Austin made first ‘Freedom City’ in Texas at tense city council meeting

Folks, policy has to get worked at all levels for the shift and changes that we want to see happen. Under the stellar leadership of Council Member Gregorio Casar​, Austin made a very positive step forward.  This needs to expand to other Texas cities so that immigrants can get about without fear while making our cities safer.  

Glad to see our city to be the first in the state to do this.

-Angela

Austin made first ‘Freedom City’ in Texas at tense city council meeting

The resolutions pinpoint racial disparities in Austin police arrests and how officers interact with undocumented immigrants.

Author: Leslie Adami, Christy Millweard

Published: 6:44 AM CDT June 15, 2018

Updated: 6:24 PM CDT June 15, 2018

AUSTIN -- Things got a little tense Thursday night at a packed Austin City Council meeting.

Council members unanimously approved a pair of "Freedom City" resolutions, which makes Austin the first "Freedom City" in the state of Texas. The resolutions pinpoint racial disparities in Austin police arrests and how officers interact with undocumented immigrants.

More than 100 people signed up to speak on the proposal before council members made their final vote early in the morning of June 15. Applause broke out when members approved the resolutions.

Of the 100 people who spoke last night was the head of the Austin Police Association, Ken Casaday. While he said he supported the ordinance, he did not support claims and social media posts by Council Member Greg Casar. Casar has said that Austin police arrested African Americans at an officer's discretion at more than double the rate of white and Latino residents.

RELATED:

Council member addresses comments after head of APA called him out for race data

Casaday said the councilman needs to take a closer look at his numbers.

"What we did not appreciate was having the department called a racist organization and that's the part we had a problem with," Casaday said at the meeting.

Casar stood by his statements.

"We can always clean up the data, that's an APD issue -- to continue to get the best numbers that we can," he said. "But those disparities exist and I believe they exist in the way we have described them so far."

Now that the resolutions have been approved, City Manager Spencer Cronk will work with the Austin Police Department to deal with these type of arrests. And city leaders will now also be keeping track of where and why those type of arrests are made. The city manager must give an update to the city council in September.

Advocates and support groups of the Freedom City Policy said that its passing is a step toward making the city more inclusive.

"We live every single day with the uncertainty of whether we will be separated from our families,” said Batillo.

She hopes the moves will help her, and other immigrants feel --- free.

"We know that just even to travel around for our day to day activities is a risk,” said Batillo.

Under the new policy, police will work to cite those who commit a non-violent misdemeanor, instead of arresting them. And if they do make an arrest, they will now collect data on when, where, and why.

"This is very important to make sure there are justified reasons and it's not just about the color of our skin,” said Batillo.

It also asks police to tell someone they have a constitutional right to remain silent before asking about their immigration status.

"Everyone should know their rights,” said Jose Garza, the Executive Director of the Workers Defense Project.

Batillo hopes that creates a stronger bond with police.

"I've seen that people are afraid to contact the police if they see something happening and this will hopefully make us all safer,” said Batillo.

"I think it's going to help to encourage more trust between those two groups which I think is really important for public safety for everyone,” said Attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch.

"When all of our communities feel like they can go to the police, when they witness crime or are the victims of crime, we are all safer because of it,” said Garza.

Garza calls this a historic move.

"This is a really important policy for Austin’s immigrant families,” said Garza.

But he hopes to see more.
"From our perspective, this is just the beginning,” said Garza.

"We definitely recognize that this is a first step,” said Yuridia Loera, with United We Dream.

"I think these are positive steps, I'd like to see more steps, I'd like to see concrete policies,” said Attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch.

Lincoln-Goldfinch said immigrants arrested for minor offenses are immediately set on the path to deportation. She hopes new policies can end that.

"I think this is really important because it's going to help keep people out of the hands of immigration,” said Lincoln-Goldfinch.

"That to me is proactive to ensure that individuals specifically and interactions feel safer,” said Loera.

Loera hopes to see it expand to other Texas cities and beyond.

"It was a statement that the city stands behind addressing the fear in our communities,” said Loera.

Austin Police said they are evaluating the new ordinances and looking to change their policies where needed.

But, they said it is important to note: they are still in compliance with SB4, the state law passed last session that requires police to cooperate with federal immigration officials.

Mexicans Didn't Immigrate To America -- We've Always Been Here by Pedro Garza

An in-law's brother of mine from South Texas, Pedro Garza, wrote this excellent column for Forbes Today (see below).

Mexicans in Texas, especially South Texas, have a deep, historic connection to the land.  I use the term "Mexican" because it is actually how so many of us identify.  We have many names or labels and they shift across place and time, but in South Texas for so many, particularly families like Pedro Garza's, it reflects the real, lived experience of one's kin never having actually crossed the border.  But rather, the border literally crossed them.  The same people, the same families that lived in South Texas for many generations before there was a "Texas" or a "United States" were always there.

Like my husband's family that has been in S. Texas, literally no less than 3 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border for generations, has a distinct relationship to the interior of Mexico.  Mine is more emotional.  His is not.

In my case, I am a third-generation Mexican American, whose family on one side emanates from Sonora, Mexico (northern Mexico on the border with Arizona), and on the other, from the Sierra Madre mountains of Guerrero in southern Mexico and is where the largest part of my family lives today.  So I long for my family in Mexico in a way that my husband does not—or more appropriately, cannot.  After all, outside of the literal U.S.-Mexico border, he has no family at all in the interior of Mexico.

Consequently, for people like Pedro Garza and my husband, their sense that "there's no Mexico to go back to" is particularly acute.  They are in Mexico, albeit on the U.S. side of the border.  That's why they call themselves "Mexican."  Plus, it's simply cultural for many to have this as their preferred self-referent.  This is not a national identity, but rather an ethnic one.  This of course annoys many Mexicans from Mexico who either do not understand or look down upon our having this nuance in identity as "Mexican Americans" or "U.S. Mexicans."

That said, Mexicans aren't making distinctions between themselves in certain places in the U.S. even if others are.  In Spanish, they say "Mexicano" or "Mexicana" as Spanish is a gendered language.  Other terms are "Tejano" and "Tejana,"" Chicano" and "Chicana" ...and these days "Chican@," Chicanx" or "Latinx" in order to promote gender equality in the area of self referents or identifiers. 

However, pan-ethnic terms like " Latino," "Latina," "Latin@," "Latinx," or "Hispanic," are situational and marshaled in certain contexts such as when in the presence of other Latino (or Latinx) groups (I can only imagine how this confuses others not part of our culture).

As the late scholar, Gloria Anzaldúa, once put it in her book (paraphrasing), Borderlands/La Frontera, there isn't a Tejano or Tejana alive who doesn't know that the lands were taken away.  We all grow up knowing this.  It's in our cultural DNA.  And what's fascinating is that even more recent generations acquire that very same sense of loss.  Not all, but many if not most.  I certainly grew up with it.

South Texas identity is complex, but at its base, connected to the land itself, the Spanish language, indigeneity, a rich, albeit vexed history involving governments in both countries, and protracted, intimate, transborder relations, blood mixture (mestizaje), family bonds, and a wealth of shared experiences as a people negotiating the same geographic and geopolitical space over the centuries.  


Moreover, the American Southwest represents a habitually traversed, uncannily familiar topographical landscape, even as it frequently connotes a shared experience of oppression, encouraging a sense of group solidarity that is part and parcel to many shared cultural, linguistic, and aesthetic norms, tastes, and preferences—the stuff of culture, no less.
 

Great job, Pedro!  "We didn't cross the border!  The border crossed us."

Angela Valenzuela

c/s 

Mexicans Didn't Immigrate To America -- We've Always Been Here

Apr 11, 2017 @ 10:35 AM

Guest commentary curated by Forbes Opinion. Avik Roy, Opinion Editor.

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Guest post written by

Pedro Garza

Pedro Garza served as a First Lieutenant during the Vietnam War and is now a retired federal government executive.

Guest commentary curated by Forbes Opinion. Avik Roy, Opinion Editor.

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Guest post written by

Pedro Garza

Mexican mariachis play the US national anthem while civil organizations carry out a demonstration called Mexican mariachis play the US national anthem while civil organizations carry out a demonstration called 'Serenade to Break the Wall' against US President Donald Trump's immigration policies. / AFP PHOTO / Pedro PARDO (Photo credit should read PEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images)

I can trace my ancestry to La Grulla, a small community just west of McAllen, on the Texas side of the Rio Grande. My ancestors settled there in the 1830s -- a decade before Texas became a state. They pre-date the ancestors of most current Texans.

Of course, when my family settled in La Grulla, it was part of Mexico. They became residents of the United States after the U.S. government was given their land -- or stole it, depending on your point of view -- in 1848.

My family settled in what is now the United States decades before President Trump's ancestors arrived. In other words, we "Mexicans" did not immigrate to the United States. We lived on U.S. land before it was U.S. land. And we're not going away.

The chanting of "Build that Wall" at Trump campaign rallies and in our schools was disappointing. Even more insulting was Trump's accusation that Mexican immigrants are "criminals and rapists."

But these are only the latest salvos in the U.S. government's centuries-long track record of anti-Mexican sentiment.

A little history. In the early 1800s, with a passion for expansionism fueled by Manifest Destiny, the United States craved a passage to the Pacific Ocean -- and by extension, the shipping routes to Asia.

But Mexico inconveniently stood in the way. So the United States invaded. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the two-year Mexican-American War in 1848 and ceded present-day Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming to the United States.

The United States realized its "destiny" and secured its pathway to the Pacific. But it also inherited the hundreds of thousands of Native Americans and millions of Mexicans who had long lived on that land.

It was an immigration problem of the U.S. government's own making.

The U.S. Army responded to Native Americans with involuntary removals and reservations. From 1864 to 1866, nearly 10,000 Navajo and Apache people were forced to walk 450 miles to a camp in eastern New Mexico. The reservation didn't have adequate shelter or food. Over 2,300 Navajo and Apache died before the Army allowed survivors to move back home.

Dealing with the much larger group of Mexicans -- many of them landowners, office-holders, entrepreneurs, lawyers, bankers and members of the clergy -- was more complex. The government couldn't consign them to reservations.

Their customs, language, traditions, values, culture, food and communities all became part of who we are as a nation -- whether the U.S. government liked it or not.

But the U.S. government still did its best to make its newest citizens foreigners in their own land and unwelcome in their own country. Congress passed the Homestead Act in 1862, allowing Americans to apply for Western land in exchange for farming on it -- taking land that belonged to Mexicans.

Later, during the Great Depression, the United States deported almost 2 million Mexicans. More than half of them were U.S. citizens.

Despite this history of bigotry, discrimination and exclusion, we're still here, contributing to American society and the economy. Latinos have $1.5 trillion in purchasing power. 
Latino-owned businesses were responsible for 86% of small business growth from 2007 to 2012. That means we created a whole lot of jobs, for Latinos and non-Latinos alike.

And there is no wall high enough or long enough to exclude us from this country's future. By 2060, one in four Americans is projected to be Hispanic. We're not confined to our ancestral home in the Great Southwest. The fastest-growing Latino communities are in North Dakota, Alabama, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, South Dakota and Utah.

President Trump is seeking to close the stable door a century and a half after the horse has bolted. Mexicans are here -- in our homeland -- to stay. Nearly 33 million Latinos were born in this country.  We were here before many of our fellow citizens arrived. And a fence, a wall, a moat, or a river will serve only to keep us in, not out.

91.2% of All Americans Who Live in Mexico Are Living There Illegally

I researched this around 10 years ago when we were living in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, Mexico.  There are communities in Mexico like San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato where fully 1 out of 2 people are Anglo (white). One purchases property in San Miguel in dollars and at costs that feel exhorbitant, out of reach for the middle class.  

Except for the Spanish colonial facade, it doesn't even feel like Mexico there anymore.  This is gentrification on a global scale. 

The Mexicans have been "pushed out."  Many have had to move out to the city's more affordable outer ring, or to other places in Mexico where the economic conditions are better or migrate to the U.S. altogether.  And then they get punished for that which is attributable to macro-level factors involving the transborder flows of capital that invariably position them— as with all the world's poor that is similarly situated—at a disadvantage.

Angela Valenzuela
c/s 

March 5, 2017 by Latino Rebels

News Report: 91.2% of All Americans Who Live in Mexico Are Living There Illegally [UPDATED]

A February 28 report from Mexico’s Excélsior news outlet said that 91.2% of all Americans who live in Mexico are living there illegally. The percentage of undocumented Americans is based on findings from a 2015 census survey from Mexico’s Institute of Geography and Statistics.

According to the Excélsior report, it said that 739,168 U.S. citizens lived in Mexico during 2015, of which only 65,302 had legal residency. The report explained that this breakdown marked a 37.8% increase in Mexico’s undocumented population of Americans living there. These Americans, Excélsior noted, are not deported.

However, what the Excélsior report did not include or explore is whether or not a percentage of these U.S. citizens living in Mexico are also Mexican citizens and can claim dual citizenship (making a visa irrelevant for them). When Latino Rebels analyzed the actual survey, we saw that it did ask if any of these Americans living in Mexico could claim Mexican nationality, and about 47% said yes, but just because you claim Mexican nationality doesn’t mean you are a Mexican citizen. It is also unclear whether any of these Americans are authorized to reside in Mexico, a point that the Mexican government admits is extremely complex to track, as a 2012 report detailed (see page 12). The State Department says that 1 million U.S. citizens live in Mexico.

And as much as Excélsior reported a 91.2% figure, that percentage could very likely be lower based on the survey Latino Rebels saw, but there it still enough data to conclude that a very significant number of Americans living in Mexico are not there legally.

The Mexican newspaper also wrote that Donald Trump’s administration has already repatriated 11,328 Mexicans since it has taken office, and of those 11,328 individuals, 723 had previous convictions for narcotrafficking, kidnapping, transporting of weapons and other major crimes. In addition, Excélsior wrote that Mexican immigration authorities said that the others who have been deported were convicted of much lesser crimes or misdemeanors.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has yet to publish any 2017 removal statistics, but U.S. Customs and Border Protection has released its latest data about border apprehensions (which are not ICE deportations). Here is what Border Patrol said: “U.S. Customs and Border Protection saw a decrease in apprehensions between our ports of entry and a decrease in individuals deemed inadmissible to enter the U.S. at our ports of entry along the Southwest Border in January 2017.

Overall total migration remained at elevated levels, primarily due to family units and unaccompanied children from Central America, Haitian nationals migrating from Brazil, and Cuban nationals.”



In 2012, the BBC published a story about Mexico’s own “illegals” problem:

[In 2011] about 1,000 US citizens were questioned over irregularities in their immigration status, according to Mexican authorities. They face a modest fine —up to $50— if officials find them working without a permit or living in Mexico without proper documents.
Those who lose their visas or are asked to leave the country and then discovered to be overstaying are fined up to $400.

In 2014, a Washington Post story said this: “While figures are hard to come by, some argue that U.S. citizens may make up the vast majority of illegal immigrants in Mexico.”

And for those of you who are wondering how Mexico’s American undocumented population compares to the United States’s Mexican undocumented population, here is what Pew reported last year:

Mexicans made up 52% of all unauthorized immigrants in 2014, though their numbers had been declining in recent years. There were 5.8 million Mexican unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. that year, down from 6.4 million in 2009, according to the latest Pew Research Center estimates. Meanwhile, the number of unauthorized immigrants from nations other than Mexico grew by 325,000 since 2009, to an estimated 5.3 million in 2014. Populations went up most for unauthorized immigrants from Asia and Central America, but the number also ticked up for those from sub-Saharan Africa. Increases in the number of unauthorized immigrants from other countries mostly offset the decline in the number from Mexico.