Worth St, New York, NY

Information: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/solidarity-vigil-against-deportation-tickets-40893734260

New Sanctuary Coalition's Ravi Ragbir

New York City families deserve dignity and respect. Each day, dozens of New Yorkers facing deportation must check-in with ICE Officers at 26 Federal Plaza. When they enter the building, they don’t know if they will be able to see their families again. Now more than ever it is important to show solidarity in the face of policies that threaten our communities.

Join us for a Jericho Walk to stand with individuals and families facing deportation. This interfaith act of solidarity will bring together advocates and supporters to show immigrants that they are not alone.

At 9 am, we will begin the Jericho Walk, circling the building in silence and thoughtful prayer. Though we walk in silence, our actions speak to the injustices that our communities face.

Sponsoring organizations: American Friends Service Committee, Brooklyn Defender Services, Center for Constitutional Rights, Detention Watch Network, Immigrant Defense Project, LatinoJustice, Make the Road New York, MinKwon Center for Community Action, National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Project, the New York Civil Liberties Union, Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, UnLocal, Inc. and a growing list of others!

Please invite others to attend via Facebook: http://bit.ly/jan11vigil-facebook

DACA and TPS: Trump Plans to Push 1 Million More Into the Shadows

Trump rants about Salvadoran gangs. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

On January 9 the administration announced that it was terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for some quarter million Salvadorans. Along with the termination of DACA and most other TPS programs, this will end protection from deportation for a total of about 1 million immigrants. Few of them will be able or willing to return to their countries of origin. The undocumented population in the U.S. has remained stable at around 11 million for a decade; now the White House, which regularly denounces “illegals,” actually seems to be working to increase the number. Maybe we should ask why.—TPOI editor

Trump’s attacks on humanitarian immigration just became a full-blown war

He’s trying to force 260,000 immigrants to return to El Salvador after decades in the United States.

By Dara Lind, Vox

January 9, 2018

On Monday, the Trump administration announced that it was stripping approximately 260,500 Salvadoran immigrants — who’ve been in the US for at least 17 years, since a 2001 earthquake — of temporary legal status as of July 2019.

It’s the latest, and most significant, blow in the administration’s fight against Temporary Protected Status, an immigration program that lets the government allow immigrants to stay in the US and work legally after their home countries are struck by natural disasters or war.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/8/16862898/trump-tps-salvador-ms13-immigrants

Ending Salvadorans' protected immigration status will exacerbate problems Trump aimed to fix

[T]he termination of TPS for Salvadorans likely will cause a significant humanitarian and economic impact for cities such as Washington, D.C., Miami and Los Angeles.

By Geoff Thale and Elyssa Pachico, The Hill

January 8, 2018

It is no secret that protection offered by the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program to Salvadorans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans lasted beyond “temporary,” extending over many years. Under TPS, migrants unable to return to their home countries because of war, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” conditions can live and work in the United States. The U.S. government granted TPS to Salvadorans in 2001, following two devastating earthquakes in the Central American country, and because of violence and instability in subsequent years, continued to approve extensions to the program.[…]

Read the full article:

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/367982-ending-protected-immigration-status-for-salvadorans-will-exacerbate

Save the Salvadorans

So long as our immigration system is built on contortions of logic like these, it will be vulnerable to Trump-style cruelty that’s then justified on the basis of common-sense law enforcement.

David Leonhardt, New York Times

January 9, 2018

The roughly 200,000 Salvadorans whom the Trump administration is subjecting to deportation are deeply ensconced in American society.

They have lived here for at least 17 years. Together, they have about 190,000 children who were born in the United States. The immigrants “work in a wide array of jobs, from defense contractors to school cafeteria workers, commercial office cleaners and restaurant owners,” Maria Sacchetti of The Washington Post writes.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/opinion/salvadorans-tps.html

Book Excerpt: What Are “Chain Migration” and the “Visa Lottery”?

On December 29 President Trump tweeted that “there can be no DACA without the desperately needed WALL at the Southern Border and an END to the horrible Chain Migration & ridiculous Lottery System of Immigration etc.” As usual, he had no idea what he was tweeting about, but there’s a lot of confusion about these terms in the general public—especially about “chain migration,” which is now misused to describe what was previously known as “family reunification,” “family-based immigration,” or the “family preference visa.”

Here's what we say in The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers, second edition, Chapter 4, “Why Can’t They Just ‘Get Legal?’”:

Can’t immigrants bring their extended families here?

If you’re a U.S. citizen, you can generally apply to bring your “immediate relatives”—spouses, parents or unmarried children under twenty-one—here as permanent residents, although there are plenty of hoops to jump through, and it’s not always quick or easy. For other types of “family preferences,” an even more complex set of rules lays out “priority” categories and annual caps based on the family relationship and country of origin. Waiting times of ten to twenty years are not uncommon. In February 2015 the government was still processing family visa applications from as far back as August 1991. While they wait, applicants are disqualified from visiting the United States because they have shown “immigrant intent” by applying for immigrant visas.

Some conservatives now object to the “family preference” system, but it was actually introduced into the 1965 Immigration Act as a concession to conservative politicians who wanted to keep Asians and Africans out of the United States. Family preferences would mean “there will not be, comparatively, many Asians or Africans entering the country,” Representative Emmanuel Celler, a liberal New York Democrat who cosponsored the 1965 law, said in Congress during the final debate on the bill, “Since the people of Africa and Asia have very few relatives here, comparatively few could immigrate from those countries because they have no family ties to the U.S.”

What about the work visa and the “visa lottery”?

The government can also issue up to 140,000 immigrant visas a year for five categories of workers, and each of these has its own numerical limitations. The categories include professionals, people with special skills, and cultural or sports figures. There are openings for religious workers, former U.S. government employees, and investors, but only 5,000 visas can be issued to unskilled workers.

In 1986, Congress created a temporary category of “diversity” visas to bolster immigration from Europe, which had slowed thanks to a growing European economy. The Immigration Act of 1990 made the program permanent starting in 1995. The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, often called the “visa lottery,” allocates 50,000 immigrant visas to different parts of the world under a formula favoring regions that have sent relatively few immigrants in the previous five years. Natives of countries that have sent more than 50,000 immigrants to the United States during the past five years are disqualified from participating in the lottery.

[We’re occasionally posting excerpts from the new edition of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers. You can order here or from your favorite bookseller.]

DACA Fight Heats Up—and Other Fights Loom

The Democrats’ failure to defend DACA recipients in 2017 infuriated much of their base. What will they do in 2018? Meanwhile, there’s been comparatively little coverage of Trump’s termination of TPS for many groups, and Sessions may try to restrict some protections in the immigration court system.—TPOI editor

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

Divided Democrats face liberal backlash over inaction on immigration

“The entire progressive movement has galvanized around protection for Dreamers. We need the party united,” said Cristina Jimenez, executive director of United We Dream....”

By Steve Peoples and Matthew Daly, Associated Press via PBS

January 4, 2018

WASHINGTON — With a new deadline fast approaching, Democrats in Congress are struggling to adopt a unified strategy to protect hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation.

Their inaction has enraged liberal activists across the country, who have shifted their anger in recent days from Republicans who control Congress to Democrats seeking to balance their commitment to a progressive priority with their desire to avoid an explosive government shutdown heading into the 2018 midterm elections.[...]

Read the full article:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/divided-democrats-face-liberal-backlash-over-inaction-on-immigration

The Other Imperiled Immigrants

For no good reason, other than spite and symbolism, Trump goes after Central American immigrants with Temporary Protected Status.

By Manuel Madrid, American Prospect

January 5, 2018

The past has come to claim Karla Alvarado and her family.

Departing from Central America’s infamous Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, Karla and her younger brother Carlos made the harrowing journey to the United States border in 1997, crossing over with the help of a coyote and then waiting for nightfall to hike into Texas. Their mother, Maria, had gone before them just months earlier, fleeing an abusive husband in El Salvador and then arranging for her children to join her in Washington, D.C.

At the time, Karla could count the number of words she knew in English on one hand and her own age on two hands[...]

Read the full article:
http://prospect.org/article/other-imperiled-immigrants

Trump administration considers eliminating immigration policy seen as a lifeline for thousands

The attorney general wants to aggressively tackle immigration court backlogs

Clark Mindock, The Independent

January 5, 2018

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reviewing an judicial policy that could potentially reshape the way immigration courts work and thrust thousands of people’s legal status into question.

Mr Sessions is questioning whether he should revoke judge’s ability to conduct “administrative closures” of immigration proceedings, which allow judges to close the cases without a decision.[...]

Read the full article:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-immigration-policy-consider-scrapping-a8144621.html

Two Examples of Resistance and One Example of Why We Need It

Photo: Astrid Riecken/Washington Post)

Rapid response network to monitor immigration enforcement launches in San Diego

By Kate Morrissey, San Diego Union Tribune

December 19, 2017

People who see immigration officers knocking at their doors — or their neighbors' — in San Diego County can now call a new 24-hour hotline for support.

The hotline is part of the San Diego Rapid Response Network, which sends trained volunteers to reported immigration enforcement activity across the county to document officers’ behavior, gather information for legal screenings and offer resources to family members. The network is activists’ answer to increased immigration arrests under President Donald Trump.

More than 150 volunteers have received training so far.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/sd-me-rapid-response-20171219-story.html

How a Group of Immigration Attorneys Stopped a Deportation Flight to Cambodia

ICE is seeking to deport Cambodian Americans at unprecedented speed.

By Julianne Hing, The Nation

December 19, 2017

A plane packed with around 50 Cambodian Americans set for deportation was scheduled to depart on Monday from Texas for Phnom Penh. But a court order issued late Thursday has blocked, at least for now, the Trump administration’s plan to expel them.

A US district-court judge granted a month-long temporary restraining order after attorneys argued that—in the course of raiding, apprehending, detaining, and attempting to deport more than 100 people to Cambodia in recent weeks—Immigration and Customs Enforcement denied people due process and violated the agency’s own procedures.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.thenation.com/article/how-a-group-of-immigration-attorneys-stopped-a-deportation-flight-to-cambodia/

Shocking treatment of immigrants by US immigration agents revealed in new report

Immigration advocates say that ICE frequently fails to bring about change

Clark Mindock, The Independent

December 15, 2017

American immigration detention facilities regularly subject inmates to strip searches, unsanitary conditions, and threats of prolonged confinement without justification - a new report details.

The report stems from an inspection of several US detention facilities by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General, which followed after immigrant rights groups and members of the public lodged complaints about the treatment of the immigrants.

“Overall, we identified problems that undermine the protection of detainees’ rights, their humane treatment, and the provision of a safe and healthy environment,” the report states.

Read the full article:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ice-immigration-agents-rights-violations-strip-searches-confinement-arrests-a8113496.html