Ukraine: Zelensky looks to win a war of symbols, by the Editors of Le Monde

Friends:

I listened to President Zelensky's speech and found it to be powerful and hopeful. Putin has no limits, destroying Ukraine's infrastructure and using the harsh, cold winter as a weapon of war. I fantasized that our country could similarly show a parallel level of compassion and statesmanship for our own humanitarian crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border where many migrants and refugees find themselves at this very moment in freezing temperatures and without food, shelter, or legal representation. Regardless of increased enforcement of the U.S.-Mexico border, desperation will keep migrants coming.

Congressman Joaquin Castro has been calling for a Central American Marshall Plan without which nothing will change. I couldn't agree more. In the meantime, I ask you to join me in a birthday fundraiser for migrants and refugees crossing the U.S.-Mexico border who need many things, including legal representation.

You can learn more about RAICES below or at their website: https://tinyurl.com/4ww33exn.

Thank you for joining me in this fundraiser: https://www.facebook.com/donate/483427460481481/10160174261911970/

-Angela Valenzuela

Ukraine: Zelensky looks to win a war of symbols

By visiting Washington, the Ukranian president wanted to thank the United States. He will probably be eager to pay the same tribute to his European allies.

Dec. 22, 2022 | Le Monde

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky gives a Ukrainian national flag to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as US Vice President Kamala Harris looks on during his address to the US Congress in Washington, DC on December 21, 2022. MANDEL NGAN / AFP

Continue reading here: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/12/22/ukraine-zelensky-looks-to-win-war-of-symbols_6008707_4.html?fbclid=IwAR1DG96wLpBlezad1XdHj4NnuX6f7EEozGEUpv-HNdbV1iaoLFhWi8U6F1I

Happy Fathers Day! Happy Word Refugee Day 2021!

As many of us celebrate Father's Day today, let's also be mindful that today is World Refugee Day, as well. Thanks to Barbara Peña of Raíces, Texas, for this reminder.

We totally need human policies for asylum seekers and refugees, as a staggering tens of millions annually of people are regularly displaced from their homes due to "violence, persecution, hunger, climate disasters, poverty, and political upheaval," as noted below. 

Just like we wish and seek for ourselves and our own families, they deserve a life of dignity and respect. 

Like Mahatma Ghandi once said, “The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane.” This points directly to the virtue of being compassionate toward others if we ourselves are to be humane in our policies and practices.

Happy Fathers Day! Happy Word Refugee Day 2021!

Peace and blessings to all.

-Angela Valenzuela

@RAICESTEXAS

More than 80 million people have been displaced from their homes globally. Many, including unaccompanied children, are fleeing violence, persecution, hunger, climate disasters, poverty, and political upheaval.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Refugee Convention¹ – but despite a decades-long international commitment to protect those who are in fear of persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, or political opinion, the U.S. government turns away asylum seekers and refugees, and continues to criminalize migration.

The COVID-19 pandemic only made things worse. Processing inefficiencies at the U.S. southern border, coupled with policies like the Migrant Protection Protocols and Title 42 that prevent migrants from entering the country and supercharge mass expulsions, have eroded what once were robust laws that protected people’s right to seek refuge in the U.S.

This World Refugee Day, and every day, RAICES stands in solidarity with those whose lives have been uprooted and who are seeking safety and refuge here in the U.S. It is our mission to uplift their stories and create a more welcoming country for refugees and asylum seekers.

It is in this spirit of resilience and courage that we share this video with you. It is a beautiful testament to the power of storytelling as a vehicle for change.

Watch the video and then click on the link below to help us build a people first approach to migration that welcomes everyone.

See video here.

Click here to commit to uplifting the stories of refugees and asylum seekers by joining the Uprooted & Uplifted campaign.

The more people who join the campaign, the more power we build to make the dream of building an immigration system that treats all human beings with dignity and respect a reality.

In solidarity,

Barbara Peña
Associate VP of Advocacy
RAICES

PS: You can also support our work by making a monthly gift. With your support, we can model a humanitarian approach to migration through our legal, social, and advocacy programs and keep up the fight to make our borders more welcoming places.

References:

1. The UN Refugee Agency, "The 1951 Refugee Convention."
   Accessed June 17, 2021.

“THE U.S. GOVERNMENT KIDNAPPED MY SON” by RAICES [Content Warning]

With a focus on the Karnes Detention Center here in Texas, here is a hard-hitting report by Raices, the organization that has been advocating on behalf of children and families detained in our nation's immigration detention centers as they struggle for U.S. asylum.

Key quotes in line with the #BlackLivesMatter movement:

Immigration is an inherently intersectional issue, affecting people of any background. That is not to say that people of differing backgrounds receive the same treatment,²⁹ but rather that the struggle for liberation in the immigrant rights movement is inherently tied to other struggles for liberation, including the Movement for Black Lives and the movement to defund the police.³⁰ The movements for abolition of the police, prisons, ICE, and immigrant detention are inherently intertwined.³¹ ICE and CBP operations mirror those of the U.S. police in many ways, including in the prevalence of abuses committed against people in their custody, the targeting of Black and Brown people, and the huge quantity of taxpayer money put towards these militarized systems of oppression that could otherwise be used to support community services. Furthermore, multiple organizations focused on Black liberation explicitly identify the end of immigrant detention as a policy demand.³² Ending family detention minimizes harm wrought against multiple communities at the hands of the U.S government, and insofar as multiple movements for liberation call for abolition of detention, family detention is an obvious immediate target. 

The unique role the United States has played in contributing to the root causes of immigration from Latin America must also be acknowledged. The violence immigrants flee, particularly in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, is rooted in U.S. intervention and exploitation. The United States backed military coups and dictatorships that committed massacres and other atrocities against innocent civilians, including genocide like the mass physical and sexual violence attempted against the Maya in Guatemala. The impunity Central America struggles with today is largely rooted in these years of violence. The present narrative surrounding immigration is egregiously estranged from the reality of the United States’ history in Latin America; in March, 2019, the president cut off about $500 million in aid to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.³³

Read this painful exposé and cry.  Support Raices. Oppose fascism.

-Angela Valenzuela

#AbolishFamilyDetention

#BlackLivesMatter

#OpposeFascism

“THE U.S. GOVERNMENT KIDNAPPED MY SON”

SURVIVING FAMILY SEPARATION AND PROLONGED FAMILY DETENTION:
A REPORT ON THE FAMILIES OF KARNES

CONTENT WARNING: This report includes the following topics: family separation, detention, torture, sexual violence, death, suicide, genocide, mistreatment of indigenous communities, and abusive behavior by those in positions of power.

INTRODUCTION

On April 6, 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Department of Justice would seek to criminally prosecute migrants who crossed the southern border outside of ports of entry, an action for which prosecution is typically discretionary. In practice, this policy provided the legal basis for the Department of Homeland Security to forcibly separate children from their parents. Children were ripped from parents while parents were referred for criminal prosecution for crossing the border without prior authorization, even though many families fled to the U.S. to seek asylum. It is legal to seek asylum when in the territory of another country under both U.S. and international law. The affected families primarily migrated from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. 1

The U.S. government has been found to repeatedly misrepresent data on family separation, with the number of families separated originally reported as 1,556.2 However, as of October, 2019, that number was estimated to be over 5,400, though some of that increase may be due to continued, illegal family separations.3 To date there is no definitive count of families separated by the policy, nor of children who still remain separated from their parents. Reports estimate at least 300 children were yet to be reunified as of 2019.4 At least 471 parents were deported without their children as a result of the inhumane policy.5 In the words of U.S. Judge Dana Sabraw, who oversaw the family separation case Ms. L v. Sessions, “The reality is that for every parent who is not located, there will be a permanently orphaned child, and that is 100% the responsibility of the administration.” 6

This report intends to illuminate the experiences of the 278 families who were separated and subsequently detained at the Karnes family detention center (“Karnes”) in Karnes City, Texas. The Karnes Pro Bono Project, under the auspices of RAICES, offers free legal services to people detained in Karnes under a universal representation model. This meant that any formerly separated family at Karnes could seek legal services from RAICES until they were released from detention. Many families also continued to receive services from RAICES after their release. Because of the universality and scope of services offered, RAICES, through the work of the Karnes Pro Bono Project is uniquely positioned to comment on the issues of families detained in Karnes.

After months of separation, fathers and sons remained in detention together in Karnes, fighting their immigration cases. The following report of experience aims to illustrate in detail how family separation and detention are unacceptable policies. Additionally, this report attempts to add to the public record of atrocities committed against migrant families in the ongoing fight for immigrant justice. Finally, this report seeks to elevate the voices of formerly separated families who bravely spoke out against prolonged family detention based on their own experiences in response to the Trump administration’s ongoing attempts to expand family detention and family separation.

SEPARATION

Families separated under the Zero Tolerance policy crossed the U.S. southern border in spring of 2018, and were then separated for long periods of time ranging from forty-five days to six months or more. The average length of separation was 52 days. At the time of their separation, children who were reunited to be detained with their fathers in Karnes ranged from four to seventeen years old. Families were separated in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detention facilities known as the “hieleras” and “perreras.”7 Parents reported a variety of situations surrounding the initial separation from their child. One father recalled officers told him they were taking his seven-year-old son for a bath, mirroring tactics of the Nazis in the Holocaust. 8

A father recalls officers deceiving him when they separated him from his son, telling him they were only going to bathe the child.

After these separations, parents were sent to various, often multiple, adult prisons and immigration detention centers across the U.S. There was no uniformity in the way that children’s cases were processed, and children were transported to various sites around the United States. While separated, most families reported having little to no contact with each other. They did not know where the other was. They did not know if the other was detained, deported, or released into the United States. Fathers often reported squalid conditions in federal prison or adult immigrant detention centers, including being made to eat while chained at the ankle, waist, and wrists. Some families were able to speak on the phone once or twice during the months of separation. The conversations were typically limited to two to ten minutes.

One father recalled being able to speak to his son for a few minutes after a month with no contact and no word on where he was. He was only able to speak to his son because his family outside of detention helped him find him; the government did not respond to his requests to locate him.

Many families had no idea if, when, or where they would be reunified until it took place. On July 15, 2019, the first twelve families reunited at Karnes arrived. Many parents had just been reunited at 4:00 in the morning after months without contact with their children and with no warning that they were about to be reunited. Within about a week the population at Karnes swelled to several hundred formerly separated fathers and sons, with cases in a wide variety of legal postures.

On average, formerly separated families spent 68 days detained in Karnes after reunification, bringing the average total length of time in immigrant detention to 120 days. The last family of the hundreds of families who arrived in late July would not leave Karnes until December 27, 2018, some five months after reunification. The atrocities the U.S. government inflicted on these families did not end with their reunification, as they continued to face the harm inherent to detention for months on end afterwards.

Tell ICE: Release All Immigrants at Risk of Coronavirus #FreeThemAll

Important message from Raices.  Here is something we can all do right away.  Please urge ICE to release all immigrants as they are at risk of coronavirus now.

-Angela Valenzuela

#FreeThemAll #FreeTheChildren, @RAICESTEXAS, #FamiliesBelongTogether, #familiestornapart 

ACTION

03.14.2020

Tell ICE: Release All Immigrants at Risk of Coronavirus

We sent a letter to Daniel Bible at ICE today, demanding that he use his powers to release immigrants in detention who are at great risk during normal times, let-alone during a pandemic. We’re asking you to join us, and use the form below to add your voice. Send a message to Daniel Bible and ICE, to free detained immigrants.

The immigrant community is at grave risk.

“Infectious disease outbreaks have a long history of preying on society’s most vulnerable, disenfranchised members.” – NY Times

#COVD19 is no exception.

That is why we are asking you to take action with us, using the form below, to tell ICE to release all immigrants in detention, because detention is no place for a family, and no place for a family to be during a pandemic.

All those who have been subject to the Trump administration’s roster of anti-immigrant policies are in a vulnerable position; from those in detention to those living under MPP. Immigration detention conditions are already poor, so a coronavirus outbreak could be a disaster. Neither DHS, ICE or EOIR have provided any sort of contingency plan that would help reduce exposure to detained immigrants, their families, government staff, judges, or jail staff.

RAICES attorneys are extremely concerned for the health and well being of our clients held at Karnes and Pearsall Detention Centers in Texas right now. At Karnes, there are families with children, and those at Pearsall are trans women with HIV. We are working with at least six children with symptoms of cold, cough and flu with several families complaining of inadequate testing and/or treatment. We are currently aware of 4 pregnant women and 14 babies under two years old detained there.

Let’s make this clear: Their lives are in danger. Let us remind you what ICE has already done:

• Federal immigrant officials have refused to give detained kids and families flu shots in the past.
• There was a mumps outbreak in detention centers between September 2018 and August 2019.
• Clean water and soap are NOT guaranteed in detention.
• Dangerous overcrowding has already been reported at facilities.

The list goes on…

And how have officials responded to the upcoming crisis? By ordering immigration court staff to remove CDC posters designed to slow the spread of coronavirus.

We must stop this from getting worse and demand ICE to release everyone from immigration detention. They must act now.

You’ve read our letter to ICE about Detained Families and COVID-19. Join us and add your voice, by using the form below to send an email to ICE [CLICK HERE TO GO TO PAGE TO ADD YOUR SIGNATURE].

2020 Scholarship & Fellowship Lists For Undocumented Undergraduate and Graduate Students

Our undocumented students merit scholarships and fellowships. They are indeed so incredibly talented and motivated to give back to their communities and their country—which is all of ours.  

En carne propia, in the flesh,  I have conducted researched on them, with them, taught them, and advocated for them for many years, decades now.  Others are family members and everybody just wants to live good, healthy lives, free of harassment, discrimination, retaliation, scapegoating, and fear.  This list or guide contains

"344 undergraduate and 302 graduate/post-graduate scholarships and fellowships that do not require proof of citizenship or legal permanent residency (425 are open to individuals who don’t have DACA)"

We need to stop all this political nonsense and unequivocally support all of our youth, especially our undocumented youth who have been subjected to such hateful, cruel, and inhumane policies and suffering.

Not to worry. The world not only won't be over: It'll be improved, as a consequence!  It already is improving because of them.

Sí se puede!  Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela

2020 SCHOLARSHIP AND FELLOWSHIP LISTS

Art by Marithza Quiroz

Scholarships and fellowships are essential for many undocumented students to pay for higher education, especially students who do not qualify for in-state tuition and state-based financial aid. Undocumented students pursuing higher education need to know that scholarships and fellowships are available to them—regardless of their immigration status.

This year, we’ve expanded our Scholarship and Fellowship Lists with 222 BRAND-NEW scholarships and 80 fellowships. The complete list now contains 344 undergraduate and 302 graduate/post-graduate scholarships and fellowships that do not require proof of citizenship or legal permanent residency (425 are open to individuals who don’t have DACA):

Don’t know where to start? Our Applying for Scholarships resource will help you get started!

SHARE OUR RESOURCES ON SOCIAL MEDIA

We need your help to reach undocumented students! Share this resource with your networks and on social media—you can use the sample tweet and Facebook post below:

SAMPLE TWEET
 HOT OFF THE PRESS: @immigrantsrise just released 2020 List of Scholarships and Fellowships that undocumented students can apply to! Undergrad and grad students get ready for scholarship season: immigrantsrising.org/2020scholarships

SAMPLE FACEBOOK POST
 HOT OFF THE PRESS: @immigrantsrising just released 2020 List of Scholarships and Fellowships that undocumented students can apply to—now containing 344 undergraduate and 302 graduate/post-graduate scholarships and fellowships, including 425 for non-DACA! Learn More: immigrantsrising.org/2020scholarships

MAKE A DONATION

We need your financial support in order to keep our information and resources free and accessible to all undocumented young people. Please consider MAKING A DONATION to Immigrants Rising so we can continue supporting undocumented young people in achieving their educational and career goals so they can thrive in this country.

‹ 2019: A Year of Transforming Fear into Hope and Opportunity

CATEGORIES

·       CALIFORNIA CAMPUS CATALYST FUND

·       EDUCATIONAL PARTNERSHIPS

·       ENTREPRENEURSHIP FUND

·       FELLOWSHIPS

·       FESTIVAL OF UNDOCUINNOVATION

·       FINANCIAL SUPPORT

·       GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS

·       HIGH SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS

·       IMMIGRATION LEGAL INTAKE SERVICE

·       IN THE MEDIA

·       LEADERSHIP OPPORTUNITIES

·       NEWSLETTERS

·       PERSONAL STORIES

·       RESOURCES

·       SCHOLARSHIP FUND

·       SERVICES