San Quentin News

Written By Inmates - Advancing Social Justice

Former inmate Tung Nguyen faces a deportation order

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A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was knocking on Tung Nguyen’s door during a disturbance at a hip-hop concert at San Quentin State Prison in 2006.

While conducting a tour of the prison for about 50 non- profit workers and volunteers, a riot broke out between Black and Hispanic inmates. Ac- cording to Nguyen’s interview for OC Weekly, correctional officers ordered all inmates on the ground, but Nguyen ignored their commands. He and his fellow inmate tour guides formed a line in front of the terrified visitors to protect them from the riot.

“Once we formed a line, I could see the fear in the [visitors’] eyes,” said Nguyen. “We ushered them to safety.” In a debriefing after the riot, the officers said that “we did a good job maintaining the peace,” Nguyen recalled.

In 2010, four years later, Governor Brown gave Nguyen a 2011 parole date for his heroic act.

Born a year after the fall of Saigon in 1976, Nguyen came to the U.S. in the early 1990s. Ostracized by class- mates, who called him a “Nip,” Nguyen turned into prime recruiting material for a Vietnamese gang for protection. In 1993, at age 16, one of Nguyen’s fellow gang members fatally stabbed someone over an unpaid debt. Accused of first-degree murder and robbery alongside his associates, Nguyen did not think the charges would result in convictions, but the jury found him guilty. He received a sentence of 25 years to life.

Later when Nguyen was released on parole, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) waited outside San Quentin to arrest him. Nguyen was confined inside a federal building in San Francisco for two weeks. As a Vietnamese refugee, Nguyen had lost his U.S. Permanent Residency Status – his green card – because of his conviction.

Initially, Nguyen was protected from deportation due to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the U.S. and Vietnamese governments. The agreement vowed to harbor Vietnam War refugees such as Nguyen, who entered the U.S. before 1995.

However, this protected condition changed with the election of Donald Trump. In 2017, ICE started to arrest and detain Vietnamese refugees with criminal convictions. President Trump has since begun seeking to renegotiate the MOU to deport more people to Vietnam, pre- 1995 or not.

Nguyen’s act of heroism at San Quentin once again saved him from deportation. Nguyen applied to then Gov. Jerry Brown for a pardon, and in 2018, on the day before Thanksgiving, he received the pardon. It was granted partly because of his courageous act during the riot. The pardon effectively erased his conviction, protecting Nguyen from ICE’s target list.

After his release from prison, Nguyen has lived an exemplary life. He success- fully advocated for early parole hearings in SB260. He also founded the Asian and Pacific Islanders Re-Entry of Orange County (APIROC). After 2017, he shifted his fo- cus to immigration in cases that affected the Vietnamese community.

Vietnamese citizens who have run into problems with the law flooded him with calls. Many had entered the U.S. prior to 1995, the period protected by the MOU.

Nguyen says this has turned him into a case manager for such persons. He offers advice, explains to them how they can help themselves and describes to them the processes they may encounter.

Nguyen’s advocacy does not end here. In December, 2018, he helped organize a protest on the streets of Little Saigon, a Vietnamese area in Orange County.

That same month, “Congressman Alan Lowenthal (D- Long Beach) led a coalition of 26 House members, who expressed dismay with the administration’s agenda,” re- ported the OC Weekly. A Dec. 13 letter signed by Lowenthal and his supporters read, “We strongly oppose any renegotiation of the MOU that strips the current protections afford- ed to Vietnamese refugees, including the exclusion from the agreement of pre-1995 im- migrants and the humanitarian consideration provided to all others.”

In order to get MOU codified into law, Representative Lowenthal is counting on the 2020 election to change the balance of power in Washington, D.C. He believes any codifying of this issue while the administration is trying to renegotiate the terms of MOU will be unlikely to succeed.

Lowenthal considers comprehensive immigration reform as the issue of greater importance for the next administration, according to The OC Weekly.

Judges overwhelmed with immigration case backlogs makes it difficult for them to work

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The Trump administration’s controversial strategy to reduce the growing back- log of immigration cases has failed, according to a university study. The average wait for an immigration hearing is now more than two years, The San Diego Union Tribune reported.

The plan to reduce the backlog of immigration cases by forcing judges to take more cases was implemented in October 2017. Since then, the number of pending cases has grown from 655,932 to 830,000, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Access Records Clearinghouse, which tracks data from immigration courts.

The backlog is likely worse than figures provided by Syracuse University due makes it difficult for them to work to the 35 day-government shutdown in December and January, the Feb. 21 story said. That resulted in the cancellation of roughly 60,000 hearings because around 400 immigration judges were absent or furloughed. Thousands of cases were rescheduled, thus extending the already long wait times.

The plan was described as a “comprehensive strategy for significantly reducing the caseload by 2020.” It was intended to reverse the growth of the caseload and reduce it, according to the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), which administers immigration courts

The plan “has not only failed to reduce the backlog, but has eroded the court’s ability to ensure due process,” according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a group made up of more than 15,000 lawyers and professors.

The group said the administration has failed by pressuring judges to rule “at a breakneck pace” on whether an immigrant should be deported.

In defense, the Trump administration stated, “Policy changes in recent years have slowed down the adjudication of existing cases and incentivized further illegal immigration that led to new cases.”

Trump administration officials said illegal border crossing were encouraged by former President Barack Obama’s attempt to deport immigrants with serious criminal records and defend immigrants known as Dreamers who were brought to the U.S. as children.

Another argument regarding the aggravated situation was brought up by Stephen Legomsky, Homeland Security’s chief counsel for immigration.

“Immediately upon taking office, President Trump essentially advised Border Patrol agents and ICE officers that they were to begin removal proceedings against anyone they encounter that they suspected of being undocumented, without sufficiently increasing resources for immigration judges,” Legomsky said.

Another aspect of the immigration equation is the need for autonomy of the immigration judges. Immigration judges are not independent, in contrast to the regular court judges. The immigration judges are part of the Justice Department, which means that the attorney general is both the chief prosecutor in immigration cases and the boss of the judges, who are classified as government attorneys, The Union-Tribune reported.

The National Association of Immigration Judges has called for Congress to end the built-in conflict of interest and to create an immigration court apart from the Justice Department.

“As long as we continue to allow the court to be used as a law enforcement tool, you are going to get these kinds of backlogs and inefficiencies,” said Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges.

The Trump administration increased the number of immigration judges by 74 percent to 414 by the end of 2018. House Democrats requested an investigation by the Justice Department Inspector General’s office based on the suspicion that hiring was politically motivated.

The Immigration Lawyers Association wrote, “The current administration has taken advantage of the court structural laws by introducing numerous policies… that dramatically reshape federal immigration law and undermine due process in immigration court proceedings.”

As hunger strikes continue in ICE detention centers court issues decree to stop force feeding certain individuals

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Flag of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement

A judge has ordered the federal government to stop force-feeding detainees on a hunger-strike at an El Paso, Tex., immigration processing center.

“This is a win for us,” said Louis Lopez, one of the attorneys representing Malkeet Singh and Jasvir Singh. Both men are seeking political asylum. “They have a First Amendment right to protest,” Lopez told the El Paso Times.

U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama ordered the government to stop force- feeding two of nine detained Indian immigrants known as the “El Paso Nine.” He said it raised several questions, but the judge warned the detainee’s attorneys that if their clients health started to decline, he would reconsider force-feeding.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported the hunger strike began with two detainees on Dec. 30, 2018, with others joining the strike. ICE then obtained court orders in January to be- gin force-feeding the detainees non-consensually.

ICE told the New York Times four other individuals at different detention centers were also on a hunger strike. Since May 2015, Freedom for Immigrants reported 1,396 people on hunger strike in 18 detention centers.

The World Medical Center in a 2006 statement said “the forced feeding of hunger strikers is unethical, and is never justified,” the New York Times reported.

Dr. Michelle Iglesias, the El Paso detention center’s staff physician, testified that force-feeding is implemented to prevent the damage done to the body by prolonged starvation. Iglesias further explained starvation can be very painful.

In a statement to the El Paso Times, ICE said that there were 12 detainees— nine from India and three from Cuba—still on a hunger strike as of Feb. 14. However, none were being force-fed against their will.

The reversal of this practice comes after public pressure by protesters, human rights advocates and the United Nations human rights office, which said that force-feeding of immigrant hunger strikers could violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture, reported the El Paso Times.

Noncitizens allowed to vote in local San Francisco elections

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San Francisco became the largest city in the nation to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Noncitizens were only allowed to vote Nov. 6 for a single school board race. That was widely criticized by conservatives. The Times reported that only a little more than 40 noncitizens had registered to vote by Oct. 28.

The change carries symbolic force, according to Louis Desipio, a professor of political science at the University of California at Irvine.

He said, “It will speak to that sort of sense that change is coming to the United States and that change is being done extra-legally somehow.”

The chance to vote as a noncitizen is a result of a measure that passed in San Francisco in 2016.

“Noncitizen voting is a very contentious issue,” said opponent Robin Hvidston, executive director of We the People Rising, a Claremont organization that lobbies for stricter immigration enforcement. “The move to extend voting rights to those illegally residing in San Francisco has the potential to backfire among citizens with a moderate stance on illegal immigration.”

Shamman Walton, a San Francisco Unified School District commissioner, presented a resolution in support of the measure in 2016 and told the Times that he doesn’t buy the rhetoric from the right.

“At the end of the day, for me it’s important that families who have children in our schools… have a say,” Walton said.

There is no record of how many students and parents in the school district are non-citizens. But according to the district’s website, 29 percent of its 54,063 students are English-language learners. Additionally, a 2017 Pew Research report estimated 35,000 people without legal status live in San Francisco.

Joshua A. Douglas, a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law who specializes in election law and voting rights, said that San Francisco’s expansion of voting rights is part of a greater resurgence to allow noncitizens to vote in more local races.

Douglas said Takoma Park in Maryland has allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections for years. Allowing noncitizen voting has a long history in the United States, according to Douglas. “Noncitizen voting was not considered all that radical until a backlash during post World War I,” he said.

10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy arrested by ICE

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After a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy left a Texas hospital for treatment in October 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested her, The Guardian reported.

The arrest happened because five days after Donald J. Trump took office, he signed an executive order that changed the focus of ICE deportations from undocumented immigrants with criminal records to every undocumented immigrant.

The result of the policy is that ICE is arresting more people with no criminal record than ever before, according to The Guardian.

In October 2017, the number of those arrested by ICE with no criminal record was almost 40,000. The year before then it was less than 20,000. As of June 30, 2018, it’s 58 percent of the now al- most 45,000 people held by ICE, The Guardian reports.

“Why would you take that budget that’s limited and not use it to say we’re going to go after the worst people who are illegal and here?” said Alonzo Peña, former ICE deputy director, and its predecessor, the U.S. Customs Service, since 1984.

Peña raised a question, “The target goal (for ICE to arrest) is the 12 million people who are here illegally. Why are you going to target a little girl with cerebral palsy?

“Most of the 20,000 ICE employees oppose some of Trumps immigration policies, such as family separation.”

Another undocumented immigrant arrested by ICE was New York City resident Pablo Villavicencio, a father of two who worked as a pizza delivery man.

Villavicencio had applied for a green card but when he went to deliver a lunch order to an Army base, ICE arrested him. The case was fast-tracked for deportation but dropped after it received media attention, The Guardian reported.

“The idea is to try to send the message to communities that everybody is at risk of deportation by arresting all sorts of people who are no kind of threat,”said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Right Project.

The ICE tactics have made it a target by lawyers, said The Guardian.

“What they would like to do is deport people and skip the whole legal process right,” said ACLU’s Jadwat. “That was the idea initially behind this and I think their legal position is still they can sweep these people up and put them on a plane and they’re gone before you know it.

“It’s only because we and other lawyers have stepped up and said you have to provide some due process before you ship someone to a place where their lives could be in danger that they haven’t been able to kind of send people abroad immediately.”

A lawsuit was also filed on behalf of 1,900 Cambodian refugees by the Asian Law Caucus, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Los Angeles (AAJC) and Sidney Austin LLP.

Propuesta de Trump busca marcar a los inmigrantes como carga pública

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La nueva propuesta de la administración de Trump para renovar el Sistema de Inmigración en América “con base al mérito” (merit-based), pone en peligro el sueño Americano de los inmigrantes. 

La determinación del Presidente Trump para renovar el sistema migratorio de América parece no tener límite. La reforma migratoria bajo la administración de Trump inicia con una propuesta para volver a definir qué beneficios públicos podrían utilizar los inmigrantes sin ser etiquetados una “carga pública”. Posteriormente, el retiro del estatus legal a inmigrantes de países como el Salvador y Haití, al igual que su reciente inquietud para terminar la ciudadanía por nacimiento. Actualmente, la administración de Trump parece estar dispuesta a cambiar e incluso quebrantar la leyes de este país en su empeño por crear una inmigración a América basada en el mérito. 

América, bajo esta propuesta, solo aceptará a los “mejores” inmigrantes (a los mejores deportistas, a los prestamistas más ricos, a las modelos más bellas, a los científicos más inteligentes, etc. ). Aquellos que ameritan estar y permanecer en este país.

Los inmigrantes tendrán que decidir entre utilizar los programas de ayuda social (Medicaid or food stamp) o retener sus estados legales, no habrá espacio para ambos. Incluso Inmigrantes naturalizados podrían llegar a perder su estado legal bajo esta nueva propuesta. En caso de lastimarse en el trabajo y tener necesidad de los beneficios del seguro social por incapacidad, podrías perder su naturalización. Si su familia llega a ser una carga para el sistema educativo debido a la necesidad de obtener un préstamo para pagar la universidad, también podrían perder su estado legal, Informó The Guardian. El sueño americano podría terminar para muchos inmigrantes bajo estas propuestas de la administración del presidente Donald Trump. 

El sueño americano siempre ha sido claro. Se trata de obtener una oportunidad para crear una vida mejor a través del trabajo diligente. América se ha caracterizado por ser un refugio para inmigrantes con deseos de superación.” Ser americano no se trata de merecerlo, sino de tener una oportunidad”, mencionó Williams en su artículo. 

Los inmigrantes y sus hijos han fundado gran parte de las más grandes compañías americanas. “Los trabajadores inmigrantes, creadores de fortunas y contribuyentes a la nación, son tan americanos como los pantalones de mezclilla. Los inmigrantes han jugado un papel fundamental para el dominio de la tecnología americana”, subrayó The Guardian. 

Es indiscutible que existe la necesidad de una reforma migratoria que ofrezca claridad legal para inmigrantes como los Soñadores y otros residentes sin documentación. Sin embargo, la propuesta de renovar el sistema migratorio basado en el “mérito” no ayuda en lo mínimo y va contra los principios y valores que han caracterizado esta nación. 

¿La mayoría de los inmigrantes entran por México? Trump dice que sí

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Las continuas declaraciones del presidente Donald Trump acerca de que la mayoría de los inmigrantes indocumentados entran a los Estados Unidos a través de la frontera con México parecen estar infundadas. 

De acuerdo a un artículo de NPR de junio del 2018, “la mayoría de los inmigrantes indocumentados no entran al país por Tijuana, a donde todas las imágenes capturadas por las cámaras de televisión apuntan en los recientes meses.” 

El artículo indica que la mayoría de las personas que están indocumentadas en el país entraron legalmente. Según el artículo cerca de “700,000 personas que viajaron con visas en el 2017 a los Estados Unidos se quedaron.” 

“En ese mismo año, solamente hubo 300,000 aprehensiones al respecto,” de los que se quedaron; las otras 400,000 personas permanecieron en el país ilegalmente, señala el artículo. 

El artículo de NPR citó un estudio del Centro de Estudios para la Inmigración que aseguró que la cifra es “más de 600,000 más que la suma total de personas que cruzaron la frontera en el 2014.” 

Se especula que el número de personas que se quedaron ilegalmente después de haber entrado con visa podría sobrepasar la tercera parte de nuevos inmigrantes indocumentados que están en el país. 

Trump ha dicho que la construcción del muro es la solución a la entrada ilegal de inmigrantes y un asunto de seguridad nacional. 

La Secretaria de Seguridad Nacional Kirstjen Nielsen expresó que “en cada lugar en donde se ha levantado un muro, la inmigración ilegal se ha reducido del 90 al 95 por ciento,” según el artículo. 

Sin embargo, cifras de La Patrulla Fronteriza parecen desmentir esa información ya que indican que “el número de personas detenidas por agentes de la patrulla fronteriza ha disminuido, no solamente en donde el gobierno ha construido muros.” 

A pesar de esa disminución, el número de inmigrantes centroamericanos que quieren cruzar a Estados Unidos se ha incrementado en los últimos meses. 

Por el momento miles de inmigrantes se encuentran varados en la frontera norte de México. La mayoría de ellos esperan su turno para someter su petición de asilo y así poder entrar a los Estados Unidos de manera legal. 

Según el artículo, los esfuerzos por detener la inmigración van a tener que incluir más acción que construir un muro, ya que la falta de seguridad y la peligrosidad en algunos países centroamericanos ha catapultado el éxodo de sus ciudadanos con miras a encontrar un mejor futuro en los Estados Unidos. 

En el mes de enero otra caravana de inmigrantes partió de Centroamérica con esperanzas esta vez de buscar asilo en México. 

Gang violence in El Salvador often cited as reason for asylum

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Rampant gang violence in El Salvador is forcing many people to flee the country, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. 

Two gangs, MS-13 and Barrio 18, regularly murder and extort people in their own neighborhoods, the Nov. 2 story reported. 

This is one explanation for the waves of migrants seeking to enter the U.S. either by petitioning for asylum or by entering illegally, the newspaper stated. 

“As a worker and as a human being you can’t live in this country in peace,” explains El Salvadoran Jose Gualberto Claro Iglesias. “You spend all your time and energy trying to defend your business and your family.” 

One gang set fire to Claro’s truck while he and his family were inside because he refused to pay extortion fees, the article reports. 

He then sent his wife and four children to live in Los Angeles in 2015. 

Claro was caught trying to cross the US-Mexico border in 2017, held for nearly 13 months in a U.S. immigration detention center, and finally deported back to El Salvador. 

He said he now plans to sell his property in El Salvador and may move his family to Panama. 

Many youth in El Salvador have bleak prospects for employment and are attracted to gangs as an alternative to traditional employment, the story noted. 

“The only opportunities they have are working at the market nearby where they can unload or load trucks. It’s either that, or they can join one of the gangs,” said school Principal Amilcar Rivera, “You can earn $300 a week doing manual labor or you can get $1,000 a week from extortion. Which one do you think these young people will choose?” 

Poverty affects one-third of El Salvadorans, according to World Bank Data. 

The government of El Salvador attempted to address the problem by brokering a truce between the two gangs. 

As a concession by the government, gang leaders who were incarcerated were moved from solitary confinement or maximum security prisons to more permissive custody arrangements. Although the homicide rate the year after the truce was brokered fell by 42 percent, many business leaders, lawmakers and voters accused the government of bowing down to the gangs by not enforcing laws. 

The government ended the truce after pressure by the U.S. government. 

“The government’s credibility was destroyed by the truce,” said Martin Rogel, an auxiliary judge who sits on El Salvador’s Supreme Court. “It was as if El Salvadorans stopped believing in God. Salvadorans have stopped believing in the rule of law.” 

After the truce ended, the homicide rate rose to 60.1 per 100,000, nearly 12 times the rate in the U.S. and the highest in the world, according to the United Nations. 

“The highest cost is human,” said a successful El Salvadoran businessman, Javier Siman. “We’re losing the best people we have. They either flee the country, they get killed or they are constantly forced to move around. They have to pay the gangs just to enter the neighborhoods where they live and work.” 

Judges balk at President’s immigration policy changes

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Some judges are balking at immigration policy changes ordered by the Trump administration. 

The new policies include having immigration judges speed up their cases to meet quotas or face being fired The New York Times reported Sept. 7. 

The objections involve a series of changes that the judges’ bosses in the Justice Department say are aimed at chipping away at a backlog of 732,730 cases, the newspaper reported. 

There has been emphasis on efficiency and speeding up the process, said New York Immigration Judge Amiena Kahn, executive vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. 

“Judges were being pushed to move faster at the expense of denying immigrants their rights in court,” according to the article. 

New York judges feel as if they are acting like law enforcement agents because they have to meet quotas. Instead of taking their time to decide these cases according to the law, they feel obligated to operate their courtrooms like they are in a traffic court instead of an immigration courtroom, the story said. 

Union President Judge Ashley Tabaddor called the policy changes an attempt at “huge psychological warfare.” 

The new policy on immigration makes it mandatory for judges to meet these quotas. They are being monitored on their computers in order to see if they are keeping pace. 

When Philadelphia Judge Steven A. Morley postponed a case because he believed the immigrant did not receive the proper notification, the Justice Department reassigned all of his similar 87 cases. 

The Justice Department added seven New York judges to help speed up the immigration cases. There are now a total of 33 New York immigration judges, the newspaper reported. 

The Justice Department called the changes “a series of common-sense reforms” that would realign “the agency towards completing cases, increasing both productivity and capacity and changing policies that lead to inefficiencies and waste.” 

Jueces federales y estatales buscan prohibir los arrestos en los juzgados

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En un esfuerzo para garantizar la seguridad de la comunidad inmigrante en los tribunales de justicia, ex-jueces estatales y federales solicitan al Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) la prohibición de arrestos en las cortes de justicia. 

Escuelas, hospitales, y lugares de adoración han estado prohibidos para los oficiales federales de inmigración por 25 años. Ahora un grupo de exjueces estatales y federales unen esfuerzos para añadir los tribunales de justicia a esta lista de “lugares sensitivos”, Informó el National. 

Como resultado de los arrestos por parte del ICE, los tribunales de justicia se han convertido en lugares a “eludir” para muchos inmigrantes, según un artículo de Matthew Schwartz del npr. “Los arrestos del ICE en las cortes de justicia crean temor en clientes e impide que busquen justicia”. Además está afectando a sobrevivientes de violencia doméstica, a padres que buscan protección para sus hijos, e incluso a víctimas del tráfico humano. 

“Los jueces simplemente no pueden hacer sus trabajos y nuestro sistema judicial no puede funcionar efectivamente si víctimas, demandados, y familiares no se sienten seguros de ir a los tribunales de justicia”, informó el artículo. Los jueces estipulan que para servir y asegurar el bienestar de la comunidad, y para que los tribunales puedan realizar su trabajo efectivamente, es necesario garantizar el libre acceso a los tribunales sin temor al arresto, subrayó el Nacional. 

Los jueces citaron reportes del incremento de arrestos en las cortes de justicia en los últimos dos años. En un estudio realizado por Immigrant Defense Project descubrió un incremento del 1200% en arrestos e intentos de arrestos a través del estado de Nueva York del 2016 al 2017. 

En un comunicado ICE comenta que “los arrestos en los tribunales de justicia parece ocurrir más frecuentemente” debido a que las agencias policiales ya no colaboran con los oficiales del ICE tan fácilmente como lo hacían anteriormente. 

En un memorándum de enero, ICE mencionó que los arrestos en los tribunales de justicia estarían limitados a ciertas personas, tales como pandilleros, personas con antecedentes criminales, o personas que representan una amenaza a la seguridad nacional. Oficiales de Inmigración no arrestaran a los familiares a menos que traten de intervenir en el arresto, informó el artículo del National. 

Sin embargo, los jueces escribieron, “después de casi dos años de mucha actividad en las cortes de justicia por parte del ICE, únicamente garantías seguras y protección podrán restaurar la confianza de la comunidad inmigrante que es posible buscar justicia en los tribunales de esta nación”, Concluyó el artículo.