Immigration

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) is leading a third proposal to the Senate Parliamentarian for including immigrant relief in the Build Back Better Act (BBB), Joe Biden’s signature social spending bill. The third proposal (“Plan C”) will most likely be delivered to the Parliamentarian on Friday but could come as late as next week.

As undocumented immigrants from Ecuador, Madeline and Jorge had long lived with the risk that they could one day be arrested. On the day Jorge was taken by ICE outside their home in Queens, Madeline, fearing she and her daughters could be next, fled to New Jersey.

A small group of immigrant rights activists has been camped outside Vice President Kamala Harris’s house in Washington, D.C. since last Thursday, calling on Harris to overrule the Senate Parliamentarian and include immigrant relief in the budget bill being negotiated in Congress.

While the pandemic has certainly hurt Biden’s support among Latinos, so has the economy. And Latino support for Biden on immigration is even lower.

Five members of the House Hispanic Caucus, all Democrats, held a press conference on Wednesday to advocate for permanent immigrant relief provisions in the Democrats’ sprawling budget bill currently being negotiated on Capitol Hill.

Highlighting personal experiences is a common rhetorical device journalists use to report big, complex stories in a way that makes them easier to digest. Terry Greene Sterling and Jude Joffe-Block put the technique to good use in their new book, ‘Driving While Brown: Sheriff Joe Arpaio Versus the Latino Resistance.’

On Monday, Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the agency’s Inspector General, on behalf of a group of Black Haitians and their families who fled a dangerous situation in Haiti only to be submitted to inhumane treatment by federal officials at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Latino Rebels asked a half-dozen members of the upper chamber on Monday and Tuesday if undocumented immigrants will be eligible for mainstream tenants of the Build Back Better Bill, like child tax credit checks, paid family leave, and subsidized community college education.

In an interview with MSNBC on Saturday, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Dr. Raul Ruiz (D-CA), said he’s seeking a bipartisan solution for permanent immigrant relief.

A community of Indian immigrants is living in something akin to immigration purgatory due to a visa backlog. This group of over a million is not undocumented. They are here with permission from the federal government and were admitted at customs checkpoints on visas that are family- or employment-based.

On Thursday, groups advocating for better treatment of Haitian asylum seekers published a full-page ad in the Washington, D.C. edition of the New York Times, calling on Pres. Joe Biden to end Title 42 and the continued expulsion of Haitian migrants.

We dive into the racial history behind the chicken processing business in the South and the vicious cycle of an industry that continues to exploit the most vulnerable.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Biden administration said it plans to reinstate a Trump-era border policy next month to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court, complying with a judge’s order.

Latino Rebels Radio, October 14, 2021

What do refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants have to say about their own experiences? 

Thousands of separated families are waiting for immigration law to change. They only ask that the right of their families to live together be protected.

CHICAGO (AP) — Federal immigration agents will end mass workplace arrests of immigrant employees suspected of living in the U.S. without legal permission, according to a memo issued Tuesday by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

A report published last week by the Immigrant Defense Project and the Transnational Institute follows the growing use of “smart borders” and the rhetoric used by the federal government to make smart borders seem more humane than physical barriers.

On Friday Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and six other House Democrats from New York signed on to a letter urging the Democratic leadership in Congress to include immigration provisions in the sprawling social spending plan being negotiated on Capitol Hill.

Unless Padilla or the other Latino senators take a hard line on immigration reform, a legalization bill is unlikely to be enacted during the current Congress.

Reporter David González M. follows one Haitian migrant, his family, and others from as far away as Pakistan as they prepare to make the deadly journey through the Colombia-Panama border region.