Good News at the End of a Long Week

After a long week that included sharp cuts in funding to many essential programs and services across the state, including some to programs and services for immigrants and refugees, it is nice to see the potential of our advocacy efforts. For those of you who are not familiar with the story of the Ateaga family, it started here. Thanks to advocacy efforts by MIRA and others, this is the end of the story for now:

Series of Stories Highlight Injustice of U.S. Immigration System

A number of stories appeared in the news today that highlighted the various injustices that are currently masquerading as an immigration system in the U.S.

First, The Boston Globe's Kevin Cullen wrote an op-ed profiling the impact of ICE's indiscriminate enforcement policies on the families of hard-working, tax-paying immigrants in the U.S. A father now faces deportation, while the rest of his family and its livelihood slowly slips away. His wife is left with the job of explaining to the family's four year old what is happening to his father:

Their youngest, the 4-year-old, sat in the circle at play group the other day and tried to explain what was going on to his buddies.

"The 4-year-old can't begin to fathom it, and I can't fathom how to explain it to him," Leah Arteaga was saying.

What is ICE's response? Nothing out of the ordinary, they used their normal refrain of "routine, targeted fugitive operation." I wonder if this report backs that assertion up? If you don't have time to read it, the answer is NO.

The New York Times ran another story highlighting the deplorable conditions of immigrant detention in the U.S., where ICE is having a hard time keeping track of the number of detainees who have died in detention. If last week's Amnesty International report and Keith Olbermann's tirade against U.S. detention policy wasn't enough, the Times article discusses the vanishing act that DHS and ICE tried to pull when a detainee died of a heart attack in 2005.

There have been a number of high-profile cases involving the death of immigrants in detention as the article details:

As Congress and the news media brought new scrutiny to the issue, several detention deaths have highlighted problems with medical care and accountability. In one, a Chinese computer engineer’s extensive cancer and fractured spine went undiagnosed at a Rhode Island jail until shortly before he died, despite his pleas for help. In another, records show a Guinean tailor who suffered a skull fracture in a New Jersey jail was left in isolation without treatment for more than 13 hours.

These unjust and inhumane practices need to stop immediately. If they don't we'll continue to here stories like this one:

The union learned that the inspector general’s office had written up a synopsis of the allegations for investigation by the immigration agency, saying that “Ahmad Tander,” a Pakistani detainee housed at the Monmouth jail, had died “from a heart attack whose symptoms were obvious, severe and ignored until it was too late,” amid “conditions of neglect and indifference to medical needs.”