Tag: ICE

JHISN Newsletter 01/11/2025

Posted on January 11, 2025 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends, 

‘Happy New Year. You’re Deported’ was published by The Nation at the end of the year…in 2015…during the second term of the Obama presidency. Horrific, unacceptable, and unconscionable were key words the article used to describe Homeland Security’s plan to begin raids to deport families. Our first article for this new year 2025 looks at the ongoing state-sanctioned deportation threats to immigrant families and communities which promise to be significantly more aggressive than before. Just like a decade ago, our New York immigrant justice organizations today stand against the inhumanity of these policies. Even as our Mayor and Governor both talk about walking back our sanctuary policies and allowing more cooperation with ICE agents, hundreds of people rallied this past week at the state capitol in Albany demanding expanded legal protections for immigrant New Yorkers. 

Government intimidation will not stop the political, social, and community struggles of immigrant-led organizations and justice campaigns. We will, in fact, see community support strengthened this year when Make the Road NY holds a February ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new landmark center in Corona. Our second article spotlights Make the Road’s Deportation Defense Manual and practical guidance for community safety in 2025. 

Newsletter highlights:
  1. A look at deportation threats–and protections–in NYC
  2. Make the Road NY’s blueprint for deportation defense

 

 

1. Cruel Futures—Deportation @NewYork

“By pledging to carry out the largest mass deportation in history, Trump isn’t just targeting immigrant communities, he’s attacking the very fabric of the country … Trump is creating a future where millions of families will live in constant fear of being torn apart, and where entire communities and economic sectors will be destabilized.” —Murad Awawdeh, director, NY Immigration Coalition (12/8/24) 

The destabilization promised by Trump and his anti-immigrant minions holds a special threat to New York State, where 4.5 million immigrant residents are at risk of having families, lives, and communities overturned by a mass deportation agenda. New York City is home to an estimated 412,000 of the state’s 672,000+ undocumented people, all of whom stand in the crosshairs of an incoming administration that aims for cruelty and racist scapegoating as a livestream political bloodsport.

Nearly half of NYC’s small businesses are run by immigrants, including undocumented owners (an estimated 60,500 undocumented entrepreneurs live in NY state). Close to 310,000 undocumented workers compose 7% of the city’s labor force. Undocumented workers in New York State pay about $3 billion in state and local taxes. Many immigrant households in our neighborhood are ‘mixed status’ with members living together who have both legal and unprotected immigration status—including over 351,000 citizen children statewide who live with an undocumented family member. Trump has announced he wants to make even more people ‘undocumented’ by stripping away time-limited legal protections like Temporary Protective Status (TPS), DACA, and humanitarian parole, which would expose thousands more people in Central Queens to deportation threats.

Assessments abound regarding what Trump 2.0 can really do, what they will really do, and how quickly. In recent US history, the vast majority of removals and detentions took place at the US-Mexico border. Deporting undocumented immigrants from New York City would require interior arrests and detentions, actions limited, in theory, by complex legal procedures and choked by overwhelmed immigration courts. But ‘expedited removal’ protocols—which Trump tried to ramp up during his first administration—would allow federal officials to remove anyone who cannot prove they are in the US lawfully, or that they have resided physically in the country for two years or more.

New York City is not without some protections, for now, against deportation frenzy. One of over 170 US cities that has established sanctuary policies, NYC since 1989 has created legal safe zones for immigrants threatened by federal overreach. In 2014 and 2018 under Mayor de Blasio, sanctuary laws were strengthened to preclude local cooperation with ICE’s ‘detainer requests’ (with exceptions for people convicted of serious crimes), and to mandate advance review by senior city officials of any request for help from federal immigration agents that might lead to deportation. In fiscal year 2022-23, the NYPD granted exactly zero of ICE’s requests to hold someone in custody for them. But attempts at the state level to expand immigrant protections have stalled, including the ambitious New York For All Act which has never gotten out of committee. And Mayor Adams has recently threatened to change the city’s existing sanctuary laws to facilitate cooperation with ICE and federal deportation.

As we speak, the city is also closing down the vast tent city at Floyd Bennett Field in southern Brooklyn, built to serve as a family shelter for recent migrants. The closure is due in part to a steady decline in the number of migrants arriving in NYC and being housed in city shelters, a 17% drop from 69,000 migrants in January 2024 to 57,400 in December. Local immigrant justice groups and the mutual aid group Floyd Bennett Field Neighbors also fought for the closure just before Trump’s inauguration: the tent shelter was built on federal land, and advocates feared the new administration could repurpose the shelter as an immigrant detention center.

Finally, the vulnerability of thousands of recently-arrived migrants in NYC to mass deportation is mitigated by the fact that the majority of new migrants are asylum seekers. Though referred to as “illegals” by Trump, and often presumed undocumented, many recent migrants are actually at the start of the years-long asylum process. They exist in a legal border zone, constructed precisely to protect asylum seekers from deportation during the proceedings.

Will legal border zones mean anything in the coming years? Will laws be blown up, and emergency states of exception proliferate? That uncertainty triggers everyone’s worst nightmares. As Murad Awawdeh of NY Immigration Coalition says: “We can’t allow this vision of cruelty, exclusion, and fear to become our reality.”  

WHAT CAN WE DO?
  • Support the New York For All Act which prohibits state and local resources from being used to enact inhumane federal deportation agendas.
  • Support the Dignity Not Detention Act which prevents NYS from entering in, or renewing, contracts for immigrant detention centers. Similar bills have passed in NJ, CA, WA, and IL. Sign on with your organization’s support for the bill.
  • Support the Access to Representation Act which guarantees the right to counsel for anyone, regardless of income, who comes before a New York immigration court, including in deportation hearings.  

2. Preparing for Trump’s Deportation Plans

“I think [Queens], in many ways, ends up being the kind of epicenter for the fights. I think a lot of the work that we’re going to have to do over the next four years, whether it’s deportation defense or education within the community, is going to be centered in our borough.”–Jagpreet Singh, organizer with Desis Rising Up & Moving (DRUM) 

In the first weeks of 2025, our undocumented friends and neighbors are dreading the onset of Trump’s deportation plans. Many of the immigrant justice organizations are on high alert. Both DRUM and Make the Road NY say they have been preparing for the incoming presidential administration:

“Throughout this year, we’ve been preparing our community for this. We’ve been preparing basically this entire year. I think we’re in a better spot than we would have been if this was unexpected.” —Jagpreet Singh, organizer with DRUM  

 “It is a very dark time when New York City, which has always thought of itself as a sanctuary space, that our mayor would even willingly meet with this new border czar. It sets a tone that New York City is not for immigrants, and it puts a target on the back of immigrants.”—Luba Cortes, immigration lead organizer, Make the Road New York 

Make the Road NY, with the help of the Immigrant Defense Project, has created one of the most comprehensive preparedness resources: the Deportation Defense Manual. MTRNY’s website also offers current resources and downloadable flyers, including their recent Stay Safe! How to Protect Yourself in a Trump Administration.

The Defense Manual, available in Spanish and English, has three major parts and several useful appendixes. Part 1: Know Your Rights provides details for dealing with ICE at home, on the street, while driving, or at work. The main message from Part 1 is to not open the door unless ICE shows you a judicial warrant (sample on p. 19). Be calm and remain silent. You do not have to say anything or provide any information. (Your 4th and 5th Amendment rights should protect you from incriminating yourself and/or unlawful search and seizure.) You can say “I want to exercise my right to remain silent.” and “I do not consent to a search.” Ask for an interpreter. Ask to talk to an immigration attorney before signing anything. If you see someone being detained, take photos and write down all the information about the encounter. (Appendix D has a form to use.) Call the Immigrant Defense Project help line (212-725-6422).  Part I ends with extremely important guidance for how to protect your children by creating a plan now, and Appendix C has a comprehensive family preparedness checklist.

Part 2: Rapid Response to Raids provides information needed to support someone or a family after an ICE raid. What information do you need to have about the detained loved one? How to find a lawyer, and how to visit someone in detention? (pp. 28-31).

Part 3: Deportation Defense lists strategies to organize support for an individual who has been detained. How to organize the community to support a detained person? How to create a fundraising campaign or put pressure on government agencies? (pp. 42-44 and Appendix F).

Finally, Appendix G has multiple copyable flyers with rights information to distribute.

WHAT WE CAN 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. 

 

JHISN Newsletter 11/16/2024

Posted on November 16, 2024 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends, 

Like many of you, we are caught in a nightmare interlude where our worst fears are not yet real but visible in a gathering storm. Trump and the MAGA movement’s capture of national power is a threat to so much—Constitutional protections, the power of truth, hard-won victories of anti-racism and feminism, Palestinian solidarity, economic justice, historical memory, our beloved communities. But nothing is more threatened right now than the lives of undocumented immigrants residing in the US and especially in New York City. Strengthening our practice of immigrant solidarity, and in the face of voting data showing a dramatic increase in established immigrant-citizens voting for a fascist president, will require collaboration and work. Please. Do not give up.

We offer an article on the pending court decision re: DACA recipients, affecting the lives of over 530,000 Dreamers. We then give our first take on the post-election US landscape of both dread and resistance. 

Newsletter highlights:
  1. DACA decision pending
  2. The votes are in: what next for immigrant politics?   

1. Conservative 5th Circuit Court May Decide Dreamers’ Fate

“DACA has always been only a temporary solution, and Congress must act to provide certainty.” —Jennie Murray, President and CEO of the National Immigration Forum

Over 300 protesters participated in the Home is Here Coalition’s action in New Orleans last month. On October 10, they gathered at the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals where judges listened to the latest arguments about the legality of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative. This was the 14th hearing that has been held to challenge this program; this one specifically challenged recent efforts by the Biden Administration to turn DACA into a federal regulation to protect it from future legal action.

Congress has repeatedly failed to pass laws related to undocumented US residents who have lived here since childhood. It could establish legal pathways to citizenship for young ‘Dreamers’ who have started careers, created families, bought homes, and built businesses in the US. But, for a dozen years, DACA has been the sole program that provided them any federal protection.

The US Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in United States vs. Texas determined that states cannot challenge the federal government’s authority to establish immigration priorities. However, the 5th Circuit Court has challenged that rule, when it prevented US Customs and Border Protection from removing the razor wire that the Texas National Guard placed on land and in the water to harm migrants along the Mexican border.

“In recent years, the 5th Circuit, which serves Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, has allowed extremist lower court judges to issue sweeping, politically fraught rulings that advance right-wing policy positions…[T]he court has used flimsy legal theories to overturn decades of precedent.“–Center for American Progress

While a majority of Americans want our leaders to create legislative security for Dreamers, many Republican states argue they have incurred damages and injuries from spending millions of dollars on DACA recipients. MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, represented DACA recipients at the 5th Circuit court hearing and argued those allegations are not proven. 

There is no timeline by which the court must rule on these latest arguments. To some following this case, the court panel seemed divided. During the 71-minute discussion, there was speculation about whether Texas has legal standing to challenge the DACA program. One of the three judges cited briefs filed by 22 Democratic-led states detailing the economic benefits that program recipients had brought to their communities. “How could a single judge tell all 22 other states, who are so grateful for these people, that actually they’ve all got to leave the United States?” asked Judge Higginson. Despite this, people following the latest challenges to DACA anticipate the case will move to the Supreme Court no matter the outcome.

The fanatical and belligerent America First Legal (AFL) organization supports this latest legal attack on DACA. AFL was founded in 2021 by Stephen Miller, a hatemonger anti-immigration hard-liner, and soon-to-be deputy chief of policy in the next Trump administration, whose tactic is to demonize immigrants. Fortunately, there are organizations such as the President’s Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration that filed an amicus brief supporting MALDEF’s defense of DACA. Many New York universities and colleges signed on to the brief, noting how Dreamers have outperformed peers and made significant contributions to society. Map the Impact data shows how DACA-eligible individuals contribute billions to the US economy. Deporting DACA recipients would cost $60 billion and result in a $280 billion economic loss over the next decade. Map the Impact also notes that immigrants, who provide for our most vital healthcare needs, are twice as likely to work as home health aides, physicians, and surgeons.

And so we wait. The court may rule that DACA is legal. It may rule that Texas and other states have no injury and so cannot bring suit. It may agree with a prior 5th Circuit court ruling from 2023 which declared DACA unlawful. If that last possibility becomes true then it can only be hoped that the court will not order DACA to end suddenly. If DACA renewals are ended, then an estimated 1,000 DACA recipients would be forced out of their jobs every week for the next two years. It would disrupt not only DACA recipients, but their families, their workplaces, and their communities.

“We all should be clear-eyed about who and what is at stake in the DACA case. It goes beyond immigration policy and law and straight to the question of what type of country we aspire to. Hundreds of thousands of Dreamers have relied on DACA to become, quite literally, the embodiment of the American Dream.” – Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director, America’s Voice

WHAT CAN WE DO?

2. Heartbreak and Defiance 

“We have had an enormous setback in this election because the fascists won a lot of working-class support. ”  –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

It will take some time to come to grips with all the implications of the MAGA takeover of the White House and Senate. But we already know that it means trouble for immigrants and asylum seekers. Immigrant justice organizations on the national and local levels are digging in for a long, hard fight. In the immediate aftermath of the election, many of them—including NICE, Make the Road New York, the National Day Laborer Network, Chhaya, and the New York Immigration Coalition—released statements on social media and in email blasts that combined heartbreak and defiance. In a November 7 email message to supporters, United We Dream summed up this widespread dual sentiment:

“I’m not going to lie, it’s going to be hard. We must unapologetically oppose Trump at every turn. But we’re not giving up. Home is here, and we’re here to stay.”

Since migration and the border have become central to US politics, grassroots immigrant justice groups will undoubtedly play a leading role in opposing the Trump/Vance administration’s fascist agenda. In this respect, NYC activism might serve as a model for the whole country. In fact, the resistance has already started locally. On November 9, a mass rally was held at Columbus Circle, sponsored by dozens of organizations.  

One striking feature of the recent election is that voter attitudes toward immigrants and refugees have hardened quickly and dramatically. According to the New York Times, the percentage of those who want the US to clamp down on immigration went from 28 percent in 2020 to 55 percent this July. As we have recently reported, many people also say they support Trump’s threat of mass deportations.

Even more disturbing is that many immigrants have come to share these views.  Exit polls show that large numbers of Latino and Asian voters in Queens and the Bronx backed Trump. In a “pronounced shift,” the Right’s rhetoric and false narratives about asylum seekers—including the slander that asylum seekers are criminals and economic parasites—have gained traction among more established immigrants. On Instagram, the National Day Laborer Network commented acerbically: “45% of the Latinos/as who voted, voted for Trump. 54% of the Latino males who voted, voted for Trump. Aligning with whiteness, especially if you are a dark skin Latino, to feel powerful is an illusion.”

Persistence and determination will certainly be crucial to the resistance. But to fight back effectively, progressive activists will have to find ways to re-establish mass support for immigration and asylum, including rebuilding unity among immigrants and refugees themselves.

“As an immigrant myself and an activist who lived through Trump’s first presidency, I have seen firsthand the impact of his policies. I also had, and continue to have, the privilege to witness how New Yorkers united to defend and advocate for our immigrant neighbors, families and friends.”  –Nilbia Coyote, Executive Director, New Immigrant Community Empowerment (email Nov.7)

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. 

 

 

JHISN Newsletter 03/02/2024

Posted on March 2, 2024 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

For several years, JHISN reported on the anti-immigrant campaign of then-President Trump that mocked sanctuary cities and instead aimed to intensify surveillance, harassment, and deportation. Now, a Democratic mayor of New York is himself leading the charge to undermine the city’s decades-old commitment to legal sanctuary and urban refuge for recent migrants. This week’s newsletter offers an update on the cynical moves by the Adams’ administration to deny shelter and social supports to asylum seekers who are, literally, being left out in the cold by merciless new policies. 

As we wrap up this newsletter, protesters are concluding a 24-hour vigil in front of City Hall demanding that the City Council vote for a ceasefire in Gaza. Nearly 70 US cities have passed resolutions calling for an immediate end to Israel’s military assault in the besieged territory, now in its fifth month. The slaughter of civilians, including 12,000 children, has turned into an unfolding genocide. And the blockade of food and water is turning into a forced famine, as over two million Palestinians are facing slow death from starvation and disease, amidst the unending risk of sudden death from Israeli bombardment and snipers. Support a ceasefire now!

Newsletter highlights:
  1. Mayor attacks sanctuary

1. Adams is Everything Abbott Wanted

When right-wing Texas Governor Greg Abbott started busing migrants to New York City in the summer of 2022, he was hoping to “own the libs.” He planned to challenge NYC’s “sanctuary city” declaration and its immigrant-friendly reputation, exposing them as a bunch of virtue signaling—a hypocritical pose that he figured would melt away when confronted with the arrival of thousands of asylum seekers.

In fact, as we have reported, grassroots community groups, public workers, progressive activists, and ordinary residents have risen to the challenge, welcoming migrants and offering aid. And the migrants themselves have shown incredible fortitude and resilience.

But Abbott scored a bullseye when it comes to our mayor. Eric Adams has played right into the Texas governor’s hands. Instead of welcoming migrants, as he solemnly promised to do, Adams now bullies and attacks them. His administration scapegoats asylum seekers, branding them as criminals. To complete his surrender to the Right, Adams has openly asserted that he wants to gut New York’s sanctuary city laws. “We can’t even turn [asylum seekers] over to ICE,” he laments.

Adams is doing everything he can to discourage asylum seekers, and to punish those who do make it to New York. In October, he made a trip to Mexico, Colombia, and Ecuador to “personally deliver a stern message to would-be migrants thinking of applying for asylum in the US and heading for New York City.” “There is no more room in New York,” he announced. Adams even had a flyer printed up for distribution at the US-Mexico border, telling asylum seekers—people fleeing violence and discrimination—that NYC, one of the richest cities in the world, doesn’t want them. 

Adams’ abuse of asylum seekers already living in NYC is similarly aimed at discouraging migrants and positioning himself strategically at their expense.  Embracing cruelty as a weapon of politics, the mayor is currently intent on forcing asylum seekers out of NYC shelters, As The City reports:

“Last fall the city began limiting adult shelter stays to 30 days, while beginning to dole out 60-day eviction notices to some migrant families with children. Families with children are now sent back to the Roosevelt Hotel for another shelter placement when their time runs out.

“For adults whose 30 days in shelter has run out, the wait for a new shelter placement can last more than a week, during which time people lining up outside the East Village site have limited access to showers, food, and even bathrooms. Once the site closes in the evening, 25% of respondents reported that they’d slept outside or on the trains, while 4% said a family member or friend took them in.

 “About 67% of those surveyed said they had spent the night in a “shelter,” with many ending up at the city’s five overnight waiting rooms where people can rest on the ground or in chairs without cots.”

Astonishingly, the mayor is now trying to close down even these five bare-bones waiting rooms—last-ditch places that at least have bathrooms and protection from the weather. 

For Adams, creating visible street homelessness or chaos among migrants isn’t a human tragedy—it’s the centerpiece of a cynical strategy. He hopes to not only force migrants to leave the city (and discourage new migrants from coming), but also to mobilize anti-immigrant sentiment and politics to his advantage. The mayor is trying to use homeless migrants—those who he literally is making homeless—to create a public spectacle of street disorder and budget cuts. He is creating conditions for the Right to manufacture xenophobic  “quality of life”  and “migrant crime” narratives.

“I’ve said this a couple of months ago, the visualization of this crisis is going to become aware for New Yorkers. We stated we were out of room. And the cost of doing this … it was a weight we could not continue to carry.” —Mayor Adams (The City, 2/16/24)

Eric Adams, mayor of a sanctuary city, has apparently calculated that it’s useful to position himself as the scourge of asylum seekers and the enemy of sanctuary. Disregarding his cratering support among Latinos, he seems to think that appeasing anti-immigrant racists and reactionaries is his best chance at getting reelected. 

But New York is a city of immigrants, and most of us like it that way. And despite Eric Adams, asylum seekers are quickly becoming part of the fabric of the city. They’re cooking, driving, cleaning, vending, delivering food, providing care, building scaffolding, and hanging drywall. They’ve become integral to the city’s schools, advocacy groups, churches, workplaces. They are New Yorkers now.

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. 

 

 

JHISN Newsletter 09/09/2023

Posted on September 9, 2023 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

JHISN has been around for just over six years—a youngster in relation to many local immigrant justice groups. But we are old enough to have learned the difficult lesson that many justice groups know too well: hard-won activist victories are also hard to sustain. In this newsletter, we report on how the Biden administration and corporate capitalism are undermining New Jersey activists’ successful attempt to shut down privately contracted immigrant detention centers in the state. La lucha continúa …The struggle goes on.

We are delighted to also offer an introduction to a new neighbor—The World’s Borough Bookshop just opened its doors on 73rd St and 34th Ave. We encourage you to visit and explore this wonderful community space.

Newsletter highlights:
  1. New bookstore comes to Jackson Heights
  2. Notorious privately-run detention jail in NJ supported by Biden’s DOJ

1. The World’s Borough Gets a New Bookstore

Seven years ago, Adrian Cepeda had a dream: open a bookstore here in Jackson Heights. Today that dream has an address: 3406 73rd Street. The World’s Borough Bookshop, located just off the neighborhood’s Open Street, launched for business on August 5. Its shelves are filled with Latinx and Black fiction and nonfiction, literature by Desi authors, Queens writers, manga comics, and a selection of used books. There’s a colorful kids’ room with children’s books in Portuguese, Bangla, Mandarin, and Urdu.

 “Por y Para La Communidad” (“for and by the community”) reads the banner at the entrance. With comfortable couches inside, and tables on the sidewalk, the world’s borough bookstore invites students-after-school, parents with excited kids, or teachers looking for an English translation of García Márquez, to linger for conversation, or to just sit and read in the late summer sun. Cepeda, who curates the store’s selection of BIPOC-only (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) books himself, is looking to the community for ideas and desires about what our local bookstore should be. “I want to make it a very Queens bookstore,” he smiles.

Growing up in Jackson Heights, Cepeda credits his mom—who also grew up in the neighborhood—with nourishing his love of reading with trips to the JH Public Library. But he is committed to making the World’s Borough Bookstore attractive to both readers and non-readers alike, a place where people can fall in love with books for the very first time.

2. Biden Continues Expanding 40-Year Policy of For-Profit Detention

In August of 2021, New Jersey implemented Sanctuary Law AB5207 banning ICE contracts with private detention facilities—a victory for the years-long activist struggle to close down private, for-profit detention. The law successfully resulted in closing three New Jersey detention centers, leaving just one operating: the Elizabeth Detention Center (EDC). However, private contractor CoreCivic challenged AB5207 as unconstitutional for violating the Supremacy Clause, which gives federal laws precedence over state laws. The federal contract with CoreCivic to house migrants in EDC was set to expire in September of this year and was an opportunity for Biden to follow through on campaign promises to end private detention. 

As a presidential candidate, Biden said, “No business should profit from the suffering of desperate people fleeing violence,” and proclaimed private detention centers, “should not exist. And we are working to close all of them.” Although he signed an executive order last January to end the use of private prisons under the Department of Justice (DOJ), that order does not apply to immigrant detention because Homeland Security is not under the DOJ. 

Last March, after President Biden’s 2024 budget proposal increased ICE and Border Patrol funding, Make The Road NY joined with New Jersey-based immigration support groups NJ Alliance for Immigrant Justice (NJAIJ), Wind of Spirit NJ, MinKwon Center NJ, and AFSC Immigrants Rights Program to condemn him. Erik Cruz, of the NJAIJ, accused the Biden administration of supporting “a rollback to his predecessor’s worst and cruelest policies.” Soon after, 223 organizations signed a letter demanding asylum seekers and other migrants not be placed behind bars in immigration detention.

After Title 42 was repealed in May, a new set of immigration restrictions was introduced, and a review launched by senior immigration officials identified about two dozen detention centers to be scaled back, reformed, or closed. Only three closed. During 2022, the Biden administration actually increased the number of detainees held in private facilities to 90%–compared to 80% at the end of Trump’s administration. Revenues for one private prison company, GEO Group, reportedly jumped by more than $1 billion (an almost 40% increase).

Then, in July, the CoreCivic case against AB5207 gained a boost from Biden’s DOJ which filed an amicus brief supporting the CoreCivic injunction. The DOJ called the Elizabeth facility “mission critical” because of its proximity to Newark and JFK airports; they described direct flights out of the United States as “crucial” for removals. Instead of acknowledging that detainees could be released to family and community, Biden’s DOJ filing highlighted the increased costs for out-of-state relocations and transportation to alternative detention facilities which limits access to families and legal counsel. It also focused on possible worst-case scenarios saying shutting down the center could lead to the release of “dangerous noncitizens.”

50 local groups, including DetentionWatch, called the Biden administration’s support of the CoreCivic suit “bitterly disappointing but unsurprising.” They called on NJ Governor Murphy to shut down EDC, reminding everyone that detainees had long complained about problematic conditions at EDC: the facility is set up to have just one bathroom for every 40 people; birds inside reportedly defecated on beds; people were abused by staff; and there has been a lack of sanitary pads. 

A “free them all” rally was held on August 20th to defend AB5207 and demand the facility’s closure. Five days later, ten New Jersey congressional leaders joined with 41 immigrant support organizations and delivered a letter to the DOJ expressing concern for the Biden Administration’s support of the private prison company. Li Adorno of Movimiento Cosecha said later of Biden, “He could actually shut down the Elizabeth Center at any moment, any given day …This is it—his time to shine, and he’s not shining.”

Instead of shining, Biden did nothing to close EDC, nor end the contract. At the end of August, Judge Kirsch declared AB5207 unconstitutional and within a day a $20 million 12-month contract between ICE and CoreCivic was signed. Judge Kirsch had ruled the NJ law was “naked interference” with federal immigration enforcement and was “a dagger aimed at the heart of the federal government’s immigration enforcement mission and operations.” Kathy O’Leary, the Director of Pax Christi and one of many activists, including Unidad Latina and Movimiento Cosecha, protesting the ruling outside the federal immigration building in Newark, responded to his grotesque dagger statement:

“We cannot stab a dagger into the heart of ICE. It has no heart, it’s not a person. The people in ICE’s cages—they can bleed, they can shed tears. That’s who we should be concerned about.” 

Yanet Candelario of The Mami Chelo Foundation, who spent time inside the walls of the Elizabeth Detention Center, said when Biden was elected president, she was happy. “I thought he would end the Trump era of terror, where children were separated from their parents and kept in cages like animals.” She continued, “I believed he would make a difference in a country where immigrants have fewer rights…I don’t think Biden knows that people are dying in immigration detention because they have been denied medical attention, but I also expect him to keep his promises and end a system that denies us our humanity.”

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. 

 

 

JHISN Newsletter 02/11/2023

Posted on February 11, 2023 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

The immigration news headlines this past week have been grim. A 26-year-old immigrant attempted suicide on Wednesday at the city’s new ‘migrant shelter’ in Red Hook where hundreds of men are being warehoused in inhumane conditions. At ICE’s Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, WA, private guards sprayed chemical agents on detainees who had launched a hunger strike to protest bad food, unpaid labor, and harassment. 

Beneath the headlines, at a slower tempo and often out of sight, struggles for immigrant justice continue. We report on the ongoing mobilization demanding the establishment of an official NYC school holiday to mark Diwali—a major holiday celebrated by many communities here in Jackson Heights. And as we highlight the unprecedented number of immigration cases backed up in our dysfunctional US immigration system, we ally with all those calling for truly independent immigration courts. 

Newsletter highlights: 
  1. Celebrating Diwali as an official school holiday
  2. Unprecedented backlog of US immigration cases 

1. When Will Diwali Be Recognized?

“If I trusted the mayor by his words, then Diwali would have been made a school holiday on Jan. 1, because that is the promise that he made during his campaign.” –Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani

For more than 20 years, NYC’s South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities have been trying to get Diwali—the pan-religious Festival of Light—recognized as a school holiday. Hundreds of thousands of local Hindu, Jain, Sikh, and Buddhist residents celebrate the five-day Fall holiday, which is embraced by more than a billion people around the world. But so far, neither the city nor the state has mustered the will to include Diwali on the school calendar. A new initiative in Albany is raising hopes but also provoking criticism and doubts.

In 2013, Jackson Heights City Councilperson Daniel Dromm and 16 co-sponsors were unable to get a local Diwali school holiday bill passed. Dromm tried again, without success, in 2018. At the state level, Assemblyperson Jenifer Rajkumar’s 2021 Diwali bill never made it out of committee. But many advocates were convinced that 2022 would be the breakthrough year. Before his election, Mayor Adams publicly promised that once elected, he “would take his oath of office and walk into City Hall and ‘sign it into a holiday.’”

That did not happen. Adams has adopted a new position: there is no room on the school calendar, because of the state’s requirement for 180 days of instruction. Making Diwali a holiday, he now claims, requires substituting it for another holiday, which in turn requires state approval. Mamdani strongly disputes this, noting that Adams himself had previously dismissed scheduling concerns: “There are ways to move around the calendar to get the required number of days,” Adams once told Politico. South Queens district leader Richard David points out that “whenever the city punts to Albany, it’s always a little unpredictable, and you don’t really know what’s going to happen there.” 

Many private schools in NYC already treat Diwali as a holiday. Some parents question “why Adams can’t follow his predecessor’s example when former Mayor Bill de Blasio added the Asian Lunar New Year and the Muslim holidays Eid Al-Fitr and Eid Al-Adha as fixtures on the city schools calendar.” Fed-up families have resorted to simply taking their children out of school for Diwali on their own.

While the press put a harsh spotlight on Adams’ broken promise, advocates continued to apply pressure. In September, a public school student coalition circulated a petition for the Diwali holiday which gathered almost 5,000 signatures. Finally, in October, Adams joined forces with Rajkumar and Schools Chancellor David Banks in announcing a new initiative. The plan is to get the state legislature to substitute Diwali for “Brooklyn-Queens Day” or “Anniversary Day,” a holiday commemorating the founding of the first Sunday school in Brooklyn in the 1800s. The public announcement of the new Diwali initiative had a triumphal quality, as if it was already a done deal. NBC News said that Diwali “will be a school holiday in 2023.” So did NPR and TimeOut New York. Others were more cautious: “Even with over two dozen state lawmakers signed onto the legislation, community leaders in Queens remain skeptical of the efforts being made to complete a promise that they say has been made to them before,” the Queens Daily Eagle reported.

On November 2, the new City Council held a Diwali celebration in its chambers. On January 25, dozens of lawmakers and activists gathered in Albany to lobby for a bill to carry out the Rajkumar/Adams/Banks substitution plan. In the Assembly, Queens co-sponsors include Steven Raga (D-Woodside), Ed Braunstein (D-Bayside), Catalina Cruz (D-Corona), Khaleel Anderson (D-Far Rockaway) and Zohran Mamdani (D-Astoria). The sole sponsor of the matching bill in the Senate is Flushing Democrat John Liu. Rajkumar observes that “we have never seen such enthusiasm for this cause.” 

Will 2023 be the year Diwali makes it onto the public school calendar in NYC? Advocates say it is possible, if the state legislature gives approval by July. 

WHAT CAN WE DO?
  • Follow the fight for a Diwali holiday at the Diwali Coalition Twitter feed.
  • See footage of Diwali being celebrated in India in this short video.

 

2. Dramatic Backlog in US Immigration System

“When I started [as a lawyer] about 15 years ago, I could take on an asylum case, and within a three-month time frame you’d get a hearing before a judge. Now that time frame has stretched up to a five-year waiting period just to get a court date.” –Karla McKanders, Director, Vanderbilt Law School Immigration Practice Clinic

The numbers are stunning. Over 2 million pending cases in immigration courts at the end of 2022—a number that has more than doubled in the past 5 years. 9.5 million pending applications at US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) as of February 2022, with a surging backlog. At least 1,565,966 asylum seekers currently waiting for immigration hearings in the US, according to TRAC’s Immigration Project.

Behind these numbers are real people living in limbo for months and years, and spiraling stories of partners, families, beloveds, children, workplaces, and communities trying to manage profound uncertainty while sustaining hope and connection.

There are multiple reasons for the growing case backlogs. One major culprit is a history of underfunding of the immigration court system under both Democrat and Republican administrations, which has led to shortages of staff, technology, and resources. COVID shutdowns certainly played a role. Increased migration over the past decade due to economic dispossession, state violence, and environmental devastation is a factor. Also, the Trump administration intentionally jammed the immigration machinery, weakening due process protections in US immigration courts, while simultaneously increasing bureaucratic obstacles to legal immigration.

And there is no easy fix. There are no less than five different federal agencies involved with immigration processing, and four different congressional appropriations committees that fund—and underfund—their work. Right-wing electeds are actively working to slow the wheels of legal immigration while maximizing detention and deportation. Bringing down the number of backlogged immigration cases isn’t an easy target for grassroots activism. And the complexity of the US immigration bureaucracy makes popular education about the backlog difficult. All this contributes to a problem that feels increasingly intractable even as it grows more consequential.  

One step in the right direction for reforming the dysfunctional and backlogged immigration system would be for Congress to create and fully fund truly independent US immigration courts. For historically perverse reasons, US immigration courts are currently housed in the executive branch, under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice-–a law enforcement agency. Together with the American Bar Association and the National Association of Immigration Judges, we support a separate immigration court system that, like other parts of the US judiciary, has meaningful autonomy from the whims of executive branch authority and is less subject to political pressure. An independent, accountable immigration court system might help to bring justice to the hundreds of thousands of lives currently stalled by the unprecedented backlog of pending immigration cases.

 

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

 

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Feature Image – Khokarahman, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

 

 

JHISN Newsletter 05/14/2022

Posted on May 14, 2022 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

For many of us, Jackson Heights is an extraordinary example of a vibrant immigrant neighborhood. We may not know all the statistics–that over 60% of residents are immigrants; that over 80% of households speak a language other than English at home; that we have the second-highest percentage of immigrants among any neighborhood in NYC. But we know that immigrant communities are the heart of Jackson Heights. This week, JHISN takes a critical look at how immigrant politics are playing out at the national level, under a Democratic-led government. We offer our report with an eye on the future and grassroots justice struggles in our own backyard.   

1. Here We Go Again: Democratic Party Failing Immigrants

There’s a recurring, predictable pattern for many decades to the betrayal of undocumented immigrants and immigrant justice struggles by the Democratic Party–which now controls the White House and has a majority in Congress. It’s like clockwork:

First come the big promises. During Biden’s campaign, he vowed to create “a roadmap to citizenship for the nearly 11 million people who have been living in and strengthening our country for years.” 

Then the flawed proposals. The actual plan Biden submitted to Congress treated immigrants like criminals who were “earning” the chance for citizenship instead of welcoming them as essential workers and valued members of the community. It laid out a complex process for attaining citizenship, full of pitfalls and exclusions, that would take most immigrants 8 to 13 years to navigate; many would not be successful.

Then the watered-down Biden bill immediately met with Democrat defections and unnecessary obstacles. The Senate parliamentarian decided to oppose including immigration reform in a large omnibus bill; Joe Manchin and other Democrats refused to override her. Therefore the Biden plan is dead in the water. So is another proposal by Democrats in Congress that could have helped legalize roughly four million Dreamers and farmworkers.

Predictably, now comes a proposed “bipartisan” consolation prize. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Durbin’s bipartisan “compromise” initiative apparently follows the classic DC sellout pattern. As always, it promotes a fake “balancing act”: more money for “border security,” more “guest workers” with limited rights, amnesty for Dreamers if they are good, and no pathway to citizenship for their parents, or millions of other immigrants.

If the classic pattern holds, Congress will fail to pass even a deeply compromised bill like this. 

 In the meantime, the Democrats have increased the budget for ICE. Biden used the Trump era deployment of Title 42 to illegally bar millions of asylum seekers. On the sidelines, Democrats deal out targeted immigration reforms and funding to certain immigrant rights groups and ignore others, dividing the movement. Democrats welcome 100,000 white immigrants from Ukraine, while forcibly expelling millions of immigrants of color.

This is corrupt political theater, not progressive politics.

If the Dems actually cared about the 11 million immigrants without rights in the US, they would:

  • Be strong advocates. Talk every day about how immigrants are exploited and abused by corporations and the government. About families being ripped apart. About immigrants contributing to the economy without being given rights in return. About essential workers. About US responsibility for migration flows. About how the 100-mile border enforcement zone and other police-state measures hurt everybody.
  • Help organize unified national protests against immigrant exclusion. Support a “union of immigrants” to add muscle to immigrant justice demands. Hold public national hearings and consultations with immigrant justice activists. Include grassroots immigrant leaders in all Democratic meetings about immigration and spending priorities.
  • Punish Democrats who take anti-immigrant stands (like Manchin) by taking away their committee positions, Party financing, and endorsements. Openly criticize them for their reactionary stands and run alternate candidates to replace them. 
  • Clean the white nationalists and sadists out of the Department of Homeland Security. Close down ICE and return immigration oversight to the Justice Department. Set new policies to end the criminalization of migrants. End all detention for migrants.
  • Declare mass pardons or amnesty for undocumented immigrants, and expand the use of TPS. Use Biden’s presidential power to attempt to provide asylum and decriminalize immigrants. 
  • Stop the relentless attacks on migrants at the southern border. Follow international laws on asylum and refugees.

 But it’s become obvious that we can’t count on the Democratic Party on its own to speak or act for immigrants. JHISN believes that excluded migrants and solidarity activists must rely on ourselves by building a unified, national, non-partisan movement led by immigrants of all nationalities, starting from the bottom up. Such a movement, which can only be led by grassroots immigrant justice organizations, must maintain its independence from the Democratic power structure and their corporate funders, even as it seeks to light a fire under the Party to do the right thing.

 Local immigrant justice groups are already generating the kind of heat that’s needed. On May Day, local immigrant workers and allies held a march and rally and staged a die-in to call out Congress for failing to deliver on a pathway to citizenship as promised. Among the sponsors were groups from our neighborhood: MTRNY (Make the Road NY), DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving), and NICE (New Immigrant Community Empowerment). The local actions converged with organized marches in at least a dozen other US cities.  

 The Democratic Party won’t support serious measures to help immigrants unless it is confronted with a powerful independent movement that holds it, and the rest of society, accountable. JHISN hopes, in solidarity with immigrant-led organizations, to help that movement become a reality.

WHAT CAN WE DO?
  • Support Movimiento Cosecha’s national campaign “Papers, Not Crumbs!” protecting the rights and dignity of undocumented immigrants.
  • Join marches and rallies by local immigrant justice groups demanding citizenship for all 11 million! 

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.