San Quentin News

Written By Inmates - Advancing Social Justice

Trump wants $1.2 billion to lock up more illegals

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President Trump

President Trump is asking for $1.2 billion to add 15,000 more beds to private prisons to lock up illegal immigrants.

California detention centers have run out of space to detain immigrants, AZPM News reported May 29.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reports that detention centers for immigrants were up more than 40 percent from the past year.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ordered his United States attorneys to prosecute and imprison illegal immigrants regardless of their circumstances.

Under the Obama administration, ICE was zeroing in on undocumented individuals who were considered dangerous, the Arizona newspaper reported.

California Bay Area immigration attorney Otis Landerholm said because of the nearly 40 percent increase in arrests and detentions, most of the California facilities to hold immigrant detainees are full. “And so, what’s the Department of Homeland Security to do? They ship my clients out to places in the middle of nowhere.”

California built many prisons because of an increase in inmate population. That increase was prompted by tough penalty laws and longer prison sentences.

Landerholm observed, “Really, in my opinion, one of the nastiest prison detention facilities in the country is the Eloy Detention Center.” It is located about an hour northwest of Tucson.

The Eloy Detention Center is privately owned by CoreCivic, previously known as Corrections Corporation of America.

CoreCivic gave half a million dollars to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, AZPM News reported. Since Trump’s election, CoreCivic’s stock price has increased by more than 81 percent, according to public records that the newspaper cited.

San Quentin News & Wall City Merchandise

Deportation Crimes Explained

Politicians work toward protection for young illegal immigrants

1,475 immigrant children lost

Immigration assistance

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Vera Institute of Justice program offers free legal advice to immigrants facing deportation in 11 cities and counties, Mother Jones reports.

The program provides funding and resources to help train legal service providers.

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“It’s inhumane for people to go to court with no lawyer,” said Omar Siagha, a green card holder who was able to win his case through the program. “Everyone deserves a chance to explain their case to a judge.”

“Unlike in criminal court cases, immigrants generally do not have the right to a free court-appointed attorney during removal proceedings and often have to bear the cost on their own,” the Mother Jones story reported. It added that studies have shown that access to legal representation can drastically improve an immigrant’s chances of winning relief from deportation or release from detention.

Though deportations have slowed, immigration agents have made 43 percent more arrests since Donald Trump became president, compared to the same time last year, the magazine reported, referring to a Washington Post story.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has also attempted to speed up deportation and reduce immigration court backlogs, reported Mother Jones.

Vera has started soliciting competitive applications for the network from Oakland and Alameda counties, Sacramento and Santa Ana in California, as well as Atlanta, Ga.; Austin, Texas; Baltimore and Prince George’s County in Maryland; Chicago, Ill.; Columbus, Ohio, and Dane County, Wisconsin.

With 343 homicides in 2017, Baltimore “had the highest murder rate in its history, and by far the highest among the nation’s 30 largest cities,” according to The New York Times 1-17-18

Other cities have taken on their own efforts to provide funds for legal defense, the magazine reported. Seattle’s city council unanimously passed a resolution to allocate $1 million to a defense fund for immigrants and refugees, and increased that fund to $1.5 million in August with the inclusion of King County.   

Earlier this summer, city and county officials in Los Angeles also approved an L.A. Justice Fund that, with help from outside donors, would provide up to $10 million for legal defense to immigrants.

“Immigrants are our friends, neighbors and co-workers, but new enforcement tactics are breaking up families and weakening our neighborhoods and our city,” wrote Elizabeth Brown, Columbus City Council member, in a press release.

Deportation Crimes Explained

DACA repeal is a nightmare for Dreamers

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President Donald Trump’s announcement to repeal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is a nightmare for Dreamers, according to withdreamers.com.

President Trump

An estimated 800,000 undocumented immigrants (Dreamers) will be in danger of deportation without the DACA protection. Deferred action is a legal term used to refer to the federal government’s discretion in enforcing deportation against undocumented citizens who register and meet a certain criteria.

On June 15, 2012, the Secretary of Homeland Security announced that people who were brought to the United States as children and met certain guidelines could request that action be deferred for two years at a time, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) website reports.

The president’s decision to rescind DACA is another assault on undocumented communities, opponents to Trump’s decision say.

Now the Trump administration is getting more aggressive in putting people into the deportation system, Vox reports. However, the deportation process is slowing to a crawl because of backlogs.

When an undocumented immigrant is taken into custody by federal immigration agents for the first time, they cannot be deported without their consent, and must go through an immigration hearing to determine whether they are deportable, according to Vox. During the immigration court proceedings, undocumented immigrants can present a case to stay in the country for claims seeking asylum, as refugees, or if they can show that they arrived in the country as a minor prior to 2012.

In a memo to immigration judges in July, the Trump administration encouraged the courts to issue continuances so that undocumented citizens could have more time to prepare their cases and expedite the process, according to Vox.

Trump issued a tweet in which he shifted the DACA and immigration dilemma to Congress. The tweet announced that he would “revisit” DACA if Congress did not pass legislation on the issue in six months.

In the meantime, immigration cases will continue to take years to resolve.

“From November 2016 to June 2017, someone who got an official removal order from an immigration court judge had started the court process 378 days earlier,” according to Vox. “The deportation system simply isn’t built for speedy deportations of people who’ve lived in the U.S. for years.”

The majority of people who the Trump administration has deported are those who were arrested under Obama’s last term of office, according to Vox.

Deportation Crimes Explained

Black immigrants in fear of deportation

Borey Ai is out of prison, but he’s still not a free man

1,475 immigrant children lost

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