Senator Menendez took to prime time cable television last night to discuss the framework for immigration reform he helped release yesterday. First on CNN, he said the proposal is just a framework to get the process started and is an invitation to Republicans to say "come join us." The Senator also discussed Lindsay Graham's change of heart:It's only a 26 page proposal that hasn't been written into a formal bill yet according to reports.The CNN interview also saw discussion about Speaker Pelosi saying the legislation would have to begin in the Senate, to which the Senator responded that there are candidates who don't want to vote on many issues, but the fact of the matter is that moving in the Senate is going to be the first step. Below the fold I'll put the segment from Countdown with Keith Olbermann where he talks further about the legislation and also discusses the new Arizona law.
Senator Bob Meenendez is questioning the motives behind Senator Lindsay Graham backing out of efforts to push bi-partisan immigration reform before the November Election: Menendez told Politico that Graham may be more concerned with shielding his friend John McCain from the immigration blow back because he is locked in a tough primary fight with immigration as a prominent issue:
"Clearly John McCain is in a huge fight," Menendez said in an interview. "He has done a 360-degree turn on immigration - he's getting a challenge from the hard right, I'm sure the last thing any friend of John McCain wants to see is to see is immigration come for debate."
Graham had been working with Senator Chuck Shumer on crafting the bill and denied the claims of Menendez. He said the Senate is just too polarized now, because you know in the run up to the next Presidential election after this November things will be much better. The issue has come back to the front burner in recent days after the controversial new immigration law recently signed in Arizona. Menendez has said he will push forward with Shumer and Majority Leader Harry Reid drafting legislation for this session. But while they plan to push forward, the President said the immigration debate may have to wait.
Gallup recently released a poll with the headline Tea Partiers Are Fairly Mainstream in Their Demographics. By that they mean age, education, employment and race, not political beliefs, gender, or income. (Tea Party supporters are more likely to be male and higher income.) This is pretty similar to the Rutgers-Eagleton results on the Tea Party in New Jersey, which I interpreted as two Tea Parties: an activist conservative heart and a more diverse, younger crowd that is willing to say they sympathize in polls.
White Tea Party supporters are less likely than other whites to think Latinos are "intelligent" or "trustworthy," though a majority say Latinos are "hard working." Those same white supporters are also less likely to think Blacks are any of those three (especially "hard working"), and they overwhelmingly agree "If Blacks would just try harder they would be as well off as Whites." They say immigrants are "likely to take jobs from people working here," that immigration "should be decreased," and even "all undocumented immigrants should be deported immediately."
The other day, Senator Menendez sat down with the Star Ledger Editorial board and among the topics of conversation was Immigration Reform. The Senator said that Latinos believe reforming the country's immigration system is the "civil rights issue of their time"
"I think it's a real challenge at the end of the day not to seek progress on it and not to have progress on it," he said. "I think it has a political equation."
"All of us who are U.S. citizens, all of us who are permanent residents, all of us who wear the uniform of the United States, when we hear the debates on immigration ... to hear some senators saying, 'those people, those people,'" he said. "I've heard along the way what that means, 'those people.'
He said that Latinos identify with the issue no matter what their own immigration status is. You can view the Senators comments here:
The other part of the political equation is that many elected officials are so afraid of the consequences as they perceive, that they'd prefer it not come up now. In the past when the issue has come up, it's been demagogued and set aside for another day. In order to get the reform the Senator is seeking, they're going to need to overcome the other sentiment.
On Sunday March, 21, 2010, scores of buses will head to DC for Reform Immigration for America's "March for America". Immigrant activists, advocates, community leaders, clergy, and people of faith from communities throughout NJ will participate in Sunday's interfaith service and immigration reform rally.
Pax Christi NJ like dozens of other organizations in NJ has been participating in the effort by raising funds to pay for buses, recruiting bus captains, matching passengers with buses and promoting the event to affected populations. Buses will be leaving from Bound Brook, Bridgeton, Camden, Dumont, Elizabeth, Hackensack, Jersey City, Long Branch, Newark, New Brunswick, Union City, Passaic, Paterson, Red Bank, Summit, Trenton and others.
During these tough economic times it is more important than ever that we stop wasting money on inhumane enforcement policies and allow everyone to fully participate in the economy. We cannot afford to continue spending $1.7 billion a year on immigration detention alone in a system that routinely breaks apart families and detains or deports breadwinners.
Nina Bernstein of the NY Times hits the nail on the head in her article describing a hunger strike in Hudson County jail among immigrant detainees, recently moved into Hudson after the closure of Manhattan's Varick Street detention center. Communication with lawyers, family and friends is difficult, if not impossible, and they are being gouged by phone charges.
Move Across Hudson Further Isolates Immigration Detainees
When federal authorities shut down New York City's only immigration detention center last month, and sent most of its detainees to a county jail in New Jersey over protests by their advocates, Obama administration officials stressed that the jail was only a short drive from the city. But under a contract with a private telephone company, calls to detainees' families and lawyers back in New York are decidedly long distance. The result is a 800 percent increase in the cost of a call, to more than 89 cents a minute, in a phone system so cumbersome that detainees say it impedes their ability to contest deportation or contact relatives. In protest, the detainees have sent appeals for help to the American Bar Association, signed by more than 180 detainees, and have threatened a hunger strike. They cite exorbitant telephone costs as their central grievance, but also complain of poor health care, confiscation of legal documents and mistreatment by guards at the jail, the Hudson County Correctional Center in Kearny.
The county response is carefully phrased (bolding mine):
"No one is unwilling to listen to these concerns and to make sure that detainees are treated with respect and dignity," said James Kennelly, a spokesman for Hudson County and the jail. "We take the care and custody of the detainees very seriously."
This same spokesman told the Jersey Journal on March 1st in response to our complaints over a 90 day update rule for visitors lists - the rule delayed by months visits to our former Middlesex detainees and prevented us from visiting some of the detainees at all:
"That was clearly miscommunication that we regret," said county spokesman Jim Kennelly about the 90-day message. "We don't want anyone in the detainee population or advocates for them thinking that we are trying to limit their access."
We weren't just thinking they were trying to limit our access. Our access was very clearly limited. They claim they've stopped limiting the detainees' lists to 5 visitors. And that was the part I got to respond to, without seeing his exact quote first:
"Hudson County jail realized how arbitrary and unjust it was to limit detainees to visiting lists of five people," said Karina Wilkinson, co-founder of Middlesex County Coalition for Immigration Rights. "That is a small piece of a huge problem. Immigrant detainees continue to be denied access to the community, lawyers and family."
And if you weren't born here, or can't prove it, beware of which side of the street you ride your bike on, from the Times article. It can mean life or death ICE issued press releases on two more deaths in detention in the last 5 days, a 36 year old Liberian woman and a 68 year old Guatemalan. Remind me why we're detaining 68 year old men in detention centers with inadequate medical care?
One detainee who signed the petition is Orville Wayne Allen, 47, a longtime New York State resident who has spent more than 19 months in immigration custody without seeing an immigration judge, his fiancée, Desiree Williams, said. When a police officer in Mount Vernon stopped him for riding a bicycle on the wrong side of a street in 2008, she said, a database check turned up an order of deportation in absentia from the 1980s, something a lawyer had supposedly resolved years before.
Ms. Williams, who works weekdays, has not seen him since he was transferred last month, because the jail allows only weekday visits.
ICE detention standards clearly provide for weekend and holiday visits. They are just unwilling to impose these standards on the county jails, even while they are paying over $12 million into Hudson county coffers, of federal tax dollars that could be better spent, if ICE would just review on a case by case basis who actually poses a flight risk or danger. Mandatory detention has to end. For more info about the national campaign, including about a hunger strike in Texas, go to the Dignity Not Detention website.
This is a diary from this weekend, with an interesting conversation going on in the comments. Jump in at will. - - promoted by Rosi
Hudson County Jail is getting national attention. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced on Jan 12th that it would close the 300 bed detention center in Manhattan, Varick St and move them to "another facility in the NY metropolitan area", because Varick didn't meet their standards for outdoor exercise and visitation. As if any jail in New Jersey meets ICE's detention standards. Oh yeah, and because $250 per night (that was going to an Alaskan Indian tribe) was twice what Hudson charges, $111 per night. Think of the cost savings (if you do, you will find out that that saves less than 1% of the $1.7 billion budgeted last year for custody operations). NY and NJ advocates, as Bill Orr pointed out here, are calling for review of who needs to be in detention. We are at a record number of over 32,000 people being detained each night.
Alix Nguefuck of the American Friend Service Committee, Newark spoke about the issue of transfers, which we've seen increased numbers of in NJ, because of the closure of Middlesex on Oct 1, which I wrote about at the time. Some of the detainees we used to visit have been transferred up to 3 or 4 times between Essex, Hudson and Monmouth since Oct!
In the latest example of elections having consequences, a commission created by Governor Corzine to help provide advice on immigration matters is scaling back plans now that there is a new Governor in charge with a different agenda:
"There's no sense banging our heads against the wall and asking for things that we know the governor has already stated he's in opposition to," said Frank Argote-Freyre, chairman of the Commission on New Americans
But will scaling back be the only action the panel gets to take? The advisory panel is within the Department of the Public Advocate, which has been targeted for elimination. In the last round of budget cuts, Christie cut all funds to the Department for the rest of the budget year. So who knows if they'll even get to advise on a scaled back agenda.
ALIPAC, which has been classified as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League is already calling the delay of the vote on S1036 a significant victory. According to an email sent to all of its membership they intend to add the defeat of this bill to their list of major accomplishments for 2010.
Being on ALIPAC's list of accomplishments is a distinction our state does not deserve and should not have. Please don't let our legislature side with ALIPAC and other hate groups that seek to dehumanize immigrants. Please call and ask them to vote in favor of S1036.
Currently there is a largely progressive coalition that is fighting for equality for students. They are fighting for parity in tuition for students who are the least likely to be able to afford in-state tuition let alone the out-of state rate.
After nearly eight years the in-state tuition bill which would allow NJ students whose immigration status is undocumented to pay in-state tuition rates is finally on the floor of the state senate for a vote.
(It was scheduled for a vote yesterday, but delayed late in the day until Monday because we are just two votes short.)
"Every migrant is a human person who, as such, possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance." (62) Caritatas In Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI
One of those rights is the right to an education.
Over the last few weeks the NJ Catholic Conference along with the NJ Regional Equity Coalition decided to make a last push at the end of the Corzine administration for a bill that would allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates and county colleges and state universities.
Dual officeholder Blanquita Valenti, New Brunswick Councilwoman and Middlesex County Freeholder responded at yesterday's NB council meeting, when asked why campaign lit wasn't in Spanish and English (after some sotto voce comments from others - council, counsel, administrators or whoever else on the panel - about "them' not being citizens):
If they don't speak English, they can't become citizens.
Um, some people gain citizenship, like I did, by being born here. Truly astounding from the woman who purports to represent the hispanic community in New Brunswick and the county, and who also represents a county with monolingual Korean, Chinese, Hindi, (probably Urdu and Gujarati for all I know) speakers who are citizens, in substantial numbers.
Kudos to the Rutgers student who responded at the meeting, though she missed his point on the education system, resting on whatever laurels she has from back in the day for setting up bilingual education.
Makes me worry about the upcoming nat'l immigration debate.
WNYC is doing a series of 30 issues in 30 days and yesterday Steven Camarata, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, and David Caicedo, president of the board of directors of Wind of the Spirit, an immigrant resource center based in Morristown, talked about the gubernatorial candidates' positions on immigration issues. Here's the audio of the interview:They talked about how NJ has one of the larger immigrant population and said that 1 out of 4 adults in the state is someone who is not a US Citizen at birth according to the census ranking NJ in the top 5. They talked about illegal immigration and the burden on the state through the use of services and programs. They spoke of the role a Governor can play as opposed to that of the Federal Government, mentioning the 287 G program and E-verify.
Moving to the politics of the issue, Steve Cammarato said that candidates treat the issue like they're putting a hand into an open flame. Looking at their websites, the only mention of immigration is on Corzine's web page talking about developing immigration recommendations.
David Caceido then came on the show talked about the difference between immigration policy including a path to citizenship versus immigration inforcement. He talked about some of the problems of profiling that come along with 287G and the action that the Attorney General has taken. They talked about LG candidate Guadagno's support for 287G as Sheriff in Monmouth County and her disagreement with the Attorney General. By contrast, they talked about Corzine's opposition to 287G saying there is no purpose for it in his administration.
The Immigration Policy Center is out with a new study talking about the political and economic power of Immigrants, Latinos, and Asians in New Jersey:
Immigrants, Latinos, and Asians account for large and growing shares of the economy and electorate in New Jersey. Immigrants make up roughly 20% of the state's population, and more than half of them are naturalized U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote. "New Americans"-immigrants and the children of immigrants-account for 15.1% of all registered voters in the state. Moreover, Latinos and Asians wield roughly $67.3 billion in consumer purchasing power, and the businesses they own had sales and receipts of $25.7 billion and employed 125,593 people at last count. Immigrant workers contributed at least $47 billion to the state economy in 2006, representing almost one-quarter (or 23%) of all earnings statewide. At a time of economic recession, New Jersey can ill-afford to alienate such a critical component of its labor force, tax base, and business community.
I'll put the full findings below the fold. Bottom line, almost 1 in 5 residents are immigrants. Over half of them are naturalized meaning they are eligible to vote. In fact, they say that 15% of the total registered voters are naturalized citizens or US born children of immigrants.
Starting with Middlesex County cutting the contract with ICE that allowed the county, since Dec 2001, to house immigrant detainees in the county jail, reported in the Home News, to 2 Massachusetts jurisdictions ending their 287(g) programs that deputize local law enforcement as immigration agents, Boston Globe, on the same day that Middlesex acted.
"We're done. I told them to come get the computers." Framingham Police Chief Steve Carl
Ya gotta love the frankness of police chiefs when they don't want to give in to ICE demands...
"It doesn't benefit the police department to engage in deportation and immigration enforcement,"
Topped off by the new rules for Maricopa County making Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Phoenix, "furious," HuffPo. Though this only covers the cops in the street, so they are still detaining people who come into the county jail.
Gives one hope for change. In the meantime, I'd love for them to make it easier for those of us in our Middlesex visitors program to find the guys we were visiting who are now dispersed to Monmouth, Hudson and Essex jails. And I'm hearing that in Essex, you can wait for 3 hours and not even get the 15 minute visit!
Here's what happens when you're the only Hispanic Senator, and on the Finance Committee, you just might be able to make the healthcare bill less punitive. From The Hill, my objections to the non-sensical term 'illegal immigrant' notwithstanding (it doesn't even cover the group it intends to cover, since many people who are undocumented have overstayed a visa, which is not a crime):
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) is putting Democrats in a bind by seeking to let illegal [sic] immigrants benefit from the healthcare overhaul...
Menendez said he is withholding his support for the bill until his concerns about immigration and other matters are addressed...
The Senate Finance Committee bill, drafted by centrist Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), does not allow illegal [sic] immigrants to purchase health coverage over an exchange set up to create competition within the insurance industry and reduce costs.
Menendez is troubled by that language and has joined Hispanic advocacy groups in criticizing the bill for placing too heavy a burden on legal and illegal [sic] immigrants.
Good for Rockefeller for saying no to the Baucus bill. Since there are 13 Dems and 10 GOP on the finance committee, Menendez's vote is crucial. But how far can he get?
One Democratic aide said it would be difficult for Menendez to win the inclusion of illegal [sic] immigrants into the insurance exchange. But Menendez may have more success increasing subsidies for those mixed families that include illegal [sic] immigrants.
Having just attended a vigil for the rights of children, many of whom are American Citizens (one of 11 vigils around the state), it looks to me like covering mixed families will have a very big impact.
The Home News and even APP have great photos, and here's one from the end of the night at the Reformed Church of HP:
You'd think if a sheriff's going to fire off an angry response to being reminded of an AG directive, then at least she'd get her facts straight. Guadagno is accusing AG Ann Milgram of politicizing the issue of Guadagno's 287g application to ICE, which would deputize Monmouth corrections officers to ask immigration status - a rich pot calling the kettle black. And goes on this paranoid rant that Milgram only sent letters to the GOP strongholders of Monmouth, her county and Morristown, in the county where Christie is from, leaving out Hudson, which already has ICE trained officers in the jail. She's just plain wrong, which she could have known by looking at the articles in the APP or Star Ledger:
Milgram sent letters Friday and Tuesday to officials in three counties saying they should show no bias when upholding the law...
Monmouth County and Morristown, along with the Hudson County Department of Corrections, are among 79 departments nationwide that have been accepted into the program, known as 287(g), which was overhauled to allay fears it would be used to target or harass immigrant groups.
The third letter was sent to Corrections Director Oscar Aviles of the Hudson County jail.
Guadagno's accusation that Milgram is 'misinformed' and 'hate-mongering' is based on Guadagno's statement:
"Under our program, we simply ensure that if you are detained in our jail and you are an illegal alien, you will be identified, processed by federal authorities and deported if appropriate," Guadagno said.
I've discussed here why this is only going to lead to civil rights abuses and not net any criminals who aren't already covered under the AG's directive. But Ann Milgram was probably just covering all bases, seeing as the Monmouth sheriff's department does have a 'law enforcement' division. While Guadagno hasn't applied for a 'task force', do we know that she can't have some of her law enforcement officers trained by ICE? From the sheriff's department website:
"The Sheriff's Office law enforcement division consists of a warrants division and fugitive task force, a criminal investigations bureau, a court security unit, a civil process unit, a canine unit and an id bureau."
Milgram's letter just looked to be a generic reminder to both Morristown, that is asking for a task force and Monmouth that, according to Guadagno's statements, wants to use 287g for corrections officers.
I, for one, am pleased to see the following in Ann Milgram's letter:
In addition, any law enforcement officer that exercises authority under Section 287g must submit monthly reports to the Director of the Division of Criminal Justice, as required by Directive 2007-3, that document the name, address, gender, date of birth, country of birth, race and ethnicity of the individual queried; the location of the encounter; the criminal offense that formed the basis for the arrest; the outcome of the inquiry; and whether the individual was taken into custody or otherwise detained based upon immigration status.
This is how you track instances of racial profiling and is exactly what is missing, according to the ACLU, from the new 'Memo of Agreement' put out by ICE that is supposed to address the issues of racial profiling.
On another topic, in the sheriff's department statements on the cost of housing federal detainees, either she or her spokeswoman is misleading, if not outright wrong, just throwing facts around in a way that it's hard to tell whether the contract is saving the county money or not. In a August 20th APP OpEd, Guadagno tries to answer the allegation that she is losing the county money, after her spokeswoman said the county receives $105/night for federal inmates and it costs $134/night to house them. The reasoning is pretty convoluted.
If we canceled the per-diem program, there would be fewer in each mandated housing area but, under state law, each area would still remain open. We would have empty beds with the same overhead with no offsetting federal income. Eliminating the program as the editorial urges would end a revenue stream of approximately 10 times the amount saved. Thus, eliminating the per-diem program would plainly result in added cost to the already overtaxed people of this county.
I don't find that so plain, especially compared to her spokeswoman's numbers. So, it looks like those numbers are inaccurate or don't factor everything in.
I have to laugh that she thinks the APP is calling to cut the contract for federal and ICE detainees in the Monmouth County jail. They're advocating that if you take her spokeswoman's numbers on face value.
In light of the county's budget troubles, the Board of Freeholders should do what it neglected to do during the budget hearings: Insist that Sheriff Kim Guadagno ... justify the expense of housing federal prisoners. If she can't, at least one wing of the jail should be shut down, with the staff reduced accordingly.
Guadagno apparently gave no hint at the time that the federal prisoners were costing the county money.
I would want the ICE contract cut because ICE doesn't enforce its standards for jail conditions, even when deaths have occurred, as in Monmouth and Middlesex, and because it doesn't make sense to detain people with only administrative violations. Most of the 1,000 rented jail beds in NJ are a waste of federal dollars.
There are two recent articles on Guadagno's application for Monmouth County Sheriffs to be trained as ICE agents (so called 287g). No surprise that the weekly Examiner had a more reasonable headline than the APP:
Examiner's: Opinions differ on need for immigration checks
APP: Monmouth jail got good deal on housing illegals
Even Chris Christie has pointed out that "illegals" as a term is incorrect, as many people who are undocumented have over-stayed a visa, which is not a crime. Drivers who let their parking meter run out are not 'illegal drivers'.
The content of the APP article, on the other hand, is surprising, they quote Guadagno's Sheriff's Dept Spokeswoman as saying:
The rate paid by the federal government to house detainees at the 1,328-inmate-capacity Monmouth County Jail was increased from $80 per day to $105 in May 2007...
Scott said the cost of housing, feeding and guarding an inmate comes to $134 per day...
There are currently 250 federal inmates housed at the $105 daily rate. Of those, 150 are being held on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Scott said.
We have a similar number of ICE detainees in the Middlesex County jail and there is no way that the cost of housing the detainees exceeds the $95 that Mdlsx County receives.
Guadagno's budget needs to be reviewed in detail, since as a commenter on the APP website, 'simplicitytruth' points out, since her spokeswoman is saying this could be costing the county up to $2,646,250 per year!
The bottom line on the program that Guadagno is going after, is that it will not generate that many more candidates for rented beds in the Monmouth jail, since the Attorney General's directive already requires that people who commit felonies or DUIs be turned over to ICE. That means that anyone who is questioned by the newly trained corrections officers (meals and per diem for the training at the county's expense, along with overtime for the replacement officers) will have committed a minor offense.
It will lead to more civil rights violations, since revisions to the mandatory detention policy have not been implemented. Detainees have no guaranteed right to a lawyer, and most can't afford one. Mukasay, in a midnight ruling, didn't even want them to be allowed the right to competent counsel, but luckily that was rescinded.
Last month, ICE announced new Memos of Agreement with agencies and counties that have or will get 287g, which the ACLU points out is worse than the Bush administration one in certain ways - letting these guys issue warrants instead of a judge has me worried for one. You can see their comparison of the old and the new memos here.
The priorities under the new MOA are supposed to be for exactly the kind of violations that are already covered by the Attorney General's directive.
If you want to see the clearest case of 287g gone wrong, check out The New Yorker's article on Sheriff Joe, Arpaio of Maricopa Co. Arizona. It gives some insight into Sec'y Napolitano too.
Guadagno has at least said that visitors to the jail won't be checked, but most people who are out of status are too afraid to anyway, even if it's a close family member being detained.
So why does Guadagno want to cost the county money and antagonize the community? According to the Latino Leadership Alliance of Monmouth county, it's all for political gain. It seems we will be seeing alot about the immigration issue during the upcoming campaign. I'm prepared for a very ugly election season.
Finally, the APP quote from John Morton, the new director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is downright scary and says alot about where the new administration is going.
Morton said ICE has long-term plans to find arrangements that are more suitable than prison-like facilities. "We're going to focus on building a better mouse trap," he said.
Comparing inmates to mice puts me in mind of Art Spiegelman's Maus.
Just over a year ago, the complexity of the problems in our immigration system was laid bare for the community of Postville, Iowa. The story of Postville is a dramatic tale of the effects of immigration enforcement, but the events and consequences that unfolded a year ago in Iowa are occurring each and every day in communities in New Jersey, only on a smaller scale. Parents are separated from their children, workers are abused, and communities are suffering the loss of residents, wage earners and consumers. These consequences of immigration enforcement harm our communities.
At about 10 am on May 12, 2008, approximately 900 immigration agents, supported by two helicopters, descended on the community of 2200 residents to raid the Agriprocessors meat packing plant. The disruption to the community at large has been likened to that of a natural disaster.
Please join us on Friday April 10th from 1-3 pm for a prayer service in solidarity with immigrants & protest of Amtrak and Greyhound's cooperation with DHS's racial profiling. We will gather at the park outside of Newark Penn Station at the corner of Market St. and Raymond Plaza East.
Amtrak has agreed to cooperate with border inspections on a random basis within 75 miles of the border. Despite being provided with
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