Pinal County Jail: Demand Dignity, not Detention.

Every first Sunday afternoon  from 2-4pm I meet with some of these folks for a letter writing session - they write to the prisoners in detention, and I write to my state prisoners. We meet at the Worker Rights Center at 331 E. Willetta St. in Phoenix, 85004. Feel free to join us - these are some awesome peeps.

The ACLU of Arizona, by the way, put out this statement in January on the abuses occurring in the Pinal County Jail - it's worth the read, and has links to more comprehensive documents. There's good reason for ICE to terminate the Pinal County Jail's contract to detain people for immigration violations. If you're interested in joining future such vigils asnd other efforts to end immigrant detention and abuse in Arizona, please contact the Arizona Detention Working Group.

Imagine...

 Vigil for Dignity, not Detention

Pinal County Detention Center 

July 7, 2011

----from SanTanValley.com---

Vigil to Ask ICE to Drop Pinal County Jail Contract

San Tan Valley.com
by: Robert Haasch
March 4, 2012

Saturday afternoon on March 3rd, thirty-five migrant rights activists converged on Sheriff Paul Babeu's Pinal County Jail in Florence, Arizona. This was the fifth monthly vigil meeting at the jail to bring attention to the conditions under which immigration detainees are being held.

Members of the Arizona Detention Working Group (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Arizona-Detention-Working-Group/280858511963997) are calling for the cancellation of the contract the Pinal County Jail has with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The Pinal County Jail is run by Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu. Sheriff Babeu has recently been in the news over allegations by the Phoenix New Times and ABC 15 that he has engaged in inappropriate behavior with students from a boarding school he used to help manage in Massachusetts (http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2012-03-01/news/babeu-s-reckless-behavior-has-enmeshed-him-in-what-may-be-a-career-killing-scandal/).

Prior to these recent revelations, the mistreatment of inmates was surfaced in 2011 by a report from the ACLU which cited a number of human rights violations. On the ACLU website (http://acluaz.org/issues/immigrant-rights/2012-01/1693), the issues cited were "inadequate medical care, insufficient hygiene supplies, no contact visits with family, no outdoor recreation and verbal abuse by jail personnel.

"These problems have persisted in the jail for many years. For example, in the winter 2010, ICE transferred hundreds of immigrant women out of PCJ after the women submitted petition letters complaining of abusive treatment. In the spring 2011, men detained at the same jail began a hunger strike to protest many of the same problems."

In addition, they released a nearly forty page report (http://www.acluaz.org/sites/default/files/documents/detention report 2011.pdf) detailing many of the abuses and shortcomings specifically about Pinal County Jail. Some of the complaints detailed vulnerable populations such as LGBT detainees who had been assaulted while in the care of Babeu's prison system. In addition, there were numerous complaints about sub-standard medical and mental health care.

On September 7th, 2011, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit (http://www.acluaz.org/issues/prisoner-rights/2011-09/1159) against Sheriff Paul Babeu accusing the Pinal County Jail of not allowing inmates to receive books, magazines, or documents exceeding one page long. According to the ACLU release about the lawsuit, one of the plaintiffs, Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News, stated "Publishers have a well-established First Amendment right to send their publications and books to prisoners, and it is unfortunate that rather than respect the rights of publishers to communicate with inmates Sheriff Babeu continues to try to defend the indefensible by banning our books and magazines."

I spoke with Leah Carnine in December 2011 at the third vigil and interviewed her about the conditions at Pinal County Jail (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42IxI6DVkQA). Some examples she gave were the lack of quality food, the lack of outdoor recreation areas, medical neglect, and the lack of contact visits between inmates and visitors. She mentioned that when these vigils were held, they would lock down the jail while they were out in the parking lot.

Leah suggested that at a minimum she would like to see a reorganization of the way the facilities are run along with incorporating community oversight. Leah mentioned that it should include an advisory board which would keep track of the conditions, regulates, and evaluates to make necessary changes. The advisory board would include input from people outside of the system.

At Saturday's vigil, Dorien Ediger-Seto of the Florence Project described that there were multiple facilities in the area which housed immigration detainees. There were approximately 1,500 immigrant detainees in Florence and 600 in Pinal County Jail. She stated that Pinal County Jail has the worst conditions of all of the facilities.

Dorien went on to say, "Unless you are an attorney or a clergy member, it is very difficult to get in for visits. Any visits you will have are by phone with a video screen. The food is really bad. Medical care is bad.

"That is the reason we decided to make PCJ our target in this campaign. The other reason we really want to talk about PCJ is because there is a really rich, strong history of folks on the inside organizing for better conditions.

"Pinal County Jail used to hold women and over the course of a couple of years, the women organized themselves, wrote letters, petitions, describing their experience inside. They sent them to the Florence Project, the ACLU, and anyone they could think of.

"Ultimately, after two rounds of this, PCJ was investigated. And mysteriously, a few months later, the women were released or sent to Eloy. So we wanted to honor that struggle, Today there are people organizing and going on hunger strikes all the time that we don't hear about because they are so far away. So we wanted to recognize that today."

Dorien has worked with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project (http://www.firrp.org) since July 2010. As an intern in 2009, she co-authored a thirty-five page paper detailing the abuses of unaccompanied children by the Border Patrol (http://www.firrp.org/media/BPAbuseReport.pdf). The Florence Project provides free legal services to people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Arizona.

Organizer Carlos Garcia said, "I wanted to remind people that this may not seem like a normal protest with a lot of us here, chanting and running around. It's just significant how we took a whole Saturday to come out here to a place that most of us didn't even know existed.

"Even some of us who work on immigrant and migrant rights didn't know this place was here. We often forget what these folks go through. Every person who is in here has someone somewhere missing them.

"Their family members may be in there or their family members may also be undocumented and they can not come visit. There is no way that they have contact except by phone which also costs money. They are trying to raise funds for lawyer fees and so there is not much there."

Local Hip-Hop MC, Vpro Lific, then performed several spoken word rhymes for the group. Vpro Lific has been active in the Phoenix area with civil rights causes and is a regular performer at local actions.

Following Vpro Lific was local activist, Fernando Lopez. Fernando has been active working with Puente Arizona, performs spoken word rhymes, and also is a photographer. Recently, he spent a month inside Pinal County Jail and was at the vigil to speak about his experiences.

He described it, "I was just telling my friends daughter." She asked "How is it inside?" Fernando replied, "Can you feel the wind right now, and the warmth of the sun?" And she said, "Yeah." "Well those people can't feel that. We are so privileged right now to be outside and to feel the wind. I think everyone deserves that, right? The people in there are not able to feel that way. Some of them have been like that for over two years."

"I want to share a story. I don't talk about it very much. I've told a few people. Three days before my court date, the seventh of July, it was one of my cellies birthday. He was up for deportation and had been locked up for over a year. He wanted to be in Mexico for his birthday and that didn't happen because they didn't work weekends and it was a holiday three day weekend.

"We organized a whole tank, about fifty to sixty people. And we said we were all going to save our bread and peanut butter and we were all going to buy soups. So the day we were making the food, we were up early collecting food, collecting plates, and all kinds of stuff. We got fifty or sixty soups. We even got sausage and coffee. We just everything together in bags and with all the bread and peanut butter we made a cake.

"It was really nice because we had nine to twelve tables and even if they didn't have anything, we were inviting everyone to join us, and eat with us. The week before a few people had just come in there. And when you get in there you feel alone and you don't know anybody. A few of us had just come in there and a few of us had court that week and so we were wishing everyone good luck. So we prepared everything. We lined up all the tables.

"And then they locked us up. We were so ready to have our dinner and we were really mad because we had been working for this dinner since last week. It was some kind of sergeant who was kind of new. He replaced someone who was really bad. He got so many complaints that he got moved.

"This new guy was really nice. He came up to us and said as long as you guys keep it clean and quiet you can do it. So we did it. We had all these soups and this big cake. We were all lined up and sitting down. So we all sat in there and there was this guy from Jamaica. We used to call him Brother. He was a Christian man. He did all these prayers. He did a prayer in English and another guy in Spanish.

"Honestly, I can tell you it was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. There are not only brown people. There are Asian people, people from Vietnam, Jamaica, and Germany. It was all kinds of people, united in just one community.

"We all sat and ate and it was so powerful. These people still have hope. It's just the situation of having to be in there. It is all they are thinking. They can not talk about much anything else.

"Some people just want to be sleeping all day because they are so depressed. They also have homes and families and people they love that are outside.

"This guy that just had his birthday, he left his kid when he was just two or four months old. Just imagine. I'm not a parent but just imagine not being able to see your kid for months, even years. And those people have hope that someone is doing something outside and I guess that's us."

Fernando also described how that he was writing letters to someone he had known inside. Fernando asked his friend to try to get a list of the A numbers (unique ID numbers given to immigration detainees) of the other people inside so that they could write letters to them as part of a pen pal program. The guards found out about it and took away his list and restricted his phone and library privileges as a result.

He mentioned that we all have it good outside and forget that there are people inside who need our help. We have the privilege to see the sunset and the people inside do not. So we at least have the opportunity to ask for something better for them.


Other Resources:

Photos of the March 3rd Vigil
http://sandangel.smugmug.com/Category/03-03-2012-Pinal-County-Jail/

Arizona Detention Working Group
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Arizona-Detention-Working-Group/280858511963997

Puente Human Rights Movement
http://www.facebook.com/puenteaz

Vigil for Dignity, Not Detention
http://www.facebook.com/events/104497709674152/

A DREAM Deferred: The Suicide of Joaquin Luna...

"Share the Dream"
1-10 overpass, Phoenix, AZ
May 2010

----from the World Socialist----

Texas student’s suicide highlights desperate plight of undocumented immigrants

By Ali Ismail
8 December 2011

The suicide of Joaquin Luna, a high school student in Texas, highlights the worsening plight of undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Luna was a senior at Benito-Juarez-Abraham Lincoln High School, where he had a reputation among his peers as a hard-working and driven student. Despite having lived virtually his entire life in the US, Luna was undocumented.

According to his relatives, Luna had been growing increasingly anxious about his undocumented status as he grew older and was worried he’d never fulfill his dream of going to college and becoming an engineer. Luna had been particularly upset by the US Senate’s failure to pass the Dream Act late last year. The bill would have granted undocumented immigrants in higher education permanent residency status.

Luna’s suicide is a tragic consequence of the nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigrants being carried out by both big business parties and the Obama administration. While US President Barack Obama took office pledging to implement a comprehensive “immigration reform”, he has instead presided over a record number of deportations and has overseen massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids against undocumented immigrants across the country. The raids and deportations are part of a stepped up campaign by the ruling elite to scapegoat immigrants for the economic crisis and divide the working class along national lines.

On the night of November 25, Luna locked himself in the bathroom of his family’s Mission, Texas home and took his own life using a .38 revolver

Moments earlier, Carlos Mendoza had received a call from his younger brother, Luna, who was at their mother’s house and sounded strange on the phone. “He told me to have a good life, and when I asked him why he was saying that to me, he said: ‘Because I'm not going to be here,’”

Mendoza told the Guardian that Luna said he felt he would never accomplish his dreams. “My road is finished here,” Luna told Mendoza, who lives across the street. “I’m going away.”

Fearing the worst, Mendoza rushed to his mother’s house but arrived just in time to hear the gunshot.

Luna left behind a stack of letters written on notebook paper which he had tucked into a small Bible emblazoned with his name. When another half-brother of Luna’s, Diyer Mendoza, asked a sheriff’s investigator whether the letters mentioned Luna’s status as an undocumented immigrant, his suspicions were confirmed. Last Friday, Luna’s suicide notes were released by the sheriff.

According to Diyer Mendoza, while the letters did not explicitly mention his status, it was clearly implied. “Dear Lord, forgive me for what I am about to do tonight,” said one note. “I know it has to be done because I have no point of existence in this cruel world… I have realized that I have no chance in becoming a civil engineer the way I have always dreamed of here.”

Joaquin Luna was just six months old when his family crossed the Mexican border without visas and traveled 40 miles to the city of Mission, on the US side of the frontier. He had been born in Mexico while the family was on a trip to their native country. All five of his siblings are US citizens.

Luna’s mother and siblings worked as migrant laborers, and Luna traveled with them to Arkansas, Indiana, and Minnesota. Together, the family harvested asparagus, cotton, jalapenos, melons and tomatoes, according to the Los Angeles Times.

In an essay he wrote last January entitled, “Fulfilling a dream in waiting,” Luna described the grueling conditions in which he and his family had to work. He wrote the essay in order to be considered for a scholarship. In his essay, Luna recalled the most difficult job he ever had—picking asparagus in the fields of Big Rapids, Michigan. “I still remember the hot sun and the sunburns my family and I would acquire when picking the asparagus the wrong way. That summer I struggled, it seemed like it was never coming to an end,” he wrote. “My motivation grew stronger as the season was coming to an end. I could see the tiredness and anxiety in my family’s face.”

Seeing his parents and siblings toil in fields to the point of exhaustion had a profound impact on Luna. From an early age, he was determined to make a better life for himself and his family. In his essay, Luna described why it was so important to him that he attend college. “It would make a major impact in my whole family especially to my parents who have struggled practically their whole life,” he wrote. “I want to demonstrate to them that all that agricultural work done and all those days of giving their best would have been worth it.”

At his high school, Luna excelled in college credit classes and ranked 89 in a class of 467. “He was one of the smartest kids at school. His passion was for math and engineering, and he had developed his own blueprint for designing houses by computer program,” his brother, Carlos Mendoza, told the Guardian. According to his friends, Luna avoided dating because he felt it would interfere with his studies.

As he grew older, Luna grew more and more anxious about his undocumented status and whether he would ever be able to work. According to his relatives, Luna was worried that even if he did manage to gain a college education, he might still be unable to get a job since he didn’t have a Social Security number.

Luna grew increasingly frustrated as he followed news reports about the federal government’s crackdown on employers who hire undocumented workers. He was also deeply troubled by the stricter anti-immigrant laws being implemented in states like Arizona and Alabama and recent deportations in Texas. According to his brother Carlos Mendoza, “He (Luna) said the people passing these laws had no heart: how could they leave so many kids without parents and destroy so many lives?”

When the Dream Act failed to pass the Senate last year, Luna was devastated. “He got depressed real bad," said Mendoza. “Every one of us, we all get depressed. Some of us can handle it, some of us can't. Joaquin couldn’t.”

The hopes of many undocumented immigrants had been raised by the election of Barack Obama. During his campaign, Obama, with an eye to winning the Latino vote, had said that mass deportations would be “intolerable” to most Americans and that undocumented immigrants should be given a route to legal status.

But since taking office, Obama has deported over a million people, with hundreds of thousands of others being held in detention centers far away from their families. A recent report by the American Civil Liberties Union uncovered nearly 200 accusations of sexual abuse of immigrant detainees.

In June 2011, the Obama administration claimed it was beginning a new policy of focusing immigration enforcement on violent criminals. However, a recent study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University has cast doubt on the administration’s claims, revealing that of deportation proceedings that took place between July and September of this year, only 13.8 percent involved people with criminal charges.

Over the past three years the hopes of undocumented immigrants like Luna have been dashed by the reactionary policies of the Obama administration.

While immigration activists have been accused of “exploiting” Luna’s death for relating it to his undocumented status, his relatives are certain that his status and his lack of hope drove him to suicide.

“I know he did it because of his legal status,” Diyer Mendoza said at his funeral last week “I lived with him; I shared time with him. I know what I know.” Carlos Mendoza told the Guardian he believes his brother took his own life for a purpose. “Everybody has a mission in life and I think this was his—to communicate to people what’s going on in America.”

Alabama, Goddam!!! Juan Crow laws dawn.

The tune at the end is my own commentary on the Juan Crow story of the day: Alabama's HB56. Nina Simone wrote it in response to the racism of the Deep South in 1963 and the murders of the Birmingham school girls; radio stations were flooded with broken copies of her records after that. She's one of my heroes.

Too many states are taking after Arizona, digging deep into their roots to justify depriving hard-working families of the basics of life, like running water and medical care. How selfish and twisted we have become in this land of plenty, criminalizing even more of the poor. I hear there will be a water strike in solidarity with our migrant brothers and sisters in Alabama this week. Blessings to you all from the Deep Southwest, where our own racist legislature is also fueled by hatred, greed and fear...

--------this summer from the Huffington Post-----------

Alabama's Immigration Law: The New Jim Crow

Maureen Costello
Huffington Post
Posted: 06/15/11

Alabama's new law -- with provisions against hiring, harboring or transporting undocumented immigrants -- is bad enough for adults. But it is potentially disastrous for kids.

By requiring schools to determine the immigration status of every student at enrollment, the law makes it hard to tell the difference between educators and immigration officials. It already has immigrant parents asking, "Should we keep our children out of school in September?"

On the surface, Alabama's H.B. 56 appears to be fashioned after Arizona's infamous S.B. 1070 law. But the real model wasn't so far away. Take a good look. This law was inspired by something a lot closer to home: Jim Crow.

H.B. 56, which goes into effect on Sept. 1, justifies the requirement in order to keep track of just how much money the state is spending to educate the children of undocumented immigrants. Never mind that immigrants -- both legal and illegal -- support schools by paying Alabama's regressive sales tax (10 percent here in Montgomery, including on food) and local property taxes.

Some will argue that children brought here illegally should not get a public education. But the Supreme Court ruled otherwise almost 30 years ago, in Plyler v. Doe. In 1982, the court ruled that Texas schools could not deny enrollment to the children of undocumented immigrants. The decision found that children -- even those here illegally -- had 14th Amendment protections, should not be punished for the actions of their parents, and were safe from discrimination in the absence of substantial state interests to the contrary.

Wanting to "take account" of the costs of ESL fails the substantial interest test. The majority in Plyler also said that refusing to educate these students "raises the specter of a permanent caste of undocumented resident aliens," a permanent "underclass" of illiterates who would burden society far more than the cost of educating them.

Maybe history has inured Alabama to such an underclass. The law requires school officials to keep track of students "born outside the jurisdiction of the United States." But it goes even further. Schools must also determine which U.S. citizens among their students have parents who are "aliens not authorized to be in the United States."

Alabama didn't go the Texas route and outright deny the right to an education. But H.B. 56 is a thinly veiled way to discourage immigrant parents from enrolling their children in school. It reminds one of the poll taxes and literacy tests that made voting, although theoretically legal, an impossible act for so many African Americans a half-century ago.

It's unclear exactly how schools will identify the unauthorized parents, and that's part of its poisonous charm. Birth certificates don't include the legal status of parents. Will all parents now be required to prove their legal status, or only those who look like immigrants? Must educators infer which soccer mom is a likely prospect? Will children be asked where their parents were born? In the absence of evidence to the contrary, schools are instructed to presume that the student should be tracked under the new law.

All of these scenarios are ugly; they will make immigrant parents unwilling to enroll their kids. But as a nation, we can't afford to leave them behind. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 20 percent of the students in grades K-12 in 2009 were the children of immigrants. Policies that don't meet their educational needs or encourage their parents to keep them from school will leave us all behind as a nation. The cost will be far more than what Alabama pays ESL teachers.

The new law is likely to drive some undocumented immigrants away from Alabama, as its authors intended. But it will also set in stone the underclass that the Supreme Court predicted. Like Jim Crow, the law strips away rights, from having legally enforceable contracts to accepting a ride to the bus stop. Like the segregated schools of Jim Crow, this law puts obstacles in the path of immigrant parents who want their kids to become educated.

Educators have not shown great enthusiasm for the law, and they shouldn't. To his credit, Joe Morton, Alabama's state superintendent of education, has decided that the law doesn't take effect until after schools enroll students for the 2011-2012 school year. So it won't be enforced until August 2012. Morton's most likely counting on the law being declared unconstitutional by then.

No teacher or principal relishes the prospect of turning students or parents over to Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE). None would want to help divide families. Yet Alabama teachers will soon be doing just that. Although the law includes nominal privacy protection, it specifically exempts requirements related to ICE. "Every state actor" must report known illegal immigrants.

Obviously, any children pulled from school will suffer. The rest of us suffer, too. As a state and as a nation, we need as many well-educated people as possible in the years ahead. And for educators, already struggling as society's latest whipping boy, the law is a blow to professional integrity. Teachers' very ability to succeed depends on being trusted allies of students and families. That's going to be tough to do after Alabama makes them deputies of ICE.

Follow Maureen Costello on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Tolerance_org

-----------------------

DHS' "Secure Communities" program damages communities

Got the lead on this one from Bender's Immigration Bulletin, which is packed full of info updated daily about immigration laws and practices. The actual article below comes from Immigration Impact. Note that some members of the task force felt the recommendations didn't go far enough to address the problems with the Secure Communities program.

----------------------------

Task Force Submits Recommendations on DHS’s Flawed Secure Communities Program

Immigrationimpact.com
September 16, 2011

Anyone following the saga surrounding Secure Communities—DHS’s flawed enforcement program that runs fingerprints through federal databases—can tell you that the program has been ripe with controversy since its inception in 2008. As DHS began to stray from the program’s original focus on criminal aliens—state and city leaders, police chiefs, immigration advocates, and congressional members blasted the agency for casting too broad a net and for its dubious implementation process. After tensions reached a boiling point in June, ICE Director John Morton created a 20-member task force to address growing concerns. This week, that task force submitted its final recommendations in a report to the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC)—recommendations that some former task force members say don’t go far enough.

In the report released today, the task force—which initially consisted of 20 members representing immigration advocates, law enforcement leaders and union members—found that “fingerprint identification through the program should no longer lead federal agents to deport immigrants arrested by local police officers for minor traffic violations.”

The report also criticized immigration offices for making inconsistent statements about whether participation in the program was voluntary and found that Secure Communities has an “unintended negative impact” on public safety.

To the extent that Secure Communities may damage community policing, the result can be greater levels of crime. If residents do not trust their local police, they are less willing to step forward as witnesses to or victims of crime. As a result, some Task Force members believe that decisions by local jurisdictions regarding participation in Secure Communities should be honored.

Task Force chairman and executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, Chuck Wexler, said that DHS loses credibility in the community when it snags low-level offenders and that the program “should focus on deporting serious and violent felons”—a sentiment shared widely by the task force. The task force was apparently divided, however, on whether the program should be suspended while the problems were solved.

Benjamin Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Council, said the group was initially told to focus on how the program deals with traffic offenders, but realized there were much larger questions to consider if they were going to make meaningful recommendations:

This program is seriously flawed as it exists today. DHS needs to take bold action to either refocus the program on strictly pursuing violent criminals or change the program completely. Either way, DHS can no longer afford to jeopardize the relationship between communities and the law enforcement officers there to protect them.

Some task force members, however—who resigned from the group and did not endorse the final report—believe that Secure Communities is far too flawed to get better. Arturo Venegas, a former California police chief who resigned from the task force this week, said the report didn’t go far enough.

Even if DHS/ICE put the recommendations in place, the problems would continue. Without concrete accountability measures and without concrete directives, the fact of the matter is people will still get into the system that shouldn’t be there. I even question the legitimacy of the program.

Only time will tell how and when DHS takes these recommendations into consideration. The report was submitted to the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) which will review the recommendations before submitting them to ICE Director John Morton.

Undoing Borders: A Queer Manifesto

From the San Francisco Pride At Work Migrant Justice Workgroup.

Undoing Borders:
A Queer Manifesto
(blog here)

Operation Desert Sky: Arpaio to hunt immigrants from posse planes.

Arpaio is talking about gunning down "illegal immigrants" and "drug runners" after his (no doubt highly-trained) volunteer posse pilots somehow identify them as criminals from the sky. He's talking about shooting people who are RUNNING AWAY from him!

Is he out of his mind?!

The feds need to step it up and arrest him already - and we have to figure out a way to stop this operation. I'm open to ideas...

----------------------------

Sheriff's Posse Launches Air Operation

Updated: Tuesday, 29 Mar 2011, 7:05 PM MDT
Published : Tuesday, 29 Mar 2011, 7:05 PM MDT

PHOENIX - Maricopa County Sheriff's posse members are taking to the skies to fight illegal immigration and other related crimes.

As many as 30 pilots will donate their planes and their time to patrol the southern border of Maricopa County.

If they see any illegal activity like drug smuggling, they'll radio it into deputies on the ground. It's all part of the latest crime suppression operation by Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

"We're going to use our automatic weapons if we have to, and I'm tired of my deputies having to chase these people and I'm sure the air posse will be able to spot these guys running as they do constantly from us," says Arpaio.

The effort is called "Operation Desert Sky." It'll be going on for several weeks.

BAN AZ Legislative Update Jan 2011

Boarder Action Network
Legislative Update: January 17-21, 2011
By Jaime Farrant, Policy Director


I. Introduction: Governor Brewer Files a Budget that puts Arizona on the Verge of a Public Health and Moral Crisis



Governor Brewer announced her proposed budget for Arizona last Jan. 14. The budget dominated this week’s political discussion, given our state’s current financial situation: depending on the estimate, Arizona’s deficit ranges between 1 and 2 billion dollars. However, instead of proposing a budget that considers all available options to save costs and raise revenues for the state, the Arizona Capitol Times described it as one that “hinges on empathy from the federal government, surviving potential lawsuits and a $330 million accounting gimmick that may not be legal”. Governor Brewer’s main plan to reduce government spending is a $561 million cut to AHCCCS, the state’s health insurance program for the poor. The cuts will end coverage for approximately 280,000 people, most of them childless adults, parents of eligible children and elderly, blind and disabled patients. The Governor also proposed a $170 million cut to the university system. However, not all agencies suffered cuts. Governor Brewer requested $8.4 million to hire 100 new correctional officers this year, to be followed by 200 more over the next two years. She also requested a $50 million bond to cover needs at the state's 10 prison complexes.

Speaking of budget cuts, Senator Sylvia Allen (R-Dist. 5) stated to the Arizona Guardian that these will send the message that “we’ve got to preach to people to save up for their colonoscopy, to save up for their welfare visits, to put some money back into their lives and their own responsibilities for healthcare”. The Arizona Guardian also asked Senate President Russell Pearce whether it was realistic for low-income people to save the money necessary for doctor visits and exams. His response was simply "that's the way it used to be."

Read More...

II. Summary of Legislative Bills Filed and Discussed This Week

This was another busy week at the Legislature, with over 350 bills filed. As of the end of Thursday’s session, there are 756 bills before the 2 legislative bodies. Many of them will have a direct impact on Arizonans’ human rights, and on the direction this state takes. The following is a summary of several of these measures, with Border Action’s observations on them.

A. Measures Impacting Civil and Constitutional Rights and Public Justice

Some of the measures filed this week that impact civil and constitutional rights and our public justice system include:

1. HB 2444: Law Enforcement Officer Discipline. Rep. Steve Montenegro, R- Dist. 12. This measure prohibits filing disciplinary procedures against law enforcement officers if the investigation is not completed within 120 days after the employer received notice of the allegation. If disciplinary action is appropriate, the employer must give notice to the officer of intent to proceed with disciplinary action, along with a proposal of the specific action sought. The bill prohibits polygraph examinations in administrative procedures unless the law enforcement or probation officer and the employer agree to its administration. This measure has the effect of making it more difficult to hold law enforcement officers for inappropriate acts.

Read More…

B. Measures Impacting a Secure and Productive Border and Immigration Issues

On Thursday, January 20, the Senate’s Committee on Border Security, Federalism and States’ Sovereignty (chaired by Sylvia Allen, R-Dist. 5) held its first hearing. It began with Sen. Allen introducing the members, and then, by asking Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever and Pinal County Paul Babeu to speak about their county’s law enforcement efforts. 

Sheriff Dever talked for almost 1 hour. He stated that, as a way to resolve immigration issues, “until they (referring to the undocumented) aren’t incarcerated for a long period of time, they’ll continue to come back”. He also declared that there are delegations across the country ready to file bills similar to SB 1070, and that if the federal government “thinks that this is going to die, they are incorrect”. He said that he is interested to see if the Department of Justice will sue other states that pass Arizona-inspired laws. 

Senator Allen asked Sheriff Dever if he would like for the legislature to pass a law that would create a border security voluntary group that would provide him “with more bodies to help”. He responded that if that was ever to happen, that “he would like to see them under the supervision of the sheriff.” He also criticized Border Patrol’s efforts, because they are “scattered and not holding the frontline”, and because of their policy of measuring success by their number of apprehensions, saying “that’s measuring how many fish are in the lake by the number of fish you catch”.

Read More…



1. HB 2537: Immigration Legislation Challenges. Rep. Kirk Adams, R-Dist. 19. This is the House version of SB 1117, which seeks to amend last year’s HB 2162 (passed to amend SB 1070) and authorize the Senate President or House Speaker to direct counsel to initiate legal proceedings or appear on behalf of their respective chambers or on behalf of the legislature in any challenge in a state or federal court to SB 1070 and any amendments to it. Border Action Network spoke at the Senate last week opposing SB 1117, questioning the need of a measure that grants a blank check to these 2 persons to spend taxpayer monies during these difficult economic times.

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C. Measures Impacting Employment and Workers Rights

1. HB 2263: Discrimination; Enforcement; Damages. Rep. Ed Ableser, D-Dist. 17 (pictured right). This bill seeks to increase the statute of limitations on filing employment discrimination charges to 2 years from 1 year. It also allows the recovering party in unlawful employment practice cases to recover punitive or compensatory damages under certain conditions. This is a positive measure that will help Arizona workers who are discriminated against.


2. HB 2271: Employment; Unlawful Termination; Family Responsibility. Rep. Ed Ableser, D-Dist. 17 (pictured right). This measure prohibits employers from firing or threaten to fire an employee for being notified by a school or law enforcement officer of an emergency regarding the employee's child or for leaving work to attend to the child's emergency, except in cases of excessive abuse of this protection.


3. HB 2367: Public Employees; Prohibited Negotiations. Rep. David Smith, R-Dist. 7. This measure prohibits the state and its political subdivisions from negotiating with a labor organization or employee association representing public employees about employee wages and benefits, hours of work, or other financial issues. This is a bill that seeks to further diminish labor unions’ ability to negotiate on behalf of their members in our state.


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D. Measures Impacting Education

1. HB 2505 – School pupils; lawful status; state aid. Rep. Carl Seel, R-Dist. 6; Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Dist. 18. This measure prohibits school districts and charter schools from counting children whose parents are unable to prove the child’s lawful presence in the US for purposes of determining average daily membership, the measure used to determine state funding to school districts and charter schools. This bill has the intent of forcing schools to turn away undocumented children from their schools, and an attempt to force a lawsuit to challenge the Supreme Court Decision of Plyler v. Doe, which established that all children in this country are entitled to a free public education.

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E. Measures Impacting Integration and Civic Participation

Representative Carl Seel (R-Dist 6, pictured left), filed various bills this week that attempt to eliminate the advances made by various groups throughout AZ during last year’s elections to increase voter participation, by making it harder for Arizonans to register to vote and by creating mechanisms to deter organizations from assisting in voter registration efforts. These measures are:

1. HB 2240: Voter Registration; Assistance; Notary. Mandates that voter registration forms include a space for the registrant to provide the name of any person who assisted the registrant, including the name of that person's organization, if any. It also establishes that the signature of the voter in permanent early voter request forms (“PEVL”) be notarized by a notary public. Voters already on the permanent early voting list must submit a notarized renewal within 2 years or their name will be removed. The paper record provided by an electronic voting system must be used in manual audits and recounts on electronic equipment that uses a touch screen system or that is usable with assistive devices.

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F. Measures Impacting Health Care

While we have a budget that seeks to cut health care services to over 280,000 persons, several other bills were filed this week that will impact health care in our state. These are:

1. SB 1214: Interstate Compact; Health Care. Sen. Silvia Allen R, Dist. 5 (pictured right). This measure seeks to create an inter-state agreement to aggressively oppose President Obama’s health care reform law signed in Congress last year. SB 1214 seeks to:


a. Prohibit governmental agencies from depriving any resident of any party of any party state of the rights and freedoms guaranteed under their respective current or anticipated health care freedom laws.


b. Prohibit government agencies from penalizing residents of these states.


c. Allow cooperation between signatory states that will allow criminal prosecutions of anyone who violates the health care freedom criminal laws of any party state. The measure defines these “health care freedom criminal laws” as any state law that makes it a crime for anyone to interfere with a resident’s enjoyment of the freedoms protected and guaranteed obey the state’s respective health care freedom laws”. These freedom laws, in turn, are laws by which persons’ have the “freedom to pay or not to pay directly for lawful health care services and to participate or not to participate in health care plans and health care systems.”


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G. Measures Impacting Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Development

There were several measures filed this week that should concern all of Arizona’s residents, particularly as our state struggles to correct its financial situation. They are:

1. SB 1210: Corporate Income Tax; Repeal. First Sponsor Sen. Lori Klein, R-Dist.6. This measure seeks to eliminate Arizona’s Revised Statutes (“ARS”) Chapter on Corporate Taxes effective December 31, 2011. It also instructs legislative council staff to prepare new legislation on this matter. Under this measure, Arizona’s corporations would not pay any income tax until a new corporate tax code is filed. Considering our state’s financial situation, this is an irresponsible measure that must be rejected.


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Prosecuting under SB 1070.

Police may have hard time making SB1070 cases

Posted: Jul 09, 2010 10:25 PM

Reporter: Craig Smith

PHOENIX (KGUN9-TV) - The Maricopa County Attorney says he may not approve many prosecutions under SB1070 because the law requires evidence officers may have a hard time obtaining.

It might seem simple to prosecute someone under Arizona's tough new immigration law----you're here illegally---you're guilty.

But Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley says even if someone admits they are in the U.S. illegally, their word alone is not enough to prosecute.

Other parts of state law say police have to back up that confession with other evidence.

Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley says his office won't prosecute 1070 cases unless officers meet seven requirements: including evidence a suspect has been in the U.S. more than 30 days, checking with Federal immigration authorities to verify the suspect's not in U.S. legally, and proof the suspect is older than 14.

KGUN9 reporter Craig Smith asked Romley: "It looks like some of these are going to be fairly high hurdles to prosecution. Are they?"

Romley: "Well, they are. Unfortunately there is a significant burden on law enforcement. I'm not sure the Legislature really looked in depth at the Federal law they were relying upon for implementing Senate bill 1070."

Romley says proving a violation of 1070 means proving someone did not comply with a Federal law from right before World War 2. Because it allows 30 days to register, Romley feels proving someone has been in the U.S. more than 30 days is a make or break prosecution requirement.

The Pima County Attorney's office is still working on the 1070 training it will give Pima County Deputies, but it has accepted the need for hard proof someone has been in the U.S. at least 30 days.

Amelia Cramer, the Chief Deputy Pima County Attorney says, "One of those has an element of 30 days presence within the United States and that's set forth in the Arizona POST training materials. That's something that must be proven."

Romley knows his requirements will bring down some heat.

Craig Smith asked Romley, "People who are real strong backers of 1070 may accuse you of throwing up obstacles to it."

Romley says, "You know, in fact they have. The truth of the matter is, this is what the law is. There's nothing political there. This is the elements of the law that was passed. If there's any fault to be laid it should be laid to the Legislature because they didn't do their homework."

Romley says proving how long someone's been here could mean trying to get something like a utilities receipt with his name, address, and a date and that could require the time, effort and expense to get a warrant for an issue that even though it's controversial is still a misdemeanor.

When perception trumps reality...

Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press

Sheriff’s deputies for Maricopa County, Ariz., took people into custody in March at what they said was a drop house in Phoenix.

On Border Violence, Truth Pales Compared to Ideas

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

New York Times

Published: June 19, 2010

When Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, announced that the Obama administration would send as many as 1,200 additional National Guard troops to bolster security at the Mexican border, she held up a photograph of Robert Krentz, a mild-mannered rancher who was shot to death this year on his vast property. The authorities suspected that the culprit was linked to smuggling.

“Robert Krentz really is the face behind the violence at the U.S.-Mexico border,” Ms. Giffords said.

It is a connection that those who support stronger enforcement of immigration laws and tighter borders often make: rising crime at the border necessitates tougher enforcement.

But the rate of violent crime at the border, and indeed across Arizona, has been declining, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as has illegal immigration, according to the Border Patrol. While thousands have been killed in Mexico’s drug wars, raising anxiety that the violence will spread to the United States, F.B.I. statistics show that Arizona is relatively safe.

That Mr. Krentz’s death nevertheless churned the emotionally charged immigration debate points to a fundamental truth: perception often trumps reality, sometimes affecting laws and society in the process.

Judith Gans, who studies immigration at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona, said that what social psychologists call self-serving perception bias seemed to be at play. Both sides in the immigration debate accept information that confirms their biases, she said, and discard, ignore or rationalize information that does not. There is no better example than the role of crime in Arizona’s tumultuous immigration debate.

“If an illegal immigrant commits a crime, this confirms our view that illegal immigrants are criminals,” Ms. Gans said. “If an illegal immigrant doesn’t commit a crime, either they just didn’t get caught or it’s a fluke of the situation.”

Ms. Gans noted that sponsors of Arizona’s controversial immigration enforcement law have made careers of promising to rid the state of illegal immigrants through tough legislation.

“Their repeated characterization of illegal immigrants as criminals — easy to do since they broke immigration laws — makes it easy for people to ignore statistics,” she said.

Moreover, crime statistics, however rosy, are abstract. It takes only one well-publicized crime, like Mr. Krentz’s shooting, to drive up fear.

It is also an election year, and crime and illegal immigration — and especially forging a link between the two — remain a potent boost for any campaign. Gov. Jan Brewer’s popularity, once in question over promoting a sales tax increase, surged after signing the immigration bill, which is known as SB 1070 but officially called the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act.

No matter that manpower and technology are at unprecedented levels at the border, it may never be secure enough in Arizona’s hothouse political climate when Congressional seats, the governor’s office and other positions are at stake in the Aug. 24 primaries.

It took the Obama administration a few weeks to bow to that political reality and go from trumpeting the border as more secure than it had ever been to ordering National Guard troops to take up position there — most of them in Arizona, Mr. Obama assured Ms. Brewer in a private meeting — because it was not secure enough.

Crime figures, in fact, present a more mixed picture, with the likes of Russell Pearce, the Republican state senator behind the immigration enforcement law, playing up the darkest side while immigrant advocacy groups like Coalición de Derechos Humanos (Human Rights Coalition), based in Tucson, circulate news reports and studies showing that crime is not as bad as it may seem.

For instance, statistics show that even as Arizona’s population swelled, buoyed in part by illegal immigrants funneling across the border, violent crime rates declined, to 447 incidents per 100,000 residents in 2008, the most recent year for which comprehensive data is available from the F.B.I. In 2000, the rate was 532 incidents per 100,000.

Nationally, the crime rate declined to 455 incidents per 100,000 people, from 507 in 2000.

But the rate for property crime, the kind that people may experience most often, increased in the state, to 4,082 per 100,000 residents in 2008 from 3,682 in 2000. Preliminary data for 2009 suggests that this rate may also be falling in the state’s biggest cities.

What is harder to pin down is how much of the crime was committed by illegal immigrants.

Phoenix’s police chief, Jack Harris, who opposes the new law, said that about 13 percent of his department’s arrests are illegal immigrants, a number close to the estimated percentage of illegal immigrants in the local population. But the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, which runs the jail for Phoenix and surrounding cities and is headed by Joe Arpaio, a fervent supporter of the law, has said that 19 percent of its inmates are illegal immigrants...

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