Sam Kitching, a soft-spoken, round old man dressed in civilian clothes who works for the Sheriff’s department at the Baker County Jail put his hand on my shoulder and, addressing me as “young man,” said, “It’s very important that you be careful in there. They might have AIDS and might try to grab your hand and push something into it.”

“AIDS?” I ask.

“They could,” he said. “These men can be dangerous.”

A younger man dressed in a tight, dark green Sheriff’s uniform unlatched the door into one of the pods that holds several dozen federal immigration detainees.

Mostly Latino and black and all dressed in orange jump suits, unzipped with the arms tied around waists, the men stood or sat at metal tables in groups of four or five in the three-sided concrete room.

“Zip up,” the guard yelled as the door opened.

The detainees pulled the jumpers up over their shoulders and I followed the guard, Kitching and a young Legal Aid attorney named Karen Winston into the pod. A man stood on a grated walkway in front of one of the two-bed jail cells where the detainees eat, sleep, bathe and go to the bathroom. The rest of the men were below in the concrete room where they pass all their time—there’s only one hour of recreation time in an enclosed gravel yard.

“Hey, Honduras, get down here,” Kitching yelled to the man on the platform, who walked down the grated metal stairs and joined three other Latino men talking in a corner.

“That’s what I do sometimes,” Kitching explained to me. “I call them by their country. For some reason if they’ve been here a while, I can remember their country.”

Winston, a recent law school graduate, works long days in the south Florida jail defending some of the close to 250 immigration detainees held there. On this Friday morning, she’d driven from Jacksonville, the closest city, to conduct a “know your rights” training for as many of the detainees as possible. She noted the training name is misleading, since detainees don’t have many rights to know of.

To read the read of the post on Colorlines, please click here.

A growing number of Alabamians say the price will be too high, and there is compelling evidence that they are right. Alabama is already at the low end of states in employment and economic vitality. It has long struggled to lure good jobs and shed a history of racial intolerance.

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“Alabama has clearly shown that immigration policies built on intimidation and fear do nothing but create havoc and disarray”, said Jessica González-Rojas of National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights. “Since it went into effect, thousands of Alabamans have been forced to flee, abandoning homes and jobs, and those who have decided to stick it out in the state’s hostile environment may find themselves without water, work, or even a home.”

Considered one of the most extreme laws in the country, HB 56 now means that some children of immigrants will be turned away at the schoolhouse door and allows public utility companies to turn off electricity and water in the homes of immigrants even when they are paying customers.

Supported by Congressman Luis Gutierrez and other members of Congress, the “One Family, One Alabama” campaign also calls on the Department of Homeland Security to end its use of immigration programs, like S-Comm (“Secure Communities”), that allow for racial profiling and human rights violations when enforcing laws like HB56 in Alabama.

New research from the Applied Research Center has found “families are more likely to be separated where local police aggressively participate in immigration enforcement and that immigrant victims of domestic violence are at particular risk of losing their children.”

“The attacks on families in Alabama is completely repugnant,” said Miriam Yeung, speaking on behalf of the National Coalition for Immigrant Rights. “The human cost of this legislation is simply too high. The Department of Homeland Security needs to do more than rhetorically rebuke Alabama for this law; it needs to end federal immigration policies that condone human rights violations.”

Half of Alabama’s undocumented population lives in mixed-status families—families that include at least one U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.  Analysts estimate than as many as 28,000 U.S. citizen children in Alabama could be separated from a parent due to family immigration status.

The resolution was announced at the Excellence in Journalism convention in New Orleans by SPJ’s Diversity Committee. Originally, the Resolutions Committee denied their request to recommend newsrooms discontinue using these terms and told advocates for such a resolution to consult the Associated Press’ styleguide committee.

When the Diversity Committee began advocating for newsrooms to discontinue describing undocumented immigrants as “illegal aliens” and “illegal immigrants,” they were met with some opposition and sparked a debate on whether or not the term is actually offensive.

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“We Belong Together”

National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights stands with Georgia’s Immigrant Women and Children

Atlanta, GA — The National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights, stands in solidarity with immigrant women and children as part of the “We Belong Together: Women’s Delegation to Georgia.”

A press conference will be held on September 29 in front of the Georgia State Capitol Building, 203 Washington Street, at 10:30 a.m.

Steering committee members National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum are part of a delegation of women’s organizations that will travel to Atlanta this week to bear witness to the effects on women, children and families of Georgia’s new anti-immigrant law.

“Every time an anti-immigrant lawmaker spouts off about “anchor babies” or “alien invaders”, immigrant mothers are wrongfully vilified and dehumanized,” said Maria Elena Perez, interim executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. “As women, as mothers, we are here to tell lawmakers to stop with the lies and scapegoating of immigrant women and our families.”

According to New America Media, more than half of all immigrants are women and women are increasingly likely to primary breadwinners and primary family care takers. Yet, immigrant women, particularly those of reproductive age, have been specifically accused of exacerbating global warming, raising terrorist babies, and using childbirth to gain citizenship status.

Like Arizona’s SB1070, Georgia’s new HB 87 law threatens to have devastating effects on women and children, including an increase in racial profiling, the separation of families (children from parents), an increased fear of reporting crimes such as domestic violence and sexual assault; workplace raids; and the denial of services.

In a forthcoming report from the National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights, called Women in Immigration: Right to Liberty, Right to Family, immigration policy experts analyzed the intersection of gender and immigration. In this first of its kind, comprehensive review, NCIWR found that the impact of immigration policies on women is cumulative rather than additive. Misinformation and lies have led to policies that cut women immigrants – undocumented and documented alike—out of important social programs. This occurs despite evidence that individuals without current legal papers pay into government as much as others who receive benefits and use these programs less often.

“The sad reality is that millions of undocumented and mixed status women and children live below the surface in American society—with little to no access to health care, education or even food assistance programs, added Perez. “This should be unacceptable in the land of opportunity.”

To learn more about the coalition and about immigrant women, please visit http://nciwr.wordpress.com

“Secure Communities” has had a silencing effect on immigrant women who no longer trust local law enforcement for help when faced with a domestic violence or sexual assault situation. Due to this and other civil rights concerns, governors of Massachusetts, New York and Illinois decided to opt-out of the enforcement program that requires local police to submit fingerprints of those arrested to ICE. The agency maintains they need the fingerprints to track down and deport dangerous undocumented immigrants. But their numbers don’t add up. According to ICE’s own records, in many communities more than 70 percent of those detained and deported had no criminal history.

In addition, “Secure Communities” allows police to strip freedom from individuals indefinitely, allows no guaranteed access to a lawyer, no way to get out on bail, and no way to prove innocence in front of a judge and jury.
We believe that strong families are the foundation of successful communities and our families come in all types and sizes. Ensuring that immigrant women can raise their families without fear they will be torn apart by dragnet enforcement policies is critical to the fabric of our nation, its security and its prosperity.

That’s why we stand with our allied organizations and Governors who are committed to seeing an end to this unjust program. If you feel the same, sign onto our petition here.

NCIWR Steering Committee

National Latina institute for Reproductive Health

National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum

The National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights (NCIWR) is comprised of grassroots and national advocacy organizations. We defend and promote equality for all immigrant women and their families living and working in the United States. We integrate human rights principles into our work and believe that immigrant rights are women’s rights. NCIWR advocates at the national, state and local levels for comprehensive immigration reform, fair and non-discriminatory implementation of our immigration and enforcement policies, and reproductive and economic justice for immigrant women.

When: Mon, 08/01/2011 – 11:00am

As part of the 2nd Annual Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Rights, please join the National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights (NCIWR) to discuss the important roles that immigrant women play in our communities and the increasing pressures they are experiencing with hostility and negative rhetoric meant to demonize them. This important phone call will discuss the negative rhetoric and the harmful programs that have stemmed from it. We will also give listeners a sneak preview of the Right to Liberty, Right to Family campaign that NCIWR will be launching in the fall.

Speakers:

Danielle Hawkes, JD – National Latina Institute for Reproductive Rights Policy Analyst and Legal Fellow

Christine Soyong Harley, National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, Policy and Programs Director

RSVP here.

Enjoining Enforcement of Arizona’s SB 1070

April 12, 2011

Washington, D.C – The American Immigration Council applauds yesterday’s decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upholding a preliminary injunction against the key provisions of Arizona’s SB 1070.  As the court correctly recognized, Arizona’s misguided attempt to drive immigrants from the state interferes with the federal government’s exclusive authority to enforce immigration law, has negatively impacted U.S. foreign relations, and reflects the dangers of allowing states to enact a patchwork of conflicting regulations.  The Ninth Circuit also rightly rejected Arizona’s claim that state police have “inherent authority” to enforce federal immigration laws and held that Congress intended state officers to “aid in immigration enforcement only under the close supervision of the Attorney General.”

“The Ninth Circuit’s decision does not discount the serious problems created by our broken immigration system,” said Ben Johnson, Executive Director of the American Immigration Council. “However, it confirms what members of the public have long known—that Congress, and Congress alone, has the power to regulate immigration in the United States.”

For more resources on SB 1070, see:

Legal Challenges to Arizona’s SB 1070 (Legal Action Center, Litigation Issue Page)
Economic Realities of Arizona’s SB 1070 (Immigration Police Center, Resource Page)
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For press inquiries contact Wendy Sefsaf at wsefsaf@immcouncil.org or 202-507-7524

Visit our website at www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org.

NCIWR Roundtable is a discussion on the diverse movements impacted by the attacks on the 14th Amendment!

Distinguished speakers from the women’s rights, environmental justice, workers’ rights and immigrant rights movements have been invited to participate.

Lawmakers are attempting to unravel citizenship laws by stigmatizing women and families. NCIWR is the only national coalition established to specifically focus on gender issues in this public debate. Like all women in our society, immigrant women deserve equality, dignity, and human rights. We are working to elevate women’s voices and push back against dehumanizing rhetoric and attacks on immigrant women and their families.