Updated: 10:38 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011 | Posted: 10:07 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011
Ala. immigration arrests highlighting Obama policy
By JAY REEVES
The Associated Press
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. —
Two men visiting Alabama to protest the state's tough new law on illegal immigration walked into a U.S. Border Patrol office and said they were in the country illegally, resulting in their arrest. They remain in federal custody more than two weeks later awaiting deportation proceedings.
Border Patrol officials said they were only doing their job in arresting Isaac Barrera, 20, and Jonathan Perez, 24, Mexican men who lived in California before coming to Alabama to demonstrate against the state law.
"We'd be violating the law if we didn't," said Randall Baldwin, an assistant chief in the New Orleans office.
But activists are trying to use the cases of Barrera and Perez to highlight what they say are unjust immigration practices at the federal level as demonstrations and lawsuits continue over the state's controversial crackdown.
The Obama administration said this summer it would concentrate on deporting illegal immigrants with criminal records rather than people only living in the United States without the proper legal documents, so Barrera and Perez staged a test of the policy Nov. 10 at the Border Patrol office in Mobile. In an exchange that was briefly captured on a cell phone camera and posted on YouTube, one of the men told an officer he is in the country illegally.
Both of the men were arrested and are now being held at a detention center in Louisiana, according to the Alabama Youth Collective, part of a network of groups protesting Alabama's crackdown on illegal immigration, which the Obama administration is suing to block.
Mohammad Abdollahi, an organizer with the youth collective, said the administration took the correct course by focusing deportation efforts on people with criminal records.
"It was a good policy. The only problem is that it isn't being enforced," Abdollahi said in a statement. "If it was working would Isaac and Jonathan be in a detention center right now?"
Baldwin said officers didn't have any choice whether to arrest the pair.
"Basically they turned themselves in," he said. "If somebody just shows up at the police station and turns themselves in, we arrest them."
DREAMactivist.org, which opposes both the Alabama law and federal immigration practices, are using the cases of Barrera and Perez to raise awareness by asking supporters to sign petitions and make telephone calls on their behalf. The Alabama Youth Collective is trying to stop the deportation of the two with a campaign called "Bring Isaac and Jonathan Home for the Holidays."
Baldwin said the two would be held until a judge decides whether to deport them, and it was unclear how long they might remain in custody.
Border Patrol officials said they were only doing their job in arresting Isaac Barrera, 20, and Jonathan Perez, 24, Mexican men who lived in California before coming to Alabama to demonstrate against the state law.
"We'd be violating the law if we didn't," said Randall Baldwin, an assistant chief in the New Orleans office.
But activists are trying to use the cases of Barrera and Perez to highlight what they say are unjust immigration practices at the federal level as demonstrations and lawsuits continue over the state's controversial crackdown.
The Obama administration said this summer it would concentrate on deporting illegal immigrants with criminal records rather than people only living in the United States without the proper legal documents, so Barrera and Perez staged a test of the policy Nov. 10 at the Border Patrol office in Mobile. In an exchange that was briefly captured on a cell phone camera and posted on YouTube, one of the men told an officer he is in the country illegally.
Both of the men were arrested and are now being held at a detention center in Louisiana, according to the Alabama Youth Collective, part of a network of groups protesting Alabama's crackdown on illegal immigration, which the Obama administration is suing to block.
Mohammad Abdollahi, an organizer with the youth collective, said the administration took the correct course by focusing deportation efforts on people with criminal records.
"It was a good policy. The only problem is that it isn't being enforced," Abdollahi said in a statement. "If it was working would Isaac and Jonathan be in a detention center right now?"
Baldwin said officers didn't have any choice whether to arrest the pair.
"Basically they turned themselves in," he said. "If somebody just shows up at the police station and turns themselves in, we arrest them."
DREAMactivist.org, which opposes both the Alabama law and federal immigration practices, are using the cases of Barrera and Perez to raise awareness by asking supporters to sign petitions and make telephone calls on their behalf. The Alabama Youth Collective is trying to stop the deportation of the two with a campaign called "Bring Isaac and Jonathan Home for the Holidays."
Baldwin said the two would be held until a judge decides whether to deport them, and it was unclear how long they might remain in custody.
Copyright The Associated Press
VIEWPOINTS: Racism must be excised at its roots
Published: Sunday, November 20, 2011, 5:40 AM
By Dayanna RebolledoOne day, this state will look back on today as another dark chapter in a history full of them. Why Alabama?
Racism must be challenged in its home; its roots must be ground out. It must be countered wherever it arises. State Sen. Scott Beason, R-Gardendale, is an unequivocal bigot attempting to harness the power of the state for his own hateful agenda. We will not let him do it, and we will not be driven from our homes.
The Alabama Youth Collective has formed to counter these hateful laws at this horrible time. Members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance from California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington have come to stand at their side, believing that a threat to immigrants anywhere is a threat to immigrants everywhere. We will not be silent while others are being thrown out of their homes.
Because this is a law that affects us all, many of our parents have come along with us. Some of us are parents ourselves. We have families, and we will do what loving people do: Defend one another.
We are human beings, and we will be treated as such. We will not be asked to work the most grueling jobs in this country to come home and have our water turned off, kept out of college or have our children beaten and bullied at school. Immigrants, both undocumented and documented, have helped build the communities in which we live. We will not be driven from them.
Former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, the architect of American apartheid, once said "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." Today, Gov. Robert Bentley is the new Wallace, and Beason his Eugene "Bull" Connor. This is the first state-sponsored ethnic purge in the 21st century United States. We will not go in silence.
They're Aborigines, Beason said in an FBI tape, speaking of black residents of Greene County. The same white supremacist attitude motivates his crusade against predominantly Latino residents of Alabama. Only racism could motivate someone to levy the power of the state against less than 3 percent of the population. To Beason, this hatred is worth millions of dollars out of other people's pockets, namely, the state's farmers.
We will not be talked about as criminals. It is not a crime to give your children clean water. It is not a crime to go to college. It is not a crime to educate your children. It is not a crime to ask to be paid fairly. If a state decides that these must be crimes, then it is a criminal state, not a state full of criminals.
Undocumented youths, along with our families, will lead this fight against injustice. We will not let this law go unchallenged. People of conscience, which side are you on? Will you be on the side of youths, their families and this state's future? Or will you be on the side of its ugly history, so desperately trying to cling to the way it once was?
If Beason and Bentley thought that this law would go unchallenged, they were wrong. We are here, and more will come. More in Alabama will begin standing up and speaking out. We are part of a youth-led movement that has been bubbling up all across this country that will win against this attempt to turn back the clock.
About the writer: Dayanna Rebolledo is a member of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance and represents the Alabama Youth Collective, an undocumented youth-led organization working to better the lives of immigrants in Alabama. The Youth Collective firmly believes in the principles of nonviolent direct action. Email: media@theniya.org.
Alabama Youth Collective Jonathan & Isaac released from Basille, Louisiana Correction Facility as Undocumented test "the system" King-style in Alabama.
Hell, from Arizona to Alabama, this racism/classism always lands back where the "root" problem is, Louisiana.
The whitest of the white-folk have said "no-to-produce", running laborers out of not only the town, but the nation. Making them fugitives! Like a run away slave! In Louisiana, the root Plessy case that establish "legal racism" in America, persists like a cankered cancer causing destruction!
