Q and A on "When Migrants are Treated Like Slaves," New York Times

For those who have seen the opinion piece in today's New York Times, here's a quick Q and A.

Q.  The work is not at gunpoint.  People are signing up for $1/day.  Why isn't this "volunteer" labor, like GEO and CoreCivic claim it is?
A.  First, some of it is coerced, e.g., the crews for janitorial cleaning of showers or ad hoc work ordered by guards on threat of punishment.  Second, the paid work doesn't meet the definition of a "volunteer" in our labor law.  A federal regulation defines a "volunteer" as someone who is donating time for no pay to a government organization or a nonprofit.  Nothing about people working to earn money to pay for phone calls or food in a private prison meets this definition.

Q.  Who are the 18 Republicans who favor forced labor?
A.  Here's the letter they sent.  See for yourself.

Q.  Why is this happening now?
A.  Because a brilliant team of civil rights attorneys and nonprofits took a risk and initiated this laborious and expensive litigation, beginning in Aurora, Colorado.  For the appeal, a number of organizations wrote amicus briefs.

Q.  Why am I just learning about this now?
A.  There has been a smattering of press coverage about this but our country suffers from chronic legal illiteracy.  This makes it tough for most journalists to cover the nuts and bolts financing of private prisons, and kleptocracy in general.  Reporters may not understand the law and the lack of public common sense on these matters means a lot more details are required to explain the litigation.  Matt Casler and Anya Patel, Eva Jefferson Paterson Fellows at the Deportation Research Clinic, will be writing a letter responding to the one signed by the 18 Republicans and explain their errors in more detail, as well as the relation between investment firms and private prisons.

Plus, ICE has most of the information and is not eager to share.  It took years of FOIA requests and litigation to obtain the information presented in the opinion piece.  (Thanks to Andrew Free for all his work on this, and on these cases.)

Q.  Is it really "slavery"?
A.   The labor typically is not outdoors and people are not being lashed with whips. That said, guards do round up details of those in ICE custody to work under grim conditions (back-breaking manual labor, toxic chemicals, no breaks) and refusals elicit punishment.  Also, most of the history of slavery was not plantation slavery.  There was early modern prison work, work deported vagrants performed in the colonies, e.g., building fortresses in Georgia, and, of course, the Nazi labor camps readers have mentioned in email to me today.  Until the fifteenth century, slavery was the work required of captured foreigners.  This form of slavery was practiced pervasively and for most of the history of the world.

Q.  Where can I read more about the harms of birthright citizenship, and the connections among nation-state, slavery, and war?
A.  For a critique of birthright citizenship, see Citizenship in Question: Evidentiary Birthright and Statelessness (Duke University Press, 2017).  You can download it courtesy of Knowledge Unlatched at no cost.  For a critique of intergenerational identity politics, especially nationalism, and analysis of the connections among the nation, slavery, and war, see States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals (Columbia University Press, 2009).
And if you're into political theory and want to understand political membership -- in the nation, ethnicity, race, the family, and religion -- see Reproducing the State (Princeton University Press, 1999).

Lawsuit Charges Maricopa County Sheriff with Racially Profiling Latinos

Attorneys working with the American Civil LIberties Union (ACLU) and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) filed an amended complaint today against Joseph Arpaio, the Maricopa County Sheriff in southern Arizona.

The lawsuit profiles the Sheriff's Wild West brand of racist vigilantism, with the Sheriff plaing to hometown bigotry and illegally detaining and searching US citizens and legal residents who appear to be Latino. You can find the complaint here.

Here are some scenarios the lawsuit describes:

1) Arpaio ordered his deputies to detain and arrest Latinos who were in an area populated by day laborers as retaliation for community protests against these policies. "In an apparent effort to suppress the Pruitt store protesters' exercise of their First Amendment rights, Arpaio announced that he would continue to patrol the area until the protests ended" (pp. 13-14).

2) "Arpaio praised as 'patriotic' the private groups, including the American Freedom Riders, that...had been harassing all Latino persons entering and leaving [a] legal center" (p. 14).
This is the equivalent of conservative politicians in pre-Nazi German pandering to the brown shirts by informally deputizing them and tacitly supporting their thuggery directed against Communists and Jews.

In fact, most of Arpaio's actions resonate with events during the transition era of the German goverment in 1932, when a country compensated for its loss of stature in international and specifically military arenas by bullying its own citizens. Can't beat the French? Then attack the Jews. Can't beat Al Qaeda? Harass Latinos.

3. A Mexican citizen was visiting with a legal visa and in a car with other Latinos. The car was pulled over supposedly for speeding but a ticket for this was not issued. Instead the Sheriff's officers searched, arrested and handcuffed Mauel de Jesus Ortega Melendres without probable cause and after he had shown them his valid legal documents. Weirdly, he was ridiculed as a sex pervert, then held for nine hours without food or drink, and eventually released after an ICE agent approved the documents. His hands were bruised and painful from the handcuffs, which, despite his polite requests, were not removed or even adjusted (pp. 18-19).

4. Sheriffs had established a traffic stop to screen Latinos. Cars driven by Caucasians were briefly inspected and then allowed to pass through. The car driven by Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez was held up as officers requested a social security card (p. 21).

As a result of these activities, Arpaio is charged with violating several laws. The most surprising law the ACLU charges Arpaio with violating is Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act 8 USC 1357(g), which authorizes local law enforcement agencies to enter "memoranda of understanding" with the Department of Homeland Security to enforce some portions of immigration law.

The ACLU points out ICE itself has stated that the "'287(g) program is not designed to allow state and local agencies to perform random street operations'" and that "officers may only 'use their authority when dealing with someone who is suspected of a state crime that is more than a traffic offense.'" (Quoting from ICE Fact Sheet, Section 287(g) of the Immigraiton and Nationality Act (September 24, 2007), at http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/factsheets/factsheet287gprogover.htm). It should be pointed out that the prohibition against random street operations rules out the only possible defense Arpaio might have, which would be to say that his stops are not based on race: random stops are not allowed AND those based on racial profiling allowed. This means that there are no grounds on which officers are allowed to stop and investigate people for immigration violations absent probable cause.

In addition the suit charges Arpaio violated the Equal Protection clause of the 14th amendment, which invalidates racial profiling; the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure; the Arizona privacy article of the Arizona Constitution; and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibiting race discrimination in federally funded programs (since the Sheriff's office receives federal funds).

The suit is asking for judgments confirming their allegations as well as injunctions against further racial profiling and attorney fees as well as "such other relief as the Court deems just and proper" (p. 30).

Interview on today's "Crosstalk," 1:05 pm PST

I'm going to be interviewed today on the local NPR station for Ventura County and Santa Barbara, starting at 1:05 PST. It will be streamed at http://www.kclu.org.

USA Today Story on Lawsuits against ICE by US Citizens and Legal Residents

The link for this is http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-06-24-Immigration-raids_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
(June 24, 2008)

Citizens sue after detentions, immigration raids
By Emily Bazar, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — Nitin Dhopade, the chief financial officer for Micro Solutions Enterprises, was headed toward the accounting department on the afternoon of Feb. 7 to deliver checks he had just signed. Suddenly, he says, he encountered armed men and women wearing bulletproof vests and uniforms branded with "ICE," which stands for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Dhopade, 47, says he and 30 other administrative workers for the Van Nuys, Calif., company, which recycles used toner and ink cartridges, were marched down a stairwell lined by officers. The workers were ordered against a wall and told not to touch anything or use their cellphones. "There was no way you could leave. You were definitely detained," he says. "None of us were in handcuffs, but there was no way you could say 'I'm leaving.' "

That marked the beginning of a surprise raid that would result in the arrests of 138 suspected illegal immigrants, about one-fifth of MSE's workforce. Also swept up in the same raid were more than 100 U.S. citizens and legal residents, including Dhopade, a naturalized U.S. citizen from India. They say they were illegally detained at the factory for an hour when ICE agents blocked the doors and interrogated them, forbidding them to leave or go to the bathroom without an escort.

Whether their brief detention was a mere inconvenience or a flagrant violation of their constitutional rights is the subject of a growing debate that seems likely to be resolved in federal court. Immigration officials, charged with enforcing the law against the estimated 12 million undocumented foreigners in the USA, are mounting more raids at slaughterhouses, restaurants and factories.

Increasingly, U.S. citizens and legal residents who work alongside illegal immigrants are being detained and interrogated, too. And some, such as Dhopade, are filing claims or lawsuits against the government.

Dhopade says he was a victim of racial profiling by ICE. An ICE agent questioned him about his immigration status and his ability to speak English "because of my skin color," he says. "None of the white folks in the office … that I know of were asked for proof of citizenship. To be asked for proof of citizenship, in this country, it's an insult. This is the United States of America. This country does not require that."

In other immigration raids, citizens and legal, permanent residents have been taken to jail. Jesus Garcia, a former Texas poultry worker, was handcuffed and spent more than 30 hours in ICE custody this year, part of that time in jail. Two co-workers, both citizens, also were arrested. No charges were filed against them.

In April, the Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law, a public interest law firm here, filed claims for damages on behalf of 114 MSE employees, all citizens or legal permanent residents, also called green-card holders. The claims allege that they were subjected to "false imprisonment" and "detention without justification" and seek $5,000 each in damages from the federal government.

The lawsuits and claims against the government are part of a strategy by immigration lawyers to halt or change workplace raids. Peter Schey, president and executive director of the center, acknowledges that "we're hoping the prospect of thousands of U.S. citizens over time filing claims for damages against the United States government might cause (ICE) to reconsider how these raids are conducted."

"You cannot in this country engage in group detentions of large numbers of people because you think a smaller number within the larger group has done something wrong," Schey says. At the Van Nuys plant, ICE "created a powerful atmosphere of fear and intimidation. People felt like they had been taken hostage."

The rationale for the raids

Julie Myers, the Department of Homeland Security's assistant secretary for ICE, says federal law, Supreme Court decisions and search warrants give ICE the authority to enter workplaces to question "all the people inside," including citizens. She declines to discuss the MSE case, citing the ongoing investigation. But she says ICE agents work fast to separate legal workers from suspected illegal ones.

"When we go in, a lot of people are pretending to be U.S. citizens, and then there are some people who are," she says. "Our goal is to make sure we work as quickly and efficiently as we can so that U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents are free to go."

The stepped-up enforcement protects U.S. workers, she says. "We're trying to create a culture of compliance … so that businesses would start to have incentives to hire only people who are legally entitled to work here."

Workplace arrests by ICE in 2007 were 10 times what they were in 2002. Last year, the agency charged 863 people with criminal violations, such as identity theft, and 4,077 for allegedly being in the country illegally. In 2002, ICE made 25 criminal and 485 immigration-related arrests. Workers arrested on criminal charges face jail time; those accused of being in the country illegally are subject to deportation.

So far this year, ICE has made 850 criminal arrests and detained 2,900 people on immigration violations.

ICE has three primary targets, Myers says: workers who steal the identities of U.S. citizens, such as those who use someone else's Social Security number to gain employment; work sites such as airports and naval bases, which could be particularly vulnerable to terrorist threats; and what Myers calls "egregious employers" — those who knowingly hire illegal workers.

Barbara Coe, chairwoman of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, says raids "are providing the incentive for at least some of these illegal aliens to get out of here before they are deported. I don't think there are enough raids. There should be more." She says she's sorry legal residents are sometimes questioned during raids but believes ICE needs time to determine who is here legally.

So does Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. "It's not the end of the world," he says of citizens who are detained. "These people were briefly inconvenienced. Too bad."

'My heart was racing'

Denise Shippy, nine months pregnant the day of the MSE raid, says it was more than an inconvenience.

She had planned to take off that afternoon for parent-teacher conferences and a doctor's appointment. But Shippy, 30, needed to train a receptionist to fill in for her while she was on maternity leave, so she took her two children to the office with her. The raid occurred as she settled Cassidy, 7, and Ricky, 9, into the mailroom for lunch.

As she left the mailroom, Shippy found the lobby filled with ICE agents, and she, the children and co-workers were herded in there. When Shippy tried to respond to an e-mail, she says, one ICE agent said, "Stop typing."

"My rights were violated," Shippy says. "I am a citizen of this United States. I was born here. I'm not who they're looking for. I wasn't allowed to leave. … I couldn't go anywhere and couldn't do anything. Neither could my children."

Although she was upset, she tried to calm her kids, she says. She needed to use the restroom, but held off because she didn't want an agent to accompany her.

"I didn't want to scare the heck out of my kids," she says. "I was trying to be cool and calm for my children. My heart was racing."

At one point, agents started escorting handcuffed workers — suspected illegal immigrants — from the factory floor out the front door. Her children asked why the workers were handcuffed, what they had done wrong and what would happen to them, she says.

"That was when I started getting angry," she says. "My kids should not have had to watch these things. They saw people being led out in handcuffs. These are people who are recognizable to my children."

Shippy, who gave birth to a boy on Feb. 19, returned to work June 9 and says she still feels justified in filing a claim.

"I'm not some money-hungry person," she says. "This is something I'm pretty passionate about. It shouldn't have happened the way it did."

Debate over the law

As long as ICE has a warrant to enter a workplace, Myers says, agents can conduct what she calls a "survey" to determine the legal status of "anyone within the premises."

She cites a 1984 Supreme Court ruling that said factory surveys during immigration raids don't amount to an unconstitutional detention or seizure of those being questioned, even U.S. citizens.

In its ruling, however, the Supreme Court emphasized that the employees in the factory were not prevented from moving around, continuing to work or leaving. The current raids are different from those the Supreme Court approved, Schey says.

ICE can question workers as long as the interaction is voluntary, "but what they're doing (now) is not that," he says, because workers think they have no choice except to answer questions — which may incriminate those here illegally.

Many workers caught in raids don't know they're not obligated to respond, regardless of their immigration status, says Kevin Johnson, dean of the University of California-Davis, law school. ICE "can ask people questions. That doesn't mean people have to respond," he says.

Schey suspects ICE is using search warrants as a pretext to enter workplaces and then arrest as many people as it can to get publicity. "It's in effect a group detention," he says, "not supported by probable cause, … not supported by any law."

Michael Wishnie, a professor at Yale Law School, argues that ICE cannot legally detain or arrest anyone without reasonable suspicion that a specific person broke the law. People should not be detained simply because "they work in the same factory as the person" for whom ICE has warrant, he says.

Kris Kobach, who teaches law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, counters that police sometimes have to detain a large group to find the lawbreakers among them. He cites, as an example, police looking for two drug dealers in a house where 10 people live. In such a drug raid, "police will reasonably close the doors to the house and detain everybody," he says.

The factory's owners

No fines or charges have been levied against MSE or its managers.

Brothers Avi and Yoel Wazana, immigrants from Israel, started the company in 1994. Last year, net revenue was $95 million. At MSE's headquarters, a 225,000-square-foot building in Van Nuys, workers clean, disassemble, reassemble and test old printer cartridges. Before the raid, MSE employed about 700 people here.

Myers declined to say what prompted the raid. However, ICE began auditing the company in May 2007, focusing on "I-9 forms," which employers use to document employees' legal status. As part of the I-9 process, employers must inspect at least two documents that show identity and legal status, including U.S. passports, Social Security cards or green cards.

MSE was "in compliance with I-9 requirements," says Schey, who also represents the company. "If some of the documents workers presented were fraudulent," MSE has "no way of determining that."

The next month, the company voluntarily began using a government database to verify the status of new hires, he says. Then the company didn't hear from the government for months, Schey says.

"They expected a letter," he says. "Instead, on Feb. 7, ICE comes in like gangbusters."

About 100 ICE agents raided the factory between 3:30 and 4 p.m., says Nora Preciado, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center. Armed with a federal search warrant, they arrested 130 workers from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and other countries on suspicion of being in the country illegally. ICE also had arrest warrants for eight others, who were picked up at their homes or the factory. These eight, identified by ICE during the earlier check of documents, face criminal charges for making false claims of U.S. citizenship or presenting false documents.

Five people arrested in the raids have been deported, ICE says. The others remain, some in detention, some not, while fighting their deportation orders in court.

Avi Wazana did not comment on the cases against his former employees or the methods MSE used to check their immigration status. In an e-mail after the raid, however, he told some of his customers that "MSE … has rejected hundreds (possibly more) of applicants … due to improper documentation."

The ACLU and other legal aid groups sued ICE, saying the detained MSE workers should have been allowed access to attorneys when they reported for interviews after the raid. U.S. District Court Judge George Wu agreed, and ordered ICE to stop interviewing workers. ICE has since allowed lawyers to be present at any interview with MSE workers.

One of the workers interviewed without an attorney present was Maria, a 39-year-old Pacoima resident who worked at MSE for eight years. She asked that her last name not to be used, on the advice of her attorney. "I felt like I had to answer" questions from ICE, she says. "I didn't know about my rights."

Maria was a supervisor in charge of eight line workers. She says she entered the USA illegally 15 years ago from Mexico so she could give her children a better education. One of her three children, a 14-year-old girl, is a U.S. citizen.

Maria says she'll fight to remain in the USA because she doesn't want to be separated from her family, especially her daughter. The girl's father, Maria's longtime partner, is a U.S. citizen and will care for their daughter if Maria is deported.

"She's not going to leave," Maria says of the girl, an eighth-grader. "This is her country."

Jailed 'over a mistake'

ICE's raids foster discrimination, says Domingo Garcia, attorney for the League of United Latin American Citizens. "There's a lot of racial profiling. … If you look like a Hispanic, you're detained or arrested."

He says he plans to file a class-action, civil rights lawsuit on behalf of legal workers detained in raids, including Jesus Garcia, 27, a green-card holder from Mount Pleasant, Texas. Domingo Garcia says he will ask the court to prohibit ICE from conducting raids until it changes its policies to prevent racial profiling.

ICE agents went to Jesus Garcia's home on April 16 in conjunction with a raid on a nearby Pilgrim's Pride poultry processing plant, where he worked marinating chicken meat. Garcia, from Mexico, has been a legal permanent resident for a year and a half. When about 10 ICE agents and local sheriff's deputies knocked on his door, they told him he was using the wrong Social Security number, says his wife, Olivia Garcia, a U.S. citizen.

Though Garcia showed the agents his green card, they handcuffed him and jailed him. He was released a day and a half later after agents told him he wasn't the person they wanted, he says. He had spent the night in jail. "He said it was pretty bad," Olivia says. "People were crying and screaming."

Jesus Garcia, who has since left Pilgrim's Pride for another job, says the mishap cost him three days of work. "I worked hard to get my residency," he says. "And to take me to jail just over a mistake?"

Frederick County Sheriff Says Its Okay to Detain US Citizens of Mexican Descent

as long as they are picked up for a traffic violation. (He admits those detained for ICE were largely picked up for traffic violations.)

In other words, get picked up for a fender bender or DUI in Frederick County, Maryland, and instead of being released for time served, which is usually what happens in such cases, if you are of Mexican descent you could find yourself being turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement until you prove your US citizenship. (And, as shown in previous posts, sometimes even that isn't enough.)

Antonio Ramirez, a 20 year resident of Frederick County, told the Governor's Commission of Hispanic Affairs on Wednesday that when he walked down the main street in town people call him a "wetback."

"I am a citizen, and I am afraid," he said. "Now I understand what the Jewish people went through. "(Frederick County Sheriff) Jenkins is destroying families and the economy."

And no wonder. Most of the police and sheriff departments turning US citizens over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement claim they are only detaining aliens. Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins responded to Ramirez's charges by saying: "There's no one in that detention center (who hasn't) broken the law."

I had asked the person who told me about this event to post it in a "reply" to the blog, mentioning that people seem to prefer to write me directly rather than posting. Here's what I received:

I think people may be fearful to post to your blog. If you think about it, ICE's system is the perfect tool to silence dissent. Once a person ends up in the immigration system due process is flushed down the toilet.

Below is a link to an article from my local newspaper regarding the meeting I attended the other night.

Here's some background (I will try to be brief) on what is going on in my community. Frederick County, Maryland is maybe 1.5 hours north of Prince William County, Virginia. During the 1990s one of the entrants into the local demolition derby drove a klan car. Even today, it is not uncommon to see confederate flags.

When the current sheriff ran for office in 2006 he ran on an anti-immigrant platform. When he got into the office he started working on obtaining 287(g) authority for his office. He claimed that he "needed" this authority because crime is out of control due to the large influx in of "illegal" immigrants (now synonymous with Latino/Hispanic in my town).

Interestingly, data from the FBI's uniform crime database and the Census doesn't seem to support the Sheriff's assertion. In February 2008 the Frederick County Sheriff's Office signed a Memorandum of Agreement with ICE. There was no public discussion, in fact the director of the county's Human Relations Division sent him a copy of questions, and she left it to his discretion as to whether to respond.

The last time the President of the local NAACP spoke with him about meeting, the Sheriff said what's the point, I don't understand what the objectives are. He also said that we have nothing we shouldn't be worried about profiling or discrimination, because ICE is monitoring how he uses 287(g) authority. Obviously he missed the entire 2007 ICE Halloween Party incident.

Now the Sheriff does have time to meet with the local Republican Club, including minutemen and help save Maryland members. During his presentation he said that 48 people had been detained using 287(g) authority, and mostly for traffic infractions. If his assertion is correct I'd think that most of those detained would have been picked up for committing felonies, or at least misdemeanors.

Our sheriff has asked people in public meetings if they are illegal, and at one meeting with people from the Latino community he said something like I'm a redneck and I wish my county were the way it was 30 years ago.

Your blog is definitely a must read, and I've been telling other friends in the community about it.

My guess is that wherever you are, this is happening where you live, too. If you have any examples of this you'd like to share, feel free to send them my way and I'll post them here. Also, this image of Sheriff Chuck Jenkins is from the Frederick County home page; maybe he needs some more mail on this supporting the writer above.

Documenting ICE Detaining and Deporting US Citizens, Pt. IV, cont.

This continues the documentation of US citizens who have been deported or detained by ICE in the last three years, described in my Nation article "Thin ICE" (pub date June 23, 2008). ICE has no jurisdiction over US citizens.

-A boy with a Vietnamese mother was residing in the US with his mother who was naturalized in the US when he was 14; he has derived citizenship. But the client, then in his early 30s, was placed in the Mira Loma Detention by ICE on release from jail. After one year in detention he signed the deportation order; as his lawyer put it to me, "he traded his citizenship rights for his liberty." He wanted to be released from detention because his own wife was due to give birth and he wanted to be with his family and help support them. His citizenship case was complicated, as many cases of citizenship often are for those who are foreign born. He needed documentation from Vietnam of the conditions of his mother's departure while she was being beaten by his father, and his lawyer also was navigating the custody laws of Vietnam and the United States. His client knew that Vietnam does not issue travel documents for people who enter before 1996 and that ICE would have to release him within 90 days. (Source: private immigration attorney, Los Angeles)

-A man in his thirties was born in the United States, two miles from the Mexican border. His mother obtained a birth certificate for him from a nearby town in Mexico, but he really was born in the United States. Immigration judge issues order terminating deportation proceedings. ICE appeals order. Man remains in detention.

-Man in his early 20s, born in Mexico, living with his mother in San Bernadino, California. His mother, a naturalized citizen, from whom client derives citizenship, decides to do a favor for the neighbor and drive the neighbor's grandson, a Mexican citizen, across the border. "Mom convinced him: let's help the neighbor's grandkid." The mother asks her son to come with her "for moral support." They get caught. He serves two years in prison for alien smuggling. On release he is put into deportation proceedings. Attorney intervenes and client is released from Mira Loma Detention Center after being held for two months. (Source: private immigration attorney, Los Angeles.)

Are these cases "borderline," confusing? Or is the border itself the source of confusion?
The image above is of Nogales. Can you tell which side is Mexico and which the US?

Documenting ICE Kidnapping and False Imprisonment of US Citizens, Pt. III, cont.

To supplement the reporting on ICE kidnapping and falsely imprisoning US citizens in my Nation article "Thin ICE" (pub date June 23, 2008) I have been providing additional profiles of these cases as well as the sources for the article's statistics and other facts.

This post continues that documentation:

The 2008 ACLU lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and the Los Angeles County Sheriff on behalf of Peter Guzman, a US citizen born in Los Angeles and "deported" to Mexico by ICEhere. ICE calls it deportation, but the law says that when Guzman told ICE he was born in the US, ICE was supposed to accept his word on this, or prove otherwise. I believe that the government's racial prejudices are not an excuse and that what appears as a case of confusion is simply kidnapping and false imprisonment based on racial profiling.

The February 13, 2008 Congressional hearings in which Department of Homeland Security repeatedly obfuscates, much to the consternation of the Democrats, is available streaming and is a case study in the problems of an Executive branch run amok. The written testimony is available as well. It's here. You might write Congressman Zoe Lofgren, who has been ahead of the curve on the problem of ICE abuses, as well as your representatives and Senators, and let them know how you feel about ICE forcibly removing US citizens from our country.

The estimate of US citizens who were detained for at least one month or deported is based on several sources. The most important is the actual caseload of the Florence Immigration and Refugee Rights Project in southern Arizona. 10% of detainees from around the country are held in their service area. (I write about people to whom FIRRP provided legal advice from Minnesota to California.)

The supervising attorney, Kara Hartzler, told me that they were seeing between 5 to 10 cases a week of people claiming US citizenship, of which between one-third to one-half were recognized as legitimate by an immigration judge. The rest is math: take the total number of these cases and multiply by 10. At the low end of the range, 5 x 224 weeks (the number of weeks between January 2004 and April 2008) = 1120, multiplied by .33 (1/3 successful) is 370 for FIRRP alone. At the high end for the FIRRP estimate, 10 x 224 = 2240; if half (.5) are valid claims, that that would be 1120 cases for FIRRP.

In other words, the range for FIRRP's estimate of its own caseload of US citizens detained or deported by ICE (through coerced "voluntary" agreements signed to avoid more incarceration during ICE appeals of immigration judges' orders terminating deportation) is 370 to 1120. Multiply this by 10, and, if this caseload is representative - the numbers are large enough that there's no reason to quibble with this statistically - indicates that between 2004 and April, 2008 ICE has detained or deported between 3700 and 11,200 US citizens.

This figure is slightly higher than the 3,500 to 10,000 range I used in the article because I wanted to use the ICE denominator of 1 million deportations from 2004-2007, a round number that shows the range I'm estimating is less than 1% of ICE deportations and detentions. The reason to think the FIRRP estimate might be too conservative is what Robert told me of his detention experiences, and his encounter with a large number of US citizens in a situation similar to his own, leading him to say that ICE was "just throwing us out for nothing."

I also verified the high frequency of these deportations by interviewing over a dozen immigration attorneys from across the country, who affirmed their own personal representation of clients who were US citizens in deportation proceedings. It was too easy for just one person doing this research with no other support to find these cases on an ad hoc basis.

As I mentioned in the article, I used the list of pro bono attorneys the Department of Justice is required to make available (and which is a joke, because many of the numbers are disconnected or incorrect: one was for a florist!). Among the working numbers, I called 15 immigration attorneys and 7 returned my calls to report 1-4 cases of US citizens they had successfully represented who had been held by ICE for 1 month to, in the case of Robert, 5 years. The link to that list is here.

TO BE CONTINUED... (Photo is Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, D-CA, Chair, House Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law.)

ICE Deporting US Citizens, The Rest, Pt. II

UPDATE: Yesterday ICE appealed, yet again, a judge's order to terminate the removal proceedings against Neil Rambana's client, a US citizen. Despite the fact that immigration judge William Cassidy issued orders in 2006 and 2008 terminating David's deportation, David remains incarcerated. For more, see "US Citizen Falsely Imprisoned by ICE" (Georgia).

In The Nation article (pub. date June 23, 2008) "Thin ICE," in addition to the profiles of several US citizens whom ICE falsely imprisoned for up to five years, I mention a few statistics. No room to explain in the article, or to review the plights of all 30+ US citizens, but in the next few days I'll elaborate.

The statistics:
The first number I mention is the 276,912 US residents ICE deported in 2007. This figure is straight from an online publication by the Department of Homeland Security, FY07 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Accomplishments. This states:

"ICE implemented a comprehensive interior enforcement strategy focused on more efficiently processing apprehended illegal aliens and reducing the numbers of criminal and fugitive aliens in the United States. In FY07, ICE removed a record 276,912 illegal aliens, including voluntary removals, from the United States."

This high figure is indeed alarming. It means that, like the Nazi government in prewar Germany, the US government has been combing the country for longtime residents and then removing them from the country on the grounds that they are not citizens.

Most of those being deported are being found through the jails and prisons, taken in secret to detention facilities without any notice to their families, and indeed, lying to relatives by saying that the locations are not known. Here's how ICE describes what it's up to:

"ICE’s Criminal Alien Program, which screens aliens in prison to ensure that they are removed from the United States upon the completion of their sentences, initiated removal proceedings against 164,296 criminal aliens."

The problem documented in "Thin ICE" is that many of those deported are actually US citizens. An additional problem is that virtually all of the people who are deported from the prisons and jails are longterm US residents, many of whom were picked up for minor infractions or misdemeanors such as drunk driving and failing to stop for the police, prostitution, possessing a small amount of methamphetamines or marijuana, a barroom brawl perhaps years after a bench warrant was issued when someone failed to show up for a traffic violation. (These examples are drawn from cases with I am familiar.)

Again, think Nazi Germany: you're a Jew taken into the police for drunk driving after a fight with your girlfriend and suddenly no one knows where you are. Or your mother goes to work in the morning and you come home after school and she's gone and no one knows where she is. I am not describing Germany during the 1940s, during the death camps, but in the 1930s when the Nazi government started to make doing business with Jews illegal, and then being Jewish was illegal. This is happening here. This is happening now. I am not suggesting that the next step is death camps, but that this current activity is despicable in itself.

More on the rest of the numbers in "Thin ICE" tomorrow.

Thousands of US Citizens Held or Deported by ICE: Documenting their Cases, Part I

In the article "Thin ICE" published in The Nation magazine (pub. date June 23, 2008), I wrote that since 2004 between 3,500 to 10,000 US citizens had been detained by ICE for one month to five years, and that about half of these citizens had been deported. I also wrote that I had documented 31 of these cases. I have now revised these numbers upward, based on new information on additional cases.

These figures are important because they refute ICE's position that they have deported just one US citizen and that they "do not knowingly detain US citizens." By knowingly detaining US citizens, over whom ICE has no jurisdiction, ICE agents are committing the crime of false imprisonment. When they move US citizens, especially out of the country, against their will, then ICE agents are committing the crime of kidnapping. The attorneys for the people involved have the data from the immigration courts, the prisons, and the documents to back this up. All that is needed is for just a single US attorney to step forward and use this information for a criminal prosecution.

For instance, the case of Neil Rambana's client in Georgia, at the very least has an immigration judge postdating a 2006 order terminating removal proceedings for a US citizen to a 2008 termination order, apparently to justify the continuous illegal incarceration of a US citizen since 2006. He remains incarcerated. (For more on this case, see here and articles tagged David.)

Starting today I will be providing more information on the many cases whose details could not be presented in the Nation article due to space constraints. If anyone wants more information to follow up with the attorneys, please contact me and I can provide that.

There are three types of natural-born citizens, distinct from naturalized citizens. The cases below are all US natural-born citizens, either by birth in the US, or acquired or derived from parents who are US citizens, as was the case for John McCain and George Romney. ICE has no jurisdiction over US citizens.

Under the law anyone telling ICE she was born in the US is presumed to be a US citizen. In order to detain this person, ICE must prove the person is lying. This did not happen in these cases. As you read these, many questions will occur. (For instance, in the case below, why would a police officer write down that someone born in the US was born in Belize?) At some point it may be important to answer these questions--are officers harassing difficult suspects by the use of incorrect place of birth information, knowing this will put people in ICE detention? Are officers racist and trying to deport African-Americans?) The only way to get to the bottom of this is through more local police oversight, Congressional oversight, and, when necessary, civil and criminal prosecutions.

Other cases, with pseudonyms for purpose of easier discussion:

-Eva, Los Angeles resident, African-American woman born in the United States (state unknown) and arrested in February 2008, for a minor drug possession charge. The arresting officer wrote that Eva was born in Belize. Eva has never been to Belize. She was put in ICE custody and taken to the Florence Detention Center in Arizona, where she was held for two months as she saved $1 day from working in the detention center to pay for her birth certificate. (Source: Florence Immigration and Refugee Rights Program social worker)

-MarK, Washington state resident, California-born US citizens. Mark was stopped for minor criminal activity and turned over to ICE. Mark had moved from California to Washington when he was three years old. The ICE agent did not believe this statement and, without any proof, wrote that Mark had emigrated from Mexico to the U.S. when he was three. Mark had never stepped foot in Mexico until he was 20. Mark was was held in Takoma and somewhere in Alabama for a total of 9 months. Even though there were no legal grounds for his detention, he was not released until a court hearing, when his pro bono attorney presented Mark's California vaccination records from when Mark was two. The attorney believes that if his mother had not been able to produce this record, then his client would have been deported. No birth certificate was avaialable because Mark's mother was not in the country legally and, fearful of deportation, gave birth in a private home. (Source: (Source: Jorge Barón, Executive Director, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project [NIRP])

-Jason, U.S. citizenship derived from parents who naturalized before he was 18. Born in Belize. Held in detention in California (Mira Loma, I think) for two months after release from prison. (Source: private immigration attorney, Los Angeles).

-John, U.S. citizenship derived from parents who had naturalized before he was 18. Born in Ethiopia. Detained in Takoma over 6 months, NIRP only found out because a self-styled jailhouse lawyer/detainee brought this case to their attention. (Source: Barón, NIRP)

-Michael, U.S. citizenship derived from mother who naturalized before he was 18. Michael was born in Mexico. Michael was held by ICE for four years during his appeals. The FIRRP attorney advising him, but without the time to appear with him during the hearings, was stunned to learn that the judge did not accept the evidence her staff had assembled that clearly documented his US citizenship. Rather than endure more time in Eloy, after four years Michael gave up and signed the deportation order and was removed to Mexico before the FIRRP attorney could see him again.

TO BE CONTINUED!
The image above is from a 2007 protest against the Takoma Detention Center, where Mark and John, US natural-born citizens, were held for several months. See article at Indymedia, Portland here.

US Citizen Falsely Imprisoned by ICE since August 31, 2006. Immigration Court Malfeasance

David, not his real name, had served almost eight years of a ten year prison sentence in Georgia. He was a model inmate, completing his GED and a variety of training classes. With his certificate in geology, David can tell you the right place to look for a woolly mammoth and with his barber training, make sure you won't look like one. If ICE were not running an illegal prison system, right now David, a US citizen, would have served his time and been free for over two years, starting his new life.

Instead, David remains incarcerated in Wilcox Prison. His attorney, Neil Rambana, is, as he puts it, “playing Sherlock Holmes” to try to figure out how ICE, the Georgia Department of Corrections, and the immigration courts arranged to falsely imprison his client and then cover up their misdeed.

Referring to the June 11, 2008 termination from Judge Cassidy, Rambana says: “When they have on the first page that on May 13 he ruled that the respondent had acquired US citizenship at birth, that's a wrong date. In my mind it's obfuscation. We need to get to the bottom of it now.”

The bottom line is that ICE falsely imprisoned David and Rambana caught the immigration court trying to cover this up.

Rambana's not just a sleuth also a terrific advocate. He drove three hours from his offices in Florida to Wilcox Prison in Georgia yesterday and was able to meet with David. Unfortunately, the warden did not honor Judge Cassidy's June 11, 2008 termination order – new parole restrictions were imposed very recently as a post hoc excuse -- and David remains falsely imprisoned. Rambana's priority now is to “move full force to see what the Department of Corrections is going to do to honor the termination order.”

Just the facts:
-In February, 2006 Georgia released David on parole from the Georgia Correctional and into ICE custody.

-ICE held David in the Fulton County jail from February, 2006 until August 31, 2006 during ICE removal proceedings. David wrote the immigration judge Judge William Cassidy a letter explaining that David is a US citizen. David's case was sent to Neil Rambana's office because they do pro bono work for immigrants in ICE custody in the Southeast. Rambana said that if David "had not written that letter, he would have been deported."

-On August 31, 2006 Judge Cassidy issued an order terminating the deportation proceedings. At that date, ICE and the state of Georgia were required to release David. ICE reserved the right to appeal the termination order, but they did not file an appeal. David himself verified that he should have been released by calling the 800 number for the Immigration Courts and punching in his information. The voice recording said that his deportation proceedings had been terminated.

-On August 31, 2006, David continued to be held in Fulton County Jail. The jail told ICE that they had no authority to hold David after the termination proceedings, but instead of releasing him, ICE transferred David to Baldwin Diagnostic Center. He was then shuffled around a few other places. Rambana tried to contact David at the Fulton County Jail and was told he was not there. So Rambana assumed, since the termination order had been issued, that David had been released.

-On May 12, 2008 Rambana was shocked to receive correspondence that David was again in removal proceedings. He assumed that David was picked up for a parole violation and reincarcerated, and then wrongfully put in to deportation proceedings. (Rambana learned only yesterday that David had never been released.) On May 12, Rambana promptly faxed Judge Cassidy a copy of Cassidy's original August 31, 2006 termination order.

-On May 13, 2008 Judge Cassidy issued an order for a telephonic hearing on May 19, 2008. Rambana has this order.

-On May 19, 2008 the telephonic hearing was rescheduled for June 2, 2008 because the Judge missed the window Rambana had arranged for the hearing and it was not available by the time the Judge contacted his office.

-On June 2, 2008, Rambana planned for the rescheduled telephonic hearing but the Judge never called.

-On June 6, 2008, Judge Cassidy called and apologized. There had been an execution in Wilcox Prison on that date, and he said that the government had appealed his decision to terminate proceeding. Rambana told me, “We had no idea about what he was talking about.”

-On June 11, 2008 I published a post on my blog about Rambana's client and contacted someone in a government office that oversees ICE. This person made some inquiries into the matter.

-Late on June 11, 2008, Judge William Cassidy issued an order terminating removal proceedings. The order states that on May 13, 2008 he had issued a previous termination order and that ICE had appealed this order. The June 11 statement makes no reference to Judge Cassidy's August 31, 2006 termination order

David remains in prison and is completely confused. “He doesn't understand why he's still there because he was supposed to be paroled in February, 2006.”

Afternoon of 6/13, from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) timeline. An EOIR officer looked into David's case and sent me this:

"-0n 08/31/06, an immigration judge terminated Mr. Fernandez-Armedariz’s case.
-On 09/29/06, the Department of Homeland Security appealed the immigration judge’s decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals.
-On 03/10/08, the Board of Immigration Appeals remanded the case back to the immigration judge.
-On 06/11/08, the immigration judge terminated the case."

EOIR records at the very least prove that Judge Cassidy altered the timeline of his decisions and ICE appeals in his 6/13/08 decision. And they show that David was falsely imprisoned at the very least from 8/31/06 until 9/29/06, and possibly much longer, depending on whether ICE actually did file an appeal and if was legal for them to hold him while it was pending and without notifying his attorney that this was happening.

ICE and the immigration courts are turning the Constitutional protections of US citizens' liberty into a perverse parlor game of backdating, postdating, and lying about who is in custody, why people are in custody, and when they should be released. The underlying legal and political problem remains: A US citizen was held by ICE the Georgia Department of Corrections because of ICE removal proceedings from February, 2006 until June 11, 2008. As everyone knows, including ICE, ICE has no jurisdiction over US citizens.

David is presently under the control of the Georgia Corrections Department, but his attorney, Rambana, believes they have illegally altered the conditions of his parole from those given in February 2006 and is demanding David's immediate release. Unfortunately, the unlawful conflation of ICE detention with the prison system means that someone with an expertise in immigration law now must maneuver the criminal justice system as well.

The people who should really need criminal lawyers are not be US citizens in illegal detention, but the government thugs violating Congressional mandate of ICE as well as the Constitution and civil rights laws by falsely imprisoning US citizens and other legal residents. Who will be the first US attorney to step up and charge one of these ICE agents with their crimes? (And what is the penalty, if any, for a judge lying about his previous decisions in his own order?)

More on US Citizen's Removal Proceedings in Georgia

David, not his real name, was born in Mexico in 1973. His father was born in Los Angeles in 1925 and met other criteria consistent with David acquiring citizenship by birth. On March 1, 1989 the US Consular General's office in Mexico issued David a letter from the Vice Consul certifying that David had "proved to the Consulate General that he had acquired citizenship" (from Judge Cassidy's June 11, 2008 decision for ICE to terminate deportation proceedings).

In late 1998 David was incarcerated for a crime that had nothing to do with his citizenship status. In 2006, David was to be released on probation, but ICE had other ideas and put him into deportation proceedings. According to Neil Rambana, David's attorney, David was held for 8 months pending a deportation hearing. In August, 2006, Judge William Cassidy accepted the US Consulate General letter certifying David's US citizenship and terminated the deportation proceedings.

Rambana wrote yesterday: "To our surprise on or about May 12, 2008 I received a notice of hearing for May 19, 2008." Rambana replied immediately and referenced the 2006 termination order.

According to Judge Cassidy's decison yesterday, "On May 13, 2008, based on the evidence submitted by Respondent, the court determined that Respondent acquired United States citizenship at birth. As a result Respondent was improperly in removal proceedings and the court terminated proceedings."

Rambana never received a notice of this May 13 hearing or its decision until yesterday.

According to Judge Cassidy, the Department of Homeland Security appealed his second termination order and the Bureau of Immigration Appeals remanded the case back to Cassidy for a written decision. Rambana was flummoxed: he never received a notice of either the May 13 termination order proceedings or an appeal. The first he heard of this was the decision he received late yesterday afternoon, June 11, when Judge Cassidy, for apparently a third time, told ICE to stop its removal proceedings against a US citizen.

David remains incarcerated. Yesterday he was transferred to Wilcox Prison. The reason for the current incarceration and the transfer to a new facility also is not clear at this point; it appears to be based on a probation violation. Mr. Rambano is trying to meet with his client to ascertain these details.

The lesson here, once again, is that ICE is relentless in its persecution of US citizens of Mexican descent, and it is incompetent, a dangerous combination. It is still necessary to ascertain the basis for the dates and decisions Judge Cassidy is referencing, to ensure that these occurred in the order stated and were not written post hoc in response to attorney Neil Rambana's publicization of his client's predicament yesterday.

The image above is a plaque commemorating an 1818 battle between the Telfair County Militia and the Creek Indians in modern Wilcox. According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, Wilcox County was named after either Mark or John Wilcox, both of whom were officers who fought in the Indian Wars. Wilcox experienced some hard times, but, the Encyclopedia continues, "The population started to climb again in the 1990s, when the Georgia Department of Corrections built Wilcox State Prison." This is where David is presently being held. Previous posts based on information from his attorney indicated David was being held in Lumpkin, Georgia but the dates on this are not clear at this point and that may need to be revised.

Immigration Judge Reorders ICE to Release US Citizen Held in Georgia

Yesterday morning I posted something (see the post below this one) about a US citizen who was detained for 8 months in 2006. Immigration attorney Neil Rambana, in Tallahassee, Florida, who took the case pro bono, argued his client's US citizenship status successfully and the judge terminated the deportation proceedings. But last month Rambana's client was once again being held in a detention facility in Lumpkin, Georgia and once again facing removal proceedings. Since mid-May Rambana had been trying, unsuccessfully, to contact ICE attorneys and explain their error, or, as I see it, their crime of false imprisonment.

At 5 pm EST yesterday Rambana received a long overdue note from immigration judge William Cassidy in Atlanta that the client in question once again had his deportation order terminated. The circumstances surrounding this are somewhat confusing, as is the case with many transactions with the immigration bureaucracy. I am waiting until Rambana figures out exactly what happened before posting more details, hopefully later today.

One fact that is clear is that ICE twice detained the same US citizen, who is Latino, for more than 8 months, even though ICE has no jurisdiction over US citizens.

The image above is of William Lumpkin, former Senator and Governor of Georgia, and namesake for the town hosting the ICE detention center that held Rambana's client.

Lumpkin made his name by clearing Cherokees out of Georgia. He wrote a book called, Removal of the Cherokee Indians from Georgia, 1827- 1841.

Mary Young, the historian who is my source for this information, writes that Lumpkin's "sudden addiction to Indian removal" was a response to "his flagging political career."

See Mary Young, "The Exercise of Sovereignty in Cherokee Georgia," Journal of the Early Republic, 10 (1990), note 7, citing Carl J. Vipperman, "The 'Particular Mission' of Wilson Lumpkin," Georgia Historical Quarterly, 66 (Fall 1982), 295-316.

ICE Ignores Court Order: Holds US Citizen in Georgia

NOTE: This was accidentally reposted this a.m.and therefore has the wrong time stamp. It was initially posted on June 11; nothing in the content was changed.

This morning I received an email message from Neil Rambana, an immigration attorney in Tallahassee, Florida representing a US citizen ICE is imprisoning in Lumpkin, Georgia. Rambana's client was arrested TWICE:

"In the first case before the Immigration Court I was able to prove citizenship and the judge terminated the process immediately. A few months later they arrested him again and charged him with the same thing. I am working now to prove citizenship once again although it is the same judge and same evidence. Moreover, there is an order in his file evidencing such. It is outrageous."

ICE held his client for eight months in 2006, then his client was detained again in May, 2008:

"To our surprise on or about May 12, 2008 I received a notice of hearing for May 19, 2008. I immediately filed for termination based upon the prior order terminating the matter.. To date, I have been going back and forth to try and speak with the Assistant Chief Counsel for the Department of Homeland Security to see if they will take judicial notice of the prior order of termination, but they have not returned our calls. The Immigration Court has not ruled on my motion to terminate as of today. It is now June and I believe he has been in detention since May, but I am not sure. Efforts to speak with him have been very difficult."

This is not "detention." ICE has a record the client is a US citizen and has no jurisdiction over US citizens. This is false imprisonment and, because it appears that state lines were crossed, also kidnapping.

6/16 update and timeline. The information here was based on Mr. Rambana's information at the time from the immigration judge; since then we have learned that this information was incorrect and the situation is much worse, suggesting an illegal conspiracy to falsely imprison his client, David, among ICE, the Georgia Correctional authorities, and an immigration judge: See here for judge's 6/11 order a cover-up; for the most recent information, go to the tag "David."

The image is from the Correctional Corporation of America website announcing its opening of the Lumpkin, Georgia facility: "Construction on SDC began in 1999. It was halted in 2000, resumed in 2005 and was completed in September 2006 in response to demand for prison and detainee beds. The opening of the facility is indicative of CCA’s strength and growth in its industry."

Centuries of Betrayal

Many of the details about René Saldivar's 8 month detention by ICE I describe in an article in The Nation (June 23, 2008), but space constraints did not permit including everything, so I thought I'd elaborate here.

René Saldivar was born in Mexico in 1967. But his father, Isidoro, was born in Three Point, Colorado, in 1919 and married René's mother before René's birth, and Isidoro met the other requirements for making René a natural born citizen.

Isidoro himself first went to Mexico with his family when he was 11 in 1930. That's when about a million US residents of Mexican descent, around 400,000 of whom were either citizens or legal residents, were illegally removed from the country by immigration raids bearing a shocking resemblance to the ones occurring now.

According to historians Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodrigíz, in their book Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s (1995): "[D]eportation procedures were made to order for wholesale violations of basic human rights. Mass raids and arrests were conducted without benefit of warrants. Individuals were often held incommunicado and not allowed to see anyone. Without the opportunity to post bail, deportees languised in jail until the next deportation train" (p. 52).

Like today's oversight hearings by the U.S. Congress condemning these abuses, in 1932 the Wickersham Commission exposed and denounced these abuses: "The apprehension and examination of supposed aliens are often characterized by methods which are unconstitutional, tyrannic and oppressive" (quoted on pp. 52-53). And like today, the agencies responsible for these abuses simply ignored the charges and continued their violations until the economic climate shifted and Mexicans were once again encouraged to return.

In 1940, at the age of 21, Isidoro Saldivar returned to the United States and started working in Stanislaus County, in Riverbank, where many of his children and their families still live. Some are machine operators at the Conagra plant. René had some problems coping with his father's and mother's deaths in the late 1990s and lives with his sister doing odd jobs and battling his demons, mostly staying free of any entanglements with the law. He served his first and only time in jail last summer, a couple months for a minor drug possession violation.

René's brother-in-law, Pastor Aquiles Rojas was planning to pick him up on his release date of October 12, but René wasn't there. According to ICE spokesman Brandon Alvarez-Montgomery, who revealed this in an email to me, Saldivar had actually been put into ICE custody in September. By the time Rojas went to the Modesto Honor Farm jail, Rene´ was in an isolation cell in Eloy, Arizona. He was so traumatized that he'd become catatonic and was given psychotropic drugs.

When I asked Alvarez-Montgomery why the jail wouldn't tell Rojas of Saldivar's location, he said that seemed strange. Alvarez-Montgomery told me that ICE agents are working with the Modesto sheriff's department and they would certainly have access to the database with information about Saldivar's detention.

The same disappearing is happening by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, which also did not tell Guzman's family of his whereabouts. They also had ICE-trained agents in their facility, and this had been the means of Guzman's deportation.

As the immigration judge told me, the US is quietly running a secret prison system, holding people without charges and keeping them in isolation from the people who might help gain their legal rights and liberty.

While Rene´ was in Eloy, his family in Riverbank was being harassed by the Modesto Sheriff's department. Twice they raided his sister's house looking to arrest René for missing his probation meetings, even though a probation officer in Modesto told me that when someone is put into ICE custody, this is entered in the inmate's release record. She also told me that this was not taken into account before issuing warrants, and that it was the inmate's responsibility to contact their probation officers, "even if they are deported" and explain the reasons for their absence.

This why Peter Guzman, another deported US citizen, was taken into custody at the border with a warrant for his arrest for missing a probation hearing. The government is abducting the weakest members of our society, and either hiding them from their families, or dropping them off in another country with $3, and then saying that the people who cannot reach their parents, wives, sisters, and children are supposed to be sending letters detailing their legal plight to a probation officer in another state or country.

Here is some more information about how hard it was to find René, as described by his brother-in-law, Aquiles Rojas, who is a US citizen, leads a congregation with about 250 parishoners in Riverbank, and is truly aghast at what occurred.

Unlike many people taken by ICE, René had someone who was a bit resourceful and was persistent in trying to locate him. Rojas said he called numerous immigration offices repeatedly, always leaving messages, never receiving any return calls. When he would reach someone, they never had information: "I left a lot of messages becasue we wanted to find out. I called immigration in Arizona in October. They told me they had no record of Saldivar. I called back to San Francisco. Nobody had no answer. But somebody had to have some record!" Rojas told me, exasperated.

In March, René called. Rojas and his wife drove 12 hours to Eloy to see René. The guards told him visitors were allowed only on weekends and holidays. But it was Good Friday, Rojas , the pastor, pointed out. That didn't count. Also, René had not submitted their names on the appropriate list authorizing visitors, so it would be too late for them to see him that weekend. "'I drove 12 hours from Central California,'" he tried to tell them, but "we weren't able to give him the papers. They don't receive papers. This is worse than the White House. I can talk to someone there. There, you can't talk to no one."

Rojas explained that his wife, René's sister, became a naturalized citizen 12 years earlier, but the other siblings had green cards. The parents "didn't know that the kids were US citizens. They applied for green cards, but i don't know why. It was a mistake. From the beginning they were US citizens."

After learning they couldn't leave the papers with the guards at Eloy Rojas drove about 100 miles to Tucson and mailed René his documents from there. "We also sent money and a pair of tennis shoes. They don't provide tennis shoes. But now I'm finding out they won't receive nothing."

I asked Rojas why he thought this was happening: "I've seen the rise of hatred towards our ethnic group. We see it happens with the Germans to the Jews, with other people, when the economy goes bad you got to blame somebody. There's the feeling that this ethnic group is causing a lot of problems."

Wendy Brown's Talk: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and the Nation-State

Yesterday I had the opportunity to join colleagues at UCLA's Mellon Workshop "Cultures in Transnational Perspective" and hear Wendy Brown discuss two recent essays she wrote: “Neoliberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy” and “American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-democratization”. Wendy's always been one of my favorite lecturers. I especially appreciate her efforts in grappling with the academic and political Zeitgeists of the moment, and to respect her readers and listeners enough to give them nuanced readings and acknowledge her audience's possible objections to her analyses. If it's a parry with her own communities of "Women's Studies" or "the Left" Wendy's comments tend to provoke, sometimes with the point of provocation and that's also for the good.

Brown's Argument
In these particular essays, Brown defines "neoliberalism" and explores its differences and historical overlaps with "neoconservativism." She proposes that the neoliberalism of today -- its exact moment of origin is not stated -- is different from earlier expressions of neoliberalism. The distinctly horrible effects of neoliberalism today is its absorption of the entire government, so that a market rationality pervades all decision-making, and citizens come to understand themselves as consumers and lose sight of democracy's less instrumental possibilities.

Brown identifies herself as a Marxist and with radical critiques of politics, but things today are bad enough that she calls for a return to old fashioned "classical liberalism." Basic values such as rights, equality, and the rule of law that Marxists ridiculed turn out to have some value in themselves and are crucial if democracy is to be re-established.

Discussion
During the discussion Brown was asked a number of questions that seemed to press her to go further in the analytic distinctions she was making. Among these were 1) whether she was nostalgic for an era that perhaps never existed and, 2) whether she was sufficiently attentive to the meanings of "democracy."

As UCLA political theorist Juliet Williams pointed out in her comment (and in her terrific book Liberalism and the Limits of Power), a version of democracy is alive and well in popular culture. Top-rated shows such as "American Idol" and "America's Top Model" suggest Americans love to vote. What are the examples from U.S. American political history or from Brown's thought experiments that might instruct us on more desirable expressions of democracy? Brown replied this was a good question and said she might think further about how she was defining democracy.

Brown responded to questions on whether she was sufficiently attentive to the long history of U.S. politics that has been profoundly antiliberal, antiegalitarian, and unconcerned with the rule of law – slavery, prohiting women from voting, Manifest Destiny, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, Jim Crow, dropping the atom bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, assassinating leaders that threatened corporate interests abroad, etc. etc. etc.-- by agreeing, as she did in her essays, that the history of liberal democracy in the USA has been a troubled one.

I followed up by asking why, recognizing the family resemblance between earlier episodes violating liberal democratic ideals and those today, she chose to emphasize the differences and not the similarities. If generations of people who earlier expressed outrage over the events listed above could not push their government toward liberal democracy, why do we think we can do this?

Brown made the reasonable point that things today are different, and therefore she is calling for us to challenge the particularities of neoliberalism's current constellations to overthrow these now. A fair enough point, but it raises the question of criteria for deciding on what counts as “different enough” to justify this special attention to today's crises.

If it turns out that the violation of the rule of law in invading Iraq, for instance, has a lot in common with the violation of the rule of law in the Spanish-American War, when the United States seized Cuba, Puerto Rico and Guam from Spain, then it seems politically urgent to question not only the broader institutional contours of government that make possible repeated violations of liberal democratic norms but to ask whether “liberal democracy” is a possibility for the United States or any country that doesn't live near ice floes.

Bringing Back in the Nation
Instead of a relatively recent tension between competing ideologies of neoliberalism and neoconservatism, which Brown maps out quite convincingly, is it possible that Hegel was right, and that market rationality and norms of a moral authoritarianism can happily coexist as the means of institutionalizing the particularities of the nation-state? If this is right, then the current phenomena Brown describes are merely the most recent examples of a citizenry that is happy to exist as citizens who are consumers and, if not democrats, then joined to the state as nationalists. Their membership is consequential not because they vote or because America stands for particular ideals, but because America is America, their America. This is Mike Rogin's argument in his essays on demonology, that it is U.S. nationalism and anti-Russianism that fuels the anti-communism, and not vice-versa.

Hegel himself believed that the social contract theories of individual rights were a joke and impossible. A country that expects its members to die for it – in other words, any political society based on birth—is not going to guarantee individual rights for the sake of the individual, and the same goes for democratic rights. As long as the nation is the source of people's identities and political commitments, liberal democracy may be not just an illogical theory, as Hegel believed, but also an impossible political goal.

(By the way, the url in the screenshot above is from the United States Postal Service, and is the redirect if you type in www.usps.gov, which is supposed to be the url for any government agency. Try typing in usps.gov and see what happens. The USPS is run by Congress and the .com in its url has always bugged me. I wrote a note on the complaint box a few weeks ago but no one replied. In the event, the desire of a government agency to represent itself as a private firm is one of many examples of the neoliberalism ethos Brown is describing.)

No One Should Be Illegal: Oklahoma Denying Health Care to Citizens without Documentation

It is a sign of the impoverishment of this country's immigration debate that the most traction to be gained against kooks who listen to Lou Dobbs comes from instances of the state misapplying its discriminatory policies, and not the inherent unfairness of the policies even if they were to be administered correctly.

The latest example of this is a report I heard this morning (Christmas) on NPR about Oklahoma denying poor legal residents access to health benefits because of rules designed to prevent undocumented aliens from receiving aid. Here's an excerpt from an article from the Oklahoma newspaper the Muskogee Phoenix:

"A law designed to remove illegal aliens from public assistance has instead denied thousands of U.S. citizens their Oklahoma SoonerCare benefits. SoonerCare is a state program through which Medicaid services are managed. The federal Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 changed how states verify the citizenship of recipients. U.S. citizenship has always been necessary, but the new law requires documentation such as a birth certificate."

Oklahoma Health Care Authority spokesperson Nico Gomez said most of the 5,841 people whose SoonerCare benefits were terminated Dec. 1 are probably U.S. citizens:

"'The reason we can make that assumption is because that has been the pattern in other states,' he said. 'Some of the letters we sent have been returned as undeliverable.'"

More direct evidence of the law limiting benefits due citizens are the demographic features of the applicants denied. The article above states: "58 percent are Caucasian; 18 percent are African-American; 13 percent are American Indian; 10 percent are Hispanic and one percent are Asian." Among the program participants, 62 percent are children.

Equally disturbing is that not only are U.S. citizens and undocumented adult aliens being denied care, but Oklahoma politicians are trying to deny prenatal care to "illegal" fetuses (and whoever else is caught in that ugly net). In a separate development, as reported in the Tulsa World on October 10, 2007, legislators in Oklahoma are trying to reverse an Oklahoma Health Care Authority policy that will allow all pregnant women to receive prenatal care. The policy is presently in effect, but is likely to be overturned by a legislature appealing to the nativist bigots who dominate blue and red states alike. According to Randy Terrill, the policy is a "'dangerous precedent' and 'we cannot allow Oklahoma to subsidize illegal activity,'" i.e., being a fetus without a state license.
The rhetoric is another case of nationalism trumping fundamentalism, a point that was made somewhat differently by a Democrat in the Oklahoma Senate,Tom Adelson: "Anyone who professes to embrace a culture of life would not turn their back on 2,800 innocent children born each year in Oklahoma."

But enough of parsing humanity. There is no rational reason that a fetus should have more claim to health care than someone who is 80, and no good reason that someone born in Mexico City should not be allowed the legal privileges of being born in Tulsa. The argument against illegality is tautology and the argument based on cost hubris. Leaving aside the pragmatic benefits of a prenatal health program touted by the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, no computer is powerful enough to produce definitive figures on the total financial impact of removing impediments to free movement, and those who have made this effort generally find the economic arguments will not support the nativists.
(Image is from U.S. government site on history of Native American health care by federal government.)

A Real Comprehensive Immigration Reform Package: I

The authors of S. 1639 thought that to push through enhancing legal protections for 12 million undocumented residents they had to take on other problems. It is true that the status of immigrants in this or any other country is not one that can be addressed in isolation of other political and economic circumstances. But the effort to "balance" security against immigrant rights undermined both causes.

Now that S. 1639 has been defeated, it is time to contemplate a truly comprehensive, sustainable immigration policy, one that addresses the roots of the legal quagmire facing immigrants and that also goes to the heart of deeper and broader economic inequities.

Here's the basic idea: there are a few laws that are really irrational and that result in nativism (and therefore war) and wealth concentrated in families (and therefore extreme inequality), as well as the abuse of the environment. If we could eliminate just these laws, four to be precise, then we would have the sort of society where immigration among countries would be no more problematic than immigration among the states in the United States.

Here are the laws that should be eliminated:
1) Birthright citizenship
2) Inheritance (wealth to be collected at death by a global agency that would redistribute it to pay for education, health, housing, clean water and sanitation, and so forth).
3) Marriage
4) Private ownership of land

This sounds like a lot, admittedly, and not clearly connected to the present debate about immigration reform. But since a key concern in immigration is the borders defining who "we" and "they" are, it is as important to think about how nationality is made before fixing immigration as it is to understand how a house is made before fixing a foundation. The laws regulating kinship, or laws about birth in a territory, give us the main rules for how most people become citizens. If we want to think about immigration, then we want to know more about why these are the main rules for membership, even in supposedly liberal societies that abhor birthright.

The laws above, in addition to contributing to violence and inequality, have two other qualities in common. First, they are rooted in anxieties about death and the alleviation of this through institutions that call for intergenerational remembrances. Hence they reflect psychotic efforts to shape the world in ways inconsistent with the experience of mortality. Humans have a finite lifespan, a fact with which the nation, inherited wealth, marriage and being able to damage the land past one's individual lifetime are incongruous.

Second, the laws reflecting psychic wounds of mortals also follow from the specific dynamics of, to put it bluntly, pregnancy envy and compensatory masculinities, whereby men play out infant fantasies of controlling reproduction, via law and not biology. That's all that kinship rules do: put men, regardless of genetic paternity, into relations with children. (For more on this, and all the anthropological references, read this: "Pregnancy Envy and Compensatory Masculinities," Gender and Politics(2005).

To be continued!

The proposals here are based on research in my first book, Reproducing the State (Princeton, 1999) and also a soon to be complete book manuscript "States without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals."

(Image is of Shulamith Firestone's cover of Airless Spaces. Firestone wrote the Dialectics of Sex (1970), a book arguing for a feminist revolution based on the technical change of incubators for babies. It's not obvious this is necessary for a revolution in the sex/gender system, but we do need a more rational understanding and recreation of pregnancy's meanings so that it is not both overvalued and undervalued, processes that result in our present kinship rules and therefore marriage policies.)