"Dreams Deported": Book on Immigrant Youth and Families Campaigning Against Deportation

Edited by Kent Wong and Nancy Guarneros

Dreams Deported: Immigrant Youth and Families Resist Deportation is a UCLA student publication featuring stories of deportation and of the courageous immigrant youth and families who have led the national campaign against deportations and successfully challenged the president of the United States to act.

This is the third book on this topic published by the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education. The first book, Underground Undergrads: UCLA Undocumented Immigrant Students Speak Out, was the first in the country written by and about undocumented immigrant youth. The second book, Undocumented and Unafraid: Tam Tran, Cinthya Felix, and the Immigrant Youth Movement, is a tribute to Tam and Cinthya and captures the voices of a new generation who are coming out of the shadows, making history, and changing our country.

"This powerful collection illuminates some of the real stories behind our national deportation crisis that demands an immediate and compassionate response."
—Marian Wright Edelman, president of Children’s Defense Fund

"This book illustrates the urgency of building a broad-based movement for basic human rights for all. The time is long overdue to end not only mass incarceration but also mass deportation in America."
—Dr. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

"My music video “Wake Me Up” features Hareth Andrade, one of the courageous immigrant youth featured in this book. Hareth represents a new generation of immigrant youth activists who are standing up, speaking out, and making change."
—Aloe Blacc, Grammy-nominated recording artist

"Dreams Deported conveys our immigrant experiences of inspiration, struggle, and resistance, using the powerful tool of transformative, intimate storytelling. While US incarceration and deportation levels have hit record highs, a growing movement for justice has emerged from the shadows of fear and family separation."
—Sofia Campos, United We Dream

ISBN 978-0-9836289-5-8

To order the book, go to:
http://books.labor.ucla.edu/p/80/dreamsdeported

Judge blasts ICE, says immigrant children, parents in detention centers should be released

By Cindy Carcamo, Los Angeles Times
July 25, 2015

A federal judge has ruled that hundreds of immigrant women and children held in holding facilities should be released, finding their detention “deplorable” and in grave violation of an earlier court settlement.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee said federal authorities had violated key provisions of an 18-year-old court settlement that put restrictions on the detention of migrant children.

The ruling, released late Friday, is another blow to President Obama’s immigration policies and leaves questions about what the U.S. will do with the large number of children and parents who crossed the border from Latin America last year.

The Obama administration is detaining an estimated 1,700 parents and children at three detention facilities, two in Texas and one in Pennsylvania.

In her 25-page ruling, Gee blasted federal officials, saying that children had been held in substandard conditions at the two Texas detention centers. She found “widespread and deplorable conditions in the holding cells of Border Patrol stations.” In addition, she wrote that federal officials “failed to meet even the minimal standard” of “safe and sanitary” conditions at temporary holding cells.[...]

Read the full article:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-judge-orders-release-of-immigrant-children-mothers-from-detention-centers-20150725-story.html

Access Judge Gee's decision:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2179157-flores-order.html

Stop Securing the Border and Start Valuing Migrants' Lives

Above all, we need to remember that border enforcement isn't just a counterproductive waste of taxpayers' money; it's also lethal.

By David L. Wilson, Truthout
July 27, 2015

US billionaire and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is not the only politician intent on barricading the southwestern border of the United States. Calls for "regaining control of our border" are commonplace in US political discourse, routinely repeated by both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. The most recent proposal for "comprehensive immigration reform" is a good example. The bill, which passed the Senate in June 2013 but was blocked by House Republicans as "dangerously liberal," included provisions for doubling the current number of Border Patrol agents and adding $30 billion to the border enforcement budget over the next ten years.

The general public overwhelmingly backs these calls for more enforcement. While a survey the Pew Research Center conducted in May found respondents generally supportive of immigrants - 72 percent said undocumented people now living here should be allowed to stay - 80 percent thought "a lot" or "more" could be done to reduce unauthorized immigration at the borders.

This support continues despite a complete lack of evidence that an increase is necessary or that it would be effective - or even that there's an actual "crisis" of people crossing the border. What the facts show, on the contrary, is that the current policy is expensive and counterproductive and needs to be rolled back.[...]

Read the full article:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32069-stop-securing-the-border-and-start-valuing-migrants-lives

Las Ciudades de Santuario/Sanctuary Cities

(Engish Version Follows Below)

Por Elvira Arellano
11 de Julio, 2015

Cuando entré en el santuario en 2005 el Consejo Municipal de Chicago expresó su apoyo y declaró que Chicago ya era una “ciudad de santuario” en la cual la policía municipal negaría cooperar con los agentes federales de inmigración. Cuando el gobierno federal empezó a implementar su programa de “Comunidades Seguras” la importante del movimiento de las ciudades de santuarios aumentó, pues el gobierno empezaba a compartir su información con corporaciones municipales de policía, y empezó la práctica de retener a indocumentados arrestados hasta permitir que los agentes de inmigración los recogiera.

El movimiento resistió. Ciudades en todo el país aprobaron medidas que prohibieron que sus policías retuvieron presos para ser transferidos las autoridades migratorias. Pudimos citar los casos de miles de personas que fueron detenidas por infracciones de tránsito, entregadas a los agentes migratorios, y luego deportados, separándolos de las familias que trabajaban para apoyar.[...]

By Elvira Arellano
July 11, 2015

After I went into sanctuary in 2005 the Chicago City Council went on record in my support and declared Chicago a “sanctuary city” in which local police would not work as agents for the federal immigration department. The idea of a sanctuary city grew in importance as the federal government began the secure communities program, merging information sharing with local police departments and creating the policy of “holding” undocumented arrestees until ICE could come and pick them up.

The movement fought back. Cities across the country passed legislation barring their police forces from holding arrestees for ICE detention. We cited thousands of people who were picked up on traffic violations, turned over to ICE, deported and separated from the families they were working to support.[...]

Read the full article/Lea el artículo completo:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sanctuarymovement/kTY7V-XD5GE

Opinion: Vaccination of immigrants without consent in Dilley was flagrant abuse

What is egregious about the vaccine issue is the complete disregard for the idea that these women have control of their own bodies or the bodies of their children. What is egregious about the vaccines is the rejection of the idea of consent. What is egregious about the vaccines is that a private prison corporation is profiting from the abuse and control of these innocent children and mothers. What is egregious about the vaccines is that ICE thinks that they can act with impunity.

By Aseem Mehta, Fox News Latino
July 10, 2015

On the evening of Friday July 3, we became aware of a particular incident of our government’s systematic mistreatment of hundreds of young, captive children and their mothers. A spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) noted that about 250 detained children were administered adult doses of the hepatitis A vaccine in an immigration detention camp in Dilley, TX. The agency was quick to minimize this mistake, immediately asserting that “no adverse reactions are expected.”

Yet, this flippant dismissal offers us little in the way of clarity – let alone explanation or empathy – and prompts us to ask: what exactly happened in Dilley? And why?

I am working to provide legal services with the CARA Project there, where nearly 2,000 children and mothers are incarcerated by the federal government after seeking asylum. How did asylum seekers get dosed with potentially harmful amounts of vaccine by the federal government?[...]

Read the full article:
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/opinion/2015/07/10/opinion-vaccination-immigrants-without-consent-in-dilley-was-flagrant-abuse/

Human rights advocates to Senate: Central American aid package could violate internationally-protected refugee rights

For immediate release:
July 8, 2015
Laura Embree-Lowry
Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES)
laura@cispes.org
(202) 521-2510

Sixty organizations call on Senate to uphold international protections for asylum-seekers, end U.S. policies that contribute to regional violence and inequality

Washington, D.C. – In advance of Senate’s markup of the FY16 State and Foreign Operations bill on Thursday, over sixty U.S. organizations sent a letter calling on members of the Senate Appropriations Committee to rectify potential violations of international protections for Central American refugees that were introduced by House Republicans in their draft bill.

Leading religious, labor, and human rights organizations warn that conditions included in the House’s bill that would require Central American countries to take action, including militarization of their national borders, to stop migrants from leaving the region in order to receive continued US assistance violate core tenets of international law that protect the freedom to leave one’s country.[...]

Read the full press release at:
https://www.nlg.org/news/releases/human-rights-advocates-senate-central-american-aid-package-could-violate

Judge: Family of Mexican teen killed by Border Patrol agent can sue in U.S.

Fox News Latino, from Associated Press
July 10, 2015

TUCSON, ARIZONA (AP) – The mother of a Mexican teen killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in a cross-border shooting can continue a lawsuit in the case, a federal judge has ruled.

The civil rights case against Agent Lonnie Swartz over the death of 16-year-old José Antonio Elena Rodríguez will go forward after U.S. District Court Judge Raner C. Collins denied a part of his motion to dismiss the case.

An attorney for Swartz argued that Rodríguez was not protected by the U.S. Constitution because he was in Mexico at the time of the shooting.

In a similar case in Texas, a federal appeals court ruled that a teen killed in Mexico by a border agent in El Paso was not protected by the Constitution.

But Collins wrote he respectfully disagrees with that finding.[...]

Read the full article:
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2015/07/10/judge-family-mexican-teen-killed-by-border-patrol-agent-can-sue-in-us/