Save Felipe’s Family! Father Deported – Kids Taken Away

  Felipe Montes will be separated from his three U.S. citizen children unless we do something about it, now: http://Presente.org/FelipesChildren   An action launched on Valentine's Day 2012 by Presente.org and the Applied Research Center is rallying public support to save a family scheduled to be torn apart by the Department of Social Services in Allegheny County, NC. On February 21, Felipe, husband to a US Citizen and father to three US Citizen children, will have his par...

The Border Wall: The Last Stand at Making the US a White Gated Community

by: Mark Karlin, Truthout | News Analysis   This is the first in an occasional Truthout series on viewing the US "immigration" and Mexican border policies through a social justice lens, focusing on the lower Rio Grande Valley. Brownsville, Texas, area. Mark Karlin, editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout, visited the region recently to file these reports.   The physical Mexican-American wall starts as a newly fortified metal barrier extending 300 feet into the warm, balmy waters of...

DHS Documents: Local Police Not Required To Hold Undocumented Immigrants For U.S. Government

By Elise Foley WASHINGTON -- Local law enforcement agencies are not required to hold undocumented immigrants at the request of the federal government, according to internal Department of Homeland Security documents obtained by a coalition of groups critical of the Secure Communities enforcement program. The documents could provide ammunition for jurisdictions that no longer want to participate inSecure Communities, which allows federal immigration authorities to use fingerprints to scan th...

FORUM: Time to craft humane immigration policy by Pedro Rios

By Pedro Rios published in the North County Times Obama Administration officials this week touted their high record numbers of deportations ---- nearly 400,000 last fiscal year ---- as "smart and effective" law enforcement. It is neither. Rather, it reflects a precipitous loss of moral ground by a Washington elite that has lost touch with the political realities of communities for which it is supposed to be representing. In state capitols and cities around the nation, increasingly offic...

EXCLUSIVE: Escondido woman turned over to immigration after domestic violence incident

By EDWARD SIFUENTES A woman who called the Escondido Police Department to report that she was beaten by her boyfriend was herself arrested and later turned over to immigration authorities after she was booked at the Vista jail, a case that critics say illustrates the problems inherent in local police getting involved in immigration enforcement. Elena Cabrera, 36, said she came home tired from work on the morning of Aug. 20 and wanted to sleep a little. But her then live-in boyfriend, J...

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...