Tag: Guatemala

JHISN Newsletter 09/21/2025

Dear friends,

In just the past few days, news that can knock you over has reached our door. JHISN learned that ICE snatched a well-known and beloved waiter in Jackson Heights on September 3. According to the GoFundMe campaign for Dino, he was “chained hand-to-feet, and taken by bus and plane to several prisons and detention centers, always chained up, going for days without any food, from New York to New Jersey to Texas, until he was finally left with the Mexican immigration officials at the border.” His situation is similar to tens of thousands of US immigrants attacked by the Trump regime, but recognizing his face and benefiting directly from his labor makes his inhumane incarceration and deportation a shock and a wake-up call. It can happen here. It is happening here. 

Dino, outside the Queensboro restaurant where he worked in Jackson Heights.

Our newsletter, in keeping with these grim times, reports on the federal government’s unprecedented attack on immigrant children, including the arrest of students and young neighbors here in Queens. And we offer a wide-ranging political analysis of the current deportation machine, accompanied by a locally-focused survey for our readers about what you hope to do as ICE violence against immigrants closes in. 

Newsletter highlights:
  1. Immigrant children detained and caged
  2. Resisting ICE is crucial – how will Jackson Heights resist?

1. ICE Wages War on Immigrant Children

This is a really tough year for young immigrants in the US.

“We now regularly hear reports from members whose friends and classmates have disappeared after routine court appearances, and our members are afraid to go to court, school, and even leave their homes out of fear they will be detained by ICE. No child should have to choose between their safety and their right to due process.”–Beth Baltimore, deputy director of The Door’s Legal Services Center 

The dramatic spectacle of the Trump regime attempting to deport, in the dead of night over Labor Day weekend, 76 Guatemalan children who had come to the US alone and were living in shelters or with foster care families, only intensified fears for immigrant children across the US. Lawsuits were immediately filed and the removals were temporarily stopped. Missing from many news reports was the fact that in July Guatemalan government representatives toured US detention facilities.To avoid the possibility that any detained Guatemalan children who turned 18 would be sent to adult detention centers, the Guatemalan government said they would accept “all unaccompanied minors, who wanted to return to Guatemala voluntarily.” On September 10 in federal court the Department of Justice abandoned its claim that either Guatemalan parents or children had requested to be reunited and stated it actually had no evidence for that allegation. On September 18, a federal judge blocked the children’s removal for the foreseeable future. But the incident shines light on the plight of immigrant children now in the crosshairs of a deportation machine running wild.

Although Trump’s deportation plan claims to focus on “the worst of the worst,” it seems more like an assembly line plan of “last in, first out.” Those who entered the US without papers in the last 2 years are most likely to face expedited removal. Not only are they detained, they are also shunted around to as many as four different detention facilities before either being deported or released to face further immigration hearings.

Back in May 2023, the Biden  Administration expanded the digital CBP One app to allow immigrants to make appointments for asylum hearings before entering the country. People could stay for 2 years and work legally. However, Trump cancelled the program in January 2025 and invalidated 30,000 appointments. All entries using CBP One became grounds for removal. Now when people who used the app show up in court for legally arranged required hearings, ICE agents waiting outside courtrooms snatch them immediately, even if they have received new court dates.

Several minors in New York city and state have been caught in this process: 50 children younger than 18 have been detained by ICE at their legally required check-ins and 38 have been deported. Also, some New York high school students have been detained. Here are details of some cases.

In May, Dylan Lopez Contreras, a 20-year-old student at ELLIS Prep, was the first public school student detained by ICE at his scheduled hearing. He arrived from Venezuela in 2024 and had permission to live and work here through Biden’s CBP One program while he went through the asylum application process. On June 16, a federal judge reinstated Dylan’s pending asylum case and pursuit of protections under the Special Juvenile Immigration Status (SIJS). Dylan spent two months in ICE detention. He’s represented by New York Legal Assistance Group. 

On June 4, Derlis Snaider Chusin Toaquiza, a 19-year-old 11th grader at Grover Cleveland High School, was the second known New York City public school student apprehended by ICE. He and his family arrived from Ecuador in March 2024 and applied for asylum. Derlis was detained for a month in Texas and finally released on July 18 so he can return to school and continue his asylum case.

In June, Joselyn Chipantiza-Sisalema, a 20-year-old high school student, was arrested. She arrived from Ecuador in May 2024. According to her attorneys, at her June asylum hearing, the immigration judge had set a court date for March 2026. But she was arrested by ICE officers outside the courtroom anyway and sent to Louisiana. She was released in July after Make the Road New York sued on her behalf.

Also in June, Oliver Mata Velazquez, a 19-year-old asylum seeker from Venezuela living in Buffalo was unlawfully arrested by ICE agents while attending a mandated court hearing and then fast-tracked for deportation. Oliver had legal entry in September 2024 via CBP One, has no criminal history, and complied with all government orders when applying for US citizenship. He was released in August and able to reunite with his family and community as his asylum case proceeded after US District Judge Lawrence Vilardo ordered ICE to release him, saying,

“Mata Velasquez followed all the rules. On the other hand, the government changed the rules by fiat, applied them retroactively, and pulled the rug out from under Mata Velasquez and many like him who tried to do things the right way.”

New York Civil Liberties Union, African Communities Together, and The Door are hoping Judge Vilardo’s decision will help others kidnapped by ICE. “These policies are unlawful,” the lawsuit argues. “Such arrests chill access to the courts and impede the fair administration of justice.” An initial hearing is scheduled for October 10.

In August, Martha, a Jackson Heights mother with four children (two daughters 6 and 16, two sons 19 and 21), took her 6-year-old and 19-year-old to their required immigration hearing and all three were detained. Martha and two children arrived from Ecuador in December 2022. Their application for  asylum was denied, and an attempt to appeal failed because paperwork was filed too late. Martha and the 6-year-old were deported to Ecuador; 19-year-old Manuel is in detention in New Jersey.

On August 9, Roger Iza, a 15-year-old Manhattan high school student, and his father, Edison Iza, who arrived in 2023 from Ecuador, had their asylum application denied. They had filed without an attorney. Roger was enrolled in school, but they were arrested by ICE at a required check-in in New York. After being transported to a series of out-of-state hotels, where they had no access to phones or the internet, they were deported to Ecuador on August 14. 

On August 4, Mamadou Mouctar Diallo, a 20-year-old Brooklyn student from Guinea, was detained at his hearing at 26 Federal Plaza.  He’s the third NY city high school student to be detained at a required hearing. He arrived in January 2024. Before he was arrested, he had been released by the Biden administration, enrolled in high school, completed a training program to become a security guard, joined the Audubon Society and enrolled in a culinary internship. His teachers and NY City Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos have expressed support for him.

No arrests have yet been made inside NY City schools, and principals and teachers are trying to reassure parents and students that it’s safe to attend classes. But many students are afraid to go to school. In addition, immigrants who are victims of crimes or abuse are afraid to contact police and/or appear in court as witnesses and many others are afraid to get necessary medical care.

WHAT CAN WE DO?


2. Resisting the Deportation Tsunami–Invitation to Our Reader Survey

Multiple legal cases have tried to slow down the Trump regime’s trampling of long-standing asylum laws and the supposedly sacred Constitution. Court decisions have gone back and forth, but the trend is clear: they can’t be counted on for relief. In May, a Massachusetts District Court ruled that immigrants must be offered asylum hearings, and must have 15 days to contest a threat of deportation to a third country. But in June, a Supreme Court order put that ruling on hold, allowing third country deportations to continue. In July, a federal judge ruled that ICE must stop racially profiling Latinos for indiscriminate arrests. In September, an “emergency intervention” from Supreme Court “justices” overturned that injunction. This month, a California federal judge ordered that Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans and Haitians must be restored immediately—but the administration stalled and refused to comply, causing widespread panic. Now the Ninth Circuit Court has recently ruled that the regime can and in fact already has terminated TPS for our Nepalis, along with Hondurans and Nicaraguans. Lawsuits by the National TPS Coalition and the ACLU attempting to restore TPS are ongoing.

Despite the lack of a united, strategic Left and progressive movement nationwide, angry people in many localities are resisting. In particular, there is a spreading neighborhood-based movement against ICE and mass deportation. In Rochester, more than 200 local residents showed up to disrupt an immigration raid causing ICE agents to flee the neighborhood with four slashed tires. Worcester residents surrounded ICE agents and delayed their arrest of an immigrant mother. In Nashville, an ICE arrest was prevented by angry neighbors. There are many other examples of community intervention: in San Diego, Minneapolis. San Francisco, Huntington Park, Waltham, Los Angeles and many other places.

JHISN has been talking among ourselves about the likely arrival of large-scale ICE attacks in our neighborhoods in the near future, and how to respond. We don’t think we can rely on the midterm elections, or wait and hope that Trumpian fascism will fall apart on its own. Legal and legislative attempts at the national, state and city levels to try to rein in ICE are important, but not sufficient. JHISN believes there has to be a local response by local residents, showing our opposition and outrage at attacks on immigrants, and countering ICE’s secret police outrages. We must do our best to make ICE a pariah.

 We consider our 550 newsletter subscribers to be an informal local network of people in solidarity with immigrants. What role can we play in resisting ICE? Would you like to be informed when ICE shows up on our streets? Would you be interested in reporting ICE’s presence to the whole neighborhood? Would you be part of a rapid response network to protest and defend immigrant neighbors threatened with deportation? We’d very much like to hear your thoughts…to share information with us, please complete our short survey.

WHAT CAN WE DO?
  • Complete the JHISN survey and add your thoughts to our community’s insight on resisting ICE actions in our neighborhood.

 

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN. 

JHISN Newsletter 10/29/2022

Dear friends,

 As the sun drops earlier in the sky, and as communities around the world draw in their final harvest, it is time to join in the festival of lights. Diwali, and the related festival of Tihar Utsav, were celebrated this past week throughout South Asia—and here in Jackson Heights. Over 200 people gathered on October 22 in Travers Park for a day-long Diwali event, featuring food and performances, a lamp-lighting ceremony, and speakers including a young climate justice activist and the director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Bhairavi Desai.

 And on October 27, Adhikaar held its Fall Utsav festival. As a Queens-based, women-led immigrant justice organization for the Nepali-speaking community, Adhikaar has much to celebrate: their statewide nail salon workers campaign; the fight for economic justice for domestic workers; and the urgent work to extend Temporary Protective Status for thousands of Nepali immigrants. Adhikaar is also marking a change of seasons in leadership as executive director and long-time community organizer Pabitra Khati Benjamin transitions out of her role, and the search for a new director begins.          

Our newsletter this week features an in-depth article on the status of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). The fate of tens of thousands of young DACA recipients here in New York is at stake as legislative and judicial wrangling continues, and real lives are upended by uncertainty and the threat of deportation.  

Newsletter highlights:

1. No Protection for DACA’s Young Dreamers

DACA Recipients Still in Limbo

“We were promised immigration reform in the first 100 days [of the Biden administration]…Those 100 days came and went, and we have nothing”Catalina Cruz, the first former DACA recipient elected to NY State Assembly

President Obama inaugurated the DACA program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) in June 2012. It has been under attack by right-wing Republicans ever since. Today DACA’s future is unclear, leaving hundreds of thousands of people and their families in limbo, including tens of thousands of Dreamers here in NYC. Many are unable to work, and some face the prospect of deportation if DACA is not renewed or replaced with other pathways to legal status.

DACA has been the subject of a seesaw battle involving executive orders and litigation. In 2017, President Trump attempted to end the program by barring new and renewal applications so that DACA holders’ protections would expire over time. In July 2021, a Houston court ruled that DACA was illegal because it had not gone through the proper public notice and comment process. This month, shortly after DACA’s tenth anniversary, a Federal Appeals Court upheld the Houston decision, returning the case to the Houston court and ordering further review. As a result of the court’s recent decision, DHS policy will only allow current DACA recipients to renew their application and work authorization; no new applications will be processed. The hundreds of thousands of young people eligible for DACA can still submit a new application, but it will be set aside and not acted upon by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). 

Which States Have DACA Recipients? As of June 2022, USCIS reports there are 594,120 DACA recipients nationwide, with over 1,150,000 eligible. There are 25,580 in New York state, with 56,000 eligible.

The states with the highest number of DACA holders are:

California 169,590 Texas 97,760 Illinois 31,480 New York 24,580
Florida 23,240 North Carolina 22,670 Arizona 22,530 Georgia 19,460

 

Where Did Their Families Come From? The most common countries of birth for DACA holders are: 

Mexico 480,160 El Salvador 23,080 Guatemala 15,710 Honduras 14,390 Peru 5,610
South Korea 5,540 Brazil 4,530 Ecuador 4,230 Colombia 3,690 Philippines 2,900

According to the Migration Policy Institute, most states have more people eligible for DACA than are currently enrolled, and eight states have twice as many people eligible for DACA than are enrolled in DACA.

This is an extraordinary number of people.

What Can Dreamers Do? DACA recipients can legally live, work, and go to college in the US. They have married, had children, bought homes and cars, completed college degrees, started businesses, and worked in a variety of fields. Their taxes and labor have made substantial contributions to the US economy.

According to data from the Center for American Progress, DACA recipients boost the US economy by paying federal, state, and local taxes, buying homes, paying rent, and spending money. Nationwide, DACA recipients and their households each year pay $5.6 billion in federal taxes and $3.1 billion in state and local taxes. Based on 2018 data, their contributions in New York state include:

Federal taxes State and local taxes Homes owned Mortgage payments Annual rental payments Spending power
$374.1 million $238.8 million 800 $16.4 million $132.8 million $1.3 billion

But they do not benefit equally from the taxes they pay due to their precarious status.

What Are DACA’s Education Benefits? In many states, undocumented students have to pay the same tuition rates as international students. Such high rates can prevent people from going to college. To address this problem, in 2019 New York state passed the Senator José Peralta New York State DREAM Act which gives undocumented and other students access to New York State administered grants and scholarships that help pay the cost of higher education. DACA allows people to join licensed fields (like nursing and education), which improves their ability to get a well-paying job with health benefits.

Where Do Dreamers Work? In a 2020 survey, 89.1% of DACA recipients 25 and older who responded were employed. DACA allowed them to move to jobs with better pay and better working conditions with health benefits, and 12.9% were able to get professional licenses. Higher wages and financial independence increase their contributions to the economy.

The Center for Migration Studies, using data from 2018, reported that DACA employees were concentrated in the following industries: health care (including hospitals and nursing care facilities); retail trade (including supermarkets and pharmacies); transportation and warehousing; restaurants and other food services; support and waste management services; and manufacturing. In 2021 the Center for American Progress reported that 343,000 DACA recipients were employed in essential jobs during the pandemic, primarily in health care, education, and the food supply chain.

What’s Next? According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in June 2020, about three-quarters of US adults favor granting permanent legal status to immigrants who came illegally to the United States when they were children, with the strongest support coming from Democrats and Latino/as.

In 2012, DACA  was intended to be a temporary solution until Congress provided a pathway to citizenship. But congressional attempts to pass a solution have failed, even though there is some bipartisan support. As a result, undocumented teenagers graduating high school this year will not have protection from deportation or the ability to work. According to Neil Bradley, chief policy officer for the US Chamber of Commerce: The inability to hire tens of thousands of high school graduates comes amid a ‘massive shortage’ of labor that has developed partly because of the country’s aging population and low birthrate” (June 2022, New York Times). Ending DACA would put families in danger of job loss, deportation, and separation from their US citizen children, and have a deleterious effect on the US economy.

Many immigrant justice organizations, including the National Immigration Law Center, United We Dream, and Make the Road NY, continue to fight for legislation to provide a path to citizenship for Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants. But for now, hundreds of thousands of young DACA recipients are constrained by the program’s two-year increments, forced to live in limbo and in fear.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

 

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN.

 

 

How the US Created the Refugee Crisis

Every month, tens of thousands of migrants are detained along the US-Mexico border. Right now, most of those migrants are refugees from the Northern Triangle of Central America—El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. When they get to the border, these folks have already endured a long, dangerous journey, covering thousands of miles. They've struggled through perilous desert crossings. They've clung to the top of freight trains in baking heat and freezing cold. They've faced very real odds of being kidnapped or raped. They've borrowed money or used their last resources to pay off coyotes and corrupt officials. Once they arrive, they are brutalized by border agents and a dehumanizing, racist detention system.

Harsh Life in the Northern Triangle

People don't undertake a journey this terrible for no reason. The reality is that El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have become unbearable for these refugees, no matter how much they might wish they could stay in their homes.

Poverty is widespread in the Northern Triangle. Parents must watch their children go hungry. Family farmers are forced off their land, flooding into cities where there are no jobs. Homelessness is common.

Violence is out of control. Many of the people leaving the Northern Triangle have had family members killed, have witnessed murders, or have been themselves threatened with rape and other deadly violence in their home countries. Young people are subjected to forcible recruitment into street gangs, with their families as hostages. The military and police rule society with a heavy hand.

How We Got Here

Why is life so difficult for so many Central Americans? To a large extent, the blame lies with the policies of the US government, and with the power of US corporations.

For over a century, the US has acted like Central America was its private plantation. The US has invaded the region over and over. It has backed corrupt military dictators, overthrown democratic governments, armed and trained vicious death squads. The CIA has manipulated and assassinated its way up and down Central America. And US economic policies have destroyed the livelihoods of millions of people.

Here are just a few examples of US political-military intervention in the Northern Triangle:

Repressing El Salvador

  • In 1932, the US helped suppress a peasant rebellion in El Salvador led by Farabundo Martí. Tens of thousands of rebels and civilians—many of them Indigenous—were systematically massacred.
  • In 1944, the US supported a reactionary coup.
  • In 1960, the US supported another right wing coup.
  • From 1980 to 1992, the US enthusiastically funded, trained, and directed a military dictatorship, whose main purpose was to crush a popular leftist-led uprising. Some 70,000 people were killed by the Salvadoran military and death squads under the direct sponsorship of the US. Thousands more were raped or tortured. During that period, hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans fled to the US, which deported many of them back into the war zone.

Destabilizing Honduras

  • In 1911, the US launched a coup to overthrow its elected government. After that, the country was afflicted by a series of military dictators propped up by Washington.
  • In the 1980s, the US set up military bases in Honduras, turning it into a launch pad for waging war against Nicaragua. Thousands of US troops trained, armed and dispatched the right-wing Contra guerillas from Honduras, in violation of US and international law.
  • As recently as 2009, the US backed a coup against reform-minded President Manuel Zelaya.

The Pattern Repeats in Guatemala

  • In 1954, the US organized a coup against the reformist Arbenz government. This coup led to a long guerrilla uprising, which was brutally suppressed by a US-led counterinsurgency campaign. The tactics of this counterinsurgency included aerial bombing, use of napalm, and the eradication of whole villages.
  • In 1970, when US-backed President Carlos Arana took office, he said, "If it is necessary to turn the country into a cemetery in order to pacify it, I will not hesitate to do so." The US-sponsored regimes that followed Arana in Guatemala had the same basic philosophy. Turning a blind eye to all their brutality, the US gave political support and tens of millions of dollars to the Guatemalan military.
  • In 1978, Rios Montt became dictator, in a coup that had full US support. Montt unleashed a campaign of genocide against the Maya. Villages were bombed and looted; civilians were raped, tortured and executed. During the long Guatemalan civil war, some 200,000 civilians were killed by the regime and allied right-wing death squads. Hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans fled the country.

An Economic Thread

Running through all of the US violations of sovereignty and human rights in the Northern Triangle, there 's always been an economic thread. The almighty dollar is behind it all. US policy has been formulated to serve the US corporations that profit from Central America’s resources and labor. For instance, several brazen US interventions in Guatemala and Honduras were specifically intended to benefit the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita Brands), whose low-wage fruit plantations were fantastically profitable.

Maybe the best way to sum up the history of US colonialism in Latin America is to quote Marine General Smedley Butler, who helped lead US military campaigns in Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Haiti. In the 1930s, he wrote: "I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism."

CAFTA Devastates Farmers

Over the last few decades, the US pressured and bribed Central American politicians to join what is called CAFTA-DR. CAFTA, like NAFTA, is a trade pact designed to override national laws, favoring the interests of large multinational corporations. Given the economic and power imbalances in the Americas, we shouldn’t be surprised at how that worked out for Central America. US banks and commercial interests have now taken over large parts of the financial systems and retail trade in the Northern Triangle, and US manufacturers have overwhelmed local industries.

But maybe the biggest effect of CAFTA has been to drive small farmers off their land. Under CAFTA rules, small farmers can't possibly compete with well-financed, large-scale global corporate agribusiness owned by investors from the US and other wealthy countries. To give one example of the impact: Not long ago, Honduras used to be a net exporter of agricultural products. But now it imports more food and other farm goods than it exports.

CAFTA specifically forbids any national legislation by Central American countries that would allow them to protect their small farmers—even farmers trying to sell products to their own local markets. Hundreds of thousands of family farmers have fled out of the countryside, flooding into the cities, where they find little but unemployment and crime.

On top of all this is the impact of the US-fueled drug trade, and the US's "War on Drugs," each of which lines the pockets of Miami bankers while undermining one Latin American society after another. Gangs like MS-13, which was exported from Los Angeles to the Northern Triangle by the US government, thrive in this environment of chaos and corruption.

There’s a Word for This

US policies and corporate greed have left a lasting legacy of poverty, civil strife and social violence. Every time the people of Central America resist, the heavy fist of the US and its military puppets slams down on the peoples’ movements. Demands for fair trade by Central American countries are met with economic blackmail by global banks and the US, intent on enforcing the wishes of the large corporations.

There's a word for this relationship. The word is imperialism. This parasitic relationship between the US and Central America has been a constant destructive force for generation after generation, during both Republican and Democratic administrations. The whole time, it’s been justified by naked racism and victim-blaming. When we see desperate people from the Northern Triangle arriving at the Mexican border, we must recognize that it’s US imperialism that has forced them to make this painful exodus.

The Responsibility of US Citizens

Under international law, and in light of basic decency, all countries are expected to provide asylum for people seeking refuge from persecution, war, social violence and disasters. But US citizens have a special responsibility to give refuge to the people that US imperialism—in its cold-blooded search for profit—has cruelly driven from their homes. Citizens have a special obligation to defend the human rights of Central Americans, and to repudiate every racist attempt to demonize and dehumanize them. And finally, beyond the immediate human rights crisis at the border, US citizens have every moral and practical imperative to help rebuild the countries that the US has pillaged and devastated.

For Further Reading and Study:

A Century of U.S. Intervention Created the Immigration Crisis

How US ‘Free Trade’ Policies Created the Central American Migration Crisis

How US policy in Honduras set the stage for today’s migration

The devastating effects of American intervention in Guatemala

The Impact of CAFTA: Drugs, Gangs, and Immigration

Video: The War on Democracy

UNHCR: Claims from Central America

CISPES: Community in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador