MCHR Member Helps Defeat Local Immigration Enforcement Measure
FREMONT, Jul. 31 - A proposed ordinance targeting illegal immigration in Fremont may be dead, but the discussion of the problems fueling the debate is just getting under way, say those involved in the issue.
Fremont Mayor Don “Skip’’ Edwards cast the deciding vote late Tuesday night against a proposal that would have banned renting to, harboring and hiring illegal immigrants.
Opponents and supporters found much to disagree on in the public debate in recent weeks. But those on both sides of the issue agreed Wednesday the issue needs attention.
“We know we have a problem,’’ Edwards said. “That has never been debated.’’
How Scores of Black Men Were Tortured Into Giving False Confessions by Chicago Police
More than 20 years after being tortured into giving confessions by Chicago police officers, dozens of black men remain behind bars.
Michael Tillman was 20, with a 3-year-old daughter and an infant son, when he was brought into the Area 2 police station on Chicago's South Side for questioning. His mother, Jean Tillman, says that although he had gotten into some trouble with the law as a youngster, he had been on the straight-and-narrow, working as a janitor and paying his bills, since he and his girlfriend had their first child. That was July 22, 1986.
He hasn't been home since.
MCHR Member Launches Campaign to Ban Torture
“No act of war, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture"
On June 25, the eve of International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the Center for Victims of Torture, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and Evangelicals for Human Rights, launched the Campaign to Ban Torture: American Voices for American Values.
MCHR Member Joins Bipartisan Group to Speak Out on Detainees
WASHINGTON, June 25 - A bipartisan group of 200 former government officials, retired generals and religious leaders plans to issue a statement on Wednesday calling for a presidential order to outlaw some interrogation and detention practices used by the Bush administration over the last six years.
The executive order they seek would commit the government to using only interrogation methods that the United States would find acceptable if used by another country against American soldiers or civilians.
Immigrant Kids - Alone and Detained
Children who flee abuse can often be mired in legal limbo
CHICAGO, Jun. 9 - In 1999 the 9-year-old boy fled the Dominican Republic, where his abusive mother had tried to strangle him, forced him to kneel on a cheese grater and had her name tattooed on his arm as a symbol of her ownership.
The boy boarded a plane by himself and illegally entered the U.S. to join his father, who died in 2003. Two years later, police arrested the boy for bringing a knife to school and sent him to a federally funded detention center for illegal immigrant children in Indiana.
Minnesota Community Still Feels Effects of Immigration Raid
One year ago, federal immigration agents began a four-day, house-to-house operation in Willmar, Minnesota. Federal officers detained 49 illegal immigrants. Nearly half had prior criminal records.
The after-effects of that operation are still playing out in the courts, and in the community.
ST. CLOUD, MN; Apr. 10 - Some people claim the problem with last year's immigration raid was the way it was conducted.
During the four-day Willmar operation, immigration attorneys took affidavits from dozens of people caught up in the raid.
Reversal of Fortune for Former Sex Slave
She finally wins clearance to stay in U.S.
CHICAGO, Apr. 1 - For four years, she has told her story over and over, reliving every dehumanizing detail.
Today, the petite woman who was forced onto the international sex slave pipeline and escaped to Chicago can't stop smiling. A U.S. Immigration judge has ruled she can stay in the country.
Attorney Dawn Connelly and law students Adisa Krupalija and Jonathan Huckabay have worked pro bono to win asylum for an Eastern European woman who was held as a sex slave in Italy.
"Wow,'' she said, pumping her arms in the air like Rocky as she describes the tearful phone call from her attorney, Dawn Connelly, and an even more emotional one home to her mother.
People of Faith Are Called to the Movement for Worker Justice
To me, there is no more morally urgent movement than the movement for worker justice.
My hope is to share words that will deepen and strengthen that movement. So it seems to me important to address a basic question from the outset: What would drive religious leaders and people of faith to work closely with labor unions? The answer is threefold:
History
Facing Deportation but Clinging to Life in U.S.
WAUKEGAN, IL, Jan. 18—She is a homeowner, a taxpayer, a friendly neighbor and an American citizen. Yet because she is married to an illegal immigrant, these days she feels like a fugitive.
Whenever her Mexican husband ventures out of the house, “it makes me sick to my stomach,” said the woman, who insisted on being identified only by a first name and last initial, Miriam M.
“I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, he took too long,’ ” she said. “I’ll start calling. I go into panic.”
NIJC Client and Longtime Chicago Resident Sues Over Citizenship
CHICAGO, Jan. 4 - Including his three-year stint with the U.S. Army, Rodrigo Alvear has worked for the federal government for 30 years, which he figured would make him a cinch for U.S. citizenship.
But almost five years after he applied, the Colombian immigrant who grew up on Chicago's North Side is still waiting to hear back on his case, among hundreds of thousands caught in a backlog caused by pending Federal Bureau of Investigation background checks.