Judge Refuses To Block Key Parts Of Controversial Immigration Law

By Jay Reeves BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — A federal judge refused Wednesday to block key parts of a closely watched Alabama law that is considered the strictest state effort to clamp down on illegal immigration, including a measure that requires immigration checks of public school students. U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn wrote in a 115-page opinion finding some parts of the law that conflict with federal statutes, but others that don't. Left standing at least temporarily are several key eleme...

Man Shot Fleeing US-Mexico Border Crossing

By Elliot Spagat, AP A man who fired a starter pistol as he fled border inspectors was wounded after two officers shot at him at the nation's busiest border crossing Thursday. The afternoon shooting prompted U.S. Customs and Border Protection to temporarily suspend pedestrian travel into the United States from Mexico at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Angelica De Cima said. The man grew nervous under questioning at an inspection booth and tri...

Truth-Out.org: Targeting Immigrants

by: Nancy Murray and Kade Crockford, Truthout and ACLU Massachusetts | Special Feature Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the "Homeland" is a collaborative project with Truthout and ACLU Massachusetts. "Let the terrorists among us be warned," then-attorney general John Ashcroft intoned before the US Conference of Mayors on October 25, 2001: "If you overstay your visa - even by one day - we will arrest you." Ashcroft's vow to "use all weapons within the law" against nonci...

Secure Communities Task Force Criticizes Program, Five Resign in Protest

Photo: John Moore/Getty Images by Julianne Hing After being followed around the country during a protest-packed summer, a task force charged with evaluating the federal government’s immigration enforcement program Secure Communities released its report (pdf) last week that criticized the federal government’s implementation and design of the program. But some the task force’s fixes didn’t go far enough. The same day, five people on the 19-member team resigned in protest, saying the re...

New Report reveals U.S. Border Patrol’s “Culture of Cruelty”

A Culture of Cruelty is the culmination of three years of abuse documentation collected and carried out by No More Deaths and our partners in Naco, Agua Prieta, and Nogales, Sonora- border towns and cities through which thousands of immigration detainees have been deported. In our years of documenting abuses committed by the Border Patrol against detainees and migrants, we have found that it is clear that instances of mistreatment and abuse in Border Patrol custody are not aberrationa...

Border Patrol has a Culture of Cruelty, report says

By Nick Oza, The Arizona Republic TUCSON, Ariz. – A report by a humanitarian group based on interviews with thousands of illegal immigrants caught by the Border Patrol in Arizona claims agents threw unpackaged food on the floor for them to eat, took away medicine for diabetes and other illnesses, made them sleep on overcrowded cell floors and called them ethnic and racial slurs. Migrants also complained of being shoved by agents into cactuses, kicked and hit, made to walk in the deser...