- Congress has passed a few bills targeting immigration: E-Verify, a voluntary government program for employers to verify whether or not employees are legally able to work, was re-authorized by the House for only five years. This suggests that the House feels E-Verify may be a flawed system. The House Immigration Subcommittee passed a bill recapturing employment and family-based immigrant visas that had not been allocated under existing ceilings due to bureaucratic inefficiencies. It also passed a bill that could make it easier for military personnel and their families to be naturalized.
- ICE conducted its latest raids in Lowell, MA in the form of home arrests with warrants. Targets were green card holders with criminal records. Sweeps have been going on throughout the country under various types of programs, such as Operation Community Shield and Fugitive operations teams.
- The Center for Immigration Studies, "an independent research institute which examines the impact of immigration on the United States," published a report documenting the impact of immigration on global CO2 emissions. The report is titled "Immigration to the United States and World-Wide Greenhouse Gas Emissions." According to the study, immigration to the US significantly increases global CO2 emissions in that immigrants move from a lower-polluting region of the world to a higher-polluting country. While the estimated CO2 emissions of the average immigrant are 18% lower than those of native-born Americans, their emissions are estimated to be four times what they would be in their home countries.
- The New York Times published a story responding to the release of the legal blueprint in the Postville hearings. The blueprint, made available online by the ACLU, is a 117 page compilation of scripts that laid out step by step how the hearings should proceed. While these documents were not binding and were framed as providing assistance to defense lawyers, many critics argue that the scripts indicate that the court endorsed the prosecutors’ push to secure guilty pleas before the hearings even began. The scripts went so far as to include a sample statement the judge could make after accepting a guilty plea. According to Lucas Guttentag, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project of the A.C.L.U, "this was the Postville prosecution guilty-plea machine. The entire process seemed to presume and be designed for fast-track guilty pleas."
- The Times also covered the story of Hiu Lui Ng, a 34 year old immigrant who died in US custody after being systematically denied medical care in the previous months. Mr. Ng had overstayed a visa years earlier and had been sent a letter ordering him to appear in court. This letter was mistakenly sent to a nonexistent address and due to his inevitable failure to appear in court, ICE arrested him last summer when he went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan to apply for a green card. Since then he has been held in various jails in three New England states. In April Mr. Ng began to complain of debilitating back pain, however these complaints were written off as "faking it" and it was not until a judge order he be taken to the hospital in early August that he received medical attention. This exam revealed that his spine was fractured and he had terminal cancer that had been undiagnosed and untreated for months. He died in the custody of ICE five days after arriving at the hospital. Mr. Ng’s case is not isolated, it is situated in a series of cases that have "drawn Congressional scrutiny to complaints of inadequate medical care, human rights violations, and a lack of oversight in immigration detention." Mr. Ng’s case and others call for real solutions to a very real problem. Presently before the House Judiciary Committee is legislation to set mandatory standards for care in immigartion detention.
Thursday Immigration Roundup
