Citizen Orange

Specter and Sestak Support Immigrant Youth, Cosponsor the DREAM Act

2009-11-19T04:26:25Z

Each year in the U.S., 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high school with limited options for higher education or employment. Many undocumented youth were brought to this country as children, even infants, by their parents. They are indistinguishable in every way but one from their citizen friends, classmates, and siblings: they don't have a piece of paper that says they can stay here.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) would change that. The Act would provide conditional legal status to applicants who:

provide certain undocumented immigrant students who graduate from US high schools, are of good moral character, arrived in the US as children, and have been in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill's enactment, the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency. The students would obtain temporary residency for a six year period. Within the six year period, a qualified student must have "acquired a degree from an institution of higher education in the United States or [have] completed at least 2 years, in good standing, in a program for a bachelor's degree or higher degree in the United States," or have "served in the uniformed services for at least 2 years and, if discharged, [have] received an honorable discharge.".

A version of the Act was first introduced in 2001, and subsequent versions have been proposed since then, but the bill stalled during the acrimonious immigration debate of 2006-07. The Act was reintroduced earlier this year, and has garnered 105 co-sponsors in the House and 35 in the Senate. It has been endorsed by President Obama, Secretary of DHS Janet Napolitano, Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust, Microsoft, the College Board, the University of California system, and several newspaper editorial boards, including the New York Times. Against it are ... the same restrictionist organizations that oppose any immigration reform.

This spring, Temple University passed a resolution in support of the Act, largely through the efforts of Daniel Dunphy, President of the Temple College Democrats. The city of Philadelphia followed suit with a resolution sponsored by Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez. Students at the University of Pennsylvania are also getting involved.

While the Act has broad support among politicians, business, and academia, it has been put on hold to be bundled with a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Concerns about distracting the public from that primary goal have prevented some in Congress from cosponsoring the bill even though they otherwise might support it.

Until last month, only one member of Pennsylvania's congressional delegation had cosponsored the Act--Representative Chaka Fattah. Rep. Fattah had showed leadership and an understanding of the needs of some of his hardest-working but most neglected constituents, Dream Act-eligible students.

Then local Dream Act candidates, or "Dreamers," mobilized to increase Pennsylvania's legislative Dream caucus. They met with Senator Specter and traveled to D.C. to discuss the Dream Act with his staff. I and other advocates worked with local Dreamers to start a Pennsylvania chapter of the national group DreamActivist to bring Dreamers and allies together to promote the Act. These efforts began to bear fruit when Senator Specter agreed to cosponsor the Act last month.

We asked Representative Sestak if he would consider supporting the Act. He took another look at the bill and, to his great credit, cosponsored the Act earlier this month.

Now there are three legislative champions of immigrant youth in Pennsylvania! The more people know about the Act, the more likely they are to support it. If you would like to get involved to help increase Pennsylvania's legislative support for the Dream Act, please contact us to find out more. [email to: DreamActivistPA at gmail d0t com]

Dreamer Walter Lara, "Papers" Director on CNN

2009-11-16T04:52:44Z

Dream Act candidate Walter Lara was hosted on Rick Sanchez's show on CNN last week along with Anne Galisky, the director of a new documentary about the undocumented student movement, "Papers."

I saw most of the movie a few weeks ago, and it was great--informative and heartbreaking. I wish every high school or college student, and every parent of a high school or college student, could see it to get an idea of what life without papers is like in the U.S.

Also, check out Maria's thoughtful post over at Dreamactivist.

So Long Dobbs: Pro-Migrant SanctuarySphere

2009-11-13T03:38:25Z

Lou Dobbs Takes a 'Voluntary Departure' from CNN at Dream Activist blog.

Hasta la Vista Dobbs at Dream Act Texas.

Weekly Diaspora: Deporting Dobbs at The Unapologetic Mexican.

After 30 years, commentator Lou Dobbs--infamous for his tirades against undocumented immigrants--has left CNN, as TPM reports. Dobbs employed disturbing, dangerous, and dated language to slur immigrants, often equating them with disease and infection. There is a connection between this type of demagoguery and violence.

ICE Firing of 1200 Janitors Likened by SEIU to "Redecorating When the House is on Fire" - America's Voice.

Military Families Act Protects Families Who Protect US - CAUSA.

Action Alert: Money bomb today to fund a documentary about direct democracy, plus other activism at Docudharma.

There's been a lot of talk about "direct democracy" since Obama was elected - about how his campaign involved people at a level never before seen in national politics, how his White House has been using online programs to get peoples' input, and so on. But what if we as Americans could participate on a level even beyond this - what if we had the power of lawmaking?

ICE moving forward with new Los Angeles-area immigration lock-up at The Business of Detention.

If Chuck Norris Were A Migrant -- 5 Chuck Norris Migrant Facts

2009-11-11T18:00:00Z

UPDATE: This post hit the front page of Digg, this morning. Welcome Digg users! This post has also been submitted by people to Reddit and StumbleUpon so upvote it there, too, if you're feeling generous.

More importantly, though, drop us a line at Citizen Orange if you're interested in getting more involved in migrant rights, or subscribe to the Citizen Orange feed to stay connected to the online pro-migrant movement.

Andrea Nill over at Think Progress' Wonk Room picked up one of the most entertaining developments in the U.S. migration policy debate that I've had the pleasure of coming across in some time. Chuck Norris is pro-migrant!

Just in case you haven't been on the planet Earth in the last five years, Chuck Norris has become an Internet phenomenon for satirical "facts" invoking his name. Chuck Norris himself seems to have an ambivalent relationship with these "facts", but there is one new "fact" Chuck Norris might be proud to claim. Taking Rachel LaBruyere's lead at the Standing FIRM Blog, here is a new "Chuck Norris fact": Chuck Norris can fix the broken U.S. migration system in 1 minute on Fox News.

This new "Chuck Norris fact" got me thinking. What kind of Chuck Norris facts could folks come up with in the U.S. migration policy debate? Even better, what if Chuck Norris were a migrant? Here's what I came up with. If Chuck Norris were a migrant:

Chuck Norris would not cross the border. Chuck Norris would move earth with his feet until the border crossed him. Chuck Norris would then proceed to annihilate the border with a barrage of roundhouse kicks. Nothing crosses Chuck Norris, not even the border.
Chuck Norris would not just take jobs away from citizens, he would take every job, and do each job well, all at the same time, for free. Citizens would never have to work again. Chuck Norris would do everything for them.
Nativists would try to call Chuck Norris an illegal alien. With a blink, Chuck Norris would deflect their thoughts and nativists would succeed only in creating an illegal world for themselves where nativists would be the aliens.
Chuck Norris would not need to learn the language. Chuck Norris would stare people down until the language learned him. Anyone needing customer service would dial one for a beating from Chuck Norris for being stupid enough to require help from someone in a foreign country.
Chuck Norris' tears would not just cure cancer, his tears would cure leprosy and every other disease migrants are blamed for. Unfortunately, since Chuck Norris never cries, every fictitious case of leprosy that Lou Dobbs blames on migrants would actually be Chuck Norris' fault. Chuck Norris would make Lou Dobbs tell the truth.

Feel free to add your Chuck Norris migrant facts in the comments.

and this is just the health care debate

2009-11-09T03:53:15Z

Via Yglesias, right wingers spew racial epithets and tell Rep. Joseph Cao to "go back to Saigon" for voting yes on the Democratic health care bill.

It's almost as though this strain of conservatism doesn't want to see any nonwhites in the GOP, or anyone who thinks racism has no place in political discourse.

We're two months away from a new decade (the "teens") and people are still saying this crap? And believing it?

I hope that these people are not the reason Schumer and Obama keep delaying introduction of immigration legislation, or the reason Janet Napolitano keeps locking up Dream Act-eligible students and splitting up families. Because no one should be taking these racists seriously.

Is The Election of Chris Christie Actually Good For Pro-Migrant Supporters?

2009-11-07T19:26:52Z

The Republicans are celebrating their victory in New Jersey and there may be reason for pro-migrant supporters to celebrate as well. Chris Christie is not your standard Republican. In fact he has spent many years fighting Morristown, New Jersey mayor Donald Cresitello on Cresitello's desire to institute 287g. Cresitello actually had quite a distaste for Christie due to his constant push back on the 287g program. Prior to the election Cresitello stated about Christie:

I couldn't understand how a Republican could come out against a program to deport people who come here illegally and are accused of further illegalities. I figured the mayor might offer some insight. Chris Christie leans to the left of even some Democrats NJ.com

Last year Chris Christie stated in a town hall meeting:

"Being in this country without proper documentation is not a crime," Christie told more than 60 residents and town officials. "The whole phrase of 'illegal immigrant' connotes that the person, by just being here, is committing a crime."

"Don't let people make you believe that that's a crime that the U.S. Attorney's Office should be doing something about," he added of entering the country illegally. "It is not."
Christie: Immigrants are not criminals - NJ.com

The desire to see Christie's selection in a positive live for right-wingers is so strong that even Numbers USA is touting Christie's stance. Time after time Christie has shown he is not for immigration enforcement as a top priority; however, in a post titled Pro-Enforcement Candidates win in Virginia and New Jersey they cite one instance where Christie opposes driver's licenses for undocumented migrants as a strong stance against immigration.

On Christie's website he makes no mention of immigration as an issue at all. It may be possible, as this article states, that this is a tactic to garner a broader range of support in this election, but the verve of his lashings against Cresitello would suggest that he really has no desire to make immigration enforcement, as a function of the state, a priority during his term.

However, we do need to look at his running mate Kim Guadagno:

Christie's running mate, Monmouth County Sheriff Kim Guadagno, heads one of only three jurisdictions in New Jersey that are in the program. Her support for 287g, and her nomination as Christie's running mate, has worried immigrant advocacy groups such as the Latino Leadership Alliance, which says the police can misuse the program for racial profiling. N.J. candidates on immigration - Philadelphia Inquirer

We'll need to watch closely to see how Christie's administration will deal with this issue. Will Christie allow Guadagno to invoke 287g and spread it around the state or will he stick to his original position? Currently Christie believes that immigration enforcement is a job of the federal government, but will he sway? Keeping pressure on his organization to protect immigrants will be very important in this state. With many viewing New Jersey's election as a hope for future Republican victories it may be too soon to say what will happen in New Jersey. Thankfully there are many wonderful pro-migrant groups in that state working to ensure migrants are treated as human beings and not criminals.

What do you think?

Further reading: Form The Sanctuary check out 287(g) Partners Dropping Like Flies.

Remember Marcelo Lucero

2009-11-06T13:24:35Z

Nearly one year ago, on November 8, 2008, Long Island resident Marcelo Lucero was beaten and stabbed to death by a group of local teens who had decided to go "beaner hopping." They had already assaulted other Latinos earlier that day. The group appears to me to have viewed racial attacks as a way to stave off boredom, regularly going after those they viewed as the most vulnerable and despised in their community: Latino immigrants.

Long Island Wins is sponsoring a campaign to remember Marcelo. Remembering Marcelo's life and his death is important to me because there have been too many racial attacks in Philadelphia as well. Some incidents date back years, like the attack against Julio Maldonado and Denis Calderon in 1996, where law enforcement sided with the persecutors instead of the victims. Immigrants are still being attacked today in our community, and for the same reasons that Marcelo was killed: they are viewed as enemies or threats by many in the community and also seen as easy targets. Local law enforcement here facilitates those kinds of crimes by targeting immigrants themselves, usually for minor traffic violations, and turning them over to ICE, ensuring that immigrant victims of crimes will be less willing to call the police for protection. This problem is not limited to Philly--Luis Ramirez was killed in Pottsville, PA, just months before Marcelo's death.

Long Island Wins and Marcelo's family have very effectively pushed back against the hate in their community, and I hope that other communities around the country can follow their example.

And as Ted Hesson of Long Island Wins pointed out, Congress could do a lot to solve the problem of hate crimes by passing immigration reform to bring people out of the shadows and into the scope of the protections that others in the community enjoy. Right now, too many people are invisible to all but those who wish them harm.

Ask Senator Feinstein to Stand Up for U.S. Citizen Children

2009-11-04T13:25:08Z

Activists in New York are disappointed:

When we elected Barack Obama as the President of the United States, we thought we were choosing change; we thought we were voting for humane immigration reform; we thought the separation of families would end. Now, less than a year later, we see that we were wrong.
Helen is asleep, dreaming of her lacrosse match the next day, the latest poem she has been working on and her weekend plans with friends from her church group. Suddenly, she is woken up, dragged from her bed at gunpoint and told that none of the things that she has been working toward and dreaming of are possible for her. Helen's dreams have been interrupted by a living nightmare.

The twist to this story is that Helen Mejia-Perez is a U.S. citizen. Her parents fled the turmoil in Guatemala in 1992, the tail end of a civil war in which the U.S. had a hand in creating. Now Helen's parents are about to be deported early tomorrow morning. At 13, Helen and her 4-year-old brother will have little choice but to go with their parents back to Guatemala. This is a de facto deportation of two U.S. citizens.

As these New York DreamActivists have ascertained, President Obama's DHS is pretty much the same as President Bush's DHS was. Getting deportation numbers up is priority number one. Worrying about the families that are torn apart, or Dream Act-eligible students deported, is at the bottom of the list.

Congress continues to shovel taxpayer money to DHS to fund enforcement efforts, while our local Philadelphia USCIS office is cutting personnel who work to help people navigate the system to obtain lawful status. As it gets harder and harder to obtain and maintain legal status, harder to become a citizen, it is easier than ever to be deported.

Meanwhile the administration and Democrats in Congress (with some exceptions) continue to stall and prevaricate about when they will introduce an immigration bill.

Join Mo at DreamActivist in asking Senator Feinstein to stand up for immigrant families, to stand up for the U.S. citizen children in her state:

Call Senator Feinstein: D.C.: (202) 224-3841 San Francisco: (415) 393-0707 Los Angeles: (310) 914-7300
"I was calling to ask why Senator Feinstein is not stepping in and allowing for United States citizens to be deported!"
Leave a message at each office and then rinse and repeat in a few hours. We have to make sure Feinstein knows we won't tolerate this from her.

Sign onto this letter at change.org, or to sign on as an organization, send an email to mo at dreamactivist dot org.

A Blog Post For My Grandfather: Valery Sergei de Beausset

2009-11-04T09:35:29Z

I have not written since my grandfather died. I have not let sadness overtake me either. I've wallowed in nothingness, occupying myself mostly with movies and online television shows. Writing it out, now, I realize that nothingness is worse than sadness. It certainly is no way to honor a life that was so full.

I've long imagined writing something brilliant about my grandfather, or my whole family, for that matter. As my grandfather's health deteriorated, I also imagined having something profound to say after his death. Writing that out feels macabre and self-indulgent. Weeks have passed and the words haven't come. There is a hallowed tradition of writing about those that have passed away. If this were an obituary I would start with: Valery Sergei de Beausset died on Oct. 18 in Grosse Ile, Michigan. He was 94 years old. Fortunately, The Ile Camera has already done an exemplary job of recounting the major facts of my grandfather's life in an obituary. Here are my favorite parts:

From 1946 to 1948, Mr. de Beausset worked for Intercontinental Corp. in Travancore, India, building a fertilizer factory.

From 1948 to 1958 he was the director of the engineering division of J.G. White Engineering Corp. for the economic development of China.

When Shanghai fell to the communists, he moved his team to Taiwan and his family joined him there. He was decorated with the Order of the Brilliant Star from the government of Taiwan in 1957.

From 1967 to 1974, Mr. de Beausset was a consultant for the development of Mexico, Bolivia, El Salvador, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela and Costa Rica and adviser to the president of the Central American Bank of Economic Development.

From 1979 to 1988, he was a consultant for the Agency for International Development to the government of Honduras for rural development.

"His main thing was trying to help the people of the underdeveloped countries," [Lee-Tai] McKissack said. "Besides his family, that was pretty much what he lived for."

[...]

In 2007 a documentary film was produced by the National Taiwan University Library of Taipei, Taiwan, of his work in that country.
Lena Khzouz Magyar - The Ile Camera (23 October 2009)

I once applied for a job writing and editing obituaries for the Boston Herald. I didn't get the job, but I remember walking away with the realization that an obituary is one place where you really don't want to get the facts wrong.

If this were an elegy, I would probably borrow a poem from someone else. The poetry has been sucked out of my writing by a combination of academic papers, freelance and opinion journalism, and blogging, in that order of importance. Fortunately, my aunt Lee-Tai already shared a beautiful poem with the family. My aunt Valerie read it at the memorial service, and scouring the Internet, I cannot find out who authored it:

The Broken Chain

We little knew that day,
God was going to call your name.
In life we loved you dearly,
In death, we do the same.

It broke our hearts to lose you.
You did not go alone.
For part of us went with you,
The day God called you home.

You left us beautiful memories,
Your love is still our guide.
And although we cannot see you,
You are always at our side.

Our family chain is broken,
And nothing seems the same,
But as God calls us one by one,
The chain will link again.

I guess this is closest to a eulogy, but I don't want to call it that. If this were a eulogy for my grandfather it would be better organized and every word would be well thought out. The eulogies were spoken by my father and my aunt Lee-Tai at the memorial service.

Instead, I'd like to call this a blog post for my grandfather. I'm writing it as I would write an email: a diarrhea of thoughts. After it is published, I will probably go back and change it as I notice typos and awkward turns of phrases. If my vulgar metaphor isn't hint enough, I say this not to elevate a blog post onto the same plane as other venerated literary traditions, but to emphasize the inadequacy of my words as a form of remembrance. Selfishly, writing about writing has also helped me to break my writer's block.

Part of the reason it is so difficult to write about my grandfather because I'm claiming his legacy in the act of doing so. I would be honored to claim all of my grandparents' legacies, but for now I feel that honor is best bestowed upon my parents, my aunts, and my living grandmother. They knew my grandparents better than I did, and I still have much to learn before I can be faithful to their memory.

For instance, one of the things that keeps coming to my mind when I think of my grandfather is the phrase "global citizen" which I hold so dear. I always imagined calling my grandfather a "global citizen," maybe even one of the first global citizens, because of his work in India, China, Taiwan, and Latin America. I'm not completely certain if "global citizen" accurately describes him, though, and I'm not sure if my grandmother, my father, and my four aunts would approve of that phrase. Making things even more complicated, I'm also personally trying to work out what the term "global citizen" means, and even more important, what it should mean. All that is left for me to do is to describe my grandfather as I knew him and hope that the rest works itself out.

I knew Valery Sergei de Beausset not as "Grandfather" or "Grandpa", but as "Voochie". That is what my sister and my five cousins and I affectionately called him. We also call our grandmother, Constance de Beausset, "Nana". Exactly how we got the names Nana and Voochie, I'm still not sure, but to any careful observer, those names are one of the first clues that the de Beausset family is no ordinary family.

Growing up, I knew Voochie mostly as a towering, strong, and wise old man. Towering, at almost 6 and a half feet tall, he's a major reason why my high school basketball coach recruited me at a young age. Alas, at only 6'1'', I was a disappointment. Strong, Voochie was still building and fixing things well into his 80s. Early on, not only did he build things like hydroelectric dams and factories for the majority world, the joke was that he could fix anything with bubble gum and a paper clip. My father takes after him in that way. Unfortunately, I don't. Wise, my iconic vision of Voochie is of him at his desk, always reading, writing, and coming up with solutions to the world's problems, large and small. I like to think that he left a little bit of that to everyone in our family.

I also remember how much he loved cookies. Whenever I visited it was always a challenge to keep the cookies away from Voochie so that kids like me could get some.

Those are the memories of the man I knew, but what inspired me most about him were the stories told of his past. Some were probably embellished, as all good stories should be, and others are probably forgotten forever.

There's stories of Voochie trekking through the Taiwanese jungle. To keep him safe, a member of a local tribe gave him a knife. The knife had stones on its side that were supposed to represent the amount of heads the knife had lopped off. He used it to fend off the other tribes of headhunters.

Then there's the stories of Voochie in the Mexican desert. When I was young, I remember distinctly trying to throw a knife into a palm tree when my father told me that Voochie was good at throwing knifes. Supposedly, Voochie threw knives in the Sonoran desert to kill rattlesnakes and then stuck the tales of the rattlesnakes in the sand to hear them shake in the wind. I remember Voochie disputing the details of that story later on. My father was very young at the time.

There's the story of how Voochie unknowingly helped to make the atomic bomb. There's the story of how he fled Russia as an infant just as communists were taking over, and the story of how decades he fled China just as communists were taking over. There's the story of how he went to Latin America after checking Taiwan off his list of places that needed help. There are stories of how he almost lost his life and the lives of all of his family members multiple times. It's no small miracle that there are members of the de Beausset family still alive today.

There are countless stories like these. I'm not even sure if I'm getting all the details right, and for once, I don't care. These are the stories I heard and was inspired by as a child. Most people hear these things in works of fiction, but these stories were alive for me in Voochie and my family.

Voochie's stories were made all the more real by the old house in Grosse Ile, where my grandparents' and aunt live. The house is filled with souvenirs from my family's travels in faraway lands. Everything in that house has a remarkable story. Voochies stories were also made real by the adventures my immediate family lived in our home of Guatemala. Headhunters and rattlesnakes seem farfetched in Suburbia, U.S.A., but not in war-torn Central America. The things my grandparents went through make put my trip through Mexico to shame.

Writing this it occurs to me that I've lost a little bit of my sense of imagination and wonderment. It's one of many lessons that I have to learn from Voochie. Another thing about Voochie is that he built created things that you can touch and point to as progress. There's a certain satisfaction to that tangibility. I deal a lot in abstractions. Even organizing, which is a little bit more tangible, is an abstraction. I remember getting that sense from my father, recently, too. There's something amazing about the aquaculture company my father helped build. I remember getting this sense watching the tractors sculpt ponds. In fact all of the men in my family build things. They are carpenters, architects, and mechanics. I'm not.

Or maybe the most important thing I have to learn from Voochie is that I have many more lessons to learn and many more adventures to seek. Maybe it's time I stepped away from the keyboard and started living more. I think I'll try and start right now.

Before I do though, I would be remiss if I didn't end this blog post with an action, something tangible. My grandmother, Nana, has asked that all donations in memory of Voochie be donated to El Hogar, an orphanage and school in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, that my grandparents helped found. You can read more about it here.

The Latest Facts on U.S. Migration From the Migration Information Source

2009-10-30T23:30:56Z

Kirin Kalia from Migration Information Source just emailed me with a link to this very helpful collection on the latest facts on U.S. migration. Stay informed. Facts are important unless you are Lou Dobbs.

Pro-Migrant SanctuarySphere: DREAMer Nightmares

2009-10-29T22:54:30Z

I'm hoping this post will mean the SanctuarySphere and my posting at Citizen Orange is back in swing. My apologies for the long absence.

DREAMer Nightmares refered from Dream Act Texas.

She is undocumented, but has been in this country since the age of three and is a top student at her high school. Yet, unless the law changes soon, she will be unable to continue with her studies. She tells my students at the University of Arizona that it is wrong that she will not be able to attend college next year: "I consider myself a U.S. citizen. It's the only country I've ever known."

Loco Lou Dobbs Claims he was Shot At! Blames Geraldo! ANTI Websites Reporting LIES as Truth! at Immigration Talk With A Mexican American.

"American" Apparel, Kidnappings, and Fines in Depression-era Immigration Enforcement at Smart Borders.

Despite the persistent high rate of unemployment in the United States, the need for comprehensive immigration reform is as urgent today as the first day Obama took office.

H-1B work visas go begging at Working Immigrants.

Labor Groups make the case for immigration reform at Standing Firm.

In THE CRIME: Sleeping While Chinese tasers continue to be the weapon of choice as if being shocked nearly is in some way humane.

Well, now we have another incident of Taser abuse in Eugene, Oregon (sombrero tip to Angry Asian Man) and believe it or not, it's by the same cop who tazed Van Ornum. This time, he sent 50,000 volts into the body of a human being for Sleeping While Chinese.

Julio Maldonado Deported to Peru

2009-10-28T02:12:51Z

Cross-posted at Young Philly Politics.

Julio Maldonado was deported to Peru on Thursday, October 22, 2009, after arriving in the U.S. 38 years ago at the age of 3.

He and his cousin, Denis Calderon, had been victims of an attack based on their ethnicity in 1996. Julio was wrongfully convicted of aggravated assault, incarcerated for a total of 8 years, and then deported.

His family's pleas for justice were ignored by local, state, and federal decisionmakers--except for the convicting judge, Judge Gregory Smith, who actually vacated his own verdict after an evidentiary rehearing. That decision was appealed by the District Attorney's office and overturned. A jury of Julio's peers also found him not guilty of the murder of one of his attackers. So how then was Julio locked up for so long and deported, when the convicting judge (in the aggravated assault trial) and the jury (in the murder trial) both decided he was not culpable?

When it came to wrongfully convicting, imprisoning, and deporting Julio, prosecutors and the Department of Homeland Security zealously worked to prevent a just result. When it came to acknowledging that a mistake had been made and families would be torn apart, everyone's hands were tied, from prosecutor Seth Williams to Governor Rendell (mayor of Philadelphia in 1996, now with the power to pardon an egregious error that occurred on his watch) to Thomas Decker, director of Immigration Customs and Enforcement in Philadelphia, to Janet Napolitano, head of DHS.

The case has broader significance, as Seth Williams will likely be Philadelphia's new District Attorney. He will have to decide, along with the mayor and police commissioner, whether to continue along Philadelphia's current track of close cooperation with ICE to target immigrant communities. Currently, Philly PD is routinely arresting Latin@ immigrants for minor traffic stops and turning them directly over to ICE, or actually joining ICE on home raids. This is in direct contravention of Mayor Nutter's expressed desire to make Philly an immigrant-friendly city. It is hard to be friendly when the immigrant community is terrified of the police, which is working hand in glove with the local ICE contingent to deport every last one of them.

Seth Williams didn't lift a finger to undo the damage he had done to Julio Maldonado and his family, despite repeated promises to the family. At least, we have no evidence he took any favorable action.

Will Philadelphia's elected officials side with the immigrant community, or with Lou Dobbs and others who want to see immigrants chased out of the U.S.? Right now, they are saying one thing and doing another.

[Image: Democratic candidate for District Attorney of Philadelphia, Seth Williams.]

Harvard Crimson Covers Gilchrist's Cancelled Invitation

2009-10-19T04:58:16Z

Harvard freshman Jacob D. Roberts '13 has easily written one of the most well-informed and balanced accounts, yet, of the cancellation of Jim Gilchrist's invitation to Harvard. Here is where Roberts quotes me:

The movement to ban Gilchrist from the conference was largely initiated by Kyle A. de Beausset '11, who in early October began using different university mailing lists to build support for uninviting Gilchrist due to his involvement in the Minuteman Project, which organizes civilians to patrol the border for illegal immigrants and to report crossings to the Border Patrol.

"It might be an interesting intellectual exercise for Harvard students to hear extremist views," de Beausset wrote in one of these e-mails, but he added that the "broader implications of legitimizing these extremist views with the Harvard name" were more important.

The movement to ban Gilchrist from the conference was largely initiated by Kyle A. de Beausset '11, who in early October began using different university mailing lists to build support for uninviting Gilchrist due to his involvement in the Minuteman Project, which organizes civilians to patrol the border for illegal immigrants and to report crossings to the Border Patrol.

"It might be an interesting intellectual exercise for Harvard students to hear extremist views," de Beausset wrote in one of these e-mails, but he added that the "broader implications of legitimizing these extremist views with the Harvard name" were more important.

"Jim Gilchrist's willingness to spout falsehoods shows that he shouldn't be given the legitimacy of open and free academic debate...His irresponsible rhetoric has led to violence," de Beausset told The Crimson in an interview.

[...]

Heated discussion ensued over some campus e-mail lists. Students on the Black Men's Forum e-mail list debated what constituted--in de Beausset's words--"free speech and hate speech...responsible dialogue and irresponsible rhetoric."
Jacob Roberts - Harvard Crimson (18 October 2009)

I wish Roberts would have called Gilchrist out on his lies a little bit more. I also wish that he would have brought up Gilchrist's ties with Shawna Forde. That's my job, though, and I'll continue to do it.

The Post-Gilchrist Reaction: "I Hope You Are A Victim of the Next 911 [Call]"

2009-10-18T19:34:44Z

After my appearance on the O'Reilly Factor on Friday night, I was flooded with facebook messages like this:

I hope you are a victim of the next 911 you piece of shit
Keith Glassman - Facebook Message (16 October 2009)

These were the reactions who found me through facebook by googling my name after the O'Reilly Factor. The only way I know how to interpet Keith Glassman's facebook message, is that he wishes me to have the same fate as 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father. Thankfully, I don't allow non-friends to have access to my profile. Admittedly, not all of the reactions were as hostile. Some conservatives even said they were impressed and asked to be friends. One of my favorite negative reactions was that of someone who spoke like she was my mother:

For a Harvard student, you really did not communicate well in your interview tonight. Maybe you were just nervous. One thing is certain, you could use a lesson on manners. When you extend an invitation to a speaker, you honor the invitation. Next time, don't invite him. Interestingly, when conservatives "un-invite" a guest it makes headline news. Funny that you ended up on FOX. Hmmm.

At least she can disagree without being disagreeable. Still, it wasn't just average folks that had hostile reactions. The nativist blog 24ahead, which I will not link to, called me a "fascist." I put up my post explaining my position over at Blue Mass. Group, yesterday hoping for some local support. Instead, BMG editor Bob Neer compared me to a chimpanzee.

This, of course, was all after Jim Gilchrist called me an "anarchist radical", and accused me of "threatening disruption and violence", of "terrorizing the Harvard Undergraduate Legal Committee (HULC)" and of making "serious threats." I also just saw that Jim Gilchrist went on Neil Cavuto's show and called me a "scoundrel", accused me of threatening to "create a riotous atmosphere" and said:

The kid is -- obviously he's stupid -- and if anyone should be banned and barred from Harvard University, it should be a student that stupid and irresponsible, not someone like myself.
Jim Gilchrist - Your World with Neil Cavuto (16 October 2009)

I'm sorry Mr. Gilchrist, I think understanding what it means to tell the truth is a prerequisite for admittance into Harvard. I will embed Gilchrist's entire interview with Neil Cavuto, below:

Recently, Fox news is catching a lot of flack from the Obama administration for not being a real news organization. All one needs to do is compare Niel Cavuto's interview with Jim Gilchrist and Juan Williams interview with me to know that's the truth. I got just two minutes to make my case while Jim Gilchrist got five minutes to make his case. In addition letting Gilchrist spread falsehoods on his show, Cavuto also lobbed softball questions at Gilchrist like:

Did they know that you were a Purple Heart recipient, you're a war hero? Do they know the injuries and near-death experience you had defending liberties of this country? I don't want to sound cooky and all but you're not some nut, you're not some crazy, you're -- I know you're a modest guy, but people who don't know you -- you're a genuine hero.
Neil Cavuto - Your World with Neil Cavuto (16 October 2009)

Needless to say, I've taken quite a beating over the past few days. I have to hand it to Jim Gilchrist. Gilchrist might be an extremist who is complicit in violence, but he is also a skilled propagandist. By propagating the complete falsehood that students like myself threatened him with violence, Gilchrist is obfuscating his complicity in violence through his relationship with Shawna Forde, another Minuteman leader.

I also have made missteps. I went on the O'Reilly Factor preparing to get hit with the free speech argument so I lead by rebutting that. In doing so, I've made this a conversation about free speech, instead of what this is really about, which is the extremist anti-migrant rhetoric which is directly responsible for increasing hate crimes against Latinos, and the death of people like 9-year-old Brisenia Flores. I've learned my lesson. Lead with you're most important talking point. Television is not conducive to laying out rational arguments. As Erin Rosa said on my facebook profile "We gotta be prepared to tell our side in 30 seconds at most."

Fortunately, all of the negativity and all of my missteps have been outweighed by the unbelievable support I've received not only from family and friends, but by the hundreds of pro-migrant supporters I've connected with over the years. Migrant advocacy organizations are pouring money into capturing "persuadables" online, which is important. However, I have long argued that the best investment to be made online is in strengthening pro-migrant online spaces, not in changing already established online spaces. This specific incident is the first time I've truly seen both the fruits of my labor and my argument proven right.

Anyone who follows my writing knows that I take journalistic standards very seriously, and I can honestly say that the support I've received online through facebook, twitter, email, and the comments here and on other blogs, easily beats all of the negativity I've received. For me, that sends a powerful message. I can't compete with Fox News in their medium, but online, pro-migrant folks rule. It's impossible for me to thank everyone who's shown support without leaving people out so please accept this post as a token of my gratitude and a sign that the work we're doing is working.

Video of Kyle de Beausset on the O'Reilly Factor

2009-10-17T13:50:59Z

Thanks to Jackie Mahendra at America's Voice for recording this video and sending this over to me.

Again, not the best performance. I wasn't able to make the most important point. I learned my lesson. Lead off with your most important talking point. Still my face when they cut me off is priceless. It cracks me up every time.