HuffPo Offers Look Back One Year After Ferguson

August 6, 2015 By
In one of those “it’s been a year already?” moments, the Huffington Post is offering a major deep-dive story into what the Ferguson unrest meant to both the local community and to the United States. It’s a good look at how things have changed, including the media treatment of police shootings. In particular, the story illustrates how non-criminal cases migrate into jail-worthy events.
 
The team-written report mostly comes down on the side of things getting better and perhaps the protests paying off, saying “… Ferguson’s protests spawned at least 40 state measures aimed at improving police tactics and use of force. The national conversation around race and policing has shifted so dramatically that the director of the FBI said law enforcement officials historically enforced “a status quo that was often brutally unfair to disfavored groups” and discussed how unconscious racial bias affects police officers with no pushback from the law enforcement community.”
 
See the story here: The Ferguson Protests Worked
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At $3-per-day, immigrants detained by U.S. keep detention centers going

August 3, 2015 By

The Los Angeles Times has another story raising questions about how the government goes about detaining would-be immigrants at for-profit detention centers. The report notes that immigrants are allowed to “volunteer” to work, doing chores like landscaping, cleaning and cooking. The reporter talks with a mother who fled Honduras in September with her 11-year-old son and ended up at a family detention center in rural Texas.

“I worked immediately,” the 36-year-old mother said. “In order to have something to eat, to buy treats for my son.” The LAT says the woman “… cleaned bathrooms, hallways and other areas of the government-contracted detention center for $3 a day. At the commissary, a bag of potato chips cost $4, bottled water $2. The facility in Karnes City is run by Geo Group, the country’s second-largest prison company.

“It’s ironic — it’s illegal for them to work, but they’re working for the immigration service in a sense,” says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative think tank in Washington. An ACLU source in the report uses another word for the practice: slavery.

Read the LAT story here.

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: , , ,

Federal Judge Ready To Close 3 Immigration Detention Centers

July 30, 2015 By
As reported by NPR: Detainees sleep and watch television in a holding cell where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed at a U.S. Customs facility in Nogales, Texas.

As reported by NPR: Detainees sleep and watch television in a holding cell where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed at a U.S. Customs facility in Nogales, Texas.

A federal judge is poised to order immigration authorities to close three family detention centers housing some 1,700 people awaiting decisions on their stay-or-go arguments. Dolly Gee, a U.S. District judge in Southern California, ruled that federal authorities have violated key provisions of an 18-year-old court settlement that placed restrictions on detention of migrant children.
 
The Los Angeles Times notes that “…  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.”
 
Judge Gee blasted the government and the conditions at both the detention centers (two in Texas and one in Pennsylvania) as she gave the government until Aug. 3 to explain why an order she plans to issue should not be implemented within 90 days. Read the LAT report here:
 
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San Francisco Leads On Civil Gideon Moment

July 29, 2015 By
We’ve noted the push for a “Civil Gideon” for non-criminal offenses that carry life-changing results – like eviction, family custody and immigration status – so it’s worth noting that San Francisco still leads the movement among U.S. cities. The city’s bar association has a website that notes “… San Francisco is the nation’s first “Right to Civil Counsel City” that recognizes everyone should have access to legal services in cases involving basic human needs, including housing, child custody, sustenance, safety, and health.”
 
You can check out the progress here: Right to Civil Counsel Program
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California Civil Case Against Bill Cosby Clears Big Test

July 28, 2015 By
The ongoing civil courts education known as the Bill Cosby case will apparently continue. The Washington Post is among those reporting that “… the California Supreme Court has turned down Bill Cosby’s challenge to a sexual assault lawsuit against him, meaning the suit can go forward and Cosby could be questioned under oath for the first time in years — by super-aggressive, feminist lawyer Gloria Allred.”
 
While “super-aggressive” might be in the eye of the beholder, it is clear that the case will continue to illustrate issues like civil-vs.-criminal trials and limitations on prosecution. The WaPo also has commentary from Allread: “We believe we have a right to take his deposition in this civil lawsuit. We are going to tomorrow provide him with dates in August when we are available to do that… we are willing to even go to Massachusetts where allegedly he resides and take it.”
 
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Fraud Case Brings Jail Time For SoCal Attorney

July 27, 2015 By
Saying that Newport Beach attorney Gino Paul Pietro “had a bad week,’ the Courthouse News is reporting that the lawyer is being sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for two fraud schemes in Southern California – and that “It could have been worse…”
 
At issue is an attorney named Gino Paul Pietro, for Pietro, 54, who faced two fraud charges. One was for a tax scheme and another for representing solutions that were apparently untrue. The CN says U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego called Pietro a “disgrace to the entire legal profession,” and also ordered him to pay $18,000 in restitution. Meanwhile, his client in an Orange County tax case, Donald Goff, was sentenced to 78 months in prison.
 
Bad week indeed. Read the details here: Courthouse News Service
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Public Interest Attorney Notes Amicus Role For Immigration

July 24, 2015 By

Writing for the “Above The Law” website, attorney Sam Wright makes a case for increasing the role that amicus briefs might play for immigration court policies. Sam Wright, described as “a dyed-in-the-wool, bleeding-heart public interest lawyer,” focuses on the specific case of Cristoval Silva-Trevino, the subject of a Texas-based case with national implications.

A federal circuit court recently issued the latest guidelines in a years-long struggle over the case, but Wright makes the point that amicus briefs played an important role. For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center offered its opinion, along with another organization that the Center considers a hate-associated group.

See how it plays out, read here.

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: , , , ,

Trangender Issues Loom As New Court-Case Frontier

July 21, 2015 By
The Sacramento Bee newspaper has a detailed report about why transgender issues will become the next battle now that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that same-sex couples have a right to marry. From school policy to federal funding, including civil court actions, the impacts will be many.
 
The Bee reports that “… LGBT leaders, following their successful effort to legalize same-sex marriage across the country, say expanding transgender rights is the next boundary in the culture wars. Last month, a coalition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organizations formed to fight the ballot proposal to nullify the bathroom law, calling it a ‘recipe for harassment.'”
 
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Uber Car-Under Fire From Coast To Coast

July 17, 2015 By
The Uber car-hailing app is under legal pressure from coast to coast, and managed to be featured in both the New York and Los Angeles Times this week. The more serious story is out of San Francisco, the home of Uber, where an administrative judge recommended that the ride-sharing giant be fined $7.3 million and be suspended from operating in California.
 
The LAT reports that, “… in her decision, chief administrative law judge Karen V. Clopton of the California Public Utilities Commission contended that Uber has not complied with state laws designed to ensure that drivers are doling out rides fairly to all passengers, regardless of where they live or who they are. She said Uber’s months-long refusal to provide such data is in violation of the 2013 law that legalized ride-hailing firms.”
 
The paper reported that Uber said it would appeal.
 
In New York, a City Council vote is expected as early as next week, says the NYT, “… on a proposal that would place a cap on Uber’s growth, pending a study of traffic patterns, the sides have become entangled in a protracted struggle, on camera and off, over the future of mobility in the city.” Uber says that would “break” it in NYC. And it’s not just in the United States. The European governments or taxi companies. More than a dozen lawsuits have been filed in recent months in countries across the continent, where some analysts say the company is in danger of being shut down or becoming so entangled in legislation as to be neutered.
 
Read up on the latest here.
Filed Under: Community, National Tagged With: , , , ,

AP Tells Of ‘Border Kids’ Trapped In Immigration Court Hell

July 16, 2015 By
1-year-old Joshua Tinoco faces deportation. Photo from Associated Press report, 7/4/15.

1-year-old Joshua Tinoco faces deportation. Photo from Associated Press report, 7/4/15.

The Associated Press reports on 1-year-old Joshua Tinoco, who pauses while playing at his relative’s home in Los Angeles. Writing from Los Angeles, Amy Taxin tells the story of a 1-year-old facing deportation even as his mother is allowed to stay.

Taxin writes that “… at a brief hearing, a government lawyer tells the teenage mother that her son is an immigration enforcement priority for the United States and should be sent back to his native Honduras even though she is being allowed to stay and seek a green card.”

The story goes behind the numbers to outline human conditions. It also reminds us of some staggering numbers: More than 57,000 unaccompanied children from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras arrived on the border in the last fiscal year, and since then another 18,000, government statistics show. Immigration courts have fast-tracked the cases in a bid to stem a growing backlog.

It’s an AP story, and they have legs. Let’s hope this one gets around.

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community
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