Raising Cain...

Links on justice issues at Raising Cain @ wordpress

I am now posting links to articles on justice issues primarily at my Raising Cain @ wordpress blog. I hope to post more of my own writing on these subjects here at Raising Cain on Typepad. Lots going on. Much to write about. Much to heal in this country and on this planet.

Tell Secretary Napolitano to Abolish Solitary Confinement - Physicians for Human Rights

Thought I'd share this petition link from Physicians for Human Rights asking Janet Napolitano to abolish solitary confinement for people detained in immigration facilities:

Thousands of people awaiting immigration hearings in the US detention system are routinely held in solitary confinement. We know that this cruel and unusual practice causes serious and lasting psychological and physiological harm. The sometimes irreversible consequences — including panic attacks, paranoia, hallucinations, weight loss, and self-harm — are exacerbated for people who have endured torture, which is common among immigration detainees who have fled violence or persecution in their home countries.

Placing anyone in solitary confinement for prolonged periods is an outrage — in some cases even torture — but this practice is especially abhorrent in the immigration setting, where detainees are not being held as punishment for a crime and are usually unable to challenge their detention.

Urge Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to end solitary confinement in all immigration detention facilities. By ending this practice, the United States would send a strong signal to the international community that it does not tolerate torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading practices in its detention policy.

Sign the petition at secure3.convio.net

 

PHR has also published a report on the negative effects of solitary confinement:

Buried Alive: Solitary Confinement in the US Detention System (pdf download page)

 

Related articles

Solitary Confinement Report Puts Immigration Advocates In Tough Spot

Immigrants Held in Solitary Cells, Often for Weeks

Solitary confinement isn't the solution for immigrant detainees - latimes.com

Caribbean immigrants frequently held in solitary confinement in US

U.N. Expert on Torture Calls for Investigation of Use of Solitary Confinement

Treating immigrants civilly

AP drops ‘illegal immigrant’ from Stylebook

Yay! Good news from the Washington Post today for everyone participating in the "Drop the I-word" campaigns:

The Associated Press has dropped the phrase “illegal immigrant” from its stylebook, a victory for immigrant advocates who argue that the term is biased against the people it describes.

“The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term ‘illegal immigrant’ or the use of ‘illegal’ to describe a person,” a blog post from AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll explains. “Instead, it tells users that ‘illegal’ should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.”

via www.washingtonpost.com

Related articles

AP drops "illegal immigrant," means a person will no longer be described as illegal

The AP Drops the Term 'Illegal Immigrant' from Their Stylebook

AP Drops the Term 'Illegal Immigrant'

AP Style Rejects Term 'Illegal Immigrant'

Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States | Southern Poverty Law Center

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has a new report on how suggestions (see related article links below the clip) to expand the US guestworker program to ensure plenty of cheap labor may take us to a place we really don't want to be:

In the debate over comprehensive immigration reform, various policymakers and business groups have suggested that Congress create a new or expanded guestworker program to ensure a steady supply of foreign workers for industries that rely on an abundance of cheap labor.

Congress should look before it leaps. The current H-2 program, which provides temporary farmworkers and non-farm laborers for a variety of U.S. industries, is rife with labor and human rights violations committed by employers who prey on a highly vulnerable workforce. It harms the interests of U.S. workers, as well, by undercutting wages and working conditions for those who labor at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. This program should not be expanded or used as a model for immigration reform.

Read more of the article at www.splcenter.org

Related articles

Farm Bureau urges new ag labor guestworker program

Immigration, yes. Indentured serfdom, no

Report: Federal guestworker program rife with civil rights violations

Immigration Reform Set to Boost Business, Undermine Rights

U.S. Work Programs 'Close To Slavery'

Investigating Deaths of Undocumented Immigrants on the Border | Southern Poverty Law Center

Interesting article on Arizona immigration craziness from Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report for September 2012:

The mountains near here rise as jagged and unforgiving obstacles on the horizon for immigrants and smugglers who cross the border by moonlight and make their way northward along the foothills, stopping in the cypress groves for rest. It’s a natural passage and the easiest route to travel.

But it was also here, on April 8, that a group of what was described as four white men wearing camouflage opened fire on a packed truck carrying immigrants illegally into the country, killing two of them. The victims, Gerardo Perez-Ruiz from the central Mexican city of Toluca and another man believed to be from Guatemala, were part of a group of 20 to 30 immigrants driving through a remote desert wash near Eloy when the group of gunmen suddenly appeared.

Read the full article at www.splcenter.org

Federal Agencies Use Finger Prints, DNA to Track Immigrant Communities - COLORLINES

More on migrant rights...

Last week the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released a report that outlines the current state of U.S. government collection of biometric information and the problems that could arise from these growing databases of records. According to the report there is a growing push to link biometric collection with immigration enforcement and immigrant communities are already affected by the way this data is collected, stored, and shared.

Read more at colorlines.com

Download page for the report:

From Fingerprints to DNA: Biometric Data Collection, U.S. Immigrant Communities and Beyond

 

Racial Profiling, Republican Candidates, and Rights Violations: the Immigration Debate at Year's End | | AlterNet

Kari Lyderson's article reviews stories related to immigration that emerged in the final weeks of 2011. Let's hope we make progress toward justice in 2012  for immigrants -- especially the children -- who are suffering because of rampant xenophobia and crappy immigration policy (and enforcement) in the US.

Several of the Republican candidates have surprisingly moderate records and/or positions on immigration, but they are trying to obscure this in order to cater to hardcore anti-immigrant voters or generally come off as extremely conservative. Ironically a hardline anti-immigration message is out of step with the majority of Americans across the political spectrum, according to an analysis of five recent polls by the Center for American Progress.

via www.alternet.org

 

Also see:

Severing a Lifeline: The neglect of citizen children in America's immigration enforcement policy (pdf, 8.5MB)

Shattered Families: The Perilous Intersection of Immigration Enforcement and the Child Welfare System (download page)

Thousands of Kids Lost from Parents in US Deportation System (Colorlines, 11/2/11)

 

Elon James White: Black Leaders Get Closeup View of Alabama’s New Jim Crow

Interesting article at Colorlines yesterday about the situation in Alabama with HB 56, where "the country's toughest new immigration law sits in a state where there isn’t a problem to begin with."

As the delegation met undocumented residents and activists working with them, one thing that stood out was a broad climate of fear that will be familiar to those who lived through Alabama’s first Jim Crow era. Mary Bauer of the Southern Poverty Center spoke to us at the opening session of the delegation. She retold the story of someone who went to make a cash purchase at Walmart and was asked for identification. That isn’t in the HB-56 law. There isn’t any provision that you can’t make a cash purchase. But when the law of the land is prejudice, it creates vigilante immigration policing. People feel empowered to police anyone they think isn’t documented in any way they feel is reasonable.

via colorlines.com

 

Shattered Families: new investigative report presents first national data on perilous intersection of immigration enforcement and the child welfare system

The Applied Research Center has just released "Shattered Families: The Perilous Intersection of Immigration Enforcement and the Child Welfare System," a groundbreaking report offering the first national data available on the perilous intersection of immigration enforcement and the child welfare system. ARC's Investigative Research package includes a poignant video and Colorlines.com articles which bring to life the story of one family trying desperately to stay together.

Key Findings: There are at least 5,100 children currently living in foster care who are prevented from uniting with their detained or deported parents.

• If nothing changes, 15,000 more children may face a similar fate in the next 5 years.
• This is a growing national problem, not one confined to border jurisdictions or states-- ARC identified at least 22 states where these cases have emerged.
• Families are more likely to be separated where local police aggressively participate in immigration enforcement.
• Immigrant victims of domestic violence are at particular risk of losing their children
• ICE detention obstructs participation in Child Protective Services' plans for family unity.
• Most child welfare departments lack systemic policies to keep families united when parents are detained or deported.

Federal, state and local governments must create explicit policies to protect families from separation.

These polices should stop the clock on the child welfare process and the immigration enforcement process to ensure that families can stay together and allow parents to make the best decisions for the care and custody of their children. 

via arc.org

 

ARC is offering a free webinar on the Shattered Families report on November 10th.

 

Racial Profiling on an “Industrial Scale”: FBI Using Census Data to Map and Police Communities By Race | | AlterNet

New documents obtained by the ACLU show that the FBI has for years been using Census data to “map” ethnic and religious groups suspected of being likely to commit certain types of crimes.

Much is still not known about the apparent large-scale effort in racial profiling, partly because the documents the ACLU obtained through public records requests are heavily redacted.

Read the whole story at www.alternet.org

Also see Mapping the FBI - Seeking Records of FBI Discrimination at the ACLU website.