Migratory Notes 25
Deadly border crossing; roughing it up; sanctuary

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ICE on Attack
Reuters broke the story last week of ICE’s plans to target teenagers who entered the country without guardians and who are suspected gang members. In Memphis, The Commercial Appeal reports that ICE agents conducted raids Sunday as part of a “surge” targeting “family units, adults who entered the U.S. as unaccompanied alien children (UAC), and UACs who are at least 16 years old and have criminal histories and/or suspected gang ties,” according to an ICE statement.
The Colorado Rapid Response Network hotline tallied five raids over a two-day period this week across the state that ICE also attributed to the same “surge operation.” The hotline launched in June, reports Westword, and struggled with trolls and critics at first but the 20 dispatchers and over 180 volunteers are trained to confirm the raids and provide assistance to those left behind.
One ICE officer believes the agency had gone too far. “We seem to be targeting the most vulnerable people, not the worst,” an anonymous ICE officer said in an interview with The New Yorker. He also said he has noticed impunity within the agency: “‘I’d never have someone say, ‘Why do I have to call an interpreter? Why don’t they speak English?’ Now I get it frequently. I get this from people who are younger. That’s one group. And I also get it from people who are ethnocentric: ‘Our way is the right way — I shouldn’t have to speak in your language. This is America.’’ It all adds up, the agent said, ‘to contempt that I’ve never seen so rampant towards the aliens.’”
ICE is under a microscope in Los Angeles and some other California cities, and sometimes considered the enemy. The New York Times, in a beautifully illustrated multimedia story, takes readers on a ridealong with a patrol. Nearly 40 percent of chief David Marin’s officers are Latino, he tells The Times, “and many of them hear refrains of ‘How can you do this to your own people?’ They do not apologize.”
Deadly Border Crossing
Nine migrants suffocated to death in an abandoned tractor-trailer packed with more than 100 people in Texas. The driver of the vehicle was arrested for his alleged role in what U.S. Attorney Richard Durbin called “an alien smuggling venture gone horribly wrong,” reports the San Antonio Express News.
Among those who died was a young man who had spent nearly his entire life in the U.S. and who had DACA status until he committed a crime and was later deported to Guatemala. The 20-year-old was trying to return to his family in Virginia, reports the Washington Post. One of the survivors, a 16 year old, told the San Antonio Express News that the Zetas Cartel helped the migrants cross the rushing Rio Grande before they were loaded into the rig.
ABC News explores how smuggling migrants in big rigs became a popular method of transport in the early 1990s to cross the San Diego and El Paso ports of entry. But as security increased migrants were pushed to travel across more dangerous terrain by foot to cross the border. Once in the U.S. many are then loaded into tractor-trailers and moved about the country. One expert said it costs about $2,000 to $3,000 to hitch a ride in a crammed rig.
All the Mamas
The Global Migration Project at Columbia Journalism School is working with 12 journalists to assemble a database of enforcement activity from across 50 states and interviewed immigrants facing removal, their children, attorneys and employers. They highlight the stories of four mothers in The New Yorker.
Sanctuary
“After months of empty threats, the Trump administration is moving to lay siege to progressive cities, with federal grants as its weapon,” Dara Lind writes in Vox. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the administration will cut drug diversion grants from sanctuary cities that don’t comply with federal immigration agents when releasing inmates from jails. Sessions said, “So-called ‘sanctuary’ policies make all of us less safe because they intentionally undermine our laws and protect illegal aliens who have committed crimes.” The policy requires cities cooperate by giving the federal government 48 hours notice of an inmate’s release and allows agents to enter jails, reports the Los Angeles Times.
In another speech this week Sessions said that a recent study showed that sanctuary policies “have more violent crime on average than those who don’t.” One of the study’s authors refuted Sessions’ claims in the Seattle Times writing it was “factually inaccurate” and misconstrued the findings.
The acting ICE director is considering charging sanctuary city leaders with violating federal anti-smuggling laws and linked them to the gang MS-13, reports the Washington Times. He called the jurisdictions “an illegal alien’s best friend” and that such “policies only make it more difficult, if not impossible, for ICE to remove [MS-13],” BuzzFeed reports.
Some cities are pushing back. LA Mayor Eric Garcetti said he would not bend to the threat and that he “doesn’t believe LA would lose any money by continuing with business as usual.”
Massachusetts Detention Ruling
The Massachusetts State Court ruled that people cannot be held by local law enforcement just because federal officials ask. It’s the latest blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration, reports the Wall Street Journal. ICE issues these detainers to local officials and while the Massachusetts decision only applies there, there have been similar rulings across the nation. GOP state legislators in the state responded by introducing a bill to override the ruling that would allow local police and sheriffs to also arrest those wanted only for immigration reasons, reports the Boston Globe.
“Doing it Rough”
In a speech on Tuesday night in Ohio where Trump said that he is endorsing a new Senate immigration plan that will bring jobs, he also explained how his administration is not playing nice.
“We are dismantling and destroying the bloodthirsty criminal gangs. And, well, I will just tell you this — we’re not doing it in a politically correct fashion. We’re doing it rough,” the president said of ICE in a speech in Youngstown. “Our guys are rougher than their guys. We have tough people. Our people are tougher than their people. Our people are tougher and stronger and meaner and smarter than the gangs. One by one we’re finding the illegal gang members, drug dealers, thieves, robbers, criminals and killers, and we’re sending them the hell back home where they came from.”
Driving while Undocumented
By the end of the year, nearly a million undocumented immigrants could be licensed in California, one of 10 states offering drivers licenses. “A study released by Stanford University researchers in April credited the law with reducing hit-and-run accidents statewide by at least 7 percent in its first year of implementation,” the Sacramento Bee reports. “Supporters have suggested it may also be a responsible for a surge in organ donors.”
Summer Visas come Too Late
The Mexican temporary workers who come to mop up vomit on carnivals and the Jamaicans who shuck clams are not showing up this year due to temporary visas being released too late. The New York Times visits a town in Mexico where workers who usually rely on traveling north for four months of funnel cakes on the carnival tour are stuck home. PRI’s The World visits Martha’s Vineyard where fudge shops and restaurants are short staffed.
Hate
A North Dakota woman was caught on video in a Wal-Mart parking lot threatening to “kill all of ya Somali Americans.” The woman who took the video, 21-year-old Sarah Hassan, told the West Fargo Pioneer, “I wanted everyone to see what happens to us every day.”
Books
The New York Times reviews two new books about Syria and finds that since the war began more than one-third of Syrians have been displaced and nearly half a million are dead. The books: “The Home That Was Our Country,” by Alia Malek, and “We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled,” by Wendy Pearlman, take readers beyond the stats into the horrific experience and the reach of this tragedy for all.
In the Prensa
Immigration has always been an important topic for Spanish-language media, and now more so than ever, according to the Columbia Journalism Review. Experts differ on their view of how Spanish-language reporters cover the issues, either often viewed as biased in defense of Hispanic immigrants,” or as advocacy journalism. Reporters at Spanish-language papers defend their reporting, citing how often they are called on for help and as a resource for furthering audience understanding of current policies.
Follows — Building the Wall in an Ocelot Refuge
Government sources tell Reuters that Customs and Border Patrol plans to use an anti-terror law to sidestep an environmental impact study for a section of the border wall that will pass through a Texas national refuge for endangered ocelots.
Iraqi Christians facing deportation in Michigan are also part of a larger community that helped deliver the state to Donald Trump last November. Host of All Things Considered Michel Martin interviewed Michigan State Rep. Klint Kesto about the turnaround.
Jobs and other immigration-related opportunities
With all the focus on immigration has come new opportunities in immigration reporting and policy. Got one you want to share, please send it on. (Also, we’ve now grown to have more lawyers reading — if you’ve got a great opportunity, send that one as well.) Here are a few:
Selected immigration resources
- Migration Policy Institute publishes a report on Trump’s first six months on immigration.
- Voices In America launched a podcast recently about the lives of immigrants affiliated with Public Counsel.
- Curious about what Russian settlers in Alaska sang? How about the Cantonese railroad workers? This Library of Congress collection documents the music migrants have brought with them throughout the history of the US
- What are schools to do with a child’s caretaker is detained? What can school districts do to protect their undocumented students’ data? Stanford Law School and the California Charter Association created a guide answering these questions for educators.
Jobs
- Senior Editor, California Dream Project, KPCC/89.3 public radio in Los Angeles
- Editorial Director, Orb Media
- ¿Que Pasá Midwest? Freelance Editor/ Producer WNIN
- Associate Editor, Investigations Think Progress
- Community Engagement Editor — New Michigan Media (collaboration of ethnic/ minority media in Michigan)
- PRI’s Global Nation is accepting pitches for stories about immigration and diversity
- International Reporting Fellowship for Minority Journalists ICFJ travel fellowship (not specifically migration, but good opportunity to do so)
- Editor/ Producer — Latino USA
- Race/ Related Editor — New York Times
- Director of Advocacy and Strategic Communications — Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC)
- CIVIC is accepting submissions on their site from people affected by immigration enforcement, advocates, bloggers, and scholars.
That’s all for Migratory Notes 25. We’re both based in LA, so help us out by letting us know what’s going on elsewhere. We realize this is in no way a complete list. If there’s a story you think we should consider, please send us an email.
*Daniela Gerson is an assistant professor at California State University, Northridge with a focus on community, ethnic, and participatory media. She is also a senior fellow at the Democracy Fund. Before that she was a community engagement editor at the LA Times; founding editor of a trilingual hyperlocal publication, Alhambra Source; staff immigration reporter for the New York Sun; and a contributor to outlets including WNYC: New York Public Radio, The World, Der Spiegel, Financial Times, CNN, and The New York Times. She recently wrote about Five lessons from a bilingual, bicultural newsroom in Southern Indiana for Local News Lab. You can find her on Twitter @dhgerson
*Elizabeth Aguilera is a multimedia reporter for CALmatters covering health and social services, including immigration. Previously she reported on community health, for Southern California Public Radio. She’s also reported on immigration for the San Diego Union-Tribune, where she won a Best of the West award for her work on sex trafficking between the U.S. and Mexico; and before that she covered a variety of beats and issues for the Denver Post including urban affairs and immigration. Her latest story is San Diego welcomes more refugees than any other California county. You can find her on Twitter @1eaguilera

