Sunday, May 30, 2010
National Day of Action Against S.B. 1070
National Day of Action Against S.B. 1070 - May 29th, 2010There was a great sense of community within the midst of the struggle for justice at the March Against S.B. 1070 a new Arizona Law that allows for racial profiling. An article on the event is below.
Foes and Supporters of New Immigration Law Gather in Arizona
PHOENIX — Two sides of the immigration debate converged here Saturday: a throng of several thousand marching for five miles opposed to Arizona’s new immigration law, and several thousand nearly filling a nearby stadium in the evening in support of it.
Organizers said the timing was coincidental, with both sides taking advantage of a holiday weekend to bring out the masses. But the gatherings encapsulated in a single day the passions surrounding the national immigration debate, recharged by the new law, which will expand the state’s role in immigration enforcement.
Both demonstrations made a point of waving a large number of American flags and issuing pleas for a national overhaul of immigration law, but they offered a jarring study in how polarized the debate has become here.
The demonstrators against the law were mostly Latino, with young people and families making up a large share. They played drums, whistled and chanted and gave speeches in Spanish and English denouncing the perceived racism behind the law. Many carried posters or wore T-shirts with the message: “Do I look illegal?”
At the rally in favor of the law, which began with the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem, any mention of Mexico or supporters of the law brought lusty boos — a video clip of President Felipe Calderón of Mexico especially fired up the crowd, which was mostly white and middle-aged or older. Placards like “Illegals out of the U.S.A.” were typical, though speaker after speaker ridiculed the idea that the crowd was racist.
Far more attended the earlier rally opposed to the law, which included a five-mile march to the Capitol in withering heat. It was one of the largest since Gov. Jan Brewer signed the law April 23.
Some were citizens, like Armando Diaz, 33, a mechanic born and raised here who believes the law has helped spread anti-Latino fervor in the state.
“This is not what Arizona is about, hate,” Mr. Diaz said as he neared the capitol, where people fled for what little shade they could find. “But that is what this law is about.”
The later rally, at sundown, was organized by Tea Party groups from St. Louis and Dallas who said they decided to take the lead and support the state against a wave of boycotts protesting the law, some by cities like San Francisco and Seattle.
“We are doing this to crush any boycott against the free market,” said Tina Loudon, a Tea Party member from St. Louis who helped organize the rally. “Arizona has a sovereign right to enforce immigration laws on the books.”
The law — barring any successful legal challenges — will take effect July 29. It would allow the police to check the immigration status of people they suspect are illegal immigrants when they have been stopped for another reason. It also makes it a state crime, not just a federal one, to not carry immigration papers.
Advocates see it as a tool for law enforcement to weed out illegal immigrants, while five lawsuits filed against it call it an infringement on federal authority and suggest that Latino citizens and legal residents will be swept up for questioning.
On another front, the governor and attorney general are disputing who will defend the state against the legal challenges and possible litigation by the United States Justice Department.
Ms. Brewer, a Republican, said Friday she had removed the state’s attorney general, a Democrat and vocal opponent of the law, from defending it, accusing him of colluding with the Justice Department as it nears a decision on whether to challenge the law in court.
But the matter remained in dispute on Saturday, as the attorney general, Terry Goddard, a Democrat and potential challenger in her re-election bid, said in an e-mail message that he was “definitely defending the state” in legal challenges to the law.
Ms. Brewer said she took action after Mr. Goddard met Friday with Justice Department lawyers, who then met with her legal advisers.
Justice Department officials said they routinely meet with a state’s attorney general and governor when considering legal action against their state.
“We continue to have concerns that the law drives a wedge between law enforcement and the communities they serve, and are examining it to see what options are available to the federal government,” said Tracy Schmaler, a department spokeswoman.
The United States attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., has said he worries that the law may intrude on federal authority and lead to racial profiling.
Protest rallies were also held Saturday at the state capitols in Texas and Oregon, as well as in San Francisco, according to The Associated Press.
At the Arizona demonstrations, opinions could not be further apart.
Mireya Chavez Cerna, 43, an illegal immigrant who works as a maid, marched with her 9-year-old son, who was born in the United States and wore a shirt reading “Made in America.”
She denounced the climate of fear in the state and said immigrants like her could not abide the wait of a decade or more for a legal visa while their families grow hungry.
“Do you think we would risk losing our lives crossing the border if we didn’t have a need to come here for a better life?” she said. Supporters of the law “don’t know,” she added. “They don’t understand. They don’t live in Mexico. They don’t know how it is.”
But Ann Hyde, a radiological technologist from Chandler, said she grew frustrated at supporters being tarred as prejudiced or worse.
“We are not racists,” she said. “This law is about respecting the laws of the nation and the economic impact of illegal immigration, which is enormous. My state is broke and they cost us with spending on schools, hospitals and other services.”
Though violent crime is declining in Arizona, as in most other states, and illegal immigration is down at the border, speakers played up crimes that illegal immigrants have been charged with over the years, including shooting of police officers.
“One is too many,” said Mark Spencer, the chairman of a union representing rank-and-file police officers in Phoenix.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Immigration Reform Actions Around the Country
Immigration Reform Actions Around the CountryAround the country there has been a wave of actions calling for comprehensive immigration reform and a call to Stop Arizona's S.B. 1070.
As part of a national week of action for comprehensive immigration reform, a coalition of labor, business, faith and community leaders -- including Alderman George Cardenas, in an act of peaceful disobedience were arrested outside of ICE's Field Office in Chicago.
The activists blocked the field office to draw attention to the economic benefit for the nation if a comprehensive immigration reform is approved and also stressed that Arizona’s enforcement-only policies that lead to racial profiling should be repealed before their implementation in August.
While supporters rallied around them, the 32 immigration activists risking arrest piled bags with dollar signs outside of the ICE Field Office and sat down blocking the entrance.
As expected, a Department of Homeland Security 
agent approached the group and told them they were in violation of the law, and that if they did not move they would be arrested. The group responded by chanting, "What does democracy look like? This is what democracy looks like!"
After the third warning the group sang "We Shall Not Be Moved" and the agents began making arrests.
These arrests, part of a wave of civil disobedience sweeping across the country, highlight just how urgent our need for immigration reform is. Politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, should take note - we aren't willing to wait any longer. We can no longer afford a broken immigration system that destroys families, drives down wages, and hurts our economy.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Chicago New Sanctuary Coalition Leaders Travel to Arizona
Click here for more information
Local Chicago Actions Against SB1070
Saturday, May 29th at 12noon meet at Plaza Tenochititlan, in Pilsen (corner of 18th, Blue Island, and Loomis) and then at 2pm march together to PetSmart on 1101 S Canal Ave, Chicago. (PetSmart is a national company based in Arizona, and we deman to denounce SB1070 or face a boycott)
Saturday May 29th at 1:30pm at Wrigley Field Join us for a Rally asking the Chicago Cubs to move their spring trainins from Arizona to Florida.
For more information about these actions visit the Chicago New Sanctuary Coalition Website
http://www.crln.org/
Migrant Trail Walk: We Walk for Life
Jenny and Stephanie will then participate in the annual Migrant Trail: We Walk for Life, a 75-mile journey from Sásabe, Sonora to Tucson, Arizona in solidarity with our migrant sisters and brothers who have walked this trail and lost their lives. We bear witness to the lives that are lost, the families who mourn, and the communities that suffer the divisions that borders wreak on all of us.
The Migrant Trail Vision: The precarious reality of our borderlands calls us to walk. We are a spiritually diverse, multi-cultural group who walk together on a journey of peace to remember people, friends and family who have died, others who have crossed, and people who continue to come. We bear witness to the tragedy of death and of the inhumanity in our midst. Lastly, we walk as a community, in defiance of the borders that attempt to divide us, committed to working together for the human dignity of all peoples. Click here for more information about the walk.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Militarization of the Border
Troops on the border
Will the US eventually send troops to Mexico to battle drug cartels?
SAN DIEGO — Eager to be all things to all people, President Barack Obama tends to say one thing and do another. And so, when Obama said recently that he had no interest in "militarizing" the U.S.-Mexico border, it was only a matter of time before the administration drew up plans to do just that.
Sure enough, according to media reports, the Pentagon and Homeland Security Department are developing contingency plans to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
The specifics have yet to be worked out, but the $350 million initiative would radically expand the role of the U.S. military in the drug war. The proposal does not mention troop deployments, only that the military would receive the funding "for counter-narcotics and other activities" on the border.
So, for some in the National Guard, it is goodbye Iraq and Afghanistan. Hello San Diego, Nogales and Brownsville.
Before you can get your head around whether putting troops on the border is a workable solution to the drug war or just a recipe for more problems, you've got to know what this is and what it isn't.
It isn't a plan to dispatch armed National Guard troops to the border to shoot it out with drug smugglers headed north or gun smugglers headed south. You're not going to have soldiers physically interdicting southbound vehicles into Mexico looking for loads of cash, weapons or ammunition. And you're certainly not going to have those troops doubling as border patrol agents and trying to keep out illegal immigrants entering the United States from Mexico — according to the Border Patrol, there is not much of that going on lately anyway, because Mexican immigrants are as afraid of the dreadful U.S. economy as American tourists are of drug violence and swine flu. For now, everyone is staying in his own neighborhood.
Rather, what Obama seems to have in mind is exactly what President George W. Bush had in mind when, in 2006, his administration spent more than $1 billion to deploy as many as 6,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border in something called "Operation Jump Start." The goal then was to curb illegal immigration, and the guard played a supporting role.
The troops were unarmed, and they lent a hand to the Border Patrol by fixing vehicles, repairing fences, manning detection systems, building roads and performing other duties typically done by Border Patrol agents. This freed up the agents to do what Americans expect them to do: patrol the border in search of illegal immigrants. By all accounts, the program — which ended in 2008 — was a total success.
Administration officials have said the role of the National Guard troops in the drug war would be similar. Imagine a scenario where troops lighten the load on U.S. customs agents and thus allow those agents to inspect more vehicles than they do now. And no matter what, they won't be doing domestic law enforcement in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
This is an idea that is both pragmatic and promising, but it might also be the first step in a long journey that will eventually take us where some Americans might not want to go: eventual deployment, with the permission of the Mexican government, of a manageable number of U.S. special forces to launch an Iraq-style counterinsurgency against Mexican drug cartels. Why not? The Pentagon has already labeled Mexico a state in danger of "rapid and sudden collapse." For those who believe that, how do they avoid sending U.S. troops to prevent that collapse, which would create something we can't afford at our back door: chaos.
Given that Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently made his own trip to Mexico City to meet with top officials and then returned to immediately brief Obama on — according to media reports — possible uses for the U.S. military in the Mexican drug war, my hunch is that there is more than one contingency plan in the works.
Instead of trying to be popular, Obama should start getting serious about the drug war by making the American people comfortable with the idea of sending troops into Mexico. After all, that's a reality that could be difficult to escape.
Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a nationally syndicated columnist, a member of the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune, and a weekly contributor to CNN.COM.
Read more GlobalPost dispatches about the drug war:
Sizing up Mexico's war on drugs
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Military Aid to Mexico
Your voice is needed!!
Congress is currently poised to send hundreds of millions of additional dollars for helicopters, planes and other equipment to Mexico. Latin America Working Group (LAWG), and in Mexico tell us that military hardware isn't the solution to Mexico's challenges--and it avoids acknowledging the United States' responsibility for spiraling drug violence.
In May 2009, seventy Mexican human rights leaders and organizations wrote to the US Congress urging an end to US military support and instead calling for aid to support democracy, development and to fight poverty - addressing the root causes of violence and building long lasting change. To read the letter, click here.
Act Now! LAWG is urging the CRLN network to contact our legislators and help shape this new aid to Mexico--which is being considered as part of the 2009 Supplemental Appropriations Bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. Contact your member this week, as members from the Senate and House Appropriations Committees come together to reconcile the differences between the Senate and House versions of the bill. For a script and to find out how to contact your Members of Congress, click here: http://www.crln.org/Mexican_
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Border Deaths Increase
The increased risk of death parallels the historic buildup of agents, fences, roads and technology along the U.S.-Mexico border, calling into question one of the Border Patrol's mantras that a "secure border is a safe border."
Border Patrol officials point to their rescue efforts as evidence that their presence prevents deaths rather than causes them. "Our presence is greater; we are getting to these people sooner," said Robert Boatright, deputy chief of the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector. The agency rescued 160 people through mid-May, compared with 151 at the same time last year.
Flawed statistics
The apprehension figures show a clear downward trend in the Tucson Sector, the busiest on the Southwest Border, with the captures dropping 35 percent from 491,771 in 2004 to 317,696 in 2008. This year's numbers through April are down 31 percent from the same time in 2008.
The body count has remained in the same range between 2004 and 2009, yo-yoing between 180 and 230 per fiscal year, the Star border-death database shows. The bodies of 86 illegal border crossers have been discovered from the beginning of fiscal year 2009 — Oct. 1 — through April, compared with 75 at the same time last year. The hottest and most deadly months for migrant deaths are still to come.
The Arizona Daily Star's border-death database only goes back to October 2004, but using the Border Patrol's death totals, which have long undercounted the number of deaths, the risk of dying has increased 17 times, from three per 100,000 apprehensions in 1998 to 51 per 100,000 apprehensions in 2009.
But Dr. Bruce Parks, chief medical examiner at the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, cautions that the yearly counts may not accurately represent that year's total, because many in recent years have been skeletal remains that could be people who died in previous years.
Even without the skeletal remains, though, the number of bodies found per 100,000 apprehensions has increased from 38 in 2004 to 50 in 2009. And some of the people found as skeletal remains could have died months earlier within the same year, especially if death occurs in the summer, when heat speeds up decomposition, said Jerónimo Garcia, a representative of the Mexican Consulate in Tucson who handles the identification and coordination of the remains.
Skeleton found in August
Pastrana was supposed to cross the border somewhere north of Altar, Sonora, around mid-July of 2008. Her remains were found three weeks later southwest of Casa Grande. She likely walked for at least six days to get there, or she might have been picked up and driven north before being dropped off again, Garcia said. The medical examiner determined Pastrana died of hyperthermia, or heatstroke, the most common cause of deaths among illegal border crossers discovered in Arizona.
Known border deaths per 100,000 Border Patrol apprehensions:
Sources: Deaths come from the Arizona Daily Star border-death database, which compiles information from the Pima and Cochise county medical examiners. Pima County handles the bodies found in Santa Cruz County and some from Pinal County. Apprehensions are a Border Patrol figure.
Deaths recorded by Pima and Cochise county medical examiners
Summer plans
The 40 active members of the Border Patrol's search, rescue and trauma team, called Borstar, will be on high alert on foot, in vehicles and in helicopters, ready to respond to 911 calls or reports from illegal border crossers about people in distress. Several Southern Arizona non-governmental humanitarian organizations also devote time, energy and money to the effort.
The Samaritans of Tucson and Green Valley carry out daily patrols in the desert looking for illegal immigrants who need food, water or medical assistance. And while no decision has been made for this year, for the past six summers the U.S. and Mexican governments have offered Mexican illegal immigrants without criminal records a free flight home through the Interior Repatriation Program. The program flies people to Mexico City rather than busing them just across the border to Nogales, Sonora, to be approached by smugglers with offers to try again.
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