• Listen to this segment

Last week, HURRICANE, or The Human Rights Immigrant Community Action Network, an initiative of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) released a report on U.S. violations of the rights of immigrant families, workers and communities titled “Guilty by Immigration Status”. The report provides a picture of a troubling pattern of systemic abuse requiring further investigation and documentation. The various cases point to longstanding problems and concerns that reproduce a climate of impunity, in particular: 1) rampant due process violations, and 2) a glaring lack of accountability and oversight in immigration enforcement and services. The report goes on to say that immigration policing – using immigration status to implement repressive policies to detain persons – is now pervasive as a draconian form of social, economic and political control from the womb to the workplace. The vast majority of those targeted for deportation are immigrants, non-citizens and citizens of color, or those who “look or sound” foreign. There is mounting evidence that DHS-led immigration policing is fueling widespread racial, ethnic/nationality and religious profiling and criminalization, one of the central pillars of the new immigration enforcement regime. Immigrant and non-immigrant members of our communities are paying a severe price, ending up in prison and being deported in droves.

GUEST: Laura Rivas, Coordinator of the Hurricane Initiative For more information, visit www.nnirr.org/