An Interpreter Speaking Up for Migrants: Erik Camayd-Freixas is a professor and a legal translator who assisted in the fast-track trial and sentencing of the over 400 illegal immigrant workers in Postville, Iowa, who were arrested on criminal charges involving identity theft rather than the usual deportation proceedings. Unusually for a court interpreter, who maintain a strict code of impartiality and neutrality, Camayd-Freixas spoke out, writing "that the immigrant defendants whose words he translated, most of them villagers from Guatemala, did not fully understand the criminal charges they were facing or the rights most of them had waived." [more inside]
posted by Forktine on Jul 11, 2008 - 46 comments

The Mara Salvatrucha gang or MS-13 is an international street gang. Operation Community Shield spearheaded by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Dept. of Homeland Security has been arresting street gang members from gangs such as " Sure Inos (which seems to be spelled wrong and even Wiki knows it USA Today & Detroit Free Press); the 18th Street Gang; Latin Kings; the Mexican Mafia; Border Brothers; Brown Pride, Azian Pride;" etc. etc. (all you wanna know about gangs here or going way back - here) over the past few months and recently arrested 582 members of MS-13. So far, ICE has made 1,057 arrests as part of the sting. Rumor has it MS-13 linked with Al-Quedia to smuggle nukes into the US. C'mon, world net daily? The Dept. of Homeland Security (thru ICE) is using federal immigration databases coupled with the names of thousands of suspected gang members from state and local police departments to - at the very least - deport them. Is that ok? Under the new laws it seems legal. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called the gangs "a threat to our homeland security and ... a very urgent law enforcement priority." Yet non-Hispanic whites apparently commit more than half of all violent crimes, but make up only one-quarter of the prison population. I see the need to stop MS-13 and other gangs with international ties as much as the El Rukins were, but they were stopped by the state and local police and the FBI. So is it smarter policing or does the new law enforcement model target 'foreigners' and have the laws been tailor-made to target ghetto and barrio youth? I don't know, but why when I read ICE investigations cheif Marcy Forman say: "We're just getting started" do I get an Einsatzgruppen chill?
posted by Smedleyman on Aug 3, 2005 - 33 comments

Terry Bressi's long saga
"I was stopped, threatened with lethal force, dragged out of my vehicle, and detained for several hours for no reason - other than requesting to know what law authorized the police to stop me and demand ID after admitting I wasn't suspected of violating any law and I wasn't being detained. Instead of answering my inquiries, the 'peace officers' preferred to initiate force against me."
posted by trharlan on Apr 12, 2005 - 59 comments

"The principle issue is the federal government's total disregard of local government," said Gerald Cayer, director of Portland's Department of Health and Human Services. "It's the Department of Homeland Security not appreciating other levels of government as they go through their work." The feds take 5 Honduran nationals from a jail in Bangor, Maine, where they've been held since Sept. 27, and without any notice to local health or law enforcement officials, drop the men off this week at a homeless shelter 2 hours south in Portland. When he asked whether the city would be reimbursed by the federal government for providing services to the men, Cayer said, he was told that the department did not have the money for that.
posted by damn yankee on Nov 18, 2004 - 15 comments

Axing Foreign Acts — Now that immigration control falls under the rubric of Homeland Security [+ | +], ticket sales should pick up for Broadway shows: foreign culture exchange is on the wane down the drain, says the Voice's Don Mattingly this week. Students, too. Bureacratic transition pains or police-state policy? More info? Paranoid surmises?
posted by hairyeyeball on Apr 10, 2003 - 6 comments

I'm sure the U.S. would have given them money for rooms at the Holiday Inn. Canadian immigration officers say a lack of detention space forced them to release a dozen men into the Toronto area who are suspected of having links to al-Qaida terrorists. Good friends, those Canadians.
posted by nobody_knose on Dec 2, 2001 - 38 comments