CCM’s publisher, Sara Warner, has another post up on Huffington Post regarding the Border Kids legal representation issue. Take a look!
Most ‘Border Kids’ Show Up For Court
Jails Refusing ICE Requests On Immigration Holds
Lawyers Stepping Up to Volunteer Time For Border Kids: “They Have a Right to Due Process”
Feds Find $9 Million For Border Kids Lawyers
Amid Gridlock, California Comes To Border Kids Representation Rescue
Journalist Notes Change In U.S. ‘Trick’ Deportations
Los Angeles-based journalist Charles Davis, writing online at VICE, has noted changes in one of the more troubling immigration polices coming to light amid the ongoing child-refugee border crisis. He reports on an Aug. 27 court settlement that “… the [U.S] government will no longer use ‘threats,’ ‘misrepresentations,’ or ‘subterfuge’ in order to trick undocumented immigrants into agreeing to voluntarily deport themselves.”
Davis quotes from written arguments by Gabriel Rivera and Mitra Ebadolahi from the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties: “For years, countless families throughout Southern California have been torn apart by immigration enforcement agencies’ coercive and deceptive ‘voluntary return’ practices… as a matter of standard practice, ICE and Border Patrol have misinformed immigrants about the consequences of ‘voluntary return,’ including withholding the fact that ‘voluntary return’ can trigger a ten year bar against returning to the United States.”
The VICE post paints a truly alarming picture of what’s been going on in our immigration process, including intimidation and suggesting that failure to “go along” might mean trouble for family members.
Child-Immigration Crisis Also A Civil Court Crisis
Background: National Public Radio and others are drawing attention to the fact that, over the past nine months, “… more than 50,000 children and teenagers have crossed that border illegally on their own, most from Central America. By law, the administration can’t deport those young people until they have an immigration hearing — a process that can take years.” The immigration law is different for people from Mexico, who can be returned much faster.
That means what we’re seeing is really a high-profile example of what happens when civil courts can’t meet demands. There is very likely a similar situation in many of our family courts and other systems, and those will eventually bring their own “crisis” headlines.
Here’s the NPR report: Obama To Ask Congress For $2B To Ease Immigration Crisis
After Fed Court Ruling, ICE Detainee Requests Go Unheeded
NYT Shines Light On Civil Detainee Labor
The NYT notes that the federal government has become the largest employer of potentially illegal immigrants: “Last year, at least 60,000 immigrants worked in the federal government’s nationwide patchwork of detention centers — more than worked for any other single employer in the country, according to data from United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The cheap labor, 13 cents an hour, saves the government and the private companies $40 million or more a year by allowing them to avoid paying outside contractors the $7.25 federal minimum wage. Some immigrants held at county jails work for free, or are paid with sodas or candy bars, while also providing services like meal preparation for other government institutions.”