New Policy Permits Asylum for Battered Women

New Policy Permits Asylum for Battered Women - NYTimes.com

July 16, 2009

By JULIA PRESTON

The Obama administration has opened the way for foreign women who are victims of severe domestic beatings and sexual abuse to receive asylum in the United States. The action reverses a Bush administration stance in a protracted and passionate legal battle over the possibilities for battered women to become refugees.

In addition to meeting other strict conditions for asylum, abused women will need to show that they are treated by their abuser as subordinates and little better than property, according to an immigration court filing by the administration, and that domestic abuse is widely tolerated in their country. They must show that they could not find protection from institutions at home or by moving to another place within their own country.

The administration laid out its position in an immigration appeals court filing in the case of a woman from Mexico who requested asylum, saying she feared she would be murdered by her common-law husband there. According to court documents filed in San Francisco, the man repeatedly raped her at gunpoint, held her captive, stole from her and at one point tried to burn her alive when he learned she was pregnant.

The government submitted its legal brief in April, but the woman only recently gave her consent for the confidential case documents to be disclosed to The New York Times. The government has marked a clear, although narrow, pathway for battered women seeking asylum, lawyers said, after 13 years of tangled court arguments, including resistance from the Bush administration to recognize any of those claims.

Moving cautiously, the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately recommend asylum for the Mexican woman, who is identified in the court papers only by her initials as L.R. But the department, in the unusual submission written by senior government lawyers, concluded in plain terms that “it is possible” that the Mexican woman “and other applicants who have experienced domestic violence could qualify for asylum.”

As recently as last year, Bush administration lawyers had argued in the same case that in spite of her husband’s brutality, L.R. and other battered women could not meet the standards of American asylum law.

“This really opens the door to the protection of women who have suffered these kinds of violations,” said Karen Musalo, a professor who is director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. Professor Musalo has represented other abused women seeking asylum and recently took up the case of L.R.

The Obama administration’s position caps a legal odyssey for foreign women seeking protection in the United States from domestic abuse that began in 1996 when a Guatemalan woman named Rody Alvarado was granted asylum by an immigration court, based on her account of repeated beatings by her husband. Three years later, an immigration appeals court overturned Ms. Alvarado’s asylum, saying she was not part of any persecuted group under American law.

Since then Ms. Alvarado’s case has stalled as successive administrations debated the issue, with immigration officials reluctant to open a floodgate of asylum petitions from battered women across the globe. During the Clinton administration, Attorney General Janet Reno proposed regulations to clarify the matter, but they have never gone into effect. In a briefing paper in 2004, lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security raised the possibility of asylum for victims of domestic violence, but the Bush administration never put that into practice in immigration court, Professor Musalo said.

Now Homeland Security officials say they are returning to views the department put forward in 2004, refining them to draw conditions sufficiently narrow that battered women would prevail in only a limited number cases.

“Although each case is highly fact-dependent and requires scrutiny of the specific threat an applicant faces,” said Matt Chandler, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, “the department continues to view domestic violence as a possible basis for asylum in the United States.” He said officials hoped to complete regulations governing the complex cases.

The new policy does not involve women fleeing genital mutilation.

Any applicant for asylum or refugee status in the United States must demonstrate a “well-founded fear of persecution” because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or “membership in a particular social group.” The extended legal argument has been whether abused women could be part of any social group that would be eligible under those terms. Last year, 22,930 people won asylum in this country fleeing all types of persecution; the number has been decreasing in recent years.

Because asylum cases are confidential, there is no way of knowing how many applications by battered women have been denied or held up over the last decade. The issue is further complicated by the peculiarities of the United States immigration system, in which asylum cases are heard in courts that are not part of the federal judiciary, but are run by an agency of the Justice Department, with Homeland Security officials representing the government.

The government has not disputed the painful history that L.R., now 42, recounts in a court declaration. The man who became her tormentor first assaulted her when she was a teenager and he was a physical education coach, 14 years her senior, at a high school in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. He and his family were regarded as wealthy and influential because they owned a restaurant in town, L.R. said.

Over the years, he made her live with him, and forced her to have sex with him by putting a gun or a machete to her head, by breaking her nose and by threatening to kill the small children of her sister. Once when she became pregnant, she said, she barely escaped alive after he had poured kerosene on the bed where she was sleeping and ignited it. He stole the salary she earned as a teacher and later sold her teacher’s license.

Local police dismissed her reports of violence as “a private matter,” the court documents said, and a judge she turned to for help tried to seduce her.

“In Mexico, men believe they have a right to abuse their women because they are like a possession,” she said. With three children born from her involuntary sex with the man, who never married her, she fled to California in 2004.

An immigration judge denied her asylum claim in 2006. In its new filing, the government urged that L.R.’s case be sent back to the immigration court for further review, suggesting she might still succeed. But the government also injected a caveat, insisting that “this does not mean that every victim of domestic violence would be eligible for asylum.”

Study Finds Immigration Courtrooms Backlogged

Study Finds Immigration Courtrooms Backlogged - NYTimes.com

June 18, 2009

By JULIA PRESTON

Nearly three years after the Justice Department found that the nation’s immigration courts were seriously overburdened and recommended hiring 40 new judges, only a few hirings have taken place and the case backlog is at its highest point in a decade, according to a study released Wednesday.

The report, by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan group that analyzes data about federal government performance, found that the shortage of judges had contributed to a 19 percent increase in the backlog of cases since 2006 and a 23 percent increase in the time it takes to resolve them.

As of April 12, Justice Department officials said, there were 234 active immigration judges, an increase of 4 judges since August 2006. At that time a review by the attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, determined that immigration courts were struggling with their case burden and recommended that 40 judges be brought on board.

“It’s a system at its breaking point,” said Dana L. Marks, an immigration judge in San Francisco who is president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. “How can a system function properly when it is starved from the critical basic resources it needs?”

The number of cases soared after the Bush administration hired thousands of new immigration agents and stepped up raids in factories and communities. Last year the immigration courts received 351,477 cases, also a record in the last decade.

“Promises were made and promises weren’t kept, and there is real hurt,” said David Burnham, a co-director of the clearinghouse, also known as TRAC.

Many thousands of immigrants have been affected by the delays because the authorities have started to hold many more of them in detention while the immigrants challenge deportation orders or seek political asylum through the courts.

Each judge in the immigration courts is sharing a law clerk, on average, with three other judges, the report found. In federal district courts, by contrast, each judge normally is assigned more than one clerk. In one week last year that the clearinghouse examined, an immigration judge typically handled 69 hearings. Yet according to the report, 186,342 cases were pending in the immigration courts at the end of the 2008 fiscal year, the highest number in a decade.

The courts that decide immigration matters have generally had lower visibility than the federal courts because they are not part of the judiciary. Instead, they are run by an agency, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which is part of the Justice Department. Judges are appointed by the attorney general.

A spokesman for the Justice Department, Charles Miller, said the increased time to resolve cases did not mean that the courts were overwhelmed or inefficient. “For example, the case may involve significant legal or unusual issues,” Mr. Miller said.

But he said the department was hiring 19 new immigration judges and had requested 28 more judges and 28 clerks for 2010.

Unlike criminal defendants, immigrants in court do not have a right to be represented by a lawyer. In many cases, the judge is expected to explain basic rights and procedures. But according to the TRAC report, 78 percent of the immigrants that came before the courts since 2006 required a translator.

Immigration Agents to Get Expanded Powers

National Briefing - Washington - Immigration Agents to Get Expanded Powers - NYTimes.com

June 18, 2009
National Briefing | Washington

By GINGER THOMPSON

In an expansion of its crackdown on drug cartels, the Obama administration plans to announce Thursday that it will give Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents the authority to investigate drug crimes. Justice Department officials refused to divulge details of their plans, saying they did not want to pre-empt the news conference. But officials familiar with the plan said it would settle a long-running turf battle between the immigration agency and the Drug Enforcement Administration that has seriously undermined the efforts of both. The decision came amid drug-related violence that left more than 6,000 people dead in Mexico last year. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, called the Justice Department’s decision “welcome news,” saying, “The cartels that smuggle drugs and illegal immigrants have integrated their activities, and now the federal agencies will have a better integrated response.”

Senate Overturns Obama Decision Wednesday To Rescind Flawed Bush “No-Match” Immigration Rule

American Civil Liberties Union : Senate Overturns Obama Decision Wednesday To Rescind Flawed Bush “No-Match” Immigration Rule

 (7/9/2009)

Vitter Amendment Requires Employers To Fire Workers Unable to Resolve Discrepancies In Social Security Records

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (202) 675-2312; media@dcaclu.org

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate passed by voice vote today an amendment offered by Senate David Vitter (R-LA) requiring employers to fire workers, including U.S. citizens, who are unable to resolve discrepancies in their Social Security records. The Senate vote seeks to overturn President Obama’s decision Wednesday to rescind the fatally flawed Bush administration Social Security no-match rule by prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) from implementing any changes to it.

In passing the Vitter amendment, the Senate has taken a dangerous step that would threaten the jobs of tens of thousands of U.S. workers at a time when our economy is in great peril. The Social Security no-match rule, promulgated by the Bush administration in 2007, has been strongly opposed by groups across the political spectrum – business, labor, immigration, civil rights, and civil libertarian groups. Due to a federal injunction issued in 2007 as a result of a lawsuit filed on behalf of the ACLU and other groups, the no-match rule has not gone into effect.

“While the Senate might think it has taken a step to fix illegal immigration, it has actually set into motion a rule that will jeopardize the jobs of tens of thousands of U.S. citizens who could be unjustly fired under the rule due to SSA database errors,” said Joanne Lin, ACLU Legislative Counsel.

The no-match rule would unlawfully use the error-ridden Social Security database for immigration enforcement purposes by requiring employers to fire workers, including U.S. citizens, who are unable to resolve discrepancies in their Social Security records within 90 days of receipt of a no-match letter. If an employer does not resolve a data mismatch, DHS may conclude that the employer had “constructive knowledge” that an employee is not authorized to work, and may prosecute the employer accordingly.

“Social Security no-match letters were never designed to be immigration enforcement tools, and they cannot and will not solve the problem of illegal immigration,” added Lin. “Moreover, the no-match rule will harm people with disabilities and senior citizens by forcing them to deal with longer waits and more bureaucratic hassles in order to get their Social Security benefits checks. At a time of great economic instability, the Senate has taken a step towards jeopardizing the livelihood of U.S. workers, senior citizens, and people with disabilities.”

In 2007, a federal court blocked the no-match rule after the ACLU, AFL-CIO, and National Immigration Law Center sued DHS. The court concluded that the no-match rule would affect more than eight million workers nationwide and lead to the firing of tens of thousands of U.S. citizens. According to the Social Security Administration’s own Inspector General, more than 70 percent of the discrepancies in the SSA database belong to U.S. citizens. An economist hired by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that the total number of authorized workers who will be fired under the no-match rule because of their inability to resolve the data mismatch could top 165,000.

Immigration Debate Tied to Rise in Hate Crimes

Report Links Increase in Hate Crimes to Contentious Debate Over Immigration

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 17, 2009

U.S. civil rights leaders said yesterday that an increase in hate crimes committed in recent years against Hispanics and people perceived to be immigrants "correlates closely" to the nation's increasingly contentious debate over immigration.

Hate crimes targeting Hispanic Americans rose 40 percent from 2003 to 2007, the most recent year for which FBI statistics are available, from 426 to 595 incidents, marking the fourth consecutive year of increases.

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund issued a report that faulted anti-immigrant rhetoric in the media and mobilization of extremist groups on the Internet. The conference said that some groups advocating for tighter immigration laws have invoked "the dehumanizing, racist stereotypes and bigotry of hate groups."

"Reasonable people will disagree . . . but the tone of discourse over comprehensive immigration reform needs to be changed, needs to be civil and sane," said Michael Lieberman, Washington counsel for the Anti-Defamation League.

The FBI reported in October that the number of hate crimes dropped in 2007 by about 1 percent, to 7,624. But violence against Latinos and gay people bucked the trend. The number of hate crimes directed at gay men and lesbians increased about 6 percent, the FBI reported.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which was criticized in the LCCREF report, said it was "another salvo against free speech by the pro-amnesty coalition . . . to delegitimize any critic of mass immigration."

Refugees leave for the US

timesofmalta.com - Refugees leave for the US

Monday, 15th June 2009 - 14:34CET


A group of 10 refugees from Somalia and Eritrea left Malta today to begin a new life in the United States. Since the U.S. Embassy began its permanent refugee resettlement programme in May 2008, over 260 refugees have been resettled to the U.S.

Jason Davis, Chargé d'Affaires at the U.S. Embassy, said that the refugee resettlement programme showed the continuing commitment of the United States to help ease the burden that migration had placed on Malta, as well as its recognition of the enormous challenges and dangers that many of the migrants had faced.

"The Programme's success is a tribute to continued hard work on the part of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Organization for Migration, and the United States government, as well as many others here in Malta who have dedicated themselves to improving the lives of refugees in need of humanitarian assistance," Mr Davis said.

He explained that refugees are assigned a sponsor agency in the U.S. that provides initial services such as housing, food, and clothing, as well as referral to medical care, employment services, and other support services during the transition period to self-sufficiency. These services are provided in order to facilitate refugees with the process of integration and cultural assimilation.

San Francisco at Crossroads Over Immigration

San Francisco at Crossroads Over Immigration - NYTimes.com

June 13, 2009

By JESSE McKINLEY

SAN FRANCISCO — In the debate over illegal immigration, San Francisco has proudly played the role of liberal enclave, a so-called sanctuary city where local officials have refused to cooperate with enforcement of federal immigration law and undocumented residents have mostly lived without fear of consequence.

But over the last year, buffeted by several high-profile crimes by illegal immigrants and revelations of mismanagement of the city’s sanctuary policy, San Francisco has become less like its self-image and more like many other cities in the United States: deeply conflicted over how to cope with the fallout of illegal immigration.

At the center of the turnaround is a new law enforcement policy focused on under-age offenders who are in this country illegally. Under the policy, minors brought to juvenile hall on felony charges are questioned about their immigration status. And if they are suspected of being here illegally, they are reported to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for deportation, regardless of whether they are eventually convicted of a crime.

“We went from being one of the more progressive counties in the country to probably one of the least, and the most draconian,” said Abigail Trillin, the managing attorney with Legal Services for Children, a nonprofit legal group. “It’s been a total turnaround.”

Mayor Gavin Newsom, who ordered the new policy, disputes that characterization and ticks off a list of policies that remain immigrant friendly: the issuing of identification cards to residents regardless of legal status, the promotion of low-cost banking and the city’s longstanding opposition to immigration raids.

“I’m balancing safety and rights,” Mr. Newsom said. “And I’m taking the arrows.”

The policy was put in place last summer amid a series of embarrassing revelations about the city’s handling of illegal minors and even as reports arose of several serious crimes committed by illegal residents. The policy has led not only to dozens of juveniles in deportation proceedings, but also to criticism from the city’s public defender and members of its Board of Supervisors, which is threatening to relax it next month.

“I think the point of sanctuary is that you protect people and treat people the same unless they engage in some felony crime,” said David Campos, a county supervisor who came illegally to the United States from his native Guatemala when he was 14.

The new approach has pitted a growing coalition of immigrants rights groups against Mr. Newsom, who is running for governor in a state where immigrants, particularly Latinos, can be vital to being elected.

Mr. Newsom defends the policy as an effort to bring the city’s juvenile protocol in line with that for adult illegal immigrants, who have always been reported to federal authorities if they are accused of a felony.

But immigration advocates say the policy has too often swept up juveniles who are in this country illegally but who are innocent or held on minor charges, a list that includes young men like Roberto, 14, who has lived in the United States since he was 2.

Roberto, whose last name is being withheld at the request of his parents who are also in the country illegally, was handed over to immigration authorities last fall after he took a BB gun to school to show off to friends. He spent Christmas at a juvenile facility in Washington State and is now facing deportation to Mexico, where he was born.

The experience left Roberto shaken. “I was feeling really scared,” he said in an interview here.

Supporters of the new crackdown say that Roberto’s case is unrepresentative and that the majority of youths turned over to the immigration authorities have engaged in serious crimes, including those associated with the practice by Honduran drug gangs in San Francisco of using minors as dealers.

“A lot of them have histories; a lot of them are second, third chances,” Mr. Newsom said. “This is not as touchy feely as some people may want to make it.”

Mr. Newsom says he still supports the sanctuary ordinance, which grew out of worries in the 1980s about the deportation of Central Americans to war-torn regions. Made city law in 1989, the policy forbids city agencies to use resources to assist in the enforcement of federal immigration law or information gathering.

While proponents say such policies help the police by making immigrant communities — often suspicious of the authorities — more comfortable with reporting crimes, critics say San Francisco’s policy had been stretched to extremes, including the practice of occasionally flying some offenders back to their home countries rather than cooperating with immigration authorities.

Mr. Newsom says he discovered and stopped that practice in May 2008, and quickly ordered a review. Juvenile referrals began shortly thereafter and were formalized as policy in August.

In the interim, however, The San Francisco Chronicle reported that a group of teenage Honduran crack dealers who had been sent to a group home simply walked away from confinement.

A second event was more serious, when a father and two sons driving home from a picnic were killed in a case of mistaken identity in June 2008. The police later charged Edwin Ramos, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador and suspected gang member who had had run-ins with the San Francisco police as a juvenile but had not been turned over to the immigration authorities.

At the same time, San Francisco found itself under criminal investigation by the United States attorney for the Northern District of California, and city officials were eager to show that their city was not a lawless haven for illegal-immigrant criminals.

“If we start harboring criminals as a sanctuary city, this entire system is in peril,” Mr. Newsom said.

For their part, immigration advocates say they are not asking the city to shelter felonious youths from deportation. The problem, they say, is the point of contact: at arrest, rather than after any sort of legal adjudication.

“Even if you’re undocumented, you have the right to due process,” said Jeff Adachi, the city’s public defender.

The federal authorities, meanwhile, have been pleasantly surprised that the new policy has resulted in more than 100 referrals.

“We are now getting routine referrals,” said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the immigration agency.

The most serious challenge to the policy is likely to come in July, when the Board of Supervisors is expected to take up a proposal that would apply the policy only to illegal juveniles found in court to have committed a felony. The measure’s sponsor, Mr. Campos, said he expected it to pass.

Such an ordinance would not help Roberto, who is still waiting to plead his case to an immigration judge. He said he had already learned a valuable lesson.

“I will never bring anything to school again,” he said.

Private Prisons for Immigrants Lack Accountability, Oversight

Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union » Private Prisons for Immigrants Lack Accountability, Oversight

(Originally posted on AJC.com)

On March 11, a 39-year-old man held in detention at the Stewart Detention Center, a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in southwest Georgia, died at a hospital in Columbus.

To this day, the immediate cause of Roberto Martinez Medina’s death remains unclear (a press release pronounced the cause of death as “apparent natural causes”).

Last month, Leonard Odom, 37, died at the Wheeler County Correctional Facility in south-central Georgia.

Both facilities are operated by Corrections Corp. of America, which has a contract with the Department of Homeland Security to operate the Stewart center and one with the Georgia Department of Corrections to operate the one in Wheeler County.

The DOC has not released additional information about the death of Odom, due to an ongoing investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

What sets apart the deaths of these two men held at CCA-operated facilities is the difference in official responses.

In the case of the death at the immigration detention facility, there have been no further explanations regarding what may have prompted the death — much less an official investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which was created as a part of Homeland Security in 2003 to consolidate immigration enforcement.

Medina’s tragic death marks the latest in the mounting number of immigrant deaths in the custody of CCA, the largest corporation in the business of for-profit detention.

From October 2003 through Feb. 7, 2009, 18 people died in immigration detention custody in facilities operated by CCA alone, according to information from The New York Times.

Yet ICE has failed repeatedly to hold CCA accountable. Instead, the federal agency continues to reward CCA with additional contracts, most recently for operation of the North Georgia Detention Center in Hall County.

The CCA’s track record should come as no surprise to those who read the report issued in April by Georgia Detention Watch, a coalition of several organizations and individuals advocating an end to unjust and inhumane immigration detention and local enforcement practices.

The report was based on interviews with 16 detainees during a humanitarian visitation coordinated by Georgia Detention Watch in December 2008. The report uses ICE’s own Performance Based National Detention Standards to evaluate conditions at Stewart.

Even compared to ICE’s own nonbinding standards, conditions at the CCA-operated facility can best be described as grossly inadequate.

Members of Georgia Detention Watch and partner organizations have requested on several occasions to meet with ICE to discuss the findings of the report, but have gotten no response.

Georgia Detention Watch is not alone in demanding answers and accountability for immigrant deaths in U.S. detention.

The United Nations Expert on Extrajudicial Killings, Philip Alston, who toured the United States on a fact-finding mission in June 2008 on a mandate to investigate killings in violation of international human rights and humanitarian law, recently released a report demanding greater transparency and swift and public investigations for deaths in immigration detention.

Today marks three months since the death of Medina. ICE has yet to provide any answers regarding why this man died in detention.

Neither have Georgia Detention Watch members been provided with an opportunity to meet with ICE representatives to discuss the mounting concerns regarding the treatment of immigrants at the CCA-run Stewart.

With the prospect for yet another CCA-run immigrant detention facility in Hall County, these concerns become especially urgent.

If ICE’s oversight of the CCA operation of Stewart is any guide, we can expect yet another facility funded by taxpayers held to no standards at all.

I will join others in front of the ICE office in downtown Atlanta today to honor the memory of Medina and other immigrants who have died in CCA custody.

Georgia Detention Watch members will wear black T-shirts reading: “Why Did Roberto Martinez Medina Die in Detention?” Our message is clear: The era for impunity is over. ICE must hold CCA to account.

Gay Filipino professor wins political asylum after revealing a 30-year secret of sexual abuse

Gay Filipino professor wins political asylum after revealing a 30-year secret of sexual abuse - San Jose Mercury News

By Jessie Mangaliman

Mercury News
Posted: 06/08/2009 05:10:32 PM PDT
Updated: 06/08/2009 10:03:30 PM PDT

After his visitor's visa expired in 2006, Philip Belarmino, an English professor from the Philippines, consulted a San Francisco attorney. He wanted to see if he could stay longer to be with his parents and sister who are permanent residents in the Bay Area.

That bureaucratic immigration path led instead to revelation of a stunning personal secret, recounted during an emotional testimony in an immigration courtroom in San Francisco last month: When he was 9, 11 and 16, Belarmino said he was repeatedly sexually assaulted by other boys.

Recounting the abuse, said the 43-year Bay Area resident, was "like forever. It was like re-entering a harrowing, hellish experience."

He feared a forced return to the Philippines, "of being hurled back in the world of cruelty."

That wrenching testimony convinced Judge Loreto Geisse to grant Belarmino political asylum in the United States, ending for now the government's effort to deport him. The Department of Justice, which has until June 22 to appeal, could not be reached for comment Monday.

Political asylum in the United States for gays and lesbians who fear persecution if returned to their home countries is not new and no one knows how many such cases are granted each year. Immigration Equality, a New York City group that advocates for gay and lesbian immigrant rights, won 55 similar cases last year.

Thousands of cases are won each year by victims of war and political persecution, but grants of asylum for gay men like Belarmino are relatively few and far between. The last known Bay Area case, a gay Mexican man who feared a return to Mexico, was in 2001 and was appealed successfully before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"These cases are very challenging and they're very difficult to win," said Karen Musalo, clinical professor of law, and director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings College of Law.

"They are firmly legitimate under the law," she said. "Kudos to the lawyer."

Ted Laguatan, a veteran immigration attorney from San Francisco, said he represented Belarmino in his previously unsuccessful efforts to stay in the U.S. He was denied an extension to his visitor's visa and denied a student visa. He faced deportation after overstaying his visa.

Laguatan said he didn't know Belarmino's personal story at first. He knew the basics: Belarmino grew up in Manila, the Philippine capital, and taught for 17 years at a public university. He is the second to the youngest in a family of six children.

In a conversation in 2007, Belarmino revealed that he is gay. He also revealed the sexual abuse, how he kept it secret from his family, and how he feared reporting it to the police, worried about harassment and more abuse.

"I saw his anguish," Laguatan said. "I had deep concern for Philip, and I wanted to help him as competently and diligently as possible."

For the past two years that Belarmino was fighting deportation and seeking asylum, his family didn't know he is gay, and that as a child he endured abuse.

Belarmino came out to his family the day he also got political asylum.

"If it weren't for the case, it would have remained a secret," said Bess Naguit, Belarmino's sister. "In our hearts, we knew Phil wanted to spare us the sadness, the grief and the pain."

California: 73 Illegal Immigrants Are Found in Truck

National Briefing - West - California - 73 Illegal Immigrants Are Found in Truck - NYTimes.com

National Briefing | West

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 9, 2009

The Border Patrol said a truck driver had been arrested at a checkpoint in California after 73 illegal immigrants from Mexico were found in the back of his rig. The agency said the 50-year-old driver from Mexico, arrested Sunday, was in custody awaiting prosecution for alien smuggling. A Border Patrol agent said that most of the 53 men and 20 women were being returned to Mexico and that an immigrant from Guatemala would be charged with illegal re-entry of a criminal alien.

Illegal immigration's fallout: Families split as deportations grow

Illegal immigration's fallout: Families split as deportations grow | detnews.com | The Detroit News

Monday, June 8, 2009

Gregg Krupa / The Detroit News

Maria Mena and her husband, Felipe Angelus, were driving home from the grocery store with their three children on April 30, 2008, when federal agents brandishing guns surrounded the car, ordered Angelus out, handcuffed him and led him away.

It was the last time the children saw their father.

"All they ever said to him was, 'We are taking you home -- to Mexico,' " said Mena, a legal resident. "I was eight months' pregnant. The kids were crying. They are still afraid of the cops."

Angelus had entered the country illegally 17 years before his arrest, and Mena said he never committed another crime.

Similar stories across Metro Detroit have prompted calls from officials in Congress, the Catholic Church and advocacy groups for more leniency toward illegal immigrants who pose no threat to public safety or national security.

Critics say parents knowingly place their children at risk when they enter the country illegally.

"Theirs is an argument for open borders," said Bob Dane of the Federation for Immigration Reform, which advocates for increasing enforcement and slowing legal immigration.

"Having children is not instantaneous immunity from facing the consequences of breaking the law."

Leaders of immigrant communities say the recent escalation by federal agencies in deporting illegal immigrants is unraveling the social fabric of these neighborhoods and could start affecting police blotters and government relief rolls in the next decade.

Since the deportation of Angelus, who worked in highway construction, his family has had to turn to Supplemental Security Income to stay afloat. Mena now worries about losing the family home and says school counselors tell her the children need emotional help.Four years after attempts at immigration reform floundered, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of spouses in Metro Detroit are involuntarily separated and their children left without one or both parents.

Four Democratic U.S. senators recently proposed the Reuniting Families Act, to reduce the time deportees are kept from their loved ones. It usually takes years, often a decade or more, before they receive permission to return -- if they ever do.

President Barack Obama says he wants reform by the end of the year.
Weighing the law's effects

Failure to have current residency documentation is a civil violation, punishable by deportation, but some say deporting those who are otherwise law abiding is a harsh penalty that will lead to more social problems.

"We definitely need reform of the immigration system, especially in a way that is respectful in keeping families together," said Bishop Daniel Flores of the Archdiocese of Detroit. "We in the archdiocese have amicable relationships with law enforcement, and a lot of them are doing exactly what the law asks of them. But, particularly when there is a family involved, we ask them to be sensitive and to apply the law with respect for the family situation as much as possible."

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has said enforcement should refocus on employers, while other officials in the department stress that laws will be enforced.

"Immigration and Customs Enforcement ... enforces laws as they are written," said Matt Chandler, a spokesman. ICE has been given new direction, Chandler said, but "that is not to say that illegal workers found in these raids will not be arrested."

Until reform is accomplished, advocates for civil rights say, federal investigators should attempt to differentiate between illegal immigrants who have committed further crimes or who pose threats to the national security and undocumented workers who support families.

"No one disputes the right of our government agencies to do their job to the fullest," said Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

"However, minor immigration violations cannot be treated in a totally heartless and blind process."
Changing the focus

When the current removal initiative was launched in 2003, it was aimed at fugitives who committed crimes or who were subject to court-ordered removals. But a study by the Migration Policy Institute and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law determined that immigrants with criminal convictions accounted for only 9 percent of deportees in 2007 -- down from 32 percent in 2003. And 40 percent of the deportees in 2007 had no removal order.

"In the vast majority of the families, a parent or the parents have come only to improve their lives and make a contribution to our country -- they are not here to hurt us," said Viviana Lande, director of Community Immigration Services for the Archdiocese of Detroit.

"Right now, the emphasis is on enforcement, and inevitably the families are going to be affected."

Amid heartbreaking anxiety, deportees sometimes choose to leave their American-born children behind, in a country that offers more opportunity.

Edgardo, 14, and Sixto, 13, have lived with guardians since their mother and father returned to Guatemala in February 2008.

Their two younger sisters live with an aunt and six cousins in Chicago, and the two brothers live in Michigan with friends of their parents.

"My parents both cried and cried," said Edgardo, whose guardians asked that his last name not be used. "We all talked about it for a long, long time.

"We are Americans. We've never been to Guatemala. My dad just said, 'You will have no life where we are going, and we won't be able to support you.'

"But we still don't really understand why they had to leave."

Judge: Raids Violated Immigrants' Rights

Judge: Raids Violated Immigrants' Rights - CBS News

HARTFORD, Conn., June 8, 2009

AP) Federal agents violated the constitutional rights of four illegal immigrants in raids that critics say were retaliation for a New Haven program that provided ID cards to foreigners in the country illegally, a federal judge has ruled.

The sweeps on June 6, 2007, came two days after New Haven approved issuing identification cards to illegal immigrants. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials deny the early morning raids were retaliatory.

Immigration Judge Michael Straus, in a decision last week, said the ICE agents went into the men's apartments without warrants, probable cause or their consent, and he put a stop to deportation proceedings against the four Latino defendants.

Immigration officials have denied claims that the 32 arrests that morning were improper. They said in court documents that they were allowed into the homes. It was not clear whether they will appeal Straus' ruling. Messages were left Monday morning for a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Witnesses described in court documents how parents were arrested in front of their children and alleged that agents refused to identify themselves and told people in the homes to shut up.

In his ruling issued June 2, Straus said the four immigrants' rights were “egregiously violated” and the agents' entries in the apartments were “unlawful.”

“Examination of the agents' ... conduct confirms (the defendant's) Fourth Amendment rights were flagrantly violated,” Straus wrote in one of the four men's cases.

“The touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is 'reasonableness' and, by natural extension, one's reasonable expectation of privacy,” the judge wrote. “Nowhere is that expectation of privacy more sacrosanct than in the confines of one's home.”

Of the 32 people arrested, 30 were released on bond or supervision orders. Seventeen of those 30 immigrants challenged their arrests in court.

Straus denied motions in 11 of the 17 cases, granted motions in four of them and reserved decision in the remaining two. Of the 11 cases in which motions were denied, one person was later granted asylum by the judge and the other 10 have appealed.

Yale Law School students are representing the immigrants, whose names were not released.

“We're obviously very happy about it,” Anant Saraswat, one of the students, said Monday. “We think our clients had a very strong case.”

Saraswat said it won't be known for about a month whether federal authorities will appeal Straus' ruling. He said the case can be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, then to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.

New Haven officials have said the raids appeared to be retaliatory for the ID cards, which are meant to help immigrants open bank accounts and receive city services. But ICE officials have said the ID program played no role in the arrests, and the immigration raids were planned weeks before the ID program began.

Reid Declares Immigration a Priority for Senate

Harry Reid Calls Immigration a Priority for U.S. Senate

By Ben Pershing
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 6, 2009

With President Obama on a historic foreign trip, a Supreme Court nomination pending and massive health-care and climate change bills percolating in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) managed to draw headlines on a completely separate front Thursday: immigration.

At a news conference with Hispanic leaders to tout Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court candidacy, Reid said a comprehensive immigration bill is "going to happen this session, but I want it this year, if at all possible." Reid called it one of his three top priorities this year, along with health care and energy.

His comments drew renewed attention to the immigration issue, which has been largely dormant on Capitol Hill since a comprehensive reform measure failed in the Senate in 2007. Despite the hopes of Reid and other advocates, however, with Congress and the White House preoccupied with a packed legislative calendar, immigration reform looks unlikely to pass this year.

House Democratic leaders have already said they want the Senate to move on immigration first, and the Senate can take weeks to process a major bill. Both chambers have to grapple with a full complement of issues this year, including the usual slate of appropriations bills as well as the health-care and energy measures, both of which will be controversial.

Brent Wilkes, the national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, was standing with Reid on Thursday and said he understands why Democrats are not committing to a firm timetable. "They're cautious about the immigration bill, because things have a tendency to slip in Washington," he said.

Last summer, candidate Barack Obama pledged on a LULAC questionnaire, "I will put comprehensive immigration reform back on the nation's agenda during my first year in office." The White House is hosting a meeting of key lawmakers and advocacy groups to discuss immigration June 17, but the administration has given no hint of an intensified push on the issue. Administration aides have said repeatedly that Obama wants to "start the debate this year," but the president has not asked for a bill to sign in 2009.

Obama himself said in April, "We want to move this process," before adding that he does not "have control of the legislative calendar."

Reid does, and his spokesman, Jim Manley, said yesterday he thinks an immigration bill could pass the Senate this year, though he acknowledged the agenda is packed. "It's an ambitious schedule, but it's doable with a little bit of cooperation" from Republicans, he said.

But there is little evidence that such cooperation is forthcoming or that any consensus is forming around a compromise bill, so Republicans do not think moving a measure this year is realistic.

"The real estate is rapidly shrinking," said Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). "Although we can always do more on border security, there are still a number of unresolved issues before the Congress that are going to take us well into the latter part of the year."

Despite those obstacles, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has said he plans to draft and introduce a new immigration measure later this year. Wilkes said that would get the ball rolling, and that 2010 is a more likely target for final action on the issue.

"I think spring is realistic," he said.

U.S. vows crackdown on illegal immigrant worker abuse

U.S. vows crackdown on illegal immigrant worker abuse | Reuters.com

Fri Jun 5, 2009 8:53pm EDT

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The U.S. government under President Barack Obama plans to step up prosecutions of employers who abuse illegal immigrants on the job, a senior U.S. immigration official said in Mexico on Friday.

"(There are) employers who employ illegal labor in abusive conditions, don't pay them the minimum wage, make them work hours beyond the 40-hour week work, don't pay them overtime," said John Morton, who heads the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

"I intend to try to identify and prosecute those people much more vigorously than in the past," Morton told a small group of reporters at the U.S. Embassy after meeting with Mexican officials.

After just three weeks on the job, Morton traveled to Mexico to discuss security along the U.S.-Mexican border, which stretches about 2,000 miles.

Many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States entered the country from Mexico.

"We are going to enforce the law, that's our responsibility. ... I intend to make sure we do that responsibly, humanely and thoughtfully," Morton said.

Morton also said his agency is committed to cooperating with the Mexican government to control the flow of money and weapons south into Mexico, where they are used to help fuel a war with drug cartels that has claimed some 2,500 lives this year alone.

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Will Dunham)

Valley Park's immigration law upheld

Valley Park's immigration law upheld - STLtoday.com

ASSOCIATED PRESS
06/05/2009

ST. LOUIS -- A federal appeals panel has upheld Valley Park's ordinance prohibiting employment of illegal immigrants, a case that could have national implications.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday unanimously affirmed a lower court's ruling in favor of the city of Valley Park.

The town of 6,500 residents has been involved in court battles since passing the immigration law in 2006. A St. Louis County judge struck down the original ordinance as well as a revised one.

Then, in 2007, the city revised the law again, this time to repeal a provision prohibiting renting to illegal aliens, but keeping the provision prohibiting hiring them.

The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which did not return phone messages seeking comment.

Screening the Prison Systems for Illegal Aliens

ThreatsWatch.Org: RapidRecon: Screening the Prison Systems for Illegal Aliens

In what is the first program of its kind, the Texas prison system is now capturing the digital fingerprints of the approximately 1,500 new inmates each week. These digital prints are then sent to the Department of Homeland Security. The program is intended to identify and then deport criminal aliens who have "committed serious crimes such as major drug offenses, murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping while living illegally inside the United States."

This program is not intended to search for and deport those among the more than 11 million illegal immigrants that are otherwise law abiding. Instead, and encouragingly, this program targets the tens of thousands of criminals who already populate our prison systems.

Imprisoned criminal aliens who entered the country illegally or have disobeyed a deportation order can be processed for deportation during their prison terms to get them out of the country faster once their sentence is complete. As many as 450,000 criminal aliens are imprisoned in federal, state and local facilities across the nation.

This is clearly a good step. In the past, states and municipalities, and even federal agencies like ICE, would not deport illegal immigrants unless they had committed another crime. It is expected that California will soon follow Texas and implement a similar program. But in what could be seen as an interesting policy contradiction, The City of Oakland plans to issue photo-ID cards to illegals to enable them to ease their "access to services, improve their civic participation and encourage them to report crimes."

The two sides of Oakland's decision to issue these cards pits Ira Mehlman spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform who says, "The problem is you have cities who are aiding and abetting people who are violating federal immigration laws. It sends a message that what they are doing is OK." against Jesse Newmark, a staff attorney with Centro Legal de la Raza who said that "he was pleased with the council's most recent action, adding that the ID card is tangible confirmation of Oakland's sanctuary status."

Cleared of Terror Charges, a Target for Deportation

Cleared of Terror Charges, a Target for Deportation - NYTimes.com

June 4, 2009

By DAMIEN CAVE

MOORE HAVEN, Fla. — Youssef Samir Megahed toyed with a piece of lint on the other side of the bulletproof glass and described his case as simply “weird.”

In April, a federal jury acquitted him on charges of transporting explosives during a road trip with a friend who had packed model rocket propellants in the trunk. But three days later, in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Tampa, Mr. Megahed was arrested again in connection with the case, this time by immigration authorities.

The new charge is that he “is engaged in or is likely to engage in” terrorist activities, a violation of his legal residency in the United States.

“They just label you a terrorist and that’s it,” said Mr. Megahed, 23, who moved to Florida from Egypt with his family 11 years ago and is being held here at an immigration detention center.

Mr. Megahed is at least the third Florida defendant in three years to be brought up on immigration charges after prosecutors failed to win terrorism convictions in federal court. If convicted of the new charges and deported, he would join thousands of other Muslim and Arab men sent home since Sept. 11, 2001, as part of an extensive law enforcement strategy that relies on the immigration courts to remove potential threats.

Some national security experts say the country is safer without such men, and immigration officials declare the deportations both legal and fair. But with President Obama scheduled to speak in Cairo on Thursday about repairing relations with the Muslim world, Mr. Megahed is being presented by critics of the immigration strategy here and abroad as a test case of the president’s pledge to break with some of the Bush administration’s most unpopular policies.

Egyptian news outlets and blogs have taken up Mr. Megahed’s cause. Several federal jurors who acquitted him have also made the rare move of publicizing their outrage at their verdict’s being second-guessed, while Arab-American groups, civil rights organizations and churches have lobbied the Obama administration for his release.

“We are sending the wrong message to American Muslims and the Muslim world,” said Ramzy Kiliç, executive director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group for Muslims. “If Obama really wants to make a new way forward with mutual respect, he has to start here at home.”

Immigration courts have not been central to the prosecution of cases involving terrorism. But in such cases, they share prosecutorial advantages similar to those found in the controversial military tribunals for suspects accused of being foreign fighters.

In immigration courts, for example, hearings can be closed to the public, the burden of proof is lower than in federal court, and a wider scope of evidence, including hearsay, can be used. Michael Wishnie, a law professor at Yale University, said using immigration courts in these cases amounted to “second-class justice” because “the defendant’s rights are reduced.”

In Mr. Megahed’s case, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement have emphasized that his deportation hearing is a civil, not a criminal, proceeding, possibly with new evidence, and does not amount to “double jeopardy” — the prohibition on trying defendants more than once for the same crime.

“This is nothing new,” said Bill West, chief of national security for immigration enforcement until he retired in 2003. “The concept goes back to Al Capone — get the bad guys any way you can, on any violation you can.”

Still, the main question in the immigration case is essentially the same as it was in the federal trial: Is Mr. Megahed a danger to society, or, as his lawyer argues, is he only “guilty of having stupid friends”?

Mr. Megahed’s legal problems began two years ago on a road trip with Ahmed Mohamed, who, like Mr. Megahed, was Egyptian, Muslim and an engineering student at the University of South Florida. Mr. Megahed said he had known Mr. Mohamed for only a few months before traveling with him in the summer of 2007.

“It was for fun,” Mr. Megahed said in an interview here. “To see the Southeast of the United States.”

They took turns driving north until they reached Goose Creek, S.C., where the police pulled them over for going 60 miles an hour in a 45-m.p.h. zone. One of two deputies involved said he had become suspicious when the men quickly put away a laptop; a recording of the traffic stop captured the officer saying, “I think they’re part of the Taliban.”

The officers searched the trunk and found “several pipe bombs;” more specifically, four pieces of PVC tubing, about 2 to 2.5 inches long and three-quarters of an inch in diameter, which contained sugar, potassium nitrate and cat litter.

Mr. Mohamed told the police they were homemade fireworks — similar recipes can be found online. The authorities charged them with possession of an explosive device, carrying a prison term of up to 15 years. A judge set bail at $500,000 for Mr. Mohamed and $300,000 for Mr. Megahed.

“That is when the bad dreams began,” Mr. Megahed’s father, Samir, an engineer, said in an interview with his wife, Ahlem, at their upscale two-story town house in Tampa. Declaring “I love America,” he said he had brought his family to the state because the University of South Florida had accepted his two sons.

He described Youssef, the younger, as an outgoing joker who had lost a front tooth rough-housing as a boy.

Mr. Megahed, in a visitation booth at the detention center, described himself as clueless. He said he had not known the plastic tubes were in the trunk (his fingerprints were not found on them) and had never even heard the term “pipe bomb” until the police said it.

He also said he had not known they were seven miles from a naval base when they were pulled over, or that Mr. Mohamed’s laptop had a video on it showing a rocket attack somewhere in the Middle East.

“I thought it was going to be O.K.,” Mr. Megahed said. “I hadn’t done anything wrong.”

After their arrest, federal investigators found a YouTube video that Mr. Mohamed had made showing how to turn a toy into a detonator. In December, Mr. Mohamed pleaded guilty in a separate case to providing material support to terrorists and was sentenced to 15 years in prison; as part of the plea agreement, the charges from the traffic stop were dropped.

Mr. Megahed was not involved with the video. His trial began three months later and lasted three weeks. Gary Meringer, the jury foreman, said jurors were initially suspicious about the circumstantial evidence in the case — the fireworks in the trunk; the video on the laptop; a gas can in the car; that they had tried to buy a gun, while their bags lacked toothpaste or bathing suits.

An initial survey of jurors, Mr. Meringer said, produced six guilty votes, four undecided, and two not guilty. But as the jury examined each detail individually, he said, holes emerged. For example, the prosecutor’s expert could not get a simulated version of the alleged explosives to give off much more than heat and smoke.

It was also unclear whether Mr. Megahed had watched the video on the laptop, or if he had viewed a handful of Web sites — on AK-47s among other things — that were found in the browsing history on a family computer at the Megaheds’ home.

By the third day of deliberations, the jury had arrived at unanimous verdicts of not guilty of transporting explosive materials and of possessing a destructive device.

Mr. Megahed’s sister cried in the courtroom. He celebrated at the beach. Then immigration authorities arrested Mr. Megahed after a shopping trip with his father. Mr. Meringer, 57, the foreman, who is a corporate lawyer, was shocked when he heard of the immigration charge. “It literally took the air right out of my chest,” he said. “I felt the government had completely wasted the time of the legal system, the judge, the jury, the bailiffs, all of those people.”

He contacted the other jurors, and three joined him in signing a statement opposing Mr. Megahed’s detention. “We want a fair shake,” Mr. Meringer said. “A fair shake for Youssef would be that he could finish college, become a citizen and go on his merry way.”

Mr. Megahed’s hearing is scheduled for Aug. 17. By then, he will have spent nearly a year behind bars, including nine months before his trial.

His lawyer, Charles Kuck, said immigration officials had suggested they would rely in part on evidence from the family computer, which Mr. Megahed’s brother, Yahia, said had been used by numerous friends and relatives.

In the criminal trial, the judge excluded eight video clips on the computer that show rocket attacks in an unidentified Middle Eastern location; a ninth clip shows an improvised explosive device that hits an American tank.

While Mr. Megahed waits, his parents visit him every five days, as often as is allowed. His father said he worried that his son had become depressed. “Every time he tells me to bring clothes for him in case they let him out,” he said.

But in the interview, Mr. Megahed seemed determined to appear stoic. He said he had turned to an Arabic proverb for solace: “The longer you live, the more you will see.”

Lynn Waddell contributed reporting from Tampa, Fla.

Holder Moves To Restore Fairness To Immigration Proceedings

American Civil Liberties Union : Holder Moves To Restore Fairness To Immigration Proceedings

(6/3/2009)

Attorney General Withdraws Bush Administration Ruling Denying Immigrants Protection From Lawyers' Mistakes

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

WASHINGTON – In a major step towards restoring key legal protections for immigrants facing deportation, Attorney General Eric Holder today withdrew a last-minute Bush administration order that severely restricted the right of immigrants to reopen immigration cases lost because of their lawyers' mistakes. Holder also stated that he will review the problem of "ineffective assistance" in immigration proceedings to determine whether additional protections are necessary.

The American Civil Liberties Union had urged Holder to reconsider former Attorney General Michael Mukasey's ruling that overturned years of established legal precedent just days before Mukasey left office.

"Attorney General Holder correctly recognized that fairness and due process apply to everyone including immigrants," said Lee Gelernt, Deputy Director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project. "By restoring the longstanding right of individuals to challenge immigration proceedings lost because of lawyers' mistakes, innocent immigrants at risk of being deported through no fault of their own are once again protected by the rule of law. Holder's decision will profoundly affect the lives of many immigrants and their families."

Deportation hearings, held in special immigration courts, are overseen by the Justice Department. Holder's decision makes clear that the rule of law guarantees individuals fundamentally fair deportation proceedings and ruled that immigration cases lost due to "ineffective assistance of counsel" is grounds for a new hearing.

"The winners today are fairness and due process. Attorney General Holder has taken a huge step in the right direction, and we applaud his decision. The Obama administration recognizes that immigrants facing deportation, including longtime permanent residents with U.S. citizen children and family, should not be denied fair hearings because of incompetent or unscrupulous lawyers who fail in their duty to provide proper representation to vulnerable immigrants, many of whom lack fluency in English and an understanding of the complex procedures that govern their hearings. It is now essential that the Justice Department take the same position in pending court cases," said Lucas Guttentag, Director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project.

Mukasey's ruling was issued in January 2009, after a truncated decision-making process that did not allow sufficient time for many lawyers and legal organizations to prepare and submit legal briefs on the issue. Although the rushed process drew protests from prominent legal and civil rights organizations, Mukasey did not significantly expand the amount of time for submission of briefs.

Attorneys who worked on the brief include Gelernt, Guttentag, Caroline Cincotta, Michael Tan and Farrin R. Anello of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project.

Attorney General Holder's ruling regarding the Compean decision can be found online at: www.aclu.org/immigrants/gen/39750lgl20090603.html

The ACLU's friend-of-the-court brief and other information are available online at: www.aclu.org/immigrants/gen/37064res20081007.html

More information on the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project is available online at: www.aclu.org/immigrants/index.html

Bill Proposes Immigration Rights for Gay Couples

Bill Proposes Immigration Rights for Gay Couples - NYTimes.com

June 3, 2009

By JULIA PRESTON

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Democrat from Vermont who is the powerful chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is adding another controversial ingredient to the volatile mix of an immigration debate that President Obama has said he hopes to spur in Congress before the end of the year.

Mr. Leahy has offered a bill that would allow American citizens and legal immigrants to seek residency in the United States for their same-sex partners, just as spouses now petition for foreign-born husbands and wives.

The senator has said the bill should be part of any broad immigration legislation that Congress considers. To highlight his initiative, known as the Uniting American Families Act, Mr. Leahy is holding a hearing on Wednesday to discuss it in the full Judiciary Committee, bypassing the usual subcommittee hearings.

Also this week, immigrant advocacy groups and labor organizations are opening a nationwide campaign to hold President Obama to his recent pledge to initiate a Congressional debate on immigration legislation later this year.

Small-scale rallies took place on Monday in Los Angeles and some 40 other locations, and immigration groups are converging on Washington on Wednesday for three days of strategy meetings.

The Obama administration, juggling an array of huge and pressing issues on the economy and health care reform, has encouraged the mobilization of immigration advocates, especially Latino groups, while avoiding any legislative battles for now on the prickly topic of immigration. President Obama has invited a bipartisan group of lawmakers to the White House next Monday to “launch a policy conversation” about immigration, an administration official said.

The president wants to “identify areas of agreement, and areas where we still have work to do,” said the official, who would only speak on background because the final plans for the meeting were not settled.

The most contentious part of the immigration legislation that the administration supports, which is known as comprehensive immigration reform, is a program to give legal status to more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in the country. But current proposals also include a variety of measures intended, like Senator Leahy’s, to expand or streamline the legal immigration system.

Mr. Leahy’s proposal for same-sex immigration benefits was not included in the immigration legislation that the Bush administration brought forward in 2007, which failed after a firestorm of opposition, mainly from Republican voters.

Groups backing the overhaul this year have cobbled together a wide-ranging but fragile coalition that includes Latino and black groups, Roman Catholic and evangelical Christian churches, farm workers and commercial farmers, and some employer groups. In contrast to 2007, organized labor is united this time around in supporting the overhaul.

The political fault lines opened by Senator Leahy’s same-sex bill quickly became apparent this week. In a letter sent Tuesday, Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, the chairman of the Catholic bishops’ Committee on Migration, wrote that the Uniting American Families Act would “erode the institution of marriage and family,” by taking a position “that is contrary to the very nature of marriage which pre-dates the Church and the State.”

Bishop Wester addressed his letter to Representative Michael M. Honda, a California Democrat who has said he will introduce an immigration bill containing similar same-sex provisions in the House this week.

J. Kevin Appleby, the immigration policy director for the bishops’ conference, said, “The last thing the national immigration debate needs is another politically divisive issue added to the mix.”

But Senator Leahy said the bill would eliminate discrimination in immigration law against gay and lesbian couples.

Under family unification provisions in immigration law, American citizens and legal residents can petition for residency for their spouses. There is no numerical limit on permanent residence visas, known as green cards, for spouses of American citizens, and this is one of the main channels for legal immigration to the United States. Same-sex couples, though, cannot petition for partners, and many face the prospect of an immigrant partner’s deportation.

Senator Leahy’s bill would add the term “permanent partner” to sections of current immigration law that refer to married couples, and would provide a legal definition of those terms.

“I just think it’s a matter of fairness,” he said Tuesday in an interview, noting that a number of American allies, including Canada, France and Germany, recognize same-sex couples in immigration law.

The Judiciary Committee is to hear testimony on Wednesday from Shirley Tan, 43, the mother of twin 12-year-old boys who are United States citizens because they were born here. Ms. Tan has raised them with her partner of 20 years, Jay Mercado, who like Ms. Tan is from the Philippines. Although Ms. Mercado became a naturalized American citizen in 1998, she has not been able to gain legal immigration status for Ms. Tan.

Ms. Tan said she came to this country fleeing a cousin who was released from prison in the Philippines after he served 10 years for the murders of her mother and her sister. Ms. Tan said she had been severely injured in the 1979 attack by the cousin.

She applied for political asylum in the United States, she said, but did not receive notice when it was denied years later. She remained here with a provisional legal status until last Jan. 28, when federal immigration agents carrying a deportation order came to the home she shares with Ms. Mercado, 48, in Pacifica, Calif.

Since her arrest, Ms. Tan has been able to remain legally in the country because of a private bill introduced on her behalf by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California.

Ms. Tan said she feared returning to live in the Philippines, in part because of concern that she and Ms. Mercado would face anti-gay discrimination there.

“People are cruel,” she said. “I don’t know if I can expose my boys to narrow-minded people.”

Opponents of the Leahy bill argue that it would foster immigration fraud because it would be difficult for immigration officers to determine whether same-sex couples had an established relationship.

Supporters said the bill would assist about 36,000 same-sex couples nationwide. Rachel B. Tiven, the executive director of Immigration Equality, a group that advocates for gay rights legislation, said the bill had improved chances this year because of recent same-sex marriage victories in Iowa, Maine and Vermont.

Legislation Is Needed To Bring U.S. In-Line With Other Democracies

American Civil Liberties Union : Immigration Law Denies Equal Protection For Same-Sex Life Partners

Immigration Law Denies Equal Protection For Same-Sex Life Partners (6/2/2009)



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (202) 675-2312; media@dcaclu.org

WASHINGTON – The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow on a bill that modifies U.S. immigration law to provide equal protection to same-sex life partners of citizens and permanent legal residents. As part of the hearing, entitled “The United American Families Act: Addressing Inequality in Federal Immigration Law,” the American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to lawmakers urging the Committee to pass S. 424, “Uniting American Families Act.”

Currently, same-sex partners of U.S. citizens and permanent residents are denied the same rights as married heterosexual couples. Consequently, gay citizens and permanent residents are barred from activities such as sponsoring their foreign partners for permanent residency. U.S. immigration law lags behind the immigration laws of many other democracies that permit equal sponsorship protections including Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

The following can be attributed to Joanne Lin, ACLU Legislative Counsel:

“U.S. immigration policies lag behind other democracies in extending fair treatment of gay couples. Right now, 18 other countries provide equal protection to partners of gay and lesbian citizens.

“As a result of discriminatory U.S. immigration laws, American families, including U.S. citizen children, are being torn apart permanently. The Uniting American Families Act will fix this patently discriminatory injustice.”