"Sarah Towle joins The Great Battlefield podcast to talk about her book "Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands" where she writes about how unwelcoming our government is to...
Valerie Lacarte, Ph.D., Aug. 2024 "The charge that immigrants are taking jobs from U.S.-born Black workers has made its way from conspiracy circles to the broader public conversation this election...
I have some thoughts for the Harris/Walz team, the Supreme Court, Congress, DHS, DOL, and DOJ regarding the border. Please consider subscribing to my free Substack . Comments welcome via Substack,...
Eric Asimov, New York Times, Aug. 27, 2024 (gift article) "Arjav Ezekiel rose through the restaurant ranks becoming a sommelier and opening Birdie’s in Austin, Texas. Few knew of his past...
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the ACLU, the ACLU of Louisiana, Immigration Services & Legal Advocacy, National Immigration Project, Aug. 26. 2024 "A coalition of immigrants’ rights groups...
A flood of families crossing the southwestern U.S. border illegally is prompting the Obama administration to revive a much-criticized detention program that previously led to children and their parents being held for extended periods of time in harsh prison-like conditions. ... The U.S. has tried large-scale family detention before. That operation sparked a lawsuit after it was discovered that children and their parents were being held in a former prison for long periods in punitive conditions. In 2007, advocates sued the Department of Homeland Security, alleging it was keeping families at the 512-bed T. Don Hutto Residential Center near Austin, Texas, under virtual 24-hour lockdown and denying them privacy, educational opportunities and adequate health care. The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and other immigrant advocates, said toddlers in prison garb spent most of the day locked in their cells at the private facility run by the Corrections Corporation of America, waiting for head counts. When the ACLU investigated in December 2006, it said some children had not stepped outside in a month. “The conditions were truly horrible,” said Vanita Gupta deputy legal director of the ACLU, who helped bring the lawsuit. The suit was settled and the government agreed to changes at what was then the nation’s largest family detention facility. Then in 2009, the Obama administration announced a widespread overhaul of its detention system that included shuttering Hutto . ICE kept open only one small family detention facility in Pennsylvania, releasing most families with an order to appear in court when notified of immigration proceedings. The unprecedented number of families apprehended at the border in the last year has led to a reversal of that policy." - Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan Seville, July 25, 2014.