Nightmarish Detentions
An outstanding commentary follows on the hellish imprisonments faced by individuals in the ICE detention system. The following op-ed by Larry Cox, Amnesty USA’s executive director, appeared in Monday’s Telegram … but since we don’t actually publish syndicated columns online, the following excerpt links to a full version of the story elsewhere.
On any given night, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) warehouses more than 30,000 immigrants in prisons and jails—a number that has tripled in the past 12 years. Among them, surely, are immigrants who have committed deportable offenses or are undocumented—but the jailed also include large numbers of legal permanent residents, individuals seeking protection from political or religious persecution, survivors of torture and human trafficking, U.S. citizens mistakenly ensnared in immigration raids, and parents of U.S. citizen children.
… Lawmakers who fear anti-immigrant backlash might consider the secondary benefits to honoring our moral imperative: the average cost of detaining a migrant is $95 per person/per day, while alternatives to detention cost as little as $12 per person/per day and yield up to a 99 percent success rate, according to ICE, as measured by immigrants’ appearance in immigration courts for removal hearings.
Congress should also pass legislation to ensure due process for all within our borders, including the right to a prompt individualized hearing before an immigration judge. Currently, ICE field office directors have the power to decide whether to detain someone; yet to incarcerate an individual for months, or even years, before a court makes a judgment on the individual’s case is an absurd negation of our nation’s stated commitment to the rule of law. (Read the entire op-ed here.)
Subscribe to the comments for this postTwisted Politics
Another story off the presses about gay couples divided by American immigration law, exploring the twisted dilemma of two of the most politically charged issues in our time: gay rights and immigration reform.
Immigration Equality, a New York-based advocacy organization, estimates 36,000 binational, same-sex couples like the ones profiled in Sunday’s Houston Chronicle story are left with few options to legally build lives together in the U.S.:
- Gay and lesbian U.S. citizens are not entitled to apply for legal status for their partners, even if their marriage is recognized by state law.
- Massachusetts and Connecticut legalized same-sex marriage as a result of judicial decisions in 2003 and 2008, while Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire followed this spring by legislative action. In the rest of the country, only Iowa allows same-sex couples to marry.
Here is an excerpt from the Sunday story about the couple — one in Canada and the other in Texas — I found particularly intriguing:
A strong voice in the pro-immigrant movement, the Catholic Church, also has taken a stand against the bill, based on the belief that marriage is strictly between a man and a woman, said Kevin Appleby, migration policy director for U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
He added that the church, long supportive of a comprehensive immigration reform bill, sees the push for same-sex couples as giving “opponents another arrow in their quiver.”
“The last thing the immigration debate needs is another politically divisive issue,” Appleby said. “Immigration is controversial enough, and to add another issue of national interest that is also controversial could be combustible.”
Combustible indeed! When I first posted a story about a binational, same-sex couple, the slew of anti-gay comments was expected but disheartening. As I previously wrote in response to these comments, it’s very difficult to profitably explain why immigration rights should extend to gay and lesbian immigrants when there are folks who still believe that the rights of the gay community should continue to be restricted in the legal, financial and societal sectors of our community. If anything we can see through these personal stories how intertwined all these issues — immigration, gay and lesbian rights, privacy laws — really are and how addressing one (i.e. inherently discriminatory policies against gays and lesbians in our military and society) could positively impact another. I disagree with Appleby (quoted above) — while it’s true the immigration debate does not so extensively overlap with the gay rights debate, we cannot ignore it when it does. We just have to find a way not to let our heads combust in the process!
A glimmer of hope
Last week, the Obama administration took another step toward restoring fairness and humanity to the immigration system by granting two-year reprieves to immigrants who were married to U.S. citizens but didn’t complete the permanent residency process in time, because their American spouses died during the process. Read more about the new policies here.
Social Capital in Garden City
For Garden Citians interested in the dynamics of our city’s inter-ethnic relations and a deep look into its history, too, there’s going to be a KU graduate student, Molly DesBaillets, in town Saturday (at 10 a.m. at the Finney County Historical Museum) to give a presentation and talk with locals about these topics. The PhD student of cultural anthropology focused her master’s research on social capital in Garden City — the networks and connections between people and groups. Read more in today’s Telegram.
Here some other stories readers might be interested in… enjoy!
County now majority-minority population
Published 5/20/2009 in Local News
Members of Mariachi Nuevo Sonido perform from a flatbed trailer as part of a parade entry during the 2008 Community Fiesta celebration. Garden City is a majority-minority population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.(Brad Nading/Telegram)
Finney County has added its name to a growing list of counties nationwide where minorities outnumber the majority — non-Hispanic whites — and the news is making national cable television.
A crew from CNN that rolled into town earlier this week is leaving today, after getting a glimpse of Garden City’s diversity in a county where 50 percent — or 20,505 of 40,998 individuals — identify themselves as minorities, according to numbers released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Read more…
ESL students share stories, learn language
Published 5/7/2009 in Local News : Education
German Robles ansers questions about his ESL scrapbook project Wednesday at Garden City Community College Beth Tedrow Student Center portico. (Brad Nading/Telegram)
Garden City Community College student Ngoc Nguyen hasn’t seen her two siblings in nearly three years, after part of her family left their small village in South Vietnam to live with extended family in Hugoton, hoping for a better life.
Now the 19-year-old, who has aspirations to be a pharmacist, is learning intensively along with dozens of other English-as-second-language students in adult learning classes at the college. Read more…
Kansas roots on display at Stauth
Published 5/22/2009 in Local News
Museum director Kim LegLeiter describes the town of Nicodemus, a planned Kansas community devoted to African-American settlement in the years after the U.S. Civil War.
MONTEZUMA — The tranquil face of Moses Jay Nesahklauh reveals much from his black and white portrait.
The Kansas American Indian whose name means “glittering rainbow” in the Apache language returned to Kansas a decorated World War II veteran and is portrayed in regalia he wears proudly as a member of the Wichita Intertribal Warriors’ Society.
The Indians of Kansas is one of seven exhibits from the Kansas Historical Society on display this month at the Stauth Memorial Museum in Montezuma. The exhibits detail the lives of Kansas immigrants from an era prior to statehood to the present day through photos, oral histories and maps. Read more…
Freedom Fighter
I was fairly dismayed by the first two comments on this photo, an image we published of a man using his right to peaceful assembly to raise awareness of the imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi. Here they are:
Are You Kidding Me?
Get off your a** and get a job. We working Americans don’t have the luxury of sitting around on the lawn with a sign that doesn’t pertain to anything in Garden City, much less Kansas. Either be a contributing member of our society or get out.
Posted by: American 2 on 6/4/2009
Bull*@^T
What a Bunch of BULL*&@T to even cover this story
Posted by: American on 6/3/2009
Freedom fighter
Published 6/2/2009 in Local News By The Telegram
Win Zaw sits on the grounds of the Finney County Courthouse Monday afternoon in an attempt to call attention to the plight of Burmese freedom fighter and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Su Kyi, who has been under house arrest by the military junta for a majority of the last 19 years. Zaw and two other Burmese refuges are answering Kyi's call to use their liberty to promote liberty in Burma. (Laurie Sisk/Telegram)
Well, here’s are some thoughts from American 3: For those who would purport to assume that the imprisonment of a Noble Prize-winning human rights activist has nothing to do with the community here, I ask that you remember there is a very large Burmese community in Garden City … a community that is here because of the very injustices this woman is fighting against and this guy is raising awareness about. Why would someone make a bogus claim that this guy is out of work without knowing for sure? In addition, what’s wrong with him spending his free time the way he wants to? Residents in America — citizens and non-citizens alike — have a right to peaceful assembly.
Hope & Fear
“There is a grim contradiction at work here with the Obama administration simultaneously, and self-destructively, twisting the dials of hope and fear,” the NY Times editorial writers said today.
The editorialists contend that the Department of Homeland Security has been pressing ahead with an old Bush administration policy of lengthening the local law enforcement arm, arresting and detaining individuals suspected of being undocumented. But the efforts are poorly designed, putting more legal residents and Americans at risk than enforcing safety. Not only do they get mixed in with the lot of sweeping raids, community policing strikes fear into undocumented residents already here — I don’t think we can afford to have victims or witnesses out there who won’t call the local police because they’re afraid of being deported.
It’s a tricky subject. The federal government has historically enforced civil immigration law, and state and local police have focused on enforcing criminal law. Where the two meet, you get guys like Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, creating a tidal wave of controversy. Here’s the thing: Presumptions about correlations between documentation and crime have been debunked, while anti-immigrant sentiment continues to propel the demands for police to take an increased role in immigration enforcement. How do we reconcile the two? I don’t know, but the rhetoric on both sides can often be heart-wrenching and passionate, often leading to racism and hate. Hopefully we can learn something from the death of Dr. George Tiller and our own president’s response: ”However profound our differences over difficult issues, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.”