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Detention Reform: A Mixed Review (Part 1)
originally posted by ImmPolitic Blog for National Immigration Forum - ImmPolitic Blog [click here]
Jul 27th
On August 6, 2009, DHS Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement John Morton announced plans for sweeping reforms of the immigration detention system.
On the occasion of the fast-approaching one year anniversary of the announcement of major detention reforms at ICE, the agency and detention advocates have an opportunity to reflect on the progress to date. Although there have been some accomplishments on detention reform, there is a long way to go before the system can be characterized as civil and humane. (ICE lists its own perspective on its achievements here.)
One aspect of the promised reforms launched last week: ICE’s Online Detainee Locator System.
For years, many immigrants taken into ICE detention have been whisked off and effectively disappeared, as family and attorneys struggled to find them in the maze of ICE’s vast detention system. With the Online Detainee Locator System (ODLS), anyone can search for a detainee by name and country of birth, or Alien Registration Number and country of birth. The locator will report whether the detainee is currently in ICE custody or not, and provides information about what facility the detainee is in. If an individual has been released from ICE custody within the last 60 days, the locator provides the telephone number for the ICE field office with jurisdiction over the former detainee.
The ODLS should result in significant improvements in detention management and transparency for the agency. Given the huge proportion of detainees that are transferred between facilities, often multiple times, during their detention, advocates hope that the ODLS will greatly reduce the previously widespread problems of detainees functionally vanishing, leaving families desperate to know what has happened to their loved ones, and frustrating attorneys with hours of dead-end phone calls trying to locate their clients. There are limits to the locator system. One, for those searching by name, the spelling of the detainee’s name must exactly match ICE’s detention records. ICE might not have entered the name correctly, especially in cases where a detainee has two last names that may or may not be hyphenated. Hopefully, searchers will keep guessing alternative spellings if they don’t have a hit on the first try. Secondly, ICE’s track record on the accuracy of detainee information has not instilled faith in the ability of the agency to keep track of all their detainees. Third, the ODLS is inaccessible to anyone who lacks computer and internet access; there is no telephonic option.
Unfortunately, more people than ever before have a need to use the ODLS to locate a member of their family or community. The Obama administration is detaining and deporting immigrants in greater numbers than ever before. For the hundreds of thousands detained and deported in just the last two years, the ODLS comes too late to have helped their families find them in detention or try to find them a lawyer.
A major problem with the detention system that has yet to be addressed is the incarceration of mentally disabled detainees. Many of these individuals are held by ICE in unsafe conditions, while their cases are indefinitely continued because they are unprepared to represent themselves in immigration court. As part of a large study on people with mental disabilities in the immigration system, Human Rights Watch (HRW) interviewed over 100 mentally impaired detainees, several of whom had been in detention for more than a year, although 2/3 of HRW’s interviewees did not even know when they had entered ICE detention. Detainees with mental illness or cognitive disabilities, an estimated 15% of the entire detained population, often end up in segregation, the agency’s term for solitary confinement, as a result of their disability.
ICE recently directed its personnel against detaining individuals with medical or mental illness in some instances. A June 30, 2010 ICE memo on civil immigration enforcement priorities stated that ICE field office directors should not “expend detention resources on aliens who are known to be suffering from serious physical or mental illness, or who are disabled, elderly, pregnant, or nursing, or demonstrate that they are primary caretakers of children or an infirm person, or whose detention is otherwise not in the public interest.” It’s too soon to see what results this memo can bring. We hope that de-prioritizing the confinement of nursing mothers and seriously ill immigrants will be an easily obtainable outcome. It is long overdue.
Image by Flickr user 710928003.
Our Bags Are Packed
originally posted by Allie Carter, Senior Field Manager, ACLU of Illinois for Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union [click here]
Jul 27th
(Originally posted on RHRealityCheck.)
I got married at the beginning of July. The church, the flowers, the family, the cake and champagne, the whole deal. Why, you ask, am I now planning to spend 2 straight weeks on the road in Illinois traveling with someone other than my new spouse? Why am I leaving the love of my life at home in Chicago to eat food from truck stops, sleep in unfamiliar beds and talk to strangers?
I got married at the beginning of July. The church, the flowers, the family, the cake and champagne, the whole deal. Why, you ask, am I now planning to spend 2 straight weeks on the road in Illinois traveling with someone other than my new spouse? Why am I leaving the love of my life at home in Chicago to eat food from truck stops, sleep in unfamiliar beds and talk to strangers?Two reasons: corn dogs and Chlamydia.
The corn dogs should be obvious. Springfield, Illinois, in addition to being our state’s capitol, is home to the Cozy Dog Drive Inn – the birth place of the corn dog. I am a huge fan of corn dogs; delicious and portable, they are nature’s perfect food. And the highways and byways of Illinois are one of the best places to find them in their native habitat.
Chlamydia is a different matter. In 2007, Illinois had more than 55 thousand cases of Chlamydia – at a rate nearly double the national average. Moreover, those cases were disproportionately in adolescents and young adults. According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, 34% of cases were in youths ages 15-19 and 36 in young people ages 20-24.
Those statistics ought to make Illinois lawmakers stand up and take notice. According to SEICUS, in that same year, “The [Illinois] Department of Human Services and community-based organizations in Illinois received approximately $8,815,804 in federal funds for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs…” Since 1998, rates of Chlamydia have risen every year in Illinois. From 32,861 reported cases in 1998 to 55,470 in 2007. During those same years, Illinois has spent tens of millions of dollars on failed abstinence-only education programs that don’t prevent the spread of disease or unwanted teen pregnancies and don’t equip our youth to make healthy decisions and protect themselves.
Even if a young person manages to receive medically-accurate sexual health information, there’s no guarantee that they can access the reproductive health care services they need throughout their lives. Women in Illinois, especially outside of the Chicago area, can face enormous barriers to getting reproductive health services. They may have to travel great distances to find a pharmacy which will fill their birth control prescription. They may find that their local doctor or hospital will no longer provide abortions or emergency contraception because they’ve merged with a religious hospital network. They may have to pay out of increasingly empty pockets because Medicaid doesn’t adequately cover the reproductive health services that they need.
We’re going on the road to talk to the men and women who face these challenges in accessing or providing reproductive health services and information. We’re trying to put a human face on those challenges so that they cannot be ignored by the media or the state legislature. We’re trying to make the case for why Illinois so desperately needs comprehensive reform of laws regarding reproductive health and access. That’s why I am delighted to spend the next two weeks on the road in Illinois.
That, plus the corn dogs.
The ACLU of Illinois is embarking on a project to put a human face on the status of reproductive health and access to care in Illinois. Over 10 days in July and August, we will be traveling the state, listening to women, men, young people and doctors throughout Illinois as they share stories about the barriers they face in accessing and providing reproductive health care and information. As we travel more than 2000 miles, through 13 Illinois cities and towns, we will learn more about the challenges everyday people face in filling prescriptions for birth control, in finding doctors who will provide needed services, including abortions, in dealing with Medicaid funding or in receiving comprehensive, age-appropriate sexual health education in public schools.
You can follow along at acluroadtrip.org or on twitter and facebook.
Do you have a story to tell? We’re listening. Email us at stories@aclu-il.org or visit action.aclu.org/rhstories.
The Final Push – Imminent House Vote to Reform Broken Crack Sentencing Law
originally posted by Ian Thompson, ACLU for Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union [click here]
Jul 27th
Advocates who have been working for years to reform one of the most dysfunctional aspects of our criminal justice system – the infamous and discriminatory 100-to-1 sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and the powder form of the drug – have finally arrived at the critical final stage. The House will vote this week on a measure known as the Fair Sentencing Act (S. 1789), which passed the Senate unanimously earlier this spring. If the House succeeds in passing the legislation, it will be sent to President Obama for a final signature and become the law of the land.
While stopping short of fully eliminating the disparity – the ACLU’s preferred course – the legislation will bring much needed reform, indeed justice, to a federal law that has been particularly devastating to African-Americans and a source of this country’s massive rates of incarceration.
A Mosque in Maine
originally posted by Zachary Heiden, Maine Civil Liberties Union for Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union [click here]
Jul 27th
If all goes well, the Portland Masjid and Islamic Center will receive approval tonight for the establishment of a small mosque in Maine’s largest, and most ethnically diverse, city. It is the culmination of a five-year effort, which has included numerous meetings, one federal lawsuit, and an entire re-writing of the city’s zoning rules for places of worship. Though it is a small event for all but the members of the community (and their lawyers), it is worth celebrating, especially in light of the recent controversy surrounding mosque constructions across the country.
This is a momentous occasion for the group, which is made up of approximately 15 Maine families, who are primarily of Afghan descent. They pooled their money four years ago and purchased a small property that had been a television repair shop on a busy street on the outskirts of the city. They opened up the floor downstairs, put down carpet and prayer rugs, and decorated the walls with passages from the Koran. The Portland Zoning Code, though, said that while a 1/3- acre lot was a fine size for a television repair shop, it was too small a space for prayer. The city told the group they would have to find somewhere else to pray.
Hopefully, this irony is not lost on anyone. Most of the families involved fled Afghanistan in the early 1980s, after the Soviet Union invaded, It wasn’t the military coup, or the murder and exile of government officials, or the dropping of mines designed to look like children’s toys, or the depopulation of the rural zones that drove our clients from Afghanistan: it was the prohibition on the practice of religion. That is still what they talk to me about, when they recall their reason for coming to this country.
This country was founded on the principle of freedom of religion for everyone. For almost 400 years, this has been a haven for religious minorities and dissenters, and the guarantee of free exercise of religion is embodied in our Constitution.
But hostility to foreigners and minorities is, unfortunately, a tradition with nearly as old a provenance. For as long as people have been coming to this country seeking freedom from religious discrimination, there have been people already here who would deny them that right. Sometimes that denial takes a relatively banal form: the lot size requirements for places of religious assembly in Portland, Maine were not the product of an anti-immigrant campaign, even though they had the effect of keeping new religions out and making people who practice those religions feel unwelcome. Portland has since realized the effect its law was having, and it amended its laws to make it possible for new religious groups to locate here.
But elsewhere, the campaign to make Muslims feel unwelcome and unwanted has been both overt and nefarious. In New York City, efforts to build a mosque in lower Manhattan have been opposed by people who seem to believe that all of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims helped plan and carry out the attacks on September 11, 2001. In Tennessee, candidates running for governor have competed to outdo one another in opposition to a Muslim community centerin Murfreesboro, with one questioning whether Islam is truly a religion.
It is unfortunate that racism and xenophobia can be manipulated to win political support, and hopefully, in time, political leaders will repudiate (er, refudiate?) such views. Until then, the ACLU remains committed to fighting for everyone’s right to freely exercise their religion—from prisoners, students, and small community groups, to those in the majority.
A Happy Ending, So Far
originally posted by Nusrat Jahan Choudhury, National Security Project for Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union [click here]
Jul 27th
Last week, we got some good news in the case of Adnan Tikvesa, an airline employee whose security clearance was unexpectedly suspended by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) without any reason or reasonable opportunity for him to defend himself – leading Delta to suspend him without pay. After eight months of limbo, Mr. Tikvesa was finally permitted to return to work at Delta Airlines at Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport. His co-workers welcomed him back with a party.
Last week, we got some The suspension happened in November 2009. This March, the ACLU and the ACLU of Georgia appealed the TSA’s decision to suspend Adnan’s security clearance without telling him why and called on the agency to restore due process by telling him the reasons for the decision and giving him a real opportunity to respond. In May, the TSA finally reversed the suspension.
While Mr. Tikvesa is better off because of TSA’s reversal and Delta’s recent decision to reinstate him, the fundamental problems with TSA’s process have not gone away. TSA has never provided a reason for the agency’s initial decision to revoke Adnan’s security clearance or, for that matter, its reversal of that decision. Mr. Tikvesa is relieved to have his job back, but he remains confused as to why TSA took away his clearance in the first place.
We should all be troubled. Even though Adnan’s story has a happy ending, so far, we cannot determine whether there are now safeguards in place to protect Adnan (or anyone else) against arbitrary security clearance revocations. Our appeal on Adnan’s behalf highlighted the lack of due process in TSA’s suspension and appeals process, but TSA has given no indication that it will act differently in the future by sharing the reasons for its security clearance decisions. Without that information, an individual’s hands are tied—he has no way to correct misinformation or to address the basis of a decision by TSA to suspend his security clearance in the first place.
We urge TSA to provide due process by refraining from suspending security clearances without affording the basis for such decisions or a meaningful way for people to defend themselves.
"WikiLeaks Is Not One Person…We Are All the Threat" – Hacker Magazine Editor Says WikiLeaks Is Bigger Than Julian Assange
originally posted by Democracy Now! [click here]
Jul 27th
Watch on AWARE-LA TV on the date of the post. After that, watch in the Democracy Now! archives.
We speak to Emmanuel Goldstein, a well-known figure in the hacker community and the editor of the magazine 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. He is also the organizer of the HOPE conference. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had been slated to be the keynote speaker at the most recent conference. Federal agents were there waiting for him, but Assange didn’t show. [includes rush transcript]
_Guardian_ Editor on Coverage of Afghan War Logs: European Audience "Troubled More…by the Toll this War is Taking on Innocent People"
originally posted by Democracy Now! [click here]
Jul 27th
Watch on AWARE-LA TV on the date of the post. After that, watch in the Democracy Now! archives.
We speak with David Leigh, the investigations editor at The Guardian, one of the three newspapers, along with the New York Times and Der Spiegel, WikiLeaks gave the Afghanistan war documents to. "Broadly, we see a similar picture in the three media. What we do see is quite a different political perspective. From the New York Times’s point of view…it was interesting to see that the relationship with Pakistan was a political priority," Leigh says. "With us, we’re more concerned about the casualties, I think. We’re troubled more, a European audience, by the toll this war is taking on innocent people." [includes rush transcript]
WikiLeaks Founder Says "Evidence of War Crimes" in Afghan War Logs, White House Downplays Leak, Claiming "No Broad New Revelations"
originally posted by Democracy Now! [click here]
Jul 27th
Watch on AWARE-LA TV on the date of the post. After that, watch in the Democracy Now! archives.
The disclosure of a massive trove of classified military records documenting the Afghanistan war has ignited a firestorm and increased pressure on the White House to defend its military strategy. We play highlights of the White House press conference in Washington and Julian Assange’s press conference in London. [includes rush transcript]
Headlines for July 27, 2010
originally posted by Democracy Now! [click here]
Jul 27th
Watch on AWARE-LA TV on the date of the post. After that, watch in the Democracy Now! archives.
- Karzai Orders Probe into Deadly NATO Air Strike
- Missing US Soldier Found Dead in Afghanistan
- As BP Reports $17B Loss, Hayward to Step Down as CEO
- BP Fails to Set Up $20B Compensation Fund
- Greenpeace Activists Shut Down BP Stations in London
- Iran Says It Is Open to Nuclear Talks “Without Any Conditions”
- Environmental Ministers Criticize US Stance on Climate Change
- WFP: 8 Million Need Food Aid in Niger Due to Severe Drought
- SEIU and UNITE HERE Reach Settlement Ending Dispute
- Tennessee GOP Candidate Questions Whether Islam Is a Religion
- Probe Urged into Murdered Honduran Journalists
- Nike Agrees to Compensate Laid-Off Contract Workers in Honduras
- 20th Anniversary of Americans with Disabilities Act Marked
- Puerto Rican Independentista Freed After 30 Years
Is the FBI Engaging in Race-Based Snooping?
originally posted by Sam Ritchie, ACLU for Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union [click here]
Jul 26th
What is the FBI up to in your neighborhood? That’s the question being asked by ACLU affiliates in 29 states and Washington, D.C. The answer could be extremely disturbing.