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Refugees Cast in ‘The Jungle’, an Earnest Play about Migrant Camp Life in Calais

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As a response to its successful run at the Young Vic (December 2017-January 2018), The Jungle opened at Playhouse Theatre in London in June 2018 for a 20-week engagement. Created by Joe Robertson and Joe Murphy and directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, The Jungle tells the stories of the inhabitants of the makeshift camp in Calais, France, known as the Jungle.

The Jungle was an unofficial refugee camp with more than 8,000 individuals from over 17 countries including Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Libya, Somalia, Egypt, Chad, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kurdistan, and Iran. The inhabitants of the camp were awaiting a chance to cross the Channel to the UK.   [Read more…]

President Trump Admin Took Millions From FEMA For ICE Detentions | Video Worth Watching

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From the MSNBC YouTube website:

Senator Jeff Merkley talks with Rachel Maddow about a document showing that the Trump administration took ten million dollars from FEMA’s budget ahead of the 2018 hurricane season and gave it to ICE to pay for detentions.

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As Immigrant Children Contemplate Suicide, Trump Administration Moves to Extend Detentions

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Having been stymied in attempts to circumvent the 1997 Flores ruling which set standards for children in immigration detention centers, the Trump administration is proposing new federal regulations with sweeping implications.

The more than 200-page proposed regulation would give the administration much broader authority over how undocumented immigrant children are treated in its care. Publication of the proposal in the Federal Register on Friday will kick off a 60-day window for the public to comment, after which the administration can move to certify the regulations as final.

Meanwhile, Pro-Publica Illinois and Mother Jones have jointly published a story based on confidential documents providing an overview of the inner workings and life inside one of the country’s largest shelter networks for unaccompanied minors,     [Read more…]

‘I Have a Dream’ at the San Diego-Mexico Border and Reflections on 1968

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By Rev. Richard Lawrence

1968 came back to me when I stood with Martin Luther King, III, at the Border on August 28 and listened to folks on the other side of the Border holler in pure delight that the day had finally come when a black leader stood tall in the fight for a just immigration policy.

King, III, took us back to his father’s “I Have a Dream Speech” fifty-five years ago and reminded us that there’s no room for leaders who separate children from their parents in the world his father envisioned. No. Dr. King wanted to build bridges, not barriers, to freedom.   [Read more…]

Is Bank of America ‘Just Following Orders’ by Asking Citizenship Status Questions?

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It’s not just ICE and local bigots harassing immigrants and people who they think might be immigrants anymore.

Activists are claiming U.S. financial institutions, encouraged by the Department of Treasury, are including citizenship status as part of the Customer Identification Program provision of the USA Patriot Act, even though it is not legally required.

What this means in practical terms is that existing customers, like Josh Collins and wife Jessica Salazar Collins who thought envelopes from Bank of America were junk mail, are having their accounts suspended until such time as questions about citizenship are answered.
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Don’t Get Distracted: 565 Immigrant Children Are Still Held by U.S. Authorities

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By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

Amid a news cycle dominated by the day-to-day chaos, antics, and scandals of the Trump presidency, new government numbers released on Thursday offered a grim reminder that the humanitarian travesty sparked by President Donald Trump’s inhumane family separation policy is still ongoing, despite the fact that it has faded into the background of corporate news coverage.

In court filings on Thursday, lawyers for the Trump Justice Department said that 565 immigrant children remain separated from their parents and held in detention facilities more than three weeks after the court-mandated deadline for reunification.

While immigrant rights activists and advocacy groups have continued calling attention to the crisis and working tirelessly to ensure that every child is ultimately reunited with their families, much of the media “has largely moved on, worn out and dazzled by other outrages,” observed Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur.   [Read more…]

Immigrant Families, Food, and Stalking a Border Town Greyhound Bus Station

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Helping others is not political. It’s good for the soul. When you help others, you forget about your own problems for awhile. In addition, nobody should make you feel bad about who you decide to help. In my case, as a writer, I have interviewed many good folks assisting others — be they two-legged or four-legged — and ended up also giving to many charitable human and animal organizations.

I had wanted to find a way to help the mothers and especially the children in detention centers. My first thought was to bring stuffed animals to comfort the children at one of the centers, but that didn’t work out.

Then a successful business woman I know, who came here from Central America more than 30 years ago, told me about going to the local bus station to bring things to the mothers and children ICE was dropping off there. I decided that was a concrete way I could help.   [Read more…]

GOP Ghouls Ready to Go After Green Card Holders, Legal Immigrants Looking for Citizenship

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According to NBC News, the Trump administration is in the late stages of developing policies aimed at keeping as many as 20 million legal immigrants from gaining green cards or applying for citizenship.

Using the same rationale employed during the 1930s to block Jewish refugees from settling in the U.S., persons deemed as potential, past, or current “public charges,” will be deemed ineligible for permanent residency. The slight of hand needed to make this happen involves labeling virtually all government programs as ‘welfare.’

The NBC report profiles a 55-year-old Haitian man who has been in the country since 1989, works eighty hours a week at two jobs, and is a homeowner. Because he required government assistance to care for his US-born daughter’s severe disabilities, his quest for citizenship–already in trouble due to another policy reversal–is likely to end in failure.      [Read more…]

Abolish ICE: Why We Need to Abolish Immigrations and Customs Enforcement | Video Worth Watching

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From the Now This YouTube page:

Sean McElwee, co-founder of Data for Progress, thinks ICE should be abolished.

“ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was created in 2003, as part of post-9/11 legislation that housed immigration enforcement under the Department of Homeland Security,” he explained. “This signaled a shift towards viewing immigrants as the threat to national security.”

After 9/11, immigrants were seen as a terrorist threat, and the policies that followed were created for mass migrant deportation. Trump and Stephen Miller have not only enforced this anti-immigration strategy, but increased it with aggressive, inhumane measures like their zero tolerance policy. ICE has been in the middle of all of this, and have become synonymous with these practices that are tearing families apart and causing long-term residents in the country to self-deport.

“We need to stop deporting people for what is fundamentally the civil violation of being in this country without documentation. We choose as a society what is criminalized and how those laws are enforced,” said McElwee. “We don’t have a militarized police force to prosecute financial crimes because the people who commit those crimes are powerful white men. We have to dismantle not just ICE, but the thousands of small offenses that put people on ICE’s radar. From marijuana possession to turnstile jumping, people enter into ICE’s net through over-criminalization.”

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How U.S. Involvement In Central America Led To a Border Crisis | Video Worth Watching

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So many of the recent asylum seekers along our southern border are from the Central American nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Is this just coincidence? Hardly. For anyone that’s used the term “Banana Republic” without being clear how that term originated (actually, even if you do know how the history of that term), here’s a brief look back at how U.S. involvement In Central America led to our current border crisis.   [Read more…]

The Shape of the Human Heart | Readers Write

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By Trevor Barton

As an elementary school teacher and a writer, I often recognize my students as the shape of the human heart.

One of those students is Maria, a 7-year-old second-grader. Her parents fled the after-effects of the brutal civil war in El Salvador and found a new life on the farms and in the fields of South Carolina.

She is like those farms and fields, with dark skin the color of the ground and a garden of a heart that produces love and joy as if they were tomatoes and beans.

I have seen her hold the hand of a frightened kindergartner in the cafeteria lunch line during early morning breakfast and offer her shoulder to a crying friend who scraped her knee on the blacktop during recess. She is a beautiful child.   [Read more…]

Immigrant Family Reunification Falls Way Short

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It’s been nine weeks since U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw gave the government a deadline for reuniting the more than 2,500 children who were taken from parents apprehended while crossing the border.

This isn’t over. What passes for compliance in the eyes of the court and the chattering class on cable news doesn’t match reality for hundreds of parents and children.

As the deadline came and went dozens of children and their parents engaged in non-violent civil disobedience at the U.S. Capitol proclaiming I AM A CHILD. They sang lullabies and drew pictures of their families to remind elected leaders that all children are human beings who belong with their families.

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