Tag Archives: immigration

We’ve Been Asking Mexico to Detain Migrant Kids for Us. Here’s What That Looks Like.

by SteffenRoepke Posted on April 13, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A new report by the Georgetown Law School’s Human Rights Institute found that Central American child migrants apprehended in southern Mexico over the past year have faced excessive stints in detention, often in poor conditions, deterring them from seeking asylum abroad.

The study, released Monday, concluded that Mexican immigration officials have failed to adequately screen children for international protection needs and did not inform them of their right to apply for asylum. “Unfortunately, the reality for most migrant children apprehended by immigration authorities in Mexico is characterized by the violation, rather than the protection, of human rights,” the report concludes.


70,000 Kids Will Show Up Alone at Our Border This Year. What Happens to Them?


What’s Next for the Children We Deport?


Map: These Are the Places Central American Child Migrants Are Fleeing


Are the Kids Showing Up at the Border Really Refugees?


Child Migrants Have Been Coming to America Alone Since Ellis Island

See MoJo‘s full coverage of the surge of unaccompanied child migrants from Central America.

The group of Georgetown researchers interviewed 65 accompanied and unaccompanied children, parents, government officials, aid workers, and people in the southern Mexican border city of Tapachula and Guatemala City.

As Mother Jones has reported extensively over the past two years, a recent rise in gang and gender-based violence, along with economic hardship at home, has prompted children and families to flee Central America’s so-called Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras). While the number of kids crossing the US-Mexico border alone shot up to 68,541 in fiscal year 2014, estimates show that US Customs and Border Protection will apprehend only 37,000 child migrants in fiscal 2015. Some experts have suggested that the decrease can be attributed to stepped-up enforcement in Mexico, taxing an already flawed system of immigration detention there.

Here’s what else the report found:

Child migrants were kept at Mexico’s immigration stations and shelters in Tapachula for “long, unpredictable periods of times,” even though Mexican law requires unaccompanied children to be immediately transferred to federal, state, or local shelters. Of the 6,718 children detained at Tapachula’s notorious Siglo XXI detention center in 2013, 1,121 children were held there for between 15 days and 300 days. Just 422, or 6 percent, were placed in local shelters.
A psychologist who worked with child migrants at a city shelter said that their extended detention at a local shelter made them “apprehensive” about applying for international protection. “Very few children request asylum,” she told researchers. “What scares them is the prospect of being detained for three months.”
Poor conditions at Siglo XXI also deterred migrants from seeking asylum. Once families are detained, members are separated by age; many detainees reported that the gang presence they’d fled had followed them to the center. As one 15-year-old boy said: “It’s an awful place. People are crammed, it’s very hot, the food is terrible, and it’s dangerous for us teenagers because they put us together with maras Central American gangs.”
Researchers also noted that Mexican immigration officials who are legally bound to screen children for asylum and other forms of deportation relief failed to inform them that they had a right to international protection. None of the children the research team interviewed at Siglo XXI was informed by child protection officers or other immigration officials about the right to seek asylum.
Few migrants who applied for international protection in Mexico received it, according to the country’s Commission for the Assistance of Refugees. Of the 1,165 cases decided between January and September 2014, only 247 were recognized, despite the fact that the commission received 17 percent more applications for asylum in the first eight months of 2014 than in all of 2013.

Original source:

We’ve Been Asking Mexico to Detain Migrant Kids for Us. Here’s What That Looks Like.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We’ve Been Asking Mexico to Detain Migrant Kids for Us. Here’s What That Looks Like.

Tea Party Loses Big in Today’s Vote on Clean DHS Funding Bill

by KatlynMauldin Posted on March 3, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

It looks like the conventional wisdom was correct:

The House will vote as soon as Tuesday afternoon on a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security for the rest of the fiscal year. The measure will not target President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, giving Democrats what they have long demanded and potentially enraging conservatives bent on fighting the president on immigration.

…The decision marks a big win for Democrats, who have long demanded that Congress pass a “clean” bill to fund DHS free of any immigration riders. For weeks, Boehner and his top deputies have refused to take up such a bill, as conservatives have demanded using the DHS debate to take on Obama’s directives, which include action to prevent the deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants.

I thought the most likely course was a brief DHS shutdown (a week or two) just to save face, followed by a pretty clean funding bill. But I was too pessimistic. Apparently the House leadership wasn’t willing to take the PR hit that would inevitably involve.

I wonder if Republicans could have gotten a better deal if the tea party faction had been less bullheaded? Last week’s debacle, where they torpedoed even a three-week funding extension, surely demonstrated to Boehner that he had no choice but to ignore the tea partiers entirely. They simply were never going to support anything except a full repeal of Obama’s immigration actions, and that was never a remotely realistic option. The subsequent one-week extension passed only thanks to Democratic votes, and that made it clear that working with Democrats was Boehner’s only real choice. And that in turn meant a clean funding bill.

But what if the tea partiers had signaled some willingness to compromise? Could they have passed a bill that repealed some small part of Obama’s program—and that could have passed the Senate? Maybe. Instead they got nothing. I guess maybe they’d rather stick to their guns than accomplish something small but useful. That sends a signal to their base, but unfortunately for them, it also sends a signal to Boehner. And increasingly, that signal is that he has no choice but to stop paying attention to their demands. There’s nothing in it for Boehner, is there?

This article – 

Tea Party Loses Big in Today’s Vote on Clean DHS Funding Bill

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Tea Party Loses Big in Today’s Vote on Clean DHS Funding Bill

DHS Funding Fight Is Going Down to the Wire

by GemmaMcMinn Posted on February 25, 2015

Mother Jones

We’re getting down to the wire in the funding fight over the Department of Homeland Security: DHS will shut down this weekend if funding isn’t approved by Friday. In the Senate, Mitch McConnell wants to simply hold two separate votes: one to fund DHS and another to repeal President Obama’s recent immigration actions. But tea partiers in the House are adamantly opposed to that: they want to keep the two things together in one bill, which they hope will force Democrats to cave in and kill the immigration plan. In reality, it will only produce deadlock in the Senate and a shutdown of DHS that Republicans will be blamed for. So what’s John Boehner to do? Greg Sargent comments:

We’ve seen this particular thriller a number of times already. Here’s how it always goes: We are told there’s no way Boehner would ever dare move must-pass legislation with a lot of Democrats. He’s stuck! Then pressure builds and builds, and Boehner does end up passing something with a lot of Democrats. Last I checked, he’s still Speaker.

….The fact that Boehner has the mere option of passing clean funding with the help of a lot of Democrats is rarely even mentioned. You can read article after article about this whole showdown and not be informed of that basic fact. Thus, the actual reason we’re stuck in this crisis — Boehner is delaying the moment where he does pass something with Dems for as long as possible — goes oddly unmentioned. Yet recent history suggests that Boehner himself knows this is how it will end, and that all of this drama won’t change the outcome.

Probably so. After all, the only thing that changed in the last election was control of the Senate, and Senate Republicans are willing to compromise. The House is probably going to have to go down that road eventually too.

But my guess is that they’re going to shut down DHS for a while first. Boehner has made it pretty clear that he feels like he needs to demonstrate his conservative bona fides at the beginning of this new session of Congress, and that means holding out as long as he can. It’s a waste of time, and it’s going to hurt Republican efforts to work on other legislation, but that’s life. Symbols are important, and Boehner needs to show whose side he’s on. There’s a good chance this will last a couple of weeks before it gets resolved.

Excerpt from – 

DHS Funding Fight Is Going Down to the Wire

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, oven, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on DHS Funding Fight Is Going Down to the Wire

GOP Lawsuit Says Obama’s Immigration Plan Costs States Big Bucks. That’s Wrong.

by DaneLabynm Posted on February 12, 2015

Mother Jones

The mostly GOP-run states suing to block President Barack Obama’s immigration actions have a shaky legal argument. But politically, their rationale sounds even worse.

Continue Reading »

Original link:

GOP Lawsuit Says Obama’s Immigration Plan Costs States Big Bucks. That’s Wrong.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on GOP Lawsuit Says Obama’s Immigration Plan Costs States Big Bucks. That’s Wrong.

Obama Suckered Republicans Into an Immigration Trap—And They Charged Right In

by LillianaLlewell Posted on February 5, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Ed Kilgore notes that Latino approval of the Republican Party—already low in 2013—plummeted even further in 2014 when they spent all year pandering to their base and blocking any chance at some kind of comprehensive immigration reform. And it’s gotten even worse since then:

The marginally improved performance of the GOP among Latinos in the 2014 midterms probably tempted some to think disgruntlement with Obama would trump estrangement from the elephant party. But since then, of course, the president’s executive action on immigration provided fresh impetus to “deport ’em all” messaging, and the jockeying for position during the Invisible Primary for 2016 is not going to help.

I don’t have any big point to make here. I just wanted to highlight the passage above. In the same way that, say, Osama bin Laden wanted two things on 9/11—to attack the US and to provoke an insane counterreaction—President Obama wanted to accomplish two things with his immigration actions. Obviously he thought it was the right thing to do. Beyond that, though, he wanted to gain Latino support for Democrats and provoke an insane counterreaction from Republicans. He succeeded brilliantly on both counts. Republicans fell swiftly into his trap, and they show all signs of falling even further as primary season heats up. By the time 2016 rolls around, even a moderate guy like Jeb Bush is going to be so tainted by Republican craziness on immigration that he’ll get virtually no support from the Latino community.

It didn’t have to be this way. Republicans could have responded in a more measured way that would have blunted Obama’s actions. Instead they let themselves get suckered. Obama must be laughing his ass off right about now.

Read the article: 

Obama Suckered Republicans Into an Immigration Trap—And They Charged Right In

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Obama Suckered Republicans Into an Immigration Trap—And They Charged Right In

GOP Speech Pushes Immigration Reform—in Spanish Version Only

by GerardoWhitting Posted on January 21, 2015

Mother Jones

On Tuesday night, freshman Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida delivered the Republicans’ Spanish-language response to President Obama’s State of the Union address. His remarks initially were billed as a translation of Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst‘s official GOP response. That put the GOP in an awkward spot, as Mother Jones first reported on Tuesday: Ernst has long been a proponent of making English the official language of US government communications.

In the end, Curbelo’s speech wasn’t an exact replication of Ernst’s. Whereas the senator relied upon numerous anecdotes of life in small town Iowa, Curbelo stuck to more general platitudes to open and close his speech. But when it came to policy, each largely followed the same script—Curbelo’s essentially used the same structure and rephrased the same talking points, albeit in a different language.

But there was also a conspicuous divergence: While Ernst’s speech included comments about abortion politics, Curbelo instead touted the need for immigration reform. “We should work through the appropriate channels to create permanent solutions to our immigration system, modernize legal immigration, and strengthen our economy,” he said, according to a translation by the Democratic opposition research firm American Bridge. From there, Curbelo went directly back into language also found in Ernst’s speech, saying: “In the past, the President has expressed support for ideas like these; now we ask him to collaborate with us to get it done.”

Similarly, Curbelo briefly touched on education reform and Cuba—two topics Ernst didn’t broach.

Ultimately, it’s not too surprising that Ernst included no mention of immigration reform. In the past she has said that she couldn’t support a bill that offered “amnesty” to undocumented workers.

Taken from: 

GOP Speech Pushes Immigration Reform—in Spanish Version Only

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on GOP Speech Pushes Immigration Reform—in Spanish Version Only

This Map Shows The West’s Spreading Anti-Terror Crackdown

by FreddyHoliday Posted on January 20, 2015

Mother Jones

On the heels of the Paris attacks, a wave of anti-terror raids, arrests, and new security policies have swept the Western world in at least seven countries. Around two dozen suspects in four countries were apprehended on Thursday and Friday of last week. On Tuesday, counter-terrorism operations continued in France, Germany, and Greece. The map below plots the efforts thus far from Canada, the US, Germany, Ireland, France, Greece, and Belgium. Click on each city for further details.

Source:  

This Map Shows The West’s Spreading Anti-Terror Crackdown

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Map Shows The West’s Spreading Anti-Terror Crackdown

Ted Cruz Shoots Self in Foot, Declares Victory

by Greg3678myvmzjm Posted on December 14, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

File this under “with friends like this, who needs enemies?”

Republican senators fumed as a strategy developed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) intended to undercut President Obama’s immigration action seemed to backfire, giving Democrats a chance to move a batch of controversial Obama administration appointments.

….Saturday’s session was required after conservative Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) objected to an effort by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) late Friday to adjourn the Senate for the weekend….He and Cruz had sought to force a vote to strip out funding that would be used to implement Obama’s plan to halt deportations for as many as 5 million immigrants.

Without the ability to leave for the weekend, Reid instead began the process of bringing 20 long-stalled nominations to a vote, including Obama’s nominee for surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, who was a target of groups like the powerful National Rifle Assn. over his advocacy for stricter gun laws. Shortly after noon the Senate began the first of what could be 40 procedural votes that could lead to confirming all the nominees by the end of the week.

The Cruz/Lee proposal was entirely symbolic in not just one, but two separate ways:

It was merely a “point of order” to express opposition to funding President Obama’s executive order on immigration. It would have accomplished nothing.
It had little chance of passing anyway.

So now everyone has to spin their wheels on the Senate floor over the weekend instead of seeing their families or watching the Army-Navy game. By itself, that might deserve only the world’s tiniest violin. But as long they’re there and have some extra time, Harry Reid decided to start the process of approving a whole bunch of Obama nominations that otherwise might have dropped off the calendar later in the week as senators began pressing to start the holiday recess. That meant Obama’s nominees would have had to face a Republican Senate in January, but now, thanks to Cruz and Lee, they’ll all be safely in office by then.

I’m sure the NRA is thrilled. Ditto for all the Republicans who were apoplectic over the nomination of Tony Blinken as deputy secretary of state. And megadittoes—with a megadose of irony—for Cruz, Lee, and all their tea party buddies who objected to confirming Sarah Saldaña to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Their objection, of course, was meant as a protest against Obama’s executive order on immigration. Now, thanks to a dumb little stunt that was pathetic even as an empty protest against Obama’s immigration plan, they’re going to lose an actual, substantive protest against an Obama immigration nominee. Nice work, guys.

But I guess it’s a nice big platter of red meat that plays well with the rubes. With Cruz, that’s all that counts.

UPDATE: You gotta love this:

Only the Democrats seemed able to wrest a modicum of enjoyment from the day’s proceedings. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, said that it was “inconvenient to be here voting around the clock” but that he was “kind of pleased at how it’s working out.” Mr. Cardin said, “We will get these confirmations done, and we may not have gotten them done otherwise.” And as Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, struggled to explain to a group of reporters just what Mr. Cruz was trying to achieve, Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, loped by and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Let me know if you need backup,” Mr. Booker said with a grin.

Read more:

Ted Cruz Shoots Self in Foot, Declares Victory

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ted Cruz Shoots Self in Foot, Declares Victory

This Article Has Been Retracted

by MichaelJZDV Posted on November 26, 2014

Mother Jones

This story included erroneous information. Waterford, NY, fire chief Donald Baldwin was not the commenter in question. We regret the error and are investigating.

More: 

This Article Has Been Retracted

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Pines, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Article Has Been Retracted

One Man Should Not Dictate Immigration Policy

by Aaron Duff Posted on November 23, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

You know, the more I mull over the Republican complaint about how immigration reform is being implemented, the more I sympathize with them. Public policy, especially on big, hot button issues like immigration, shouldn’t be made by one person. One person doesn’t represent the will of the people, no matter what position he holds. Congress does, and the will of Congress should be paramount in policymaking.

Now don’t get me wrong. I haven’t changed my mind about the legality of all this. The Constitution is clear that each house of Congress makes its own rules. The rules of the House of Representatives are clear and well-established. And past speakers of the House have all used their legislative authority to prevent votes on bills they don’t wish to consider. Both the law and past precedent are clear: John Boehner is well within his legal rights to refuse to allow the House to vote on the immigration bill passed by the Senate in 2013.

Still, his expansion of that authority makes me uneasy. After all, this is a case where poll after poll shows that large majorities of the country favor comprehensive immigration reform. The Senate passed a bipartisan bill over a year ago by a wide margin. And there’s little question that the Senate bill has majority support in the House too. So not only is the will of Congress clear, but the president has also made it clear that he’d sign the bill if Congress passed it. The only thing stopping it is one man.

That should make us all a bit troubled. John Boehner may be acting legally. But is he acting properly?

From: 

One Man Should Not Dictate Immigration Policy

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on One Man Should Not Dictate Immigration Policy