Cristina Costantini

PBS 'Need To Know' Documentary Tackles Border Patrol Abuse

2012-07-23T16:36:32-04:00

The "basic values" of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency include, "professionalism, honor, integrity, [and] respect for human life." According to the second installment of a PBS documentary, "Crossing The Line," however, many of the agency's employees are falling short of their stated ideals.

In recent years, border agents have sexually assaulted, tortured and psychologically abused foreign nationals with impunity, the "Need To Know" documentary alleges. The second installment, which aired on Friday evening, features interviews with many who claim to be witnesses and victims of border patrol abuses -- including a Mexican woman who says she was sexually assaulted by a U.S. border agent, a Mexican man who maintains he was physically abused by a member of the same agency and a retired border agent who claims prisoners were at times intentionally abused in CBP facilities. The documentary also shows hidden camera footage of agents emptying out gallons of water set out in the desert by an NGO, intended to help border crossers stave off dehydration.

CBP spokeswoman Jenny Burke said in a phone interview that her agency was unable to speak by deadline about specific allegations made in the PBS documentary. However, Burke said in a statement given to The Huffington Post that, "We do not tolerate abuse within our ranks, and we fully cooperate with any criminal or administrative investigations of alleged misconduct by any of our personnel, on or off duty.”

The documentary comes at a bad time for the agency. Civil rights complaints filed against the CBP have risen dramatically in recent years, while immigration across the border has simultaneously slowed. Allegations of corruption have also risen, according to Reuters, with 129 agents arrested on corruption charges between 2003 and 2009.

In recent months, numerous deaths on the border have brought the agency more bad press. In May of 2011, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen, Carlos Lamadrid, was shot in the back three times by a U.S. Border Patrol agent while fleeing across the southern border into Mexico. Earlier this year, PBS unearthed footage of the beating of Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas in the first installment of their "Crossing the Line" project. More than a dozen border patrol agents stood around the Mexican citizen while he was hogtied, beaten with a baton and shocked with a Taser, according to the documentary. The death of 15-year-old Sergio Hernandez-Guereca, a Mexican citizen fatally shot by a CBP agent in 2010, also sparked outrage in the immigrant activist community, after agent Jesus Mesa Jr. said he used lethal force because Hernandez-Guereca was throwing rocks at him.

In Nogales, Mexico, a nurse who provides medical assistance to border crossers spoke to PBS about caring for the victims of border patrol abuse.

"We are here. We are living it everyday. The abuses are frequent," she said in Spanish.

More Immigration Attorneys Turn To Online Petitions

2012-07-18T07:45:38-04:00

After consulting with eight different immigration attorneys, and spending $10,000 in lawyers' fees over the course of five years, Manuel Guerra lost hope that he would be allowed to stay in the U.S.

"The [attorneys] were all were telling me the same thing: to sign my voluntary departure form," Guerra told The Huffington Post. Guerra, who says he came to the U.S. illegally when he was 16 to escape Mexico's gang violence, was finally encouraged by yet another attorney, Richard Hujber, to try one last thing -- an online petition at Change.org.

So Guerra created an account, and wrote a letter to the public explaining his story. "I have made the United States of America my home, my adopted country and the land where I found freedom and purpose of life. That is a reason to live and a reason worth of fighting for," Guerra wrote in his petition.

After years of battling with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), just weeks after publishing the petition, the agency stopped Guerra's deportation proceedings. He says the petition and the public outcry it created made the difference for him.

Guerra's case isn't unique, however. The Obama administration's announcement last year that it would prioritize prosecutorial discretion, a policy which favors the deportations of criminal immigrants over those of non-criminals, has triggered some immigration attorneys to employ public outrage to help their clients, according to Change.Org spokesperson and campaigner Gabriela Garcia. Change.org has seen more than 10 new immigration-related petitions each month, and more than 20 immigration-related "victories" in the last year, Garcia told The Huffington Post.

"We've seen an increase in the number of petitions about immigration cases, and an increase in immigration attorneys who've started them when they run out of legal recourses for helping their clients," Garcia said.

However, ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christiansen downplayed the influence of online petitions in the agency's decisions to halt deportation proceedings. "ICE exercises prosecutorial discretion on a case-by-case basis, depending upon the unique circumstances of an individual’s case and whether or not it falls outside the bounds of the agency’s enforcement priorities," she wrote in an email. Decisions are made by the agency's attorneys, based solely on legal justifications, she told The Huffington Post. Christiansen was unwilling to speak on the record specifically about the influence of public opinion and online petitions on ICE decision-making.

But Matthew Muller, a California-based immigration attorney, says the agency is "definitely worried about the public implications of their decisions."

"Even if ICE doesn't wake up every morning and check Change.org, the site's petitions are affecting the agency in some form," Muller told The Huffington Post.

Muller says the petitions can help link attorneys with those who need representation and alert media outlets to extreme cases. "Change.org is a bridge to traditional media, which is definitely something ICE is paying attention to," he said.

Earlier this year, Muller himself used a Change.org petition to demand that ICE halt the deportation proceedings of his client Blanca Medina, a mother who faced the threat of sexual abuse if returned to her home country. He says that when he ran out of legal options to help his client, he hoped public outrage would shame the agency into changing their ruling. The petition collected over 118,000 signatures and attracted media attention. The petition worked, Muller says.

"With the prosecutorial discretion policy, press attention and public outrage don't hurt," Muller said.

Manuel Guerra, who claims an online petition encouraged ICE to halt his deportation proceedings, now spends his free time filing petitions for undocumented strangers.

"After they stopped my deportation so many people asked me for help," he told The Huffington Post. "So now I start petitions on their behalves or I show them how to do it."

John Rocker's New Book, 'Scars And Strikes,' Aims To Fix The Former Pitcher's Public Image

2012-07-16T10:00:23-04:00

John Rocker chose a unique way to prove that he's not racist: He launched his own "Speak English" campaign.

The former Atlanta Braves pitcher -- who was suspended from baseball for making homophobic, xenophobic and racist comments -- says he wants the world to know he's actually a pretty nice guy. He's written a book called "Scars and Strikes," which outlines his decade-long fight to reverse a damning portrayal of him written by Sports Illustrated reporter Jeff Pearlman in 1999. Rocker's new book dives back into controversial race politics, but this time he's advocating an aggressive assimilation campaign. (He sells "SPEAK ENGLISH" shirts on his website to promote the campaign.)

In the 1999 Sports Illustrated piece, Pearlman quoted Rocker's thoughts on immigrants.

"The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners," Rocker said in the interview. "You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?"

Rocker also described why he would never live in New York.

"Imagine having to take the [Number] 7 train to the ballpark, looking like you’re [riding through] Beirut next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids," he said to Sports Illustrated. "It’s depressing."

The former pitcher likens the 1999 piece to an assassination. He lost his job, he lost his friends and he lost a reputation he worked hard to build for himself, he says.

"Technically, I’m still breathing and the soulless shell that is my body continues to walk around upright appearing to be intact," Rocker writes in his new book. "Make no mistake about it, however, everything inside of me that day, everything I worked a lifetime to become, who I was at the core of my being which took more than a decade to create was laid to waste in one fell blow all for the sake of selling a few fucking magazines."

He says the portrayal of him as a xenophobic, racist, New York City-hater is far from the truth. Some of his best friends are foreigners, he says. He's dated African American model Alicia Marie for many years. He wears a NYPD hat sometimes. But Rocker hasn't quite stopped making those controversial statements.

In a 2006 interview with Deadspin, Rocker gave a less-than-romantic description of how he met his girlfriend. "I just looked down her shirt, saw what I needed to see and moved on. I took a leap of faith, because she had a long coat on, and she could have had big birthin' hips or something." Three years later, Rocker reportedly called radio host Steve Shapiro a "jew faggot," and referred to a gay couple as "fruitcakes" while eating breakfast at a Dallas bakery.

Rocker insists these reports are the media's distortions of who he really is. His focus is now on helping immigrants by encouraging them to assimilate, he says. Learning English, he argues, is the key to economic opportunity in the United States.

"If you really want to achieve and grasp all the opportunities that America has, assimilation is going to be required. Speaking English is going to be required. And I don't think that can be viewed as racist. It's almost encouragement, it's almost advice, I guess," Rocker told The Huffington Post.

He also said that it's annoying for him when immigrants don't speak English.

"I can remember I was in Miami a year ago or so, and I was trying to order coffee at Starbucks. And the lady, literally, we could not interact," Rocker told HuffPost. "And my Spanish isn’t bad -- I could have ordered my coffee in Spanish. And I wasn’t going to do it out of pure spite and stubbornness, I guess. And she gave me this kind of disgusted look. She sighed really big, rolled her eyes, and walked to the back to get someone to take my order. And it was like I’m a foreigner in my own country here."

When asked if perhaps sending journalists an email entitled "John Rocker wants you to speak English" isn't the best way to fix his reputation, Rocker blamed the media industry, again. He says his PR reps framed his book with a polarizing message in order to catch the media's attention. And perhaps it worked.

"In my mind, and don't take this personally, media is a business. Their job is to create interest and create buzz, to drive ratings," Rocker said.

"The sexy story for the media is John Rocker, the bigot. That’s the one they print, they portray. It drives ratings, it sells newspapers. And I’ve had enough of it." Rocker said. "So I’ve decided to sit down and deliver the story straight from the horse’s --- or some might say the jackass' -- mouth."

D.C. Passes Bill To Restrict Secure Communities Immigration Enforcement Program

2012-07-10T19:17:18-04:00

WASHINGTON -- As groups around the country rally this week against the Secure Communities immigration enforcement program, the District of Columbia approved its own measure on Tuesday to fight back.

In a unanimous vote, the D.C. Council approved a bill that will limit the ability of the federal government to enforce immigration laws by restricting the circumstances in which individuals can be held in the custody of local law enforcement at the request of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The nation's capital joined a handful of cities across the country that are taking a stand against the spate of immigration enforcement measures seen in states like Arizona, where local police are now required to ask people who they suspect of being in the country illegally for their documents, during actions as routine as traffic stops.

"We want to be the anti-Arizona," Sarahi Uribe, a D.C.-based organizer for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told The Huffington Post. "Our entire campaign to get cities to break ties with federal immigration enforcement is an effort to be the opposite of Arizona."

Opponents of Secure Communities, which is under ICE, say the program has the same effects as SB 1070's most damaging provisions, by potentially scaring undocumented immigrants away from working with police. Under SCOMM, as many call it, fingerprints taken by local police during arrests are given to ICE for screening to determine whether the person detained has entered the country illegally. While the process has been amended slightly so minor traffic offenders won't be caught in its net, the program still brings many to ICE attention who haven't first been convicted. Critics say this practice goes directly against SCOMM's stated purpose -- to deport dangerous criminals.

The D.C. measure specifically targets one of ICE's tactics called immigration detainers -- a practice in which ICE asks local law enforcement to hold an individual for up to 48 hours, so that the agency can investigate their immigration status and assume custody if necessary. The newly-approved law restricts the period in which immigrants will be held from 48 to 24 hours, requires that ICE pay the local costs of incarceration and specifies that those held on detainers must have been convicted of serious crimes.

While ICE spokeswoman Danielle Bennett declined to comment on the D.C. measure or how it would affect her agency's ability to operate in the area, she wrote in an email that, “ICE remains committed to working with our law enforcement partners to help make our communities safer by focusing our resources on public safety and national security threats, border security, and the integrity of the immigration system.”

Opposition to Secure Communities has been growing since 2010, when a number of states and localities tried to leave the program only to find out that, despite previously being told they could opt out, there was no avenue to do so.

Since leaving the program is impossible, D.C. and other areas are attempting to go against it in a different way, with the fight against detainers one of the most recently adopted strategies for fighting the program. Santa Clara, Calif., and Cook County, Ill., also limited their response to detainer requests earlier this year. Last week, the California state Senate passed a bill called the TRUST Act that resembles the D.C. measure. The bill will prohibit police from keeping any individual in custody longer than they would in normal circumstances, even if there was a detainer request, unless they have been convicted of a "serious or violent felony."

Localities have every right to ignore detainers, said Aarti Kohli, a senior fellow at the University of California Berkeley Law School's Warren Institute who has done extensive research on Secure Communities. When immigration rights groups learned that ICE had no final say in detainer enforcement, they began a campaign to lobby city governments for local restrictions on the federal government's reach.

"Today's vote is really a culmination of a three year struggle," Uribe of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network said of the city council action on Tuesday.

Still, ICE agency heads have hinted that cities and states are putting their communities in danger by ignoring their requests to hold undocumented immigrants, an approach critics take issue with.

"States and localities are well within their rights to decide whether they want to honor the detainers," Kohli said.

"When it comes down to it, they are incurring the cost of holding these people," she added. "ICE's response is, 'You're going to let go of the next axe murderer and you're going to have to pay the political cost for that.'"

Latino Advertising Can Alienate Non-Latinos, Study Says

2012-07-06T09:16:08-04:00

Well-known in the Hispanic community for his love ballads and salsa numbers, Marc Anthony is asking Latinos to do more than just dance these days. "The president has our back, so it's time to let him know that we have his," Anthony says in an advertisement for the Obama campaign aimed at English-dominant Latino voters. Other Hispanic notables, including actress Eva Longoria and "Hispanic Oprah" Cristina Saralegui, have recorded English-language ads for President Barack Obama with similar messages.

Many marketers say these ads are smart, because they appeal to Latino voters who primarily speak English, a growing demographic in battleground states. However, as candidates release Spanish and English-language ads geared towards Latinos, emerging research indicates that some non-Latinos may feel turned off by them.

Black and white test subjects showed decreased support for a candidate after watching an English-language advertisement that features a Latino endorser, according to Ricardo Ramirez, a Notre Dame professor who was part of the team that conducted the study. The same occurred when black and white subjects watched an advertisement with a non-Latino endorser who used Spanish phrases, Ramirez said. The experiment, which surveyed over 4,500 Los Angeles residents, was conducted during the 2008 race between Obama and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), and the academic paper will be published in coming months.

Obama and McCain supporters alike demonstrated the same decreased enthusiasm for a candidate after watching the Latino-aimed ad, Ramirez noted. Bucking the trend, Asians were more likely to like a candidate after watching ads targeted towards Latinos.

While the reason black and white voters reacted negatively was not identified in the study, Matt Barreto, another researcher who worked on the study, has a guess.

"Some voters see this advertising as sort of threatening," said Barreto, an Associate Professor at the University of Washington who focuses on Latino voting behavior. "They think, 'Where is my group? Why aren't they talking to me?"

Candidates must therefore navigate the quintessential political game of appealing to one kind of voter without alienating another. The key may be ensuring non-Latino voters don't see the ads intended for Latino voters, Barreto said. One of the ways for candidates to do this is to avoid English-language ads and stick to Spanish-language television.

"Unless someone has a fetish for Sabado Gigante or something, non-Latinos aren't typically watching Univision or Telemundo," Gary Segura, a Professor of American Politics and Chair of Chicano/a Studies at Stanford University said in an interview. Univision's longest-running program, Sabado Gigante is a popular variety show that has helped the network repeatedly outperform major English-language networks.

The Romney campaign, it seems, is lagging in the chase for the Spanish-speaking Latino voter. Most polls show Obama leading Romney in key battleground states, and increasingly so after he announced that he'd halt some deportations and grant work permits to some undocumented youth.

While the Obama campaign spent more than $2 million on Spanish-language ads since mid-April, Romney has spent only about $110,000 in the same period, according to Politico estimates. Furthermore, Spanish-language versions of Romney's English-language ads "Day One" and "Doing Fine" have come under attack for being poorly translated.

Critics say "Day One" should have been translated to "El primer día" rather than "Día Uno," and "Doing Fine?" is more accurately translated to "Las cosas están bien?" than "Van Bien?" In addition, the titles throughout the ad "Día Uno" are capitalized according to English grammar rules rather than Spanish grammar rules, which require only the first letter of a title to be capitalized.

A Romney spokesperson wrote to The Huffington Post that there are native Spanish speakers on the campaign's advertising team and that the accusation of mistranslation originated from a "a Democratic operative." Although consultant Melisa Diaz, who has worked for the Democratic National Committee, made the original accusation in an LA Times piece, others have echoed the point that the translation could have been better.

One of those people is Liliana Gil, a Hispanic market strategist and Co-founder of XL Alliance, a Cultural Marketing firm. Gil, who blogs for HuffPost LatinoVoices and Fox News Latino, says that Romney should focus his efforts on creating a message tailored to the Latino community, rather than just translating an English message. Romney "ruined his first impression" with the Latino community with a flawed Spanish-language ad campaign, Gil argues.

"On a first date, you try to look your best, and tell your story in a compelling way, and take your date to a nice restaurant. He's not doing any of that," Gil said. "We feel like an afterthought. He really missed an opportunity here."

Both candidates would do well to improve and increase their advertising efforts geared toward Hispanics, Gil believes -- even if that means turning away a few non-Latino voters in the process.

"You can be super sensitive and not advertise to Latinos to avoid upsetting some kind of conservative base," Gil said. "Or you can do the smart thing and get your message out to the right people."

Here are some more politicians trying their best to speak to the Latino community:

Jorge Ramos, Univision Anchor, Speaks Out On SB1070 Ruling, Navigates Journalistic Impartiality

2012-06-27T14:10:05-04:00

Blurring the line between advocate and journalist, Univision anchor Jorge Ramos publicly disapproved of the Supreme Court's ruling on Arizona's immigration law Monday. In particular, the vote to uphold the "papers, please" provision of the law by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court, came as a shock to the Spanish-language anchor.

"Surprised that Judge Sonia Sotomayor voted in favor of the police acting as immigration agents in Arizona. She could have stopped it, and she did not," he tweeted in Spanish shortly after the ruling was released.

The provision, which requires law enforcement to check the legal status of individuals they suspect of being in the country illegally, was not struck down by the court, and will "only create more persecution and discrimination in Arizona and other states," he said.

Ramos called Monday "a sad day for the Hispanic community," in an interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC World Report.

However, Ramos' clear disappointment with the ruling and Sotomayor's vote seems at odds with the common journalistic practice of maintaining impartiality -- at least publicly. Ramos, who was en route to Mexico to cover the country's presidential election, did not respond by deadline to questions regarding his own opinions on immigration or why he found Sotomayor's ruling "surprising." Univision representative Jose Zamora wrote in an email to The Huffington Post that Ramos' disappointment was rooted in his worry for the Latino and immigrant community.

"I don’t think his main concern was about Sotomayor, but rather the general impact the Supreme Court decision will have in the Hispanic community, because it legitimizes racial profiling and discrimination against Latinos and immigrants in AZ," Zamora wrote.

Mirta Ojito, a professor at the Columbia Journalism School with expertise in Latino issues said Ramos' condemnation of the Supreme Court ruling is consistent with his style of reporting. "He seems to have decided a long time ago to become a sort of spokesman for his community," Ojito wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. "[His words] seem to reflect his true feelings, and he’s made them obvious in numerous occasions before," she noted.

Ramos, an immigrant himself, has been labeled the "voice of the voiceless" for his advocacy for immigrants rights. The Univision anchor wrote four books on the topic, and has criticized Democrats and Republicans alike for their perceived failures on the issue. However, Ramos recently fought to reassert his own "journalistic independence" after the Obama campaign used his image in a campaign ad.

"I want it to be clear that I object to the use of my image and Noticias Univision's image in any electoral campaign," Ramos said in Spanish in Univision news broadcast. "We are making this a public statement of our nonconformity. We've always defended our journalistic independence and will continue to do so."

Ramos isn't alone in navigating the roles of both journalist and immigrant advocate. Over the past year, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and migrant-rights activist Jose Antonio Vargas reported on immigration while simultaneously lobbying Congress for reform.

"Some have argued that, since I’m advocating for immigration reform, I’m no longer a journalist in the traditional sense," Vargas wrote in a blog post for his organization DefineAmerican. But Vargas argues, journalists cannot maintain traditional "simplistic, us-versus-them, black-or-white, conflict-driven narrative, often featuring the same voices making familiar arguments" in the immigration debate.

Rather, he said, the human issue requires a different kind of coverage. "Elevating the conversation means telling the immigration story not just through abstract policy points, but also through tangible human stories," Vargas wrote.

Ramos' lack of objectivity on immigration does not make him a bad journalist, but a different breed of journalist, Columbia Professor Mirta Ojito wrote in an email. Ojito compared Ramos to English-language columnist Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times or CNN host Anderson Cooper who, she wrote, was "outraged and with tears in his eyes, in the aftermath of Katrina."

"Many journalists make the decision to remain publicly neutral about events, and that’s good," she wrote. "That’s the way most of us were taught and the way many of us continue to think about journalism, but others make a different choice and are much admired for it."

Despite Supreme Court SB 1070 Ruling, Climate Of Fear Persists In Arizona

2012-06-25T17:33:24-04:00

On Monday, the Supreme Court struck down three key portions of a polarizing Arizona immigration law, but upheld the most controversial part of the bill requiring law enforcement to check the legal status of individuals suspected of being in the country illegally.

Within minutes of Monday's announcement, both proponents and opponents of the Arizona law known as SB 1070 claimed the court's ruling represents a clear victory for their cause. Those who crafted SB 1070 and those who support it across the country said the court's decision affirmed the right of states to create laws that support local sensibilities and address regional concerns. And those who oppose it insist that the court affirmed the absolute authority of the federal government to make immigration-related laws and created a clear path to challenge SB 1070's one standing provision.

But in Arizona, those who reside without legal authorization, those who work most closely with the undocumented, and citizens who are Latino say that the "show your papers provision" represents the most onerous section of the law. They argue that the court's decision leaves some people –- including U.S. citizens who happen to have the hair, eye and skin colors most often associated with the appearance of undocumented immigrants -- open to legalized police harassment and intimidation.

"The biggest concerns for families and residents of Arizona, when you talk to them, is being asked for their papers," said Arturo Carmona, president of Presente.Org, a California-based Latino advocacy group with operations in Arizona. "Of the provisions of SB 1070, this part of the law is the most visible, it's certainly the most egregious, and it has the most direct contact with families and communities on the ground."

When SB 1070 went to the Supreme Court in April, Petra Falcón, a fourth generation Mexican-American living in Arizona, joined a group of people deeply opposed to the law in a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week vigil on the Senate lawn at the Arizona State Capitol. At points as many as 100 members of the group have camped or stood outside of the state's capitol building. At others, the vigil dwindled to as few as 10. Now that the court announced a decision, Falcón says some people are still afraid.

"Anybody of color would be subject to increased profiling under the law, and I just think that's unjust," Falcón said. "For myself, for my children, and my grandchildren, I'm worried. We would all be put in category this together."

On Monday, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, declared the Supreme Court's decision a victory for "law and order," and an affirmation that Arizona has the authority to help identify and remove undocumented immigrants from the state.

"After more than two years of legal challenges, the heart of SB 1070 can now be implemented in accordance with the U.S. Constitution," Brewer said in a statement issued Monday.

And while Brewer declared a win, so too did people deeply opposed to SB 1070. The court struck down parts of the bill including language that would have criminalized the act of an immigrant moving around the state without paperwork proving that they are lawfully present, and provisions that rendered the act of seeking or holding a job if unauthorized to live in the United States a state crime. The court also overturned a section of SB 1070 that would have allowed police to make warrantless arrests.

David Leopold, an immigration lawyer and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, noted that while both sides are claiming victory, the decision deals a blow now -- and potentially, later -- to SB 1070 supporters.

"Everybody is spinning it as a victory, but in private Jan Brewer and her ilk have got to be licking their wounds," said Leopold, a HuffPost blogger. "The court said most of this is utterly unconstitutional. And on the one provision left standing, gave the state a very narrow ruling. ... What the court is saying it's premature."

DeeDee Garcia Blasé, a Mexican-American Arizona-based immigration activist and co-founder of the Tequila Party, denounced her ties to the GOP last year because of its support for policies such as SB 1070.

"We think this is an overall victory," said Blasé, who is also a HuffPost blogger. "We won three out of the four issues. The court very clearly said that the state overstepped its authority and they may have said the same on the fourth issue if they had more information. The bottom line is, Arizona kept the shell but lost the teeth of SB 1070 today."

The Justice Department challenged SB 1070 on relatively narrow legal grounds: the idea that the federal government has almost absolute authority to craft and enforce the nation's immigration law, said Dan Pochada, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona. The ACLU was part of a coalition of civil rights groups and other organizations that filed suit attempting to block the law before it went into effect in 2010. The Justice Department later intervened.

Federal authorities did not raise questions before the Supreme Court about the possibility that the law will inspire racial profiling or lead people who come in contact with police for the most basic and perfunctory reasons to be held in police custody for lengthy and undefined periods of time. Both are prohibited by the Constitution, Pochada said.

"We would anticipate bringing a challenge on one or perhaps both of these issues within weeks if not months," Pochada said. "The court virtually pointed to this door and left it wide open."

The idea that the federal government has almost sole authority to make and enforce immigration law has guided court decisions since the Civil War, said Gary Gerstle, a Vanderbilt University historian who specializes in immigration and related policy.

Before the Civil War, a small number of mostly East Coast port cities and states created laws that restricted the ability of shipping companies to transport and unload paupers unable to support themselves or individuals carrying diseases. There have not been state-level attempts to enforce immigration law since, Gerstle said.

"I think what we have to watch closely now is the copy cat laws, the efforts in states like Alabama and to a lesser extent in Arizona, to basically visit social death on the undocumented," he said.

Falcón, an Arizona resident and outspoken SB 1070 opponent, worries that she and her children will now be targets for police stops, inquiries and even arrests, she said.

"Our immigrant families are relieved, in part," Falcón said, "but they know it's not over."

TIMELINE: Arizona Immigration Law SB1070

And, some reactions on Twitter:

Obama Immigration, Gay Marriage 'Evolution' Shifts Voter Opinion, Galvanizes Base

2012-06-22T12:40:19-04:00

Between delivering steaming platters of enchiladas and clearing away the remains, Evelyn Rivera often overhears conversations in the Orlando, Fla.-area restaurant where she waits tables. This year, Rivera, 23, has heard more than one about the choices facing Latino voters in 2012.

"I think there's this sense that the choice is between the guy who has deported millions and this guy who suggests things like self-deportation and maybe wouldn't mind that electrified border fence," said Rivera, an undocumented immigrant and immigration reform activist. "So, why vote?"

Less than six months from the election that will determine whether President Barack Obama returns to office, Obama announced plans to offer some measure of relief to as many as 1.4 million young unauthorized immigrants, often dubbed Dreamers, in reference to the Dream Act, a decade-old immigration reform bill.

Critics of the administration's new ban on deporting certain young undocumented immigrants say it is tantamount to the president's announcement on gay marriage -- more symbolic and politically advantageous than substantive. Others wonder why he waited so long. But advocates insist that the move constitutes something rare: a combination of good policy and genius politics.

In May and again this month, the president managed to give young voters, LGBT individuals and Latinos of all ages and sexual orientations a reason to get animated around the possibility of a second Obama term, said Fred Sainz, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign. The Human Rights Campaign is a Washington, D.C.-based organization that advocates for the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals.

Obama's gay marriage announcement and immigration policy shift amount to "evidence of the president's commitment to groups of Americans that might have otherwise gotten the short shrift," Sainz said.

In at least one major way, Obama's ABC News interview on gay marriage and the administrative change in deportation policy are not alike, said Charles Garcia, a venture capitalist, CNN political commentator and HuffPost blogger. Garcia is an Independent who has supported Republican and Democratic candidates. The president's gay marriage interview left no one with the right to marry who did not already have it, Garcia said.

But, after both announcements on what are arguably some of the most controversial social issues of the day, public opinion seems to be largely in line with that of the president.

Nearly 65 percent of likely voters surveyed after Obama's deportation reform announcement said they agreed with the new approach, according to a Bloomberg poll released this week and conducted after the president's immigration announcement.

And in a Washington Post-ABC news poll conducted within weeks of the president's gay marriage announcement, a record 53 percent of Americans indicated they too support gay marriage. Still, two-thirds of Americans also thought the president was motivated to speak publicly about his changed stance on gay marriage by political gamesmanship, according to a New York Times/CBS poll taken shortly after the ABC interview where Obama spoke of his "evolution."

"This is really the equivalent of Obama saying I am not for clubbing baby seals," said Efren Perez, a Vanderbilt University political scientist who studies immigration, about the change in deportation practices. "That's how widespread support for this group of young undocumented young people is. Now Republicans have to come up with a way to say well, some of us are for clubbing baby seals. Politically, you really don't want to be that person."

Republicans, who have continued to call for stepped-up enforcement of immigration law, have largely been critical of the president's new directive, claiming Obama has overstepped his authority.

The president has created a constitutional crisis, said Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that advocates for limited legal immigration and strict enforcement of related laws. The president does not have the legal authority to make the sort of change that he announced last week, Camarota said.

"It's corny and maybe hackneyed, but the rule of law is the foundation of a democratic republic," Camarota said. "We elected people who are supposed to make the laws and someone to implement the laws. If that all gets short circuited what's the value of the law?"

On Thursday, after evading questions about the president's deportation reform, Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential candidate, laid out his ideas.

Romney renewed a call for increased border security and regulatory pressure on undocumented immigrants living in the United States. The combination will prevent new illegal immigration and push unauthorized immigrants already here to leave, he said. Romney also told the group he would only offer deportation protection and a path to citizenship to young undocumented adults who join the military. He spoke about the need for assistance for families split by deportation, but offered few specifics.

What Obama has done is move immigration squarely into the center of the election, said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a Washington, D.C.-based immigration reform advocacy organization. The move also proves the post-Clinton Democratic Party orthodoxy on controversial social issues such as gay marriage and immigration is dead, he said.

"The old way of thinking was if you lean in on immigration and gay marriage and other controversies," Sharry said, "you lose swing voters and some Democrats, and the Latino voters or young voters you may gain can't make up the difference. The new conventional wisdom says lean in and lead because these also happen to be the right things to do."

While eligible Latino voters will not personally benefit from the president's new approach to deportation, and have in most polls indicated that immigration does not rank among their political priorities, there is good reason to believe that the president's immigration announcement matters. A quarter of Latino adults indicated that they know someone detained in the last year by immigration officials or deported, according to a Pew poll.

A Latino Decisions poll conducted after the immigration announcement indicates the president's immigration policy shift has also set off a burst of interest in the presidential election among Latino voters, among whom election turnout is typically low. That is particularly meaningful in battleground states where Latinos may determine the election outcome such as Colorado, Nevada and Florida, said Garcia, the CNN commentator.

On Friday, when Obama laid out an at-least temporary reprieve for young undocumented individuals, Rivera wasn't in Orlando. Rivera and other undocumented activists had gathered in D.C. to lobby for the Dream Act.

Minutes after the president spoke, Rivera's older sister -- a U.S. citizen who struggles with guilt about the life options she has and Rivera, until recently, has not -- called. Rivera's sister talked about her plans to make sure that Obama is re-elected.

"When we talked, that's when I broke down," Rivera said. "We both cried. I think what happened wasn't just what Dreamers needed. I think a lot of people in our families, our friends this is what they needed, too. Latinos who can vote needed to know that we matter."

This story has been updated to reflect comment from Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies.

The DREAMers: A Demographic Profile Of Eligible Immigrants Under New Obama Policy

2012-06-21T17:59:25-04:00

Less than a week ago, President Obama announced a policy change that could affect as many as 1.4 million young undocumented students living in the United States by halting their deportation proceedings and granting them temporary work permits. However, figuring out who is eligible under Obama's new policy, and how many of them exist, has been no easy task.

Pew Hispanic Center associate director Mark Hugo Lopez explained that measuring an undocumented population is inherently challenging and estimates can therefore vary widely.

"There are no surveys which ask people, 'Are you here in the country illegally or not?' And if there were, I'm not sure how reliable responses would be. So we have to rely on a number of different existing sources," Lopez told The Huffington Post.

Obama's directive will reportedly affect many of those undocumented immigrants -- often termed DREAMers -- who would have benefitted under a decade-old bill called the Dream Act, last struck down in 2010. The new policy includes those living in the country under the age of 31 who came to the U.S. as children; who don't have a criminal record; and who have served in the military, or are currently attending, or have graduated from, high school or college.

The Department of Homeland security estimated on the day of the policy announcement that nearly 800,000 individuals would be affected. However, the Pew Hispanic Center and Migration Policy Institute have independently given a number almost twice the size, projecting that nearly 1.4 million individuals will be affected.

"We're probably using some different sources and data sets," Lopez explained.

Despite numerous obstacles in measuring the population, various research organizations have begun attempts to identify who the young beneficiaries of Obama's plan are.

Nearly 60 percent of those eligible for Obama's new policy (about 800,000) are currently enrolled in K-12 institutions, a quarter of those eligible (about 370,000) are high school graduates or have earned a GED certificate, and more than 15 percent (about 220,000) are enrolled in or have graduated from college, according to recent estimates by the Migration Policy Institute.

Nearly 70 percent of beneficiaries of the new DHS directive are from Mexico, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. The remainder are likely comprised of mostly Asian and Latin American immigrants, according to a report by MPI which measured those individuals eligible for the 2010 congressional Dream Act. Jeanne Batalova, a policy analyst and demographer at the MPI, says there is significant overlap between the two populations, but that because those up to age 36 were eligible for the 2010 Dream Act, those eligible under Obama's plan are younger on average.

A quarter of those affected by the new order, nearly 350,000 young people, reside in California, according to MPI. Texas and Florida have the second and third highest numbers of eligible beneficiaries. Those eligible for Obama's new policy also tend to be from poorer families, Batalova said.

While MPI has been able to guess how many are eligible for the program, it's hard for them to tell how many will come forward, Batalova said. "At the moment it's even more difficult for us to predict how many will be affected immediately, because it's unclear who and how many will feel comfortable about stepping forward and revealing themselves to the agency," she noted.

Batalova predicts that many will not come forward until they discover if the policy will continue past Obama's first term. Presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has not yet announced whether or not he will overturn the policy if elected, but has set forth his own plan to allow those undocumented youth who serve in the military a pathway towards citizenship.

Myrna Ortiz, who is a youth organizer for California's DREAMer network, told The Huffington Post that her organization has brought on five interns and a small army of volunteers in order to answer calls about Obama's new policy. In the state most affected by Obama's immigration shift, the small staff can barely keep up with phone calls from DREAMers eager to apply. However, during the 60-day period in which DHS will decide the implementation specifics of the program, Ortiz says the "most important advice" is simple:

"Wait," Ortiz said. "All you can do now is wait."

HuffPost DREAMer Blog Series:

Blanca Medina Faces Deportation Despite Sexual Abuse Risk If Returned To Home Country

2012-06-18T08:46:52-04:00

Blanca Medina came to the United States to escape sexual abuse after suffering five rapes in her homeland of El Salvador, according to her lawyer Matthew Muller. But even after Medina told Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that she and her four-year-old daughter Alejandra would face severe harm if deported, the agency has continued with deportation proceedings, Muller says.

Medina's forced removal is scheduled just weeks after the Obama administration vowed Friday to halt deportations and begin granting work permits to some young undocumented immigrants, as part of a policy shift which prioritizes criminal immigrants over non-criminals.

But in the eyes of ICE, Medina is high-priority.

"In June 2006, when Ms. Medina failed to appear for her scheduled immigration hearing in Harlingen, Texas, she was ordered deported in absentia," ICE spokesperson Virginia Kice wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. Kice also wrote that in 2011, five years after her missed immigration hearing, Medina was arrested by ICE's Fugitive Operations team. A subsequent request from Medina's lawyer to reopen her request for asylum was denied, Kice confirmed.

"ICE is focused on smart and effective immigration enforcement which prioritizes the removal of convicted criminal aliens, recent border crossers, illegal re-entrants and immigration fugitives, such as Ms. Medina, who have failed to comply with final orders of removal issued by the nation's immigration courts," Kice wrote.

Muller says his client didn't show up for her court date because of psychological trauma caused by the multiple rapes, which he believes to be Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Muller, a former sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps and a Harvard Law graduate, says he's represented hundreds of undocumented immigrants, but that in this case, he ran out of options to help his client and hoped public outrage would help the agency change its decision. Out of desperation, he started an online petition at Change.Org and a website called Alejandra's Wish.

Conflicting laws have put Medina's case in a legal tangle: U.S. law says that foreigners will not be deported back to countries where they face persecution or torture. However, because Medina failed to file a motion to open her case within 180 days after her missed court date, she "has no means of having her case heard under current law," according to Muller in his petition.

"She's entirely at the mercy of the immigration agency right now," he wrote in an email to The Huffington Post.

From Muller's Change.org petition:

ICE used a strange procedural rule to assert that it simply did not have to listen. Under ICE rules, it is free to ignore even conclusive proof that a person would suffer slow death by torture if deported. This "willful blindness" policy could be ended through simple procedural changes by the Department of Homeland Security.

The loophole, Muller says, means the mother must return to a country that she is terrified of, and with her young daughter.

"Blanca fears for her life -- and Alejandra's -- if they have to go to El Salvador. None of the men who raped her have been arrested, including her stalker, and she's terrified of what they'll do if she's sent back to El Salvador. But ICE is choosing to ignore this and other evidence," a Wednesday Change.org email read. The petition, as of publishing, has nearly 115,000 signatures.

"Should the penalty for failing to appear at an immigration proceedings potentially be persecution or torture?" Muller asked. "It should not. Even when someone had no good reason for missing court, the punishment should fit the crime."

Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

Deportation is a hot button issue around the world. Take a look:

José Antonio Vargas, periodista indocumentado, dice 'somos americanos' en portada de TIME

2012-06-14T19:00:00-04:00

Un año atrás, el periodista de origen filipino y ganador del Premio Pulitzer por su investigación sobre la masacre de Virginia Tech y ex editor en The Huffington Post, José Antonio Vargas reveló al mundo que era un inmigrante indocumentado. Esta semana, en la portada de Time Magazine, Vargas describe este último año que pasó como figura pública sin estatus legal y dice que él también es americano.

Vargas es retratado en la portada entre las frases "We Are Americans" (Somos estadounidenses) y "Just not legally" (Solo que no legales"), junto con otros indocumentados de alrededor del mundo. También ellos salieron de las sombras recientemente y revelaron públicamente su estado migratorio ilegal.

En la introducción del artículo titulado "Dentro del mundo del inmigrante 'ilegal'", Vargas sintetiza la realidad diferente que vive el inmigrante indocumentado, al "que mucha gente llama simplemente 'el ilegal'" y sostiene que "es un tema que afecta a personas de todas las etnias y orígenes: latinos y asiáticos, negros y blancos.

Vargas caracteriza al sistema migratorio como fundamentalmente colapsado; impide que candidatos que lo merecen y que en muchos casos se identifican como estadounidenses, residan legalmente en el pais. También habla de su nueva campaña, denominada "Define American" (Defina al estadounidense).

"Fundé la campaña 'Define American' para documentar la vida de los indocumentados y aprovechar el apoyo de nuestros aliados en torno a este tema tan controvertido y mal entendido", escribe Vargas. "Se estima que hay 11.5 millones de personas como yo en este país, seres humanos con historias tan variadas como la de los propios estadounidenses y sin embargo, que carecen del derecho legal a existir aquí", añade Vargas.

Una tía y un amigo de la familia Vargas lo ayudaron a llegar a Estados Unidos de manera ilegal cuando tenía 12 años de edad con un pasaporte falso, reveló Vargas en las páginas de The New York Times Magazine el año pasado. Él descubrió la verdad sobre su estatus migratorio recién a los 16 años, cuando trató de obtener un permiso de conducir y le dijeron que sus documentos eran falsos.

Para Vargas y muchos otros filipinos, la espera por una visa a los Estados Unidos podría durar décadas. Aquellos que se casan con un ciudadano estadounidense o que tienen habilidades profesionales y una formación requeridas en este país, pueden emigrar con mayor rapidez. Las autoridades migratorias estadounidenses están en el proceso de expedición de visados a los filipinos que pidieron permiso para emigrar en 1989 y que no cumplen los criterios para la entrada más rápida, según datos federales. Los inmigrantes mexicanos también enfrentan tiempos de espera similares.

"Ha pasado casi un año desde que publiqué mi ensayo en The New York Times y que he creado con la ayuda de amigos 'Define American'", dijo Vargas en un correo electrónico a The Huffington Post esta semana. "Desde el principio, nuestro objetivo en 'Define American' fue elevar, mejorar la forma en que se habla de inmigración en Estados Unidos. Ese momento es ahora, especialmente teniendo en cuenta la muy próxima decisión de la Suprema Corte sobre la ley migratoria de Arizona y la elección presidencial. Más y más indocumentados y los ciudadanos estadounidenses que nos apoyan –las personas que componen nuestra red de apoyo underground– están saliendo de las sombras, desafiando a los políticos y los medios de comunicación. Necesitamos conversaciones más honestas”.

This week's TIME cover story comes at a moment when immigration policy and the debate about reform appears likely to serve as a key election issue and topic of national debate. The Supreme Court is expected to decide on the legality of Arizona's state-level immigration enforcement law, SB1070, this summer. The Department of Justice is working to reign in immigration hardliner Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio faces a lawsuit brought by the nation's top law enforcement agency for alleged discrimination against Latinos. Furthermore, possible Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sen. Marco Rubio continues to defend his DREAM Act-like proposal that, although not yet introduced as a formal bill, has faced criticism from both sides of the aisle.

La portada de TIME llega en un momento en que la política de inmigración y el debate sobre la reforma migratoria se constituyen en tema central en la contienda electoral y el debate nacional. Se espera que la Corte Suprema de Justicia decida sobre la legalidad de la ley SB1070 de Arizona este verano. El Departamento de Justicia está tratando de limitar la línea dura del Sheriff Joe Arpaio contra los inmigrantes. Arpaio enfrenta una demanda por supuesta discriminación contra los latinos por parte del gobierno federal. Además, el posible candidato republicano a la vicepresidencia senador Marco Rubio, sigue defendiendo su propia versión del DREAM Act contra críticas desde ambos partidos, aunque no la ha presentado todavía como un proyecto de ley formal.

La publicación de la historia de Vargas en TIME se produce meses después de que la revista publicó un reportaje con un titular en español que establecía que el voto latino podría ser un factor decisivo en la elección presidencial con base en el crecimiento demográfico de los hispanos en varios estados clave. La edición especial, publicada en febrero, contenía una entrevista con el senador Rubio y un editorial del presentador de noticias de Univisión Jorge Ramos.

Familia de Carlos Lamadrid busca justicia y exige respuestas a la patrulla fronteriza (VIDEO)

2012-06-14T13:00:00-04:00

Carlos Lamadrid, ciudadano estadounidense de 19 años, recibió tres disparos en la espalda por un agente de la Patrulla Fronteriza de Estados Unidos mientras huía a través de la frontera sur hacia México en mayo del 2011. El joven, oriundo de Douglas Arizona, estaba desarmado y supuestamente transportaba marihuana. Lamadrid falleció en el hospital local a causa de las heridas poco después del incidente.

La madre de Lamadrid, Guadalupe Guerrero presentó una demanda contra el gobierno federal alegando que el agente de la patrulla fronteriza que le disparó a su hijo actuó “fuera de sus facultades”, reveló el abogado de la familia Richard Gonzáles.

“El agente fronterizo violó los derechos civiles de este joven. El único momento en que el agente puede utilizar fuerza letal es para proteger su integridad física o para proteger a otros en el área”, le dijo Gonzáles a The Huffington Post. “Este joven estaba desarmado y huía. No representaba una amenaza para el agente. Dispararle fue una negligencia absoluta”.

La Oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza de los Estados Unidos (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CBP) le dijo a The Huffington Post que no podían comentar sobre la muerte de Lamadrid, la demanda o los incidentes en donde sus agentes pueden utilizar sus armas. “Hay un litigio pendiente y no podemos discutir los detalles del caso en este momento”, dijo el vocero de la Patrulla Fronteriza Mario Escalante.

El caso de Lamadrid llega en un mal momento para la CBP. Denuncias de derechos civiles presentados en contra de la agencia se han incrementado de manera dramática en años recientes, al mismo tiempo que la inmigración se ha desacelerado de manera simultánea. Mientras que en 2004 la CBP enfrentó 34 denuncias de derechos civiles, en 2010, el año más reciente donde hay información completa disponible, se hicieron 65 denuncias. Sólo entre enero y junio de 2011, se abrieron 81 nuevas investigaciones contra la Patrulla Fronteriza. De acuerdo con Reuters la corrupción también ha crecido, toda vez que entre 2003 y 2009, 129 agentes han sido arrestados bajo cargos de corrupción.

Muertes recientes provocadas por la Patrulla Fronteriza le han traído a la agencia publicidad no deseada. A principios de este año, PBS dio a conocer la golpiza de Anastasio Hernández-Rojas. Más de una docena de agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza permanecieron inmóviles mientras el ciudadano mexicano era atado de pies y manos, golpeado con una macana y electrocutado con una pistola eléctrica, de acuerdo con PBS. La muerte de Sergio Hernández-Guereca de 15 años, ciudadano mexicano que recibió un disparo fatal por un agente de la CBP en 2010, también provocó indignación en la comunidad activista inmigrante, después de que el agente Jesús Mesa Jr. dijo que utilizó fuerza letal debido a que Hernández-Guereca le estaba aventando piedras.

El disparo a de Lamadrid también pudo haber sido provocado por arrojar piedras, de acuerdo a reportes locales. Después de que la Chevy Avalanche llamó la atención de la policía local de Douglas Arizona al señalar que “parecía sospechosa”, Lamadrid huyó a “alta velocidad en dirección al sur hacia la frontera internacional”, de acuerdo con el Douglas Dispatch. Agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza de Estados Unidos estaba en el área por casualidad, de acuerdo con el mismo reporte y comenzaron a perseguir a Lamadrid, el conductor y a un joven de 17 años que viajaba como pasajero. Un cómplice del lado mexicano de la frontera supuestamente arrojó una escalera por encima del muro fronterizo y les aventó piedras a los agentes fronterizos. De acuerdo a reportes locales, el agente de la Patrulla Fronteriza Lucas Tidwell entonces le disparó y mató a Lamadrid.

“En ese momento, le arrojaron piedras al agente de la Patrulla Fronteriza quien disparó su arma impactando al conductor tres veces”, reportó el Douglas Dispatch.

El Latin American Herald Tribune informó que las autoridades subsecuentemente encontraron 48 libras de marihuana en el automóvil. Pero la familia de Lamadrid dice que quiere revisar el reporte de la policía para confirmarlo.

“No hemos recibido ningún reporte oficial de la policía de Douglas, la Patrulla Fronteriza o siquiera del Departamento del Alguacil. El alguacil adjunto Roger Clark nos dijo que no entregarán ningún reporte hasta que se resuelva el caso”, declaró Janeth Guerrero, tía de Lamadrid, a The Douglas Dispatch en una protesta el año pasado, clamando justicia en nombre de su sobrino.

Incluso si Lamadrid estaba transportando marihuana, el agente fronterizo aún puede ser encontrado culpable por utilizar su arma contra el joven de 19 años, si no representó un peligro inmediato. En un caso similar en 2006, dos agentes fronterizos, Ignacio Ramos y José Alonso Compéan, fueron sentenciados a 11 y 12 años por dispararle a un sospechoso de traficar marihuana en los glúteos mientras huía a través de la frontera Estados Unidos-México en Texas.

La fiscal auxiliar Debra Kanof le dijo a la corte en ese momento que los agentes actuaron de manera ilegal. “La Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos ha dictaminado que es una violación de los derechos de la Cuarta Enmienda disparar por la espalda mientras huyen si no sabes quienes son o si no sabes si portan un arma”, dijo Kanof. Sin embargo, en 2009 el presidente George W. Bush conmutó sus sentencias en su último día como servidor público, al liberarlos después de que ambos habían pasado dos años en la cárcel.

Los abogados de la familia Lamadrid dicen que las convicciones de agentes fronterizos son escasas. “He estado haciendo esto por mucho tiempo y nunca he visto un agente de la Patrulla Fronteriza que sea condenado en estos casos, aún cuando las circunstancias son realmente notorias”, dijo Gonzáles.

Guerrero, la madre de Lamadrid, le dijo a The Latin American Herald Tribune que la muerte de su hijo era una de muchas injusticias que se cometen en la frontera.

“Otro tipo de ley”, prevalece a lo largo de la frontera, mencionó. “Si esto le sucedió a mi hijo que es ciudadano de este país, ¿qué pueden esperar los inmigrantes indocumentados?” dijo Guerrero. “Si mi hijo llevaba drogas lo deberían de poner a juicio, darle una oportunidad”.

“No hay una razón lógica de la muerte de mi hijo”, continúo. “Quiero justicia, quiero que esa persona que le hizo daño a mi hijo pague como cualquiera de nosotros”.

Jose Antonio Vargas, Undocumented Journalist, Says 'We Are Americans' In TIME Magazine Cover Story

2012-06-14T12:17:30-04:00

One year ago, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former HuffPost editor Jose Antonio Vargas "came out" to the world as an undocumented immigrant. In this week's TIME Magazine cover story, the Filipino writer and activist describes his year as a public figure without legal status and argues that he too is an American.

Featured on the magazine's cover between the phrases "We Are Americans*" and "*Just not legally," Vargas is joined by other undocumented immigrants from around the world. The men and women pictured along with Vargas also recently came out of the shadows and revealed their immigration status publicly.

In the cover story's introduction, Vargas argues that the immigration system is fundamentally broken and that it prevents deserving candidates, many of whom identify as American, from residing in the country legally. Vargas also discusses his new campaign, Define American:

"I founded a campaign called Define American, to document the lives of the undocumented and harness the support of our allies around this very controversial and misunderstood issue," Vargas writes. "There are an estimated 11.5 million people like me in this country, human beings with stories as varied as America itself, yet lacking a legal claim to exist here," Vargas adds.

An aunt and family friend brought Vargas to the United States illegally at the age of 12 with a fake passport, Vargas wrote in The New York Times Magazine last year. He discovered the truth about his immigration status at 16, when he attempted to obtain a driver's permit and was told his documents were fake.

For Vargas and many other Filipinos, the wait for a visa to the United States can span decades. Those who marry an American citizen or have professional skills and training needed in the United States may be able to migrate more rapidly. However, U.S. immigration officials are in the process of issuing visas to Filipinos who requested permission to immigrate in 1989, but did not meet the criteria for more rapid entry, according to federal data. Mexican immigrants also face similar wait times.

"It's been almost a year since I published my 'coming out' essay in The New York Times and created, with the help of friends, Define American," Vargas said in an email to the Huffington Post Wednesday. "From the very beginning, our goal at Define American was to elevate how we talk about immigration in America. The moment is now, especially given the upcoming Supreme Court decision on Arizona and the presidential election. More and more undocumented Americans and the American citizens who support us -- the people who make up our underground railroad -- are coming out, challenging the way politicians and the media frame the issue. We need more honest conversations."

This week's TIME cover story comes at a moment when immigration policy and the debate about reform appears likely to serve as a key election issue and topic of national debate. The Supreme Court is expected to decide on the legality of Arizona's state-level immigration enforcement law, SB1070, this summer. The Department of Justice is working to reign in immigration hardliner Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio faces a lawsuit brought by the nation's top law enforcement agency for alleged discrimination against Latinos. Furthermore, possible Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sen. Marco Rubio continues to defend his DREAM Act-like proposal that, although not yet introduced as a formal bill, has faced criticism from both sides of the aisle.

Vargas' TIME story also comes just months after the same publication ran another cover story which argued that the Latino vote would be the deciding factor in the presidential election, based on population growth in key states. The February issue also included an editorial by Univision anchor Jorge Ramos and an interview with Marco Rubio, addressing the heated topic.

"Across the country, every day, more and more undocumented Americans and the people who support us are speaking out," Vargas writes, "challenging how our politicians, the media and the Supreme Court (in its expected decision on Arizona’s immigration law) frame the issue."

Watch the undocumented immigrants in TIME Magazine's cover story discuss their experiences:

Jorge Ramos, Univision Anchor, Criticizes Obama Campaign For Using His Image In Advertisement (VIDEO)

2012-06-11T16:30:59-04:00

He's been called the voice of the voiceless, pegged as the Anderson Cooper of Spanish-language news, and ranked the second most recognized Latino leader in the country today, in a recent Pew Hispanic Center poll of U.S. Latinos. One thing Jorge Ramos is not, however, is a mouthpiece for the President's reelection campaign, the Univision anchor insisted last week.

On Friday, Ramos took time out of his usual Univision broadcast to denounce the use of his image in a recent Obama campaign ad.

"In the last few hours, President Obama's reelection campaign aired a commercial using my image and Univision's image. I want it to be clear that I object to the use of my image and Noticias Univision's image in any electoral campaign. We have made this clear to Barack Obama's reelection campaign and the White House. We are making this a public statement of our nonconformity. We've always defended our journalistic independence and will continue to do so," Ramos said in Spanish in Univision's video above.

Ramos' insistence on "journalistic independence" comes at an interesting time for the anchor, who has recently been hailed and criticized for conducting some of the toughest interviews of the year. He grilled Gingrich on immigration policy, he took Romney to task on his stance on the DREAM Act, and he told Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa, Arizona that he represents the "face of racism and discrimination" and "the worst of America" for U.S. Latinos.

But navigating the line between impartial journalist and immigration advocate doesn't come without complications for the news anchor. "Ramos has written eleven books, mostly about immigration, and the subject ﬁlls his broadcasts," Ken Auletta wrote in an essay in The New Yorker.

It's no secret that Ramos, who is an immigrant himself, is an advocate for immigrant's rights. However, it's not just the Republicans who Ramos has criticized on the issue. The Univision anchor has also pressed President Obama on his immigration policies, and asked the President why he used the word "illegal" to describe undocumented immigrants.

"Now, in your speech to Congress you used the words 'illegal immigrants.' However, and I remember very clearly, during the campaign you were very careful to use the words 'undocumented immigrants'. Why the change? You said words matter. Now, why do you choose to use the language that is being used by those who criticize immigrants? " Ramos asked Obama in 2009. Obama responded that he used the term only when "addressing the misinformation" of those who used the term.

During an election in which the Latino vote may decide who becomes the next president, Obama's campaign may have their own reasons for featuring one of the most recognized and most beloved Latino journalists in their ad. Ramos, however, doesn't seem to be as thrilled about his cameo appearance.

“It seems that Ramos didn’t want his image and that of Univision to be confused for an endorsement,” Mónica Novoa, a campaign coordinator for Drop the I-Word, a group devoted to ending the use of the word "illegal" in describing immigrants, told ColorLines.com.

“He is arguably the most high-profile Spanish media journalist in the country, and wants to maintain a distance from any endorsement at this point,” she said.

WATCH: Jorge Ramos Interviews Joe Arpaio

Carlos Lamadrid's Family Seeks Justice After Border Patrol Shooting

2012-06-11T12:26:33-04:00

A 19-year-old U.S. citizen, Carlos Lamadrid, was shot in the back three times by a U.S. Border Patrol agent while fleeing across the southern border into Mexico in May of 2011. The young man, a native of Douglas, Ariz., was unarmed and was reportedly transporting marijuana. Lamadrid died from his wounds in a local hospital shortly thereafter.

Lamadrids's mother, Guadalupe Guerrero, is now suing the federal government, alleging that the border agent who shot her son acted "outside the scope of his authority," according to the family's attorney, Richard Gonzalez.

"The border agent violated this kid's civil rights. The only time an agent is allowed to use deadly force is in order to protect him or herself or to protect others in the area," Gonzalez told The Huffington Post. "This kid was unarmed and fleeing. He posed no threat to the agent. Shooting him was grossly negligent."

Customs and Border Protection told The Huffington Post that they could not comment on Lamadrid's death, the lawsuit or instances in which their agents may use their weapons. "It's pending litigation and we cannot discuss the details of the case at this time," Border Patrol spokesperson Mario Escalante said.

Lamadrid's case comes at a bad time for the CBP. Civil rights complaints filed against the agency have risen dramatically in recent years, while immigration has simultaneously slowed. While in 2004 CBP faced 34 civil rights complaints, in 2010, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 65 complaints were made. Between January and June of 2011 alone, 81 new complaint investigations were opened against border patrol. Corruption has also been on the rise, according to Reuters, with 129 agents arrested on corruption charges from 2003 to 2009.

Recent deaths caused by border patrol agents have also brought the agency unflattering press. Earlier this year, PBS unearthed footage of the beating of Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas. More than a dozen border patrol agents stood around the Mexican citizen while he was hogtied, beaten with a baton, and tased, according to PBS. The death of 15-year-old Sergio Hernandez-Guereca, a Mexican citizen fatally shot by a CBP agent in 2010, also sparked outrage in the immigrant activist community, after agent Jesus Mesa Jr. said he used lethal force because Hernandez-Guereca was throwing rocks at him.

The shooting of Lamadrid may also have been prompted by rock throwing, according to local reports. After Lamadrid's Chevy Avalanche caught the attention of local Douglas Arizona police, who noted that it "appeared to be suspicious," Lamadrid fled "at high rate of speed southbound towards the International boundary," according to the Douglas Dispatch. The U.S. border patrol happened to be in the area, according to the same report, and started pursuing Lamadrid, the driver, and the 17-year-old passenger of the car. An accomplice on the Mexican side of the southern border allegedly threw a ladder over the border wall, and rocks were thrown at border agents. According to local reports, border patrol agent Lucas Tidwell then shot and killed Lamadrid.

"At this time, there were rocks thrown at the Border Patrol agent who then fired his duty weapon striking the driver three times," the Douglas Dispatch reported.

The Latin American Herald Tribune reports that authorities subsequently found 48 pounds of marijuana in the car. But Lamadrid's family says they'd like to see the police report to confirm this.

“We haven’t received any official report from the Douglas Police, the Border Patrol, not even from the Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff Deputy Roger Clark said to us that they won’t deliver any report until the case is solved," Janeth Guerrero, Lamadrid's aunt, told The Douglas Dispatch at a rally last year, calling for justice in her nephew's case.

Even if Lamadrid was transporting marijuana, however, the border agent may still be at fault for using his weapon, if the 19-year-old posed no imminent threat. In a similar case in 2006, two border agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, were sentenced to prison terms of 11 and 12 years for shooting a marijuana-smuggling suspect in the buttocks as he fled across the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas.

Assistant Attorney Debra Kanof told the court at the time that the agents acted unlawfully. “The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled it is a violation of someone’s Fourth Amendment rights to shoot them in the back while fleeing if you don’t know who they are and/or if you don’t know they have a weapon,” Kanof said. In 2009, however, President George W. Bush commuted the sentences of the two former Border Patrol agents on his last day in office, setting them free after each served two years in prison.

The Lamadrid family's attorney says that convictions for border patrol agents are rare in his memory. "I've been doing this stuff for a long time and I've never seen a Border Patrol agent ever convicted in these cases, even when the circumstances are really egregious," Gonzalez said.

Guerrero, Lamadrid's mother, told The Latin American Herald Tribune that her son's death was just one of many injustices committed on the border.

“Another kind of law” prevails along the border, she said. “If this happened to my son who was a citizen of this country, what can the undocumented immigrants expect?” Guerrero said. “If my son carried drugs they should have put him on trial, give him a chance.”

"There is no logical reason for the death of my son," she continued. "I want justice, I want that person who hurt my son to pay like any of us."