www.commondreams.org/news/2016/01/08/something-very-wrong-here-outrage-swells-over-deportation-raids
Friday, January 08, 2016
'Something Is Very Wrong Here':
Outrage Swells Over Deportation Raids
'It is inhumane for DHS officials to disregard these threats and
cause fear and anguish for immigrant families,' say Progressive Caucus
co-chairs
On December 30, immigrants and their supporters protested
against the planned deportation raids that have since begun. (Photo: AFP/Getty)
A growing chorus of voices, including many from within the
president's own party, is expressing outrage over President Barack Obama's
recent crackdown on immigrants and refugees, with U.S. Sen. Bernie
Sanders urging the administration "to
immediately cease these raids and not deport families back to countries where a
death sentence awaits."
In separate letters sent Thursday and Friday, presidential
candidate Sanders and the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus,
Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), called the
raids—which have already swept up at least 121 people including women and children—"inhumane."
"Countless reports have documented how many of these women
and children are fleeing extreme violence and poverty in their home
countries," wrote Grijalva and Ellison. "It is
inhumane for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials to disregard these
threats and cause fear and anguish for immigrant families."
The lawmakers—who join a handful of their colleagues and a
host of community organizations—all expressed concern that families are not
getting the legal assistance they deserve.
"Families represented by counsel successfully obtain
asylum...most of the time," Sanders wrote (pdf), "but the majority of
detained families lack access to legal advice and assistance, often because of
financial, logistical, or governmental obstacles."
He continued: "Without adequate legal counsel, many do not
understand the court proceedings and struggle to get their cases heard
adequately and fairly. Already, courts have temporarily halted the deportation
of dozens of individuals rounded up in this weekend's raids because of
ineffective legal counsel they received."
Indeed, speaking on Democracy Now! on
Friday, CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project managing
attorney Katie Shepherd confirmed that of the nine stays the firm has submitted
thus far on behalf of detained women and children in the South Texas Family
Residential Center, "100 percent that we've received decisions on have
been granted so far."
"I feel that this is a clear indication that something is
very wrong here," Shepherd told DN! host Amy Goodman.
In an editorial published Friday, the New
York Times, too, called for the White House to stop what it described as a
"shameful round-up of refugees:"
The
administration needs to recognize that this problem cannot be solved in
backward fashion. The answer lies not in sitting idly until refugees arrive and
greeting them with family prisons and prosecution. It requires addressing the
root causes of the bloody violence in the region, and fixing the chaotic,
underfunded legal system at the border, where migrants with no money or lawyers
— or with bad lawyers — confront the infernal complexities of immigration and
asylum law, and lose.
Longtime immigration lawyer Barbara Hines, who has many clients
detained in the notorious Karnes and Dilley detention centers, agreed that U.S.
asylum laws "really haven’t been modernized to the realities of Central
America with the tremendous gang and gender-based violence."
On Democracy Now!, she said:
The way
we’ve addressed situations in the past is through Temporary Protected Status,
which is in the immigration laws and allows the executive branch and the
Department of Homeland Security to decree certain countries and to say it's too
dangerous for those people to return to their home countries. We’ve done this
since 1990, and we’ve included countries in Africa, in Syria. We recently
declared Nepal because of the earthquake. And I think that we seriously need to
begin to think about temporary protected status, in addition to asylum, because
many, many of the women do have bona fide refugee claims, as a solution
to the situation.
Sanders echoed that call in his letter on Thursday, saying Obama
should use his executive authority "to protect—not deport—these families
by extending [Temporary Protected Status] for those fleeing unsafe countries in
Central America."
Watch Shepherd and Hines on DN! below:
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