NEWSIMMIGRATION RAIDS

Ernest “Marty” Atencio is a US veteran who fought in the Gulf War and was “the most patriotic guy on the planet” according to his brother in an interview with Phoenix New Times. Described as having “special needs,” Atencio was arrested after he kicked a door and confronted a stranger shortly before he became “distracted by a passing vehicle and began chasing it,” according to a police report. In a booking photo, he is shown smiling, his eyes wide, and leaning into the camera—he appears to be unstable, likely because his medication was “not balanced,” his brother told the paper.

It is probable, had the case made its way through the system, that Mr. Atencio would have been found incompetent to stand trial or been given access to medical professionals to be put on the correct medications. We’ll never know. Because Mr. Atencio was placed in one of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s infamous Maricopa County jails. And several hours later, he was rushed to the hospital, brain dead from excessive force. He’d been tasered and thrown back in his cell for 15 minutes before officers noticed he didn’t have a pulse.

Join former investigative journalist John Dougherty’s campaign to demand the resignation of Joe Arpaio.

Over the past month, a petition started by CASA de Maryland sent a loud and clear message (actually, hundreds of them!) to the Montgomery County, Maryland Council: keep our communities secure by rethinking the "Secure Communities Program."  Thanks in part to the petition's  supporters, the County Council unanimously voted to ensure that the common mistakes, injustices and illegalities of the Secure Communities program are not replicated in Montgomery County.

Ostensibly designed to deport dangerous criminals, the Secure Communities Program (or S-Comm) is a rapidly-spreading partnership between local law enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that requires local police to send residents' fingerprints through a federal database for cross-referencing of immigration status. While it may sound innocuous, the program ends up targeting a majority of hard-working immigrant residents for deportation, residents who are neither dangerous nor criminal.

This December, we wrote about the wrongful imprisonment of eighty victims of human trafficking arrested during a thinly-veiled immigration raid at an L.A. hostess club. While the patrons went home scot-free and the club reopened within the week (even soliciting more replacement "dancers" on Craigslist), eighty women were detained due to their lack of immigration papers.

Due to the advocacy efforts of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA),  Ms. Magazine, and Change.org (with over 1,300 Change.org community members signing our petition), the 78 women arrested at Club 907 were finally set free — after over two months of wrongful imprisonment.

There were many troubling factors in this case. First, the law prohibits local police from instigating police action for the express purposes of  an immigration raid, and yet the LAPD did not arrest anyone but the paperless workers, and turned a number of these women directly over to ICE.

Second, and perhaps even more horrifying, is the extent to which these women — many of whom were working in inhumane conditions and/or trafficked for labor and sex — were viewed expressly as criminals, rather than as victims, despite their testimonies of worker abuse. In a diverse metropolis like L.A. that has seen trafficking cases time and time again (LAPD even has a special task force on human trafficking, for Pete's sake), the police simply should have known better. You can still sign the petition to tell the LAPD to investigate trafficking at Club 907 and train its officers on recognizing signs of human trafficking.

Okay, so it's a little funny to shout "Victory!" just because the law enforcement finally did the right thing. But the fact is, in the world of human trafficking, the victims are often treated as the criminals. We're happy that in this case, the LAPD finally got the picture. Thanks to all of you who helped make this change happen.

Photo Credit: SoulRider 222

At Club 907,  an L.A. "hostess club," men pay thirty bucks an hour for the "companionship" of immigrant women — many of whom, it appears, have been illegally trafficked here for forced labor and sex work.

In a recent raid of Club 907, a clear brothel front, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) busted in on suspicion of shady behavior. Of the 88 arrested that night, 81 of them were women — 59 of whom were arrested for possessing false identification (ie, for being undocumented).

Never mind the clear evidence of prositution at Club 907, or the cocaine and unauthorized booze the LAPD seized — all the patrons were told simply to go home. While the LAPD insists that it was targeting the club management's illegal behavior, the arrests alone show that this move was little more than a thinly-veiled immigration raid.

For Club 907 reopened asap, soliciting more dancers on Craigslist four days after the raid. LAPD focused, instead, on the "illegalities" of 59 women whose profiles are as classic victim-of-human-trafficking as they come.  LAPD even arrested a 17-year-old girl who'd been reported missing for months. Nice one, LAPD.

Coalitions of groups in San Francisco, Arlington, Santa Clara, and Washington DC have attempted to opt-out of the (in)Secure Communities Program. Given that these cities have sizable immigrant populations, the flawed program has a number of detrimental effects that would make these communities less secure.

The Secure Communities program allows state and local police to check immigrants' fingerprints against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration databases right after individuals are arrested, even if the criminal charges are dismissed or the result of an unlawful arrests. If there is a "hit" in the immigration database, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is automatically notified, even if the person has not been convicted of a crime. Cities have good reason to opt-out of the federal program, given its violation of  civil rights, invasion of privacy, inaccuracy, and ineffectiveness in prioritizing enforcement of "criminal immigrants."

Secure Communities is an example of criminal law wrongly intersecting with immigration law. In addition to the increased likelihood of racial profiling occurring because of this program, local officers untrained in immigration law would have the misplaced authority to carry out further immigration enforcement, a power reserved for ICE agents.

Digital natives and digital immigrants beware! The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is using social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace to obtain information on potential visa beneficiaries. And apparently, they do not need a warrant for their brave new world policy.

Gone are the days of law enforcement and immigration officials bursting through your doors with (and without) warrants. As our lives become increasingly digital, investigations will be conducted through a few clicks of a mouse.

With the inauguration of Barack Obama, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), started snooping around online to protect the President. The immigration arm of Homeland Security, USCIS, later authored a memo directing its officers to make use of social networks such as Myspace and Facebook to adjudicate the cases of immigration visa beneficiaries. Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the San Francisco-based civil liberties group, obtained the documents on this through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as part of an ongoing lawsuit against six federal agencies over social network surveillance.

According to the memo, officers should use social networks to observe the daily life of beneficiaries and petitioners who are suspected of fraudulent activities, such as entering into a sham marriage or expressing intent to stay in the United States beyond the duration of a student visa. But the memo does not stop at simply directing officers to check out blogs, tweets, and profiles. No, it encourages immigration officers to befriend unsuspecting users online in order to extract potentially relevant information.  What does this mean? For one, USCIS officers now have more of an excuse to spend time browsing the internet and chatting on Facebook, courtesy our taxpayer dollars.

A public school network in San Diego, California, has begun distributing a pamphlet to its students about their rights during immigration raids. The director of the schools requested the pamphlets after teachers expressed concern that some immigrant students were suffering academically and having difficulty focusing because they were so worried about family members and friends that could be deported.

Produced by immigrant advocacy group CASA de Maryland, the illustrated booklets are aimed towards migrants and provide directions on what to do in case of detention or questioning by immigration officials. They include such advice as "Don’t lie. Don’t give false testimony," "Don’t say anything, or say only 'I need to speak to my lawyer,'" and "Government officials may try to intimidate or trick you into signing documents. You may be signing away your right to a hearing before an immigration judge." In other words, pretty basic legal information.

But San Diego law enforcement officials are up in arms over the pamphlets that they feel incite fear of the police in immigrant communities. “It astounds me that another governmental agency, the Office of Education, would be giving out information that doesn’t give the whole picture. It’s an example of not telling the whole truth,” Escondido Police Chief Jim Maher said. “It’s inappropriate. I don’t think the pictures they used in that flier are appropriate.”

As an immigrant rights blogger and advocate, I regularly come across some pretty screwed up stories regarding actions taken by immigration authorities. But this might take the cake.

In an effort to escape an abusive husband who had her daughter in his custody, Monica Castro, a fourth generation American citizen, went to Border Patrol. She said she would give them information about her husband, who was in the country illegally and wanted for questioning as a witness to a murder, so that he could be deported. In exchange, she asked that the authorities help recover her one-year-old daughter. Authorities assured her that once her husband was in custody, they would call her so that she could pick up her daughter. Her abusive husband would have no ability to take the minor with him since she was a U.S. citizen.

But Border Patrol agents chose not to keep their end of the bargain. They raided the Castro home, picking up not just the abusive husband for deportation, but the very U.S. citizen daughter that Monica Castro was attempting to protect. While hearing her daughter's sobs but unable to see her, she was told that if she wanted to keep her child in the country, she would have to produce a court order before that afternoon. A lawyer rushed to court as Ms. Castro begged for more time, but by 3 p.m. vans were already taking her ex-husband and U.S. citizen child across the border to Juarez, Mexico.

It was years before Ms. Castro was reunited with her daughter. Despite realizing the screw-up, immigration authorities provided no help beyond identifying the city where she could be located. It wasn't until the ex-husband attempted re-entry into the United States and was arrested that authorities reached a plea agreement in which he returned the child. It's impossible to know what kind of trauma she might have faced while in the custody of a dangerous and abusive man. She no longer recognized her mother.

Nearly 4 years ago, 40 armed immigration agents used excessive force to remove 28 workers  from a medical linen firm in Bellingham, WA, under the suspicion of being illegally in the country. Twenty-six were confirmed arrests and transferred handcuffed to a detention facility. Though this raid occurred in 2006, the Bellingham Herald reports that the identities and status of the immigration cases of these workers remain a mystery to the public, illustrating the disturbing lack of transparency in our detention system.

Those arrested in this raid will long remember the traumatic experience of being terrorized and treated like dangerous criminals by the immigration authorities. But this didn't need to happen. Before the Bellingham raid took place, the medical linen firm was already under investigation for using employees with questionable documents.  The agent conducting the investigation had promised to provide the owner, who was cooperating with immigration authorities, with a list of the employees without proper documentation — instead of the extremely emotional raid filled with fear and crying which took place that day.

The unnecessarily aggressive approach to arresting undocumented economic refugees reminds me of when I was arrested at the Canadian border for being an undocumented recent grad. Even after the authorities knew I was a cooperative undocumented student with a clean criminal record (I gave them my driver's license) they still locked me in a room with no food for more than eight hours, then transferred me to a detention center hand- and foot-cuffed. I felt like I was in an action movie where I was playing a drug dealer or another hardened criminal.

When Lady Gaga raised her forearm at her concert in Phoenix, Arizona, yesterday, everyone could see the words "STOP SB 1070" written in block letters (with accompanying peace signs).

But she didn't leave her opposition to the racial profiling-encouraging law at this silent protest: Gaga took two opportunities during her show to speak out loud against the draconian legislation, telling her audience, "We have to be active. We have to protest.  . . . I will yell and I will scream louder. I will hold you, and we will hold each other, and we will peaceably protest this state."

Over 100 Change.org members signed a petition by GetEqual, which advocates for LGBT equality, asking the performer who has distinguished herself as a gay rights activist to call out Arizona’s law while she played in Phoenix. And that’s just what she did. To resounding cheers from swarms of her fans, Gaga not only criticized this law, she also attacked raids that tear families apart, dedicating the song "You and I" to a boy whose brother was snatched away from him by immigration authorities invading his home.

Elton John, if you’ll remember, was asked to cancel his concert, as other musicians who are part of the Sound Strike have done. Instead, he played as planned, and furthermore felt the need to call fellow performers who stood up for social justice “fuckwits.” And while Lady Gaga decided against joining the boycott as not the right tactic, she used her platform and captive sold-out audience to voice her opposition to a discriminatory law and rally supporters of justice to stand up.

Now that's music to the ears.