The 800 Mile Wall

ABOUT THE FILM: The 800 Mile Wall highlights the construction of the new border walls along the U.S.-Mexico border as well as the effect on migrants trying to cross into the U.S. This powerful 90-minute film is an unflinching look at a failed U.S. border strategy that many believe has caused the death of thousands of migrants and violates fundamental human rights.

Since border walls have been built, well over 5,000 migrant bodies have been recovered in U.S. deserts, mountains and canals. Some unofficial reports put the death toll as high as 10,000 men, women and children. As a direct result of U.S. border policy, migrants are forced to cross treacherous deserts and mountains in search of low skill and low paying jobs in the United States. The New York Times writes, "Current border strategy is serving as a funnel through deadly terrain." The 800 Mile Wall documents, in great detail, the ineffective and deadly results of a failed border policy and offers some thoughts and on how the current human rights crisis may be resolved. Directed by John Carlos Frey and Produced by Jack Lorenz. Running Time: 90 min.

Divided Friendship

This collaborative work in progress focuses on Border Field State Park in San Diego, California. Border Field State Park is also known as “Friendship Park,” and marks the southern-most point on the West Coast of the continental United States, located exactly where the United States, Mexico, and the Pacific Ocean meet.

The existing fence within “Friendship Park” was one of the last remaining locations along the 2000-mile U.S./Mexico border allowed for face-to-face communication across the boundary within a large urban area. This alone has made the park an important gathering place for families that have been separated due to immigration status. Border Field State Park also encompasses a significant Native American Kumayay cultural site, as well as a fragile protected ecological habitat known as the Tijuana River Estuary.

Washington politicians and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) decided in 2007 to unilaterally suspend all environmental regulations, and ignore local concerns, in order to construct a 150 foot wide triple fence extending into the Pacific Ocean, utterly destroying this last remnant of what was originally known as “Friendship Park.” Throughout 2008 construction of the new fence advanced rapidly, and has already reached the last section of the park.

Our film documents the former beauty and diversity of the park from both sides of the border, and explores current policy decisions and their consequences that are framed within anti-immigrant and national security rhetoric. It contains interviews with families, activists and others concerned about the future of this unique place.

Undocumented Immigration: A new Tendency

Registra nueva tendencia inmigración indocumentada a EUA

Diario de San Diego, 21 de diciembre, 2009

La inmigración indocumentada hacia Estados Unidos registró este año de 2009 una tendencia a la baja, en lo que perfila un cambio histórico mayor. Especialistas indican que el vuelco en la tendencia migratoria es propiciado por el notable incremento en la vigilancia fronteriza y otros factores como la recesión económica y el aumento del desempleo.
La detención de indocumentados cayó 67 por ciento en los últimos nueve años, al pasar de un millón 675 mil 438 aprehensiones en 2000 a un total de 556 mil 041 el año fiscal 2009, que concluyó el pasado 30 de septiembre. El número de detenidos en 2009 es el más bajo de los últimos 34 años. La Patrulla Fronteriza y especialistas independientes sostienen que hay una relación directa entre los arrestos y el número de personas que trata de cruzar la frontera, especialmente tras el aumento en la vigilancia fronteriza de años recientes.
David Aguilar, jefe nacional de la Patrulla Fronteriza, dijo que los nuevos datos muestran que la inversión que Estados Unidos ha hecho en personal, equipo y tecnología ha creado una fuerte disuasión para el cruce de indocumentados. "Tenemos la mezcla correcta en los lugares precisos y en el momento exacto", señaló. El presupuesto de la Patrulla Fronteriza se incrementó para alcanzar más de 10 mil 900 millones de dólares en 2008, casi cinco mil millones de dólares más que en 2004.
Estados Unidos tiene ahora más de 20 mil agentes fronterizos, en comparación con los 11 mil de 2004. El Departamento de Seguridad Interna (DHS) ha construido además muros y barreras contra vehículos en una tercera parte de los más de tres mil kilómetros de frontera con México. Aún no está claro, para los expertos, si con estas medidas de seguridad los cambios a la baja en las tendencias migratorias se mantendrán los próximos años, cuando la economía estadunidense se recupere de nuevo.
Para el gobierno federal, sin embargo, no existe duda de que se ha tenido éxito en la política de frenar la inmigración ilegal. La secretaria de Seguridad Interna, Janet Napolitano, aseguró a principios de diciembre que la administración del presidente Barack Obama ha alcanzado un "cambio fundamental" en la seguridad fronteriza. Añadió que la disminución en el flujo migratorio y los mejores resultados en la vigilancia fronteriza, abren las perspectivas de una reforma a las leyes de inmigración.
La administración del presidente Obama utilizará sin duda los próximos meses la evidencia de sus resultados a lo largo de la frontera para ganar apoyo en el Congreso a una reforma al sistema de inmigración en 2010. La disminución en los cruces ilegales parece haber puesto fin también a años de continuo crecimiento de la población indocumentada en Estados Unidos. El DHS informó en fecha reciente que el número de indocumentados en el país disminuyó de 11.8 millones en enero de 2007 a 11.6 millones en enero de 2008, el primer año en que no se registra un incremento.

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New figures show (another) drop in Mexicans coming to the US
The US recession continues to discourage would-be immigrants, with fresh Mexican government numbers showing a 40 percent drop in Mexicans emigrating in the past two years.

By Sara Miller Llana Staff writer
posted December 30, 2009 at 8:38 am EST

Mexico City —
The number of Mexicans leaving the country to go abroad in the third quarter of this year dropped nearly 10 percent from the same period last year and fell about 40 percent compared to the number in 2007, as the recession in the US continued to discourage would-be immigrants.

According to numbers released this week by the National Statistics and Geography Institute (INEGI) in Mexico, some 142,052 Mexicans emigrated in the third quarter of this year. That's down from 155,090 last year and 234,146 the year before.

“It’s primarily the economy, because these are people who have been coming to the US for many years in response to labor market demands,” says Doris Meissner, director of the US Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. “That went away with the recession.”

In the US, some 7.2 million jobs have been lost since December 2007. The foreign-born population has been the hardest hit. From 1994 to 2007, employment among immigrants was higher than that of natives, reaching 66 percent in 2007 compared to 63 percent for natives. But from the start of the recession through the first half of 2009, unemployment among immigrants rose to 9.2 percent (from a low of 3.4 percent), according to a Migration Policy Institute report, “Tied to the Business Cycle: How Immigrants Fare in Good and Bad Economic Times,” released in November. The native unemployment rate stood at 8.3 percent.

In certain sectors such as construction, which depends heavily on Mexican labor, the unemployment rate grew to as much as 17 percent in the first half of 2009.

Households headed by immigrants faced higher poverty rates. The real median income in 2008 was 5.3 percent lower than the previous year, and poverty rates grew by more than a percentage point to 17.8 percent.

Such deterrents have shrunk the balance of migrants – the numbers of those returning versus those leaving – in Mexico. The new INEGI figures show that while the balance stood at "negative 33,974" in the third quarter of 2009 - meaning that there were 33,974 more Mexicans that left Mexico than returned to the country in that time frame. It was at negative 72,038 in 2008 and negative 151,165 in 2007.

Still, despite analyst predictions that Mexico would face an influx of nationals returning home from the US, stretching government resources, INEGI figures show that the numbers of those returning during the third quarter of this year are only up slightly, at 108,078 in the third quarter of the year, compared to 83,052 in the same period last year and 82,981 in 2007. “There is still nor evidence of a massive return of migrants to the national territory,” INEGI said in its release.

That is in part due to Mexico’s own economic woes. Stricter enforcement along the US border has also caused many unemployed immigrants, even those in dire situations, to rethink returning home temporarily. “Even though it is bad in the US from a jobs standpoint, many feel that when jobs pick up again it will be much harder – if not close to impossible – to return,” says Ms. Meissner.

Houston: Sanctuary City for Immigrants

Mantendrá Houston política de santuario para indocumentados

Diario San Diego, 14 Diciembre, 2009

Annise Parker, la alcaldesa electa de Houston, adelantó que bajo su administración esta ciudad seguirá siendo "santuario" para los inmigrantes indocumentados, al mantener a su policía alejada de la aplicación de las leyes de inmigración.

Parker, quien tomará posesión en enero próximo como la primera alcaldesa abiertamente homosexual de Houston, en el estado de Texas, dijo que buscará que todos los residentes de la ciudad, incluyendo los indocumentados, confíen en su policía.

"Como funcionaria pública deseo que todos en la ciudad de Houston que hayan sido víctimas de un crimen se sientan libres de llamar a la policía y que la policía acuda y responda", dijo la futura alcaldesa en su primer rueda de prensa este domingo.

Houston se ha mantenido alejada de la tendencia por parte de los gobiernos locales de adoptar la colaboración de sus policías con las autoridades migratorias bajo el programa 287 g.

El programa capacita a las policías locales para realizar arrestos migratorios y procesos de deportación bajo supervisión de la Oficina de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE).

Parker dijo que cuando los agentes de policía detienen a una persona por una violación específica y encuentran que dicha persona es un inmigrante indocumentado y la detienen para llevarla a la cárcel, "esto hace a la ciudad más vulnerable al crimen".

"Cada vez que eso pasa, el agente deja de ser un policía efectivo", explicó Parker, al indicar que esta política genera el temor de la población indocumentada hacia las autoridades, lo que dificulta que se reporten crímenes y otros incidentes.

Parker dijo en cambio que si apoya el programa 287 cuando este se aplica en las cárceles, para deportar a inmigrantes indocumentados convictos de algún delito grave.

Houston cuenta con la tercera mayor población de origen hispano en Estados Unidos y se estima que entre 400 y 500 mil de sus residentes sean inmigrantes indocumentados.

La política "santuario" de Houston y de otras comunidades que han decidido no involucrar a sus policías en asuntos migratorios, ha sido duramente criticada por quienes se oponen a la inmigración ilegal en el país, al ver esta medida como un aliciente para los indocumentados.

Luis Gutierrez Intruduces Immigration Reform Bill Proposal

Luis Gutierrez Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bil





(Washington D.C.) On Tuesday, December 15, Congressman Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL) will introduce new legislation, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009 (CIR ASAP), to the U.S. House of Representatives. Gutierrez will be joined by members of many different faiths and backgrounds, including the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Black Caucus, Asian Pacific American Caucus and Progressive Caucus.

Who: Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (IL-4), Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Immigration Task Force
Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez (NY-12), Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus
Rep. Yvette D. Clarke (NY-11), Whip of the Congressional Black Caucus
Rep. Mike Honda (CA-15), Chair of Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus
Rep. Lynn Woolsey (CA-6), Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus
Rep. Judy Chu (CA-32)
Rep. Joseph Crowley (NY-7)
Rep. Pedro R. Pierluisi (PR-At large)
Rep. Jared Polis (CO-2)
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL-9)
Rep. Jose E. Serrano (NY-16)
Other Members of Congress

What: Introduction of Comprehensive Immigration Reform Legislation
When:  12:30 pm, Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Where: Room 2220, Rayburn House Office Building
“We have waited patiently for a workable solution to our immigration crisis to be taken up by this Congress and our President,” said Rep. Gutierrez. “The time for waiting is over. This bill will be presented before Congress recesses for the holidays so that there is no excuse for inaction in the New Year. It is the product of months of collaboration with civil rights advocates, labor organizations, and members of Congress. It is an answer to too many years of pain —mothers separated from their children, workers exploited and undermined security at the border— all caused at the hands of a broken immigration system. This bill says ‘enough,’ and presents a solution to our broken system that we as a nation of immigrants can be proud of.”

The complete text of the bill is available in the Library of the Congress

(http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:h4321.ih:)
A summary of the Gutierrez bill that was introduced in Congress.


Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity (CIR ASAP) Act of 2009


TITLE I - BORDER SECURITY, DETENTION, A
ND ENFORCEMENT

Subtitle A - Border Security:
Subtitle A of Title I assembles a vision of effective and accountable enforcement for the 21st century through maximizing border security by requiring the Secr
etary of Homeland Security to form a national strategy that is consistent with the progress already made.  In order to achieve these goals, oversight and accountability for the Department of Homeland Security is emphasized, especially as they pertain to fiscal appropriations and cost-benefit analyses of operations and programs. 

Prisions for Immigrants

Questions On Public-Private Prisons
For Immigrants




In remote places along the southwest border of the US, the consequences of recent immigration crackdown are changing the face of imprisonment in this part of America. There, public-private prisons are being built to hold immigrants both legal and illegal.

These prisons are publicly owned by local governments, privately operated by corporations, publicly financed by tax-exempt bonds, and located in depressed communities, says journalist Tom Barry, who reported on a new trend in dealing with immigrants in a recent issue of the Boston Review.

The immigrants held at these prisons are dubbed "criminal aliens" by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. Barry tells Fresh Air host Terry Gross that following 9/11, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Customs and Border Protection Agencys have teamed with local police to target immigrants — legal and illegal — who have criminal records for deportation.

Tom Barry covers border security and immigration issues as the Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for International Policy. He has written several books, including The Great Divide and Zapata's Revenge.

Despidos masivos: La nueva cara de las redadas contra migrantes

MASS FIRINGS - THE NEW FACE OF IMMIGRATION RAIDS
By David Bacon
The Progressive, December 2009/January 2010
http://www.progressive.org/full/archive

LOS ANGELES, CA (12/10/09) -- Ana Contreras would have been a competitor for the national tai kwon do championship team this year. She's 14. For six years she's gone to practice instead of birthday parties, giving up the friendships most teenagers live for. Then two months ago disaster struck. Her mother Dolores lost her job. The money for classes was gone, and not just that.
"I only bought clothes for her once a year, when my tax refund check came," Dolores Contreras explains. "Now she needs shoes, and I had to tell her we didn't have any money. I stopped the cable and the internet she needs for school. When my cell phone contract is up next month, I'll stop that too. I've never had enough money for a car, and now we've gone three months without paying the light bill."
Contreras shares her misery with eighteen hundred other families. All lost their jobs when their employer, American Apparel, fired them for lacking immigration status. {Her name was changed for this article.] She still has her letter from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), handed her two months ago by the company lawyer. It says the documents she provided when she was hired are no good, and without work authorization, her work life is over.
Of course, it's not really over. Contreras still has to keep working if she and her daughter are to eat and pay rent. So instead of a job that barely paid her bills, she had to find another one that won't even do that.
Contreras is a skilled sewing machine operator. She came to the U.S. thirteen years ago, after working many years in the garment factories of Tehuacan, Puebla. There companies like Levis make so many pairs of stonewashed jeans that the town's water has turned blue. In Los Angeles, Contreras hoped to find the money to send home for her sister's weekly dialysis treatments, and to pay the living and school expenses for four other siblings. For five years she moved from shop to shop. Like most garment workers, she didn't get paid for overtime, her paychecks were often short, and sometimes her employer disappeared overnight, owing weeks in back pay.
Finally Contreras got a job at American Apparel, famous for its sexy clothing, made in Los Angeles instead of overseas. She still had to work like a demon. Her team of ten experienced seamstresses turned out 30 dozen tee shirts an hour. After dividing the piece rate evenly among them, she'd come home with $400 for a 4-day week, after taxes. She paid Social Security too, although she'll never see a dime in benefits because her contributions were credited to an invented number.
Now Contreras's working again in a sweatshop at half what she earned before. Meanwhile, American Apparel is replacing those who were fired. Contreras says they're mostly older women with documents, who can't work as fast. "Maybe they sew 10 dozen a day apiece," she claims. "The only operators with papers are the older ones. Younger, faster workers either have no papers, or if they have them, they find better-paying jobs doing something easier.
"President Obama is responsible for putting us in this situation," she charges angrily. "This is worse than an immigration raid. They want to keep us from working at all."


Legalizing unauthorized immigrants would help economy

Two policy institutes look at the more than 11 million unauthorized immigrants in U.S.
Report: Legalization of current population would boost wages, consumption, jobs, tax revenue
Institutes estimate $1.5 trillion boost in U.S. gross domestic product over 10 years
But other groups say unfettered immigration harms U.S., so entry into nation must be limited

Washington, CNN, Jan 7, 2010-- Legalization of the more than 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States would raise wages, increase consumption, create jobs and generate more tax revenue, two policy institutes say in a joint report Thursday.


Latino/a Immigrants in the US Face Poverty

An undesirable inheritance
U.S.-born kids of illegal immigrants twice as likely as others to face poverty

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post, December 9, 2009

Eight-year-old Alex picked up a 75-cent can of fruit punch from one of the grocery store's shelves and called excitedly to his mother in Spanish.

"Mami! Can we buy something to drink?"


Mexican Deportees Increase in 2009


Mexican Deportees Increase in 2009



MEXICO CITY—An average of 1,719 undocumented Mexicans were deported each day by the U.S. government in the first 10 months of 2009, reports La Opinión. This figure comes from migration statistics from the Ministry of Interior’s most recent reports, and represents an increase of 7.3% over the same period in 2008. Baja California received the highest number of deportees, with 206,039.

The statistics only considered Mexicans detained by U.S. immigration authorities and who adhered to the Voluntary Repatriation Program, part of the Memorandum of Understanding on the Safe, Orderly, Dignified and Humane Repatriation of Mexican Nationals, signed by the U.S. and Mexico in February 2004. 

Immigrants Die in US Jails

January 10, 2010-New York Times

Officials Hid Truth About Immigrant Deaths in Jail
By NINA BERNSTEIN

Silence has long shrouded the men and women who die in the nation’s immigration jails. For years, they went uncounted and unnamed in the public record. Even in 2008, when The New York Times obtained and published a federal government list of such deaths, few facts were available about who these people were and how they died.
But behind the scenes, it is now clear, the deaths had already generated thousands of pages of government documents, including scathing investigative reports that were kept under wraps, and a trail of confidential memos and BlackBerry messages that show officials working to stymie outside inquiry.
The documents, obtained over recent months by The Times and the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act, concern most of the 107 deaths in detention counted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement since October 2003, after the agency was created within the Department of Homeland Security.
The Obama administration has vowed to overhaul immigration detention, a haphazard network of privately run jails, federal centers and county cells where the government holds noncitizens while it tries to deport them.
But as the administration moves to increase oversight within the agency, the documents show how officials — some still in key positions — used their role as overseers to cover up evidence of mistreatment, deflect scrutiny by the news media or prepare exculpatory public statements after gathering facts that pointed to substandard care or abuse.
As one man lay dying of head injuries suffered in a New Jersey immigration jail in 2007, for example, a spokesman for the federal agency told The Times that he could learn nothing about the case from government authorities. In fact, the records show, the spokesman had alerted those officials to the reporter’s inquiry, and they conferred at length about sending the man back to Africa to avoid embarrassing publicity.
In another case that year, investigators from the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that unbearable, untreated pain had been a significant factor in the suicide of a 22-year-old detainee at the Bergen County Jail in New Jersey, and that the medical unit was so poorly run that other detainees were at risk.
The investigation found that jail medical personnel had falsified a medication log to show that the detainee, a Salvadoran named Nery Romero, had been given Motrin. The fake entry was easy to detect: When the drug was supposedly administered, Mr. Romero was already dead.
Yet those findings were never disclosed to the public or to Mr. Romero’s relatives on Long Island, who had accused the jail of abruptly depriving him of his prescription painkiller for a broken leg. And an agency supervisor wrote that because other jails were “finicky” about accepting detainees with known medical problems like Mr. Romero’s, such people would continue to be placed at the Bergen jail as “a last resort.”
In a recent interview, Benjamin Feldman, a spokesman for the jail, which housed 1,503 immigration detainees last year, would not say whether any changes had been made since the death.
In February 2007, in the case of the dying African man, the immigration agency’s spokesman for the Northeast, Michael Gilhooly, rebuffed a Times reporter’s questions about the detainee, who had suffered a skull fracture at the privately run Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey. Mr. Gilhooly said that without a full name and alien registration number for the man, he could not check on the case.
But, records show, he had already filed a report warning top managers at the federal agency about the reporter’s interest and sharing information about the injured man, a Guinean tailor named Boubacar Bah. Mr. Bah, 52, had been left in an isolation cell without treatment for more than 13 hours before an ambulance was called.
While he lay in the hospital in a coma after emergency brain surgery, 10 agency managers in Washington and Newark conferred by telephone and e-mail about how to avoid the cost of his care and the likelihood of “increased scrutiny and/or media exposure,” according to a memo summarizing the discussion.
One option they explored was sending the dying man to Guinea, despite an e-mail message from the supervising deportation officer, who wrote, “I don’t condone removal in his present state as he has a catheter” and was unconscious. Another idea was renewing Mr. Bah’s canceled work permit in hopes of tapping into Medicaid or disability benefits.
Eventually, faced with paying $10,000 a month for nursing home care, officials settled on a third course: “humanitarian release” to cousins in New York who had protested that they had no way to care for him. But days before the planned release, Mr. Bah died.
Among the participants in the conferences was Nina Dozoretz, a longtime manager in the agency’s Division of Immigration Health Services who had won an award for cutting detainee health care costs. Later she was vice president of the Nakamoto Group, a company hired by the Bush administration to monitor detention. The Obama administration recently rehired her to lead its overhaul of detainee health care.
Asked about the conference call on Mr. Bah, Ms. Dozoretz said: “How many years ago was that? I don’t recall all the specifics if indeed there was a call.” She added, “I advise you to contact our public affairs office.” Mr. Gilhooly, the spokesman who had said he had no information on the case, would not comment.
On the day after Mr. Bah’s death in May 2007, Scott Weber, director of the Newark field office of the immigration enforcement agency, recommended in a memo that the agency take the unusual step of paying to send the body to Guinea for burial, to prevent his widow from showing up in the United States for a funeral and drawing news coverage.
Mr. Weber wrote that he believed the agency had handled Mr. Bah’s case appropriately. “However,” he added, “I also don’t want to stir up any media interest where none is warranted.” Helping to bury Mr. Bah overseas, he wrote, “will go a long way to putting this matter to rest.”
In the agency’s confidential files was a jail video showing Mr. Bah face down in the medical unit, hands cuffed behind his back, just before medical personnel sent him to a disciplinary cell. The tape shows him crying out repeatedly in his native Fulani, “Help, they are killing me!”
Almost a year after his death, the agency quietly closed the case without action. But Mr. Bah’s name had shown up on the first list of detention fatalities, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and on May 5, 2008, his death was the subject of a front-page article in The Times.
Brian P. Hale, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in an interview that the newly disclosed records represented the past, and that the agency’s new leaders were committed to transparency and greater oversight, including prompt public disclosure and investigation of every death, and more attention to detainee care in a better-managed system.
But the most recent documents show that the culture of secrecy has endured. And the past cover-ups underscore what some of the agency’s own employees say is a central flaw in the proposed overhaul: a reliance on the agency to oversee itself.
“Because ICE investigates itself there is no transparency and there is no reform or improvement,” Chris Crane, a vice president in the union that represents employees of the agency’s detention and removal operations, told a Congressional subcommittee on Dec. 10.
The agency has kept a database of detention fatalities at least since December 2005, when a National Public Radio investigation spurred a Congressional inquiry. In 2006, the agency issued standard procedures for all such deaths to be reported in detail to headquarters.
But internal documents suggest that officials were intensely concerned with controlling public information. In April 2007, Marc Raimondi, then an agency spokesman, warned top managers that a Washington Post reporter had asked about a list of 19 deaths that the civil liberties union had compiled, and about a dying man whose penile cancer had spread after going undiagnosed in detention, despite numerous medical requests for a biopsy.
“These are quite horrible medical stories,” Mr. Raimondi wrote, “and I think we’ll need to have a pretty strong response to keep this from becoming a very damaging national story that takes on long legs.”
That response was an all-out defense of detainee medical care over several months, including statistics that appeared to show that mortality rates in detention were declining, and were low compared with death rates in prisons.
Experts in detention health care called the comparison misleading; it also came to light that the agency was undercounting the number of detention deaths, as well as discharging some detainees shortly before they died. In August, litigation by the civil liberties union prompted the Obama administration to disclose that more than one in 10 immigrant detention deaths had been overlooked and omitted from a list submitted to Congress last year.
Two of those deaths had occurred in Arizona, in 2004 and 2007, at the Eloy Detention Center, run by the Corrections Corporation of America. Eloy had nine known fatalities — more than any other immigration jail under contract to the federal government. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement was still secretive. When a reporter for The Arizona Republic asked about the circumstances of those deaths, an agency spokesman told him the records were unavailable.
According to records The Times obtained in December, one Eloy detainee who died, in October 2008, was Emmanuel Owusu. An ailing 62-year-old barber who had arrived from Ghana on a student visa in 1972, he had been a legal permanent resident for 33 years, mostly in Chicago. Immigration authorities detained him in 2006, based on a 1979 conviction for misdemeanor battery and retail theft.
“I am confused as to how subject came into our custody???” the Phoenix field office director, Katrina S. Kane, wrote to subordinates. “Convicted in 1979? That’s a long time ago.”
In response, a report on his death was revised to refer to Mr. Owusu’s “lengthy criminal history ranging from 1977 to 1998.” It did not note that except for the battery conviction, that history consisted mostly of shoplifting offenses.
A diabetic with high blood pressure, he had been detained for two years at Eloy while he battled deportation. He died of a heart ailment weeks after his last appeal was dismissed.

Desempleo causa estragos

Comunidad latina, la más afectada por el desempleo en Estados Unidos

Apf, La Jornada, 10 de enero de 2010

Washington, 9 de enero. En 2009 la comunidad latina en Estados Unidos sufrió uno de los años más difíciles de los últimos tiempos, con una tasa de desempleo superior a la media nacional, un oleada sin precedentes de casas perdidas por impago de hipotecas y el fantasma del retorno a los países de origen para los inmigrantes sin trabajo.

La primera potencia mundial cerró el año con un índice de desempleo de 10 por ciento, pero entre los latinos la tasa fue de 12.9 por ciento, con un impacto especialmente devastador en el sector de la construcción, donde uno de cada cuatro trabajadores son latinos y la tasa de desempleo global es de 22.5 por ciento.

En los pasados 12 meses el desempleo, que subió 3 por ciento globalmente en Estados Unidos (sin precedentes desde 1949) aumentó 3.4 por ciento entre los latinos, grupo que es superado sólo por la comunidad afroamericana, con un desempleo en diciembre de 2009 de 16.2 por ciento.

A pesar de una leve recuperación en noviembre, las cifras son “tozudas”, reconoció el pasado viernes la secretaria de Trabajo estadunidense, Hilda Solís, en entrevista con corresponsales latinos.

Lo más inquietante para esta comunidad en estos momentos es el desaliento, añadió Solís. “Eso es algo que sucede típicamente cuando la gente agota su seguro de desempleo: dejan de seguir buscando”, añadió.

Solís, uno de los dos miembros de origen latino que conforman el gabinete del presidente Barack Obama, pidió un esfuerzo a los hispanos en esta época. “Mi mensaje es que no nos demos por vencidos: tenemos que seguir buscando trabajo, buscar reciclaje profesional. Tenemos que hacer cambios y convencer a la gente en nuestras comunidades de que llegó el tiempo de hacer esas inversiones”, planteó.

El gobierno informó que durante diciembre del año pasado se perdieron en Estados Unidos 85 mil puestos de trabajo y un total de 4.6 millones de puestos en 2009, la cifra más elevada desde 1939. En este contexto la tasa nacional de desempleo llegó a 10 por ciento. Sin embargo, entre la comunidad latina la desocupación llegó a casi 13 por ciento, lo que confirma la tendencia que en malos tiempos económicos ésa es la minoría que más sufre las consecuencias.
Para quienes no pueden soportar la angustia de la falta de trabajo, un nuevo fenómeno está apareciendo: el retorno a sus países de origen, aunque los expertos no se ponen de acuerdo sobre su importancia.

Pueblos mexicanos o centroamericanos, que durante lustros vivieron casi exclusivamente de las remesas que mandaban los hombres que emigraron legal o ilegalmente a Estados Unidos, ven cómo algunos de ellos regresan con la manos vacías.

En consulados como el mexicano en Phoenix (Arizona), inmigrantes triplicaron sus solicitudes de transferencia escolar para sus hijos, un signo de que vuelven a su país para quedarse. Pero el instituto de estudios Pew Hispanic Center detectó que el promedio de mexicanos que regresan a su país fue de 433 mil entre febrero de 2008 y febrero de 2009, casi sin cambios respecto al año pasado.

“No hemos descubierto que regresen más, pero sí hemos encontrado cifras que indican que muchos menos intentan entrar” al país, explicó Rakesh Kochhar, del Pew Hispanic Center.