Hóla Casa San Jose Amigos,
Your
help is still needed:
Two
more meetings of the Welcoming Pittsburgh Initiative are
being held, and it would be great to have our supporters there:
· MAY 23RD, 6-8 PM THE ALLOY STUDIOS 5530 PENN AVE.
· MAY
25TH, 6-8 PM YWCA GREATER PITTSBURGH 305 WOOD ST.,
Thank
you again to the 30 attorneys that signed up to be
“on call” one day a month to help us get immediate information from ICE about
new detainees. We welcome even more, which will help spread out the “on call”
times – so if you would like to do this, please contact Monica at monica@casasanjose.org.
Political action:
Here’s another powerful way to influence
legislators and change minds: please write a letter to the editor or an op-ed
piece. Even in
the age of Twitter these have a big impact, especially as they are carefully
monitored and paid attention to by local politicians and their staffs. It’s not hard, really! Letters are around 250
words, about ¼ the length of this email. It’s a time-honored tradition of civic
engagement.
· How to
submit opinions to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Or the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Or find a neighborhood publication where you live.
· Tips
on increasing impact: include your
legislators’ names in the text so they are alerted; add personal experiences;
make just one point clearly, i.e. “I support sanctuary policies because...”
· General tips
and newspaper contacts from the ACLU.
For samples, just read the ones that are
published in your paper.
Please watch and post this engaging, short, clear
video
explanation of how the immigration system now makes
it almost impossible to do legally. (You
could also put it in your own words to write that letter to the editor above J.)
Every other Friday at noon, PICC (Pennsylvania
Immigration and Citizenship Coalition, one of our partners) has a call-in
meeting, which you can join either by phone or
computer. In addition to getting the
latest information from PICC HQ in Philly on how to stop the anti-immigration
legislation in Harrisburg, and more on immigration-related topics, people join
from all over the state to report on what’s happening in their areas. (It’s OK
to just listen in.) Sign up here for this and other
PICC events.
More news:
On Port Authority's proof of payment policy. We
appreciate that the Port Authority has decided to delay implementation of the
proof of payment policy on the T until later in the summer, but this step is
not sufficient. Our coalition is asking the agency to halt the implementation
of the policy until it has gone through a legitimate public process. This was
covered recently in the Post-Gazette.
On Thursday, May
18, protesters organized by
the Thomas Merton Center demonstrated
outside the offices of local Pittsburgh company DCK Worldwide,
to ask that it pledge – as several other similar firms have done – not to
profit from border wall construction.
DCK has been involved in the construction of several US detention
centers and is thought to have an interest in bidding to build the wall on the
Mexican border.
Also on Thursday as part of Casa San Jose’s Latino Youth program “Jovenes
con proposito”, young people at Brashear High School were able to ask questions
of immigration attorney and Casa board member Kristen Schneck about their
worries related to police action. A
number of them had expressed their anxiety about what could happen to them as
they walked down the street or drove in a car, and so Monica and Jeimy
organized this to give them solid information about their rights.
Finally, on this
same day, the Carnegie Library in Beechview hosted a session where Attorney Schneck and Casa San Jose staff helped
our clients fill out Deportation Defense Packets which plan for the care of their children in the event that the parents
are apprehended by ICE, and
make sure that the schools their children attend have sufficient emergency
contacts listed in case something happens to them.
Our story, episode 9: “Fourteen more”
This week we don’t have many
specifics on arrests mainly because they are coming in more quickly and it has
been hard to keep track of all the details.
On Friday May 12, 2017 one of our clients, a landscaper, drove to
Beechview to pick up two brothers who work with him. As the brothers were
leaving their home, ICE came out of a hiding place, stopped them and asked the
driver (our client) for papers. Our client has 3 children: a Mexican-born
13-year-old and 2 other children ages 4 and 5, born in the US. All of the
men were taken to ICE offices on the Southside and subsequently transferred to
the detainment facility in Cambria County. Our client’s wife has retained
a local immigration attorney, who is trying to get him released on bond,
costing them thousands of dollars.
The other 2 have prior deportations so will
probably not be released. We know one of the brothers is married; his wife and 2-year-old
child are in Mexico. The other brother is also married and living with
his wife and 2 children, ages 4 months and 4 years old, in Brookline.
A few days later, Pastor
Valentino stopped at our office and brought in information about 11 more
detainees. It seems that 6 of them were
driving in from Indiana to work here, and were stopped Sunday and sent to detention
in Cambria. The other 5 were working at
one job site and on their way to another one in Washington County – and were
taken on Tuesday in the middle of the day.
One thing we discovered when following up on this
is that the state keeps a public database, whose main purpose is to give
information to crime victims. But it
also helps those who believe people were unjustly imprisoned, by letting them
look up where they are being held, their status, and their detention numbers. The database is available on the Pennsylvania SAVIN website.
Suggested if you’d like to read or hear more:
Pain
of deportation swells when children are left behind. From the New
York Times.
Report
on a current legal battle that “will profoundly impact
access to legal representation for the tens of thousands of immigrants who
apply for asylum in the United States every year and the hundreds of thousands
of undocumented immigrants whose cases are currently in front of an immigration
judge. From The Nation.
An
underground college for undocumented immigrants: refused admission by public universities and unable to get funding from
private ones, aspiring students find another way. From The
New Yorker.
Facing a
population decline, Baltimore set up a legal defense fund for immigrants.
From National Public Radio.
Thank you for
joining us.
