Democracy Now! – Deportation of U.S. Teen to Colombia Latest Failure of Immigration System

The family of a Dallas teenager Jakadrien Turner is demanding answers after she was deported to Colombia, despite the fact that she is a U.S. citizen and speaks no Spanish. Turner, a 15-year-old African-American runaway, was living in Houston when she was arrested for shoplifting and gave police a fake name that belonged to a 22-year-old undocumented immigrant from Colombia with warrants for her arrest. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) reportedly discovered Turner’s fi...

Occupy ICE Camps Out In Front Of Immigration And Customs Enforcement Office In San Diego

"Stop deporting workers! Stop deporting workers!," protestors chanted outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in San Diego Yesterday. A California janitor's union, joined by immigration activists and workers, rallied in the plaza in front of a Federal building which houses San Diego's ICE offices as part of a movement they call Occupy ICE or Occupy La Migra. La Migra refers to border patrol and immigration officials in Spanish. Holding picket signs and setting up tents,...

FORUM: The law is the law? Not really

Opinion piece in the North County Times by Bill Flores Columnist Thomas K. Arnold recently wrote (Wednesday, Nov. 2) that he feels sorry for the authorities in Escondido. They are, after all, just enforcing the law. This thinking seems to be pervasive among those who comment or blog in the NC Times, as if a piece of legislation is monolithic and written in stone. The law is the law, right? It is an exceedingly impractical position to take. Should cities be responsible for enforcing "the la...

Cecilia Muñoz Catches Heat From Former Immigration Allies

WASHINGTON -- Since the beginning of his administration, immigration reform has been a sensitive issue for President Barack Obama. As the disappointments have mounted among immigration activists, one official in particular has become the object of their frustration. Cecilia Muñoz, one of the highest-ranking Latino officials in the White House and a longtime immigration and civil rights activist, has borne heavy criticism for the administration's policies -- and often rhetoric -- on de...

U.S. Deports 46K Parents With Citizen Kids in Just Six Months

by Seth Freed Wessler Between January and June of 2011, the United States carried out more than 46,000 deportations of the parents of U.S.-citizen children, according to previously unreleased federal data obtained by Colorlines.com’s publisher, the Applied Research Center. The figures reflect a striking increase in the rate of removals of parents and raise serious concerns about the impact of these deportations on children, many of whom are left behind. ...

Latinos Said to Bear Weight of a Deportation Program

By JULIA PRESTON - New York Times A deportation program that is central to the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement strategy has led disproportionately to the removal of Latino immigrants and to arrests by immigration authorities of hundreds of United States citizens, according to a report by two law schools using new, in-depth official data on deportation cases. The report also found that about a third of around 226,000 immigrants who have been deported under the program,...