I don’t think that any of the hundred individuals who marched in protest under the blazing sun six weeks ago thought this would happen so soon, which makes the news all the more exciting. Immigrant detention policies are changing. After a few years of activism in the courts, media and on the streets, children will no longer be held behind bars at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas. Now it will hold only women, many of whom will likely be separated from their children. More info.
Update: The Southwest Workers Union is calling for a phone blast directed at Amnesty International and the Haitian Consulate in Haiti to stop Rama Carty’s deportation (info). Also, here (MP3) are excerpts of my interview with Sarnata Reynolds, Refugee Program Director at Amnesty.
From my story in today’s Free Speech Radio News headlines (listen here):
An update to a story FSRN has been following about a hunger strike at a Texas Immigration detention center… Human rights groups say they are concerned about an immigrant detainee who was suddenly moved to Louisiana for deportation yesterday. His tranfer comes after he spoke with representatives of Amnesty International at the Texas detention center where he was leading the hunger strike. FSRN’s Ansel Herz reports. Read More…
The Obama administration is expanding a program initiated by President George W. Bush aimed at checking the immigration status of virtually every person booked into local jails. In four years, the measure could result in a tenfold increase in illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes and identified for deportation, current and former U.S. officials said.
This is bad news. The Travis County Sheriff’s office joined this program here in Austin not long ago. The vast majority of immigrants caught by ICE here had been charged with misdemeanors. The Post implies that only immigrants convicted of crimes will be deported by this program, but some individuals here have been deported simply because they were arrested and then discovered by ICE agents, two of whom I saw freely walking around at the local jail last year.
I’m printing below the original version of an op-ed piece I wrote for the Daily Texan last summer, entitled “ICE does not belong in Austin’s jail.”
The Travis County Jail looks like an office building. Its clean white walls, dotted with windows, rise five stories high next to a courthouse in Austin’s downtown. Many students know it as the place they might end up if they drink too much during a night out on Sixth Street.
For Austin’s immigrant community, particularly those who are undocumented, the prospect of landing in the jail recently became far more frightening. Read More…
I contributed a short story on this for today’s Free Speech Radio News headlines. Here’s a less edited version of the story, and my original script below that:
Activists held a vigil on the International Bridge in Brownsville, Texas today in solidarity with detainees at the nearby Port Isabel Detention Center. Up to 200 detainees have been on hunger strike for nearly two weeks in protest of the conditions at the facility. Anayanse Garza of the Southwest Workers Union says the detainees are now taking turns on hunger strike in order to maintain their health. Read More…
The picture above shows Central American migrants hopping a train to Oaxaca, Mexico en route to the Texas border. See the photo essay, which follows a group of migrants from Chiapas up to Oaxaca at the Narcosphere.
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