White Supremecists in the Army, Exploitation of Undocumented Immigrants, and Losses of Food Stamps to the Most Needy

Our country is struggles galore.

One of the scariest things I've read in a long time is this article on white supremecists in the US Army. People with tattoos of swastikas and other racist symbols are being encouraged to just "give an explanation" when they enlist. And, obviously, these groups are now having increased access to and recruitment success among psychologically vulnerable men and women in the US Armed Forces with expertise and training. One person in the article pointed out that this war is particularly conducive to recruitment for racist groups. "The military is attractive to white supremacists," Millard says, "because the war itself is racist."

The author of the article, Matt Kennard, tried posing as a potential Army recruit with racist tattoos, with interesting results:

In the spring, I telephoned at random five Army recruitment centers across the country. I said I was interested in joining up and mentioned that I had a pair of "SS bolts" tattooed on my arm. A 2000 military brochure stated that SS bolts were a tattoo image that should raise suspicions. But none of the recruiters reacted negatively, and when pressed directly about the tattoo, not one said it would be an outright problem. A recruiter in Houston was typical; he said he'd never heard of SS bolts and just encouraged me to come on in.

It's in the interest of recruiters to interpret recruiting standards loosely. If they fail to meet targets, based on the number of soldiers they enlist, they may have to attend a punitive counseling session, and it could hurt any chance for promotion. When, in 2005, the Army relaxed regulations on non-extremist tattoos, such as body art covering the hands, neck and face, this cut recruiters even more slack.

In other news, three men were arrested for posing as Christian pastors and promising hundreds of undocumented immigrants that they would get them green cards for a fee of anywhere between $6,000-$10,000 per person. Without reform to our incredibly flawed system of course already-vulnerable undocumented immigrants trying to make a living are going to continue to be exploited and taken advantage of by individuals eager to make a buck. I also think it is interesting that the NYTimes focuses on this case but makes no mention of comparable exploitation going on elsewhere every day, primarily by major corporations. (read the full article here)

Also, Obama's stimulus package cut food stamps for some of the most needy, the Huffington Post reported last week. They write,

Under the economic recovery plan, laid-off workers have seen a $25 weekly bump in their unemployment checks as part of a broad expansion of benefits for the poor. But the law did not raise the income cap for food stamp eligibility, so the extra money has pushed some people over the limit.

Laid-off workers and state officials are only now realizing the quirk, a consequence of pushing a $787 billion, 400-page bill through Congress and into law in three weeks.

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What a mess.

Not speaking English and being an immigrant doesn't make you an unfit mother!

Speaking English a Requirement for Motherhood? Reunite Cirila Baltazar Cruz with her Baby
by Cindy Von Quednow
Original article (from Racewire) here)

In Pascagoula, Mississippi, in November 2008, Cirila Baltazar Cruz gave birth to a baby girl. Soon after, her daughter was taken away from her because she could not communicate with the hospital attendants.

Far away from her native Oaxaca, Mexico, she did not understand the Puerto Rican interpreter assigned to her. Cirila speaks Chatino, an indigenous Mexican language spoken by about 50,000 people. A social worker called in by hospital authorities deemed the new mother negligent and unfit to raise the baby, stating as reasons that she was an “illegal immigrant” and that she did not speak English.

To date, no one has asked the mother to provide evidence of support. She owns a home in Mexico and a store which provides both secure shelter and financial support, not counting the nurturing of a loving family of two other siblings, a grandmother, aunts, uncles and other extended family.

Baltazar Cruz is up for deportation, while her daughter is reported to be with an affluent Ocean Springs couple.

About 65 percent of Pascagoula’s 26,000 residents are white. Only 904 Pascagoulans are foreign born — about 20 of them from Latin America. Since most of the people that live in this tiny Gulf Coast town are isolated from the realities of immigrant life, it seems the authorities involved acted first and asked questions later. Now a woman has been separated from her child and can only wait to be sent back to her home country.

The Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance has started a campaign to reunite mother and child by asking people to pressure Mississippi. officials. Get more information about Cirila Baltazar Cruz, along with the addresses and phone numbers of the authorities to contact, here, and help right a wrong.

Continuing struggles..

There's new technology for policing the border apparently - people can be minutemen now from the comfort of their living rooms. For the full article on NPR click here

Texas sheriffs have erected a series of surveillance cameras along the Rio Grande and connected them to the Internet.

Thousands of people are now virtual Border Patrol agents — and they're on the lookout for drug smugglers and illegal immigrants.

On Blueservo's Web site, each camera focuses on an area that's known for illegal crossing. Next to a real-time view of a grassy meadow is the message: "Look for individuals on foot carrying backpacks." A shot of a border highway says, "If you see movement from the right to the left, please report this activity."

When a citizen spots suspicious activity, they click a button on the Web site and write a report. That message goes to the corresponding sheriff's office. The sheriff may handle the problem or call the U.S. Border Patrol.

To date, more than 43,000 people have logged on and become, as the Web site calls them, "virtual Texas deputies."

But resistance to the military/prison industrial complex lives on.

PhillyIMC reports that:

On Monday, February 16th, a diverse group of 30 anti-war and peace activists occupied the Army Experience Center at the Franklin Mills Mall in Northeast Philadelphia for about ten minutes. Activists had taped signs to their chests that read WAR IS NOT A GAME. Upon the arrival of two officers from the Philadelphia police civil affairs unit, the activists who had been holding freeze positions left the Center. A press release was read to the retired Army civilian director of the Center and two Army officer connected with it. For the full story read here

Immigration, Detention, Deportation

Haiti said NO to U.S. deportations this week, saying that the country needs to rebuild after being ravaged by several storms. It's an interesting strategy, but doesn't really benefit the Haitians stuck in limbo in U.S. detention centers. Haiti wants the U.S. to let undocumented Haitian immigrants stay and work temporarily, and the U.S. is pressuring undocumented Haitians to go get passports so that they can be repatriated without the official designation of "deportation."

The AP also recently reported that over 100,000 of deportees last year had children who were left behind. Think about those kids and what legacy that leaves for them -- not only is ICE splitting up families and being just horrible and cruel (that is something I've come to expect) they are also creating a generation of disillusioned, underrepresented children who will grow up without their parents in constant fear of the U.S. government. WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?!?! This is not in their best interest! If we can't count on people doing what is selfish then what can we count on anymore? Or are they just banking on new tactics for repression, terror, and hegemony by the time those youths are of age to take action?

Also, I saw on Racewire that the Pew Hispanic Center released a report on rising rates of Latinos being charged for federal crimes. The New York Times says:

"Latinos made up only 13 percent of the United States adult population in 2007, but they accounted for one third of federal prison inmates that year, a result the study attributed to the sharp rise in illegal immigration and tougher enforcement of immigration laws.

Nearly half of Latino offenders, or about 48 percent, were convicted of immigration crimes, while drug offenses were the second-most-prevalent charge, according to the report.

As the annual number of federal offenders more than doubled from 1991 to 2007, the number of Latino offenders sentenced in a given year nearly quadrupled, to 29,281 from 7,924.

Of Latino federal offenders, 72 percent are not United States citizens and most were sentenced in courts from one of the four states that border Mexico. Federal prisoners who are illegal immigrants are usually deported to their home countries after serving their sentences."

So we're imprisoning people for trying to provide for their families, essentially, either by crossing the border to work or selling drugs. Not that drugs don't destroy communities but if the government and businesses provided livable wages and acceptable working conditions then maybe folks wouldn't be so inclined to deal drugs to buy food for their kids.

Also of note:

Last month, The New York Times reported that federal immigration prosecutions had increased over the last five years, doubling in the last fiscal year to more than 70,000 cases. Meanwhile, other categories of federal prosecutions, including gun trafficking, public corruption, organized crime and white-collar crime, declined over the same period.

The number of illegal immigrants in the country increased to 11.9 million last year, from 3.9 million in 1992.

Undocumented Immigration 101

So here's the basic situation as I understand it
The U.S. government has historically:
- manipulated governments and trade in the region,
- exploited opportunities to use land and bodies from south of the border
- criminalized the bodies that cross the border because of the incentives that big business (supported by the same government) provides for crossing
- accepted taxes from these individuals (for more click here) and
- allowed the U.S. economy to benefit from these workers while simultaneously
- incarcerating, detaining, and deporting any undocumented workers they find

The NYT reported today that undocumented immigrants are actually rebuilding New Orleans for us.. and then being mugged and attacked in the streets. For the full article click here

As Tom Barry writes in Dollars and Sense,

"The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 drastically altered the traditional political economy of immigration. The millions of undocumented immigrants—those who crossed the border illegally or overstayed their visas—who were living and working in the United States were no longer simply regarded as a shadow population or as surplus cheap labor. In the public and policy debate, immigrants were increasingly defined as threats to the nation’s security. Categorizing immigrants as national security threats gave the government’s flailing immigration law-enforcement and border- control operations a new unifying logic that has propelled the immigrant crackdown forward.

Responsibility for immigration law-enforcement and border control passed from the Justice Department to the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In Congress Democrats and Republicans alike readily supported a vast expansion of the country’s immigration control apparatus—doubling the number of Border Patrol agents and authorizing a tripling of immigrant prison beds.

Today, after the shift in the immigration debate, the $15 billion-plus DHS budget for immigration affairs has fueled an immigrant-crackdown economy that has greatly boosted the already-bloated prison industry. Even now, with the economy imploding, immigrants are currently behind one of the country’s most profitable industries: they are the nation’s fastest growing sector of the U.S. prison population.

Across the country new prisons are hurriedly being constructed to house the hundreds of thousands of immigrants caught each year. State and local governments are vying with each other to attract new immigrant prisons as the foundation of their rural “economic development” plans.

While DHS is driving immigrants from their jobs and homes, U.S. firms in the business of providing prison beds are raking in record profits from the immigrant crackdown. Although only one piece of the broader story of immigration, it’s all a part of the new political economy of immigration."

Click here for the full article The New Political Economy of Immigration

NEW HAVEN ICE RAIDS

Feds Return For Immigration Raid

by Melissa Bailey | February 3, 2009 3:14 PM

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Melissa Bailey Photo

Two local pastors were on their way out the door to pray with a family when they heard a knock.

Minutes later, they found themselves caught in an immigration raid, their family torn apart.

The raid a couple of weeks ago at the home of Juan Sil and Julia Morales appears to be the first in the city since June 2007, when federal agents swept up 32 alleged illegal immigrants, sending waves of terror through the Fair Haven neighborhood.

In the latest raid, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents targeted Julia Morales, a 44-year-old pentecostal pastor who has been living in the New York-New Haven area for a quarter century. The raid netted four people: Julia, her husband Juan, and two other men living in their home.

The feds described the arrests as “routine.”

“ICE is mandated by Congress to enforce a wide range of immigration and customs laws we will continue to enforce those laws in Connecticut and throughout the U.S.,” stated ICE spokeswoman Paula Grenier.

Agents went to the home to serve a warrant for deportation on Julia Morales, she said. During the process, they came across the three other men and charged them with immigration violations, she confirmed.

Now Julia Morales sits behind bars in a detention in a facility in Maine, pending deportation.

Kica Matos, City Hall’s point person on immigration matters, fumed over why ICE would target a woman who by the agency’s own protocol, ranks as the lowest priority for deportation. ICE’s stated goals are to collect illegal immigrants in this order: those who pose a threat to national security, those who are a threat to the community, those who have a criminal record, and lastly, non-criminal fugitives.

“This woman has not received so much as a traffic ticket,” said Matos. “She was a contributing member of the community. She was spreading the word of God in New Haven.”

“When is it an act of terror to preach about God?” asked Matos. “She clearly wasn’t a
priority.” In arresting a pastor, she said the raid has had an impact not just on one family, but on a whole church community.

Phony Lawyer

What is particularly tragic, Matos said, is the way the woman ended up on the feds’ wanted list.

Julia’s deportation order appears to have stemmed from when she sought help from a phony New York lawyer who later pleaded guilty to defrauding immigrants.

“She was trying to do the right thing,” said Matos. “She was trying to get proper status. She got duped by a lawyer—and now she’s paying the price.”

Juan, who’s 54, has better prospects at remaining in the country: He’s eligible to have his two adult U.S. citizen children (Priscilla and Jimmy, pictured with him above) petition for a change in his immigration status. He remains home with his family pending his next date in court. Julia’s brother, Gustavo Morales, remains in ICE custody pending a hearing; the fourth arrestee, Hernán Rivera, was released on a bond, Grenier said.

The Raid

Sitting on a few couches at a cozy apartment Saturday, heaped with climbing children and two pet dogs, the Sil-Moraleses recounted the day that the feds took their “motor,” their matriarch, away.

It was about 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 14. Juan and Julia were at home at 525 East St., where they live with one of their three grown kids in a highway-bordered neighborhood between East Rock and Fair Haven.

Jimmy Sil-Morales, who’s 23, was watching a movie with his uncle on the couch. His 4 year-old daughter was playing on the floor. Julia and Juan, pastors at a Pentecostal church on Howe Street, had an appointment at a parishioner’s house. As was their nightly routine, they were going to pray with a family in need of support. Julia put her coat on.

Then she heard a knock. Jimmy got up and answered the door with his mom. On the other side, there were several men in vests. The visitors didn’t identify themselves, according to Jimmy. (Grenier declined to give details on the raid, but said that ICE agents do identify themselves as law enforcement officers, police or ICE when making arrests. Local police were notified beforehand, she contended.)

“Are you Julia Morales?” the visitors asked, according to Jimmy. She replied yes, he said. They came in and announced that they had a warrant for her arrest.

Upon learning who she was, eight men “burst” into the house, said Jimmy. They asked everyone for identification. They checked upstairs, under the bed and in the closets, he said.

When the agents came across Juan Sil, he produced a driver’s license as identification. The license was valid, Sil said. ICE agents checked his record in a database.

Before they could pull up the record, Juan volunteered what they might find. He admitted to having a bad record long ago, including a drunken driving offense. But he told them, in the past 15 years, “my record has been clean.”

“God changed me,” he told them.

Until 15 years ago, Juan lived at the bottom of society. He was homeless, unemployed, drunk. Then he found God, and has been clean ever since, he said, working as an upholsterer and devoting his life to his church.

The story didn’t sway ICE officials from slapping him with an arrest warrant.

Juan got the warrant when he appeared the following morning in immigration court, as officials ordered him to do.

“You are not a citizen” of the U.S., the warrant claimed. “You are a native of Guatemala.” The warrant charged Juan with immigrating into the country illegally.

A U.S. citizen born in New York City, Jimmy escaped the wrath of ICE. His uncle, Gustavo Morales, wasn’t so lucky. Neither was the uncle’s roommate, Hernán Rivera. The two men, along with Julia Morales, were arrested for allegedly entering the U.S. without permission.

Agents took their fingerprints in the kitchen. Meanwhile, Jimmy’s 4 year-old daughter sat on the living room floor.

When the feds moved to take the suspects away, Jimmy pleaded with them to protect his daughter from seeing her grandma hauled away like a criminal. Jimmy’s daughter is “attached at the hip” to her grandmother, he explained.

“You’re not going to handcuff my mother in front of my daughter!” he cried. The agents agreed to let Julia hug his daughter goodbye. The agents waited until Julia was outside to put on the handcuffs.

The next day, Jimmy and his sister Priscilla trekked up to Hartford for their father’s court date. They saw their mom one last time before she was taken to a detention camp in Maine. Juan was told to return on a regular basis as his case was heard.

“The Motor of the Family”

Meanwhile, the family has struggled to get by without its babysitter, cook and spiritual leader. When they went to work, Julia’s three children relied on her to take care of their four little ones. When she wasn’t babysitting or helping out at church, Julia would cook Guatemalan specialties like tamales and cheesecake, and sell them to pay the bills.

In her absence, Juan has been trying to take over some of the child-minding duties.

The other day, Juan said he tried to change a diaper on one of his grandkids. “I couldn’t do it,” he said.

“My wife is the motor of my house,” said Juan, who’s 54 years old.

“She makes everything move,” chimed in Jimmy.

A Church Rises

The family said Julia’s detention has been a blow to the church community, too.

After he turned his life around 15 years ago, Juan was possessed by a fever to help others.

When the family moved to the New Haven area about 15 years ago, he and his wife started thinking about preaching.

They found an abandoned auto mechanic’s garage on Davenport Avenue and turned it into a church. The parish grew to about 200 — until the ICE raids hit in 2007, and churchgoers were afraid to leave the house. Juan left the parish and started a new church in West Haven, this one in and old antique shop.

When he wasn’t working at his job, upholstering boats and homes, he devoted all his time to his parish, he said. When a parishioner fell on hard times, he and his wife would reach out to the church community and try to find help. That meant serving as a marriage counselor, helping women in abusive relationships, feeding people with bare cupboards, and visiting the sick at the hospital. People seek his help, he said, because he understand where they’re coming from.

“I’ve been through everything,” he said.

After the West Haven building was condemned, the Sil-Moraleses didn’t give up on the church. They found someone to rent out a church on Howe Street and kept on preaching. Today, the Iglesia de Diós, Puerta a Canaan has a parish of about 60-80 people, they said.

“She’s not a criminal,” said Julia’s daughter Julie, as the family finished rattling off a list of benevolent acts. “She’s just trying to give us a future.”

Three times, Juan has driven the five hours to the Maine detention camp to visit his wife. He finds her in an orange jumpsuit on the other side of a glass wall. They talk for one to two hours, and then he drives back home.

Priscilla, who’s 21, accompanied him on one of the trips. She said her mom tells her how much she worries about them.

“I tell her everything is going to be fine,” said Priscilla. To honor her mother’s longtime wishes, she just enrolled herself in college.

The family has not decided whether they will fight the deportation order. They do know one thing for sure, said Priscilla: “We don’t want her in there [the detention center], lonely, cooped up like an animal.”

Juan said he would like to stay around to raise his grandkids.

If the couple does get deported, however, their kids have vowed to support them.

“We’re going to have to work for them,” said Jimmy, “like they did for us.”

Original article found here in the New Haven Independent