LatinaLista — It’s a safe bet to say the country is awash in “momentum.”
There’s momentum building for next week’s Democratic convention. There’s momentum building as to who will be the running mates for both presidential candidates and there’s another momentum, that so far has been under the radar — but it’s growing.
The momentum is for a national call for a moratorium on immigration raids.
Yet, before you roll your eyes and say “heard that before,” this time it’s a little different.
This momentum has taken on a new twist that will make it very hard to ignore — or stop.
The latest call for a moratorium on immigration raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch of the Department of Homeland Security is a person who was an eyewitness to the human toll of the biggest raid in the nation which took place at Postville, Iowa.
The eyewitness, Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas, is a federal translator who saw how the Guatemalan and Mexican undocumented immigrants never had a chance to defend themselves or their families before being deported.
Dr. Camayd-Freixas’ call for moratorium on the raids differs from today’s call by Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin or Congressman Luis V. Gutierrez’ action because Camayd-Freixas isn’t just looking for the clergy or a particular politician to voice the call for a moratorium but is tapping organizations across the nation to unite their voices.
And there won’t be just a press conference with representatives from all the participating organizations standing as a backdrop to whomever is at the podium imploring the Administration to halt immigration raids, there will be something more:
The idea is to gather resolutions and statements from the different organizations and put together a package that shows the broad support and the different arguments in favor of a moratorium, in order to bolster congressional efforts in this regard.
The legal community, the labor movement, religious and interfaith coalitions,
and civic organizations are invited to join in.
In the meantime, while Dr. Camayd-Freixas compiles the necessary information to present to Congress, there are other groups who want to jumpstart the moratorium momentum.
One of the first groups to do this is in Chicago where tomorrow, August 22, the national launch of the “Ya Basta” campaign will be announced.
“Ya Basta” translates into “Enough Already” and it’s the sentiment that many Latino communities share as they are being targeted for immigration enforcement by ICE officials.
It’s one thing to enforce the law. It’s another to instill fear and intimidation on a sizeable portion of the population.
When that happens, it then borders on whether that’s enforcement or harassment.
Comment(11)
EYES OF TEXAS
If I want to catch fish I look in the oceans, rivers and lakes. If I want to find deer I look in forests. If I want to find birds I look in marsh lands and meadows.If ICE wants to find illegal aliens, it only stands to reason they would look in Hispanic communities. ICE is doing the job they were trained for and are paid to do. All those in this country illegally knew before hand exactly what the consequences of their actions could result in. Stop the whinning and support law enforcement for the protection of all American citizens.
Frank
I will just address the last two sentences.
How does one enforce the law without causing fear, intimidation or harrassment of the guilty parties of a crime? Not that I agree that this is always the case anyway. Different circumstances call for different methods. If some law enforcemnt officials are not following policy, then they should be investigated but you don’t shut down the whole department and stop enforcing laws altogether.
Yes, the sizeable population of illegal aliens are Hispanics so the point is?
Is one implying that legal Hispanic citizens should fear? They have no reason to. Except for a rare mistaken identity case, what is the problem?
Legal Hispanic citizens can prove that they are here legally just as any white, black or asian person can. It is called valid I.D.
laura
I was very glad to read your story, Marisa.This campaign is extremely urgent and actually long overdue. For me, it is overdue since the egregious human rights violations committed by ICE in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
I don’t think ICE is committing harassment. I think they are trying to terrorize all people of Latina/o descent, US citizens or otherwise, who have visa status or not. That is why they have imprisoned and deported many Latino/a US citizens already.
Their brutality and contempt for the human rights of mothers and children is part of a bigger picture: the Bush administration’s contempt for the lives of all human beings who are not their rich white friends. We saw this in New Orleans, we are seeing it in Iraq (where the lives of Iraqi people and of US soldiers are almost equally expendable), we see it in the VA hospitals, we actually see it in many civilian hospitals right here in the US – in varying degrees, the same contempt for human life is acted out by Bush and his underlings.
In ICE, his top underling is Julie Myers, the woman who last Halloween gave the “Most Original Costume” prize at an ICE Halloween party to a white ICE official in blackface, with a dreadlock wig, dressed in prison stripes.
These rogue racists are the people Bush is unleashing on Latina/o families.
This campaign deserves our utmost energy and dedication. Ya Basta.
Gabriela
The illegal immigration is only half of the “problemâ€, there are farmers and employers of all kind of business desperate for people that willing to make low pay jobs, many people can’t understand that, or don’t want to understand that, raids and deportation ARE NOT THE ANSWER, ICE have to do their job, but their job is not necessarily to raid in that inhumane way!. We need a guest work program that give the employers that need it the opportunity to bring the workers that want and can do the job. I live in Wisconsin in a small city; if all the undocumented workers would be deported our city would collapse because they are the ones who work in farms that sustain our economy!
For all of you that hate all illegal immigrants, be honest and answer to yourself. What would you do if the economy becomes so bad that your children are starving and family or friends call you and tells you that there are jobs available in another country? Would you wait until your children starve? Would you immigrate illegally?
Frank
laura, why in the world would a government enity such as ICE have an agenda to terrorize all Latinos in this country whether they be here legally or illegally? You are not making any sense at all. What would be the purpose of that? What is so damn special about Latinos that they would require that kind of attention from law enforcement?
Evelyn
Frank :
laura, why in the world would a government enity such as ICE have an agenda to terrorize all Latinos in this country whether they be here legally or illegally? You are not making any sense at all. What would be the purpose of that? What is so damn special about Latinos that they would require that kind of attention from law enforcement?
E
Laura makes perfect sence.
To apease the racist Republicans. It is easier for Bush to scapegoat his administration’s failure to what he determined were the weakest people here, (Hispanics and Hispanic immigrants) then to stand up like the man he isnt, and take responsibility for his dispicable lies and behavior.
They did it!!! It’s their fault!!!
He uses racists to refocus his failures on immigrants and Hispanics.
He plays racists like any one of the great masters plays the violin!
The racist Sensenbrenner bill HR-4437 came out exacally when it was discovered their were no wepons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the Republicans needed mass distraction because there was talk of impeachment. They needed the heat off of them.
It worked!
Bush is still in office aided and abetted by the ignorant far right, wing nut racists who happily made up lies to demonize everything Mexican and refocus the heat to let the chimp from Texas off the hook.
Michaela
Gabriela stated:
For all of you that hate all illegal immigrants, be honest and answer to yourself. What would you do if the economy becomes so bad that your children are starving and family or friends call you and tells you that there are jobs available in another country? Would you wait until your children starve? Would you immigrate illegally?
Gabriela, you have to be reasonable. Mexico needs to take care of their own starving people. What is this arrogance that Hispanics have that demands the United States has to take care of them? Mexico feels absolutely NO responsibility to take care of America’s poor. Why the hell are we supposed to take care of Mexico’s poor??? I just do not understand this sense of entitlement Mexican people have..
Frank
Well since “racists” are among the “minority” in this country, it doesn’t make any sense to appease THEM now does it? It makes more sense to appease the “majority.”
Since the majority of illegals in this country are Hispanics, it only stands to reason that they would be caught up in the raids more than any other illegal alien group, doesn’t it?
Wasn’t it Bush that wanted amnesty for them? Isn’t it the Republicans that supposedly wanted the cheap labor. There are so many holes in your theory that it looks like swiss cheese.
Bush supposedly wanting to cover up his bad decisions in such a lame suggested manner doesn’t seem to have worked does it? The majority of Americans hate him, including his own party.
Evelyn Chavez
Michaela said
Mexico needs to take care of their own starving people. What is this arrogance that Hispanics have that demands the United States has to take care of them? Mexico feels absolutely NO responsibility to take care of America’s poor. Why the hell are we supposed to take care of Mexico’s poor??? I just do not understand this sense of entitlement Mexican people have..
E
It has nothing to do with sence of entitlement.
It has everything to do with the fact that the American Government cant keep their hands out of the cookie jar in those countries.
The people that come here are just following the wealth of their countries which is siphoned to the U.S. because of our greed.
People in those countries have tried to change their countries with their vote and other ways, but the United States wont let them. Explanation below.
Mexico – Ohio Con Salsa
By Greg Palast
7-7-2007
‘Senor Blank-O’ Wins In Mexico
And the winner in Mexico’s presidential contest is Senor Blank-O!
The official count of the ruling party is: 36.38% for the ruling party and 35.34% for the challenger.
Or, to put names and numbers to it: The Bush-o-philiac candidate, Felipe Calderon, collected 402,000 more votes than Bush-bashed Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. But the big winner was Mr. Blank — the 827,000 ballots without a mark for president.
I smell something rotten eau d’Ohio, vintage 2004. In that state, as in Mexico this week, the presidential “winner,” George Bush, had victory margin smaller than the combined “undercount” (blank ballots) and rejected and mangled ballots.
Blank ballots are rarely random – in the USA, nearly 88% were cast in 2004, notably, in minority areas, the result of bad voting machines. That is, Democrats’ ballots “spoil” and “blank out” a heck of a lot more often than Republican ballots. What about in Mexico?
I intend to find out. As soon as I saw the “official” vote count, I booked a plane to Mexico City. I’ll be there to tomorrow to join our investigators on the ground – and to fill in the blanks.
And what about the “spoiled” vote – ballots rejected, lost, mangled? Well, some are sitting in dumpsters in Veracruz State which is controlled by the old ruling PRI. (There’s a darn good chance that the PRI, hoping to stave off its extinction, played a bigger role than Calderon’s PAN in shoplifting votes from challenger Lopez Obrador.)
In a prior missive, I noted that the Bush Administration, under the guise of a secret War on Terror contract, hired ChoicePoint Inc. to filch the voter and citizen files of Mexico. These are the same characters (the Bushes and ChoicePoint) who helped purge Florida’s voter rolls of African-Americans before the 2000 race. Were the Mexican rolls “scrubbed” with Dubya’s help?
And what exactly was the International Republican Institute, the imperial arm of the GOP, doing down there? Shouldn’t someone ask? Shouldn’t someone investigate?
Too many uncounted votes, too many blocked voters, too many statistics missing from the official tallies to jump to the automatic conclusion of US mainstream media, that this election was Mexico’s first “clean” vote. It may look clean and neat from the Intercontinental Hotel in Mexico City where reporters shuttle from bar to press conference. But sniffing into the garbage piles and ballot piles of Veracruz, it smells more like Ohio con salsa.
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Placing Blame for Mexico’s Ills
By Marla Dickerson
July 01, 2006
Many Americans are angry that as many as 12 million illegal immigrants, mostly Mexican, are living in the U.S., driven by lack of opportunities at home. Critics are demanding that Mexico right its stumbling economy, create jobs for its people and end its de facto development strategy of shipping its problems north of the border.
But some experts say U.S. economic policies have played a role in fueling the mass exodus. Pushed hard by the United States, Mexico began embracing the Washington-backed prescription of privatization, free trade and government austerity in the early 1980s. A quarter of a century later, the results are decidedly mixed and are the heart of Sunday’s cliffhanger presidential election in Mexico.
The contest pits leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who wants to boost social spending and rethink the NAFTA relationship, against conservative Felipe Calderon, who wants to maintain Mexico’s policy on free trade and open the country’s state-controlled energy sector to private investment. Their divergent views reflect the soaring achievements and bitter disappointments that have accompanied Mexico’s economic restructuring.
In the end Lopez Obrador lost the election by a very small margin and it is fact that Bush administration had a hand in it.
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El Salvador, 1980-92:
El Salvador’s dissidents tried to work within the system. But with U.S. support, the government made that impossible, using repeated electoral fraud and murdering hundreds of protesters and strikers. In 1980, the dissidents took to the gun, and civil war.
Officially, the U.S. military presence in El Salvador was limited to an advisory capacity. In actuality, military and CIA personnel played a more active role on a continuous basis. About 20 Americans were killed or wounded in helicopter and plane crashes while flying reconnaissance or other missions over combat areas, and considerable evidence surfaced of a U.S. role in the ground fighting as well. The war came to an official end in 1992; 75,000 civilian deaths and the U.S. Treasury depleted by six billion dollars. Meaningful social change has been largely thwarted. A handful of the wealthy still own the country, the poor remain as ever, and dissidents still have to fear right-wing death squads.
Haiti, 1987-94:
The U.S. supported the Duvalier family dictatorship for 30 years, then opposed the reformist priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Meanwhile, the CIA was working intimately with death squads, torturers, and drug traffickers. With this as background, the Clinton White House found itself in the awkward position of having to pretend-because of all their rhetoric about “democracy”-that they supported Aristide’s return to power in Haiti after he had been ousted in a 1991 military coup. After delaying his return for more than two years, Washington finally had its military restore Aristide to office, but only after obliging the priest to guarantee that he would not help the poor at the expense of the rich, and that he would stick closely to free-market economics. This meant that Haiti would continue to be the assembly plant of the Western Hemisphere, with its workers receiving literally starvation wages.
Dominican Republic, 1963-66:
In February 1963, Juan Bosch took office as the first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic since 1924. Here at last was John F. Kennedy’s liberal anti-Communist, to counter the charge that the U.S. supported only military dictatorships. Bosch’s government was to be the long sought ” showcase of democracy ” that would put the lie to Fidel Castro. He was given the grand treatment in Washington shortly before he took office.
Bosch was true to his beliefs. He called for land reform, low-rent housing, modest nationalization of business, and foreign investment provided it was not excessively exploitative of the country and other policies making up the program of any liberal Third World leader serious about social change. He was likewise serious about civil liberties: Communists, or those labeled as such, were not to be persecuted unless they actually violated the law.
A number of American officials and congresspeople expressed their discomfort with Bosch’s plans, as well as his stance of independence from the United States. Land reform and nationalization are always touchy issues in Washington, the stuff that “creeping socialism” is made of. In several quarters of the U.S. press Bosch was red-baited.
In September, the military boots marched. Bosch was out. The United States, which could discourage a military coup in Latin America with a frown, did nothing.
Nineteen months later, a revolt broke out which promised to put the exiled Bosch back into power. The United States sent 23,000 troops to help crush it.
Guatemala, 1953-1990s:
A CIA-organized coup overthrew the democratically-elected and progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 40 years of death-squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, totaling well over 100,000 victims -indisputably one of the most inhuman chapters of the 20th century. Arbenz had nationalized the U.S. firm, United Fruit Company, which had extremely close ties to the American power elite. As justification for the coup, Washington declared that Guatemala had been on the verge of a Soviet takeover, when in fact the Russians had so little interest in the country that it didn’t even maintain diplomatic relations. The real problem in the eyes of Washington, in addition to United Fruit, was the danger of Guatemala’s social democracy spreading to other countries in Latin America.
Evelyn Chavez
The refocus to immigration that Bush Administration’s created worked at that time because most talk of impeachment was stopped and Americans focused their outrage on immigrants.
Now that the American people know the TRUTH about immigrants and immigration, they no longer make it the number 1 priority in this country.
When all the lies used to demonize immigrants were exposed, most Americans no longer see the immigrants as a threat.
It has taken 2 years to accomplish this.
You are correct.
In the long run Bush’s’ plan didnt work. His refocusing plan came back to slap him in the face.
(Edited by Latina Lista moderator)
Frank
There are no lies floating around about “immigrants.” As for illegal aliens they violated our immigration laws and the penalty for that is deportation. That is all that needs to be said on this issue.
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