From Cuéntame:

Last week, Cuéntame launched a powerful animated video exposing private prison corporations. The first of a sustained documentary campaign to expose the greed and the abuse by CCA (Corrections Corporation of America), The Geo Group and Management and Training corporations – which combined currently profit more than $5 billion a year at the expense of the detention and abuse of our immigrant community.

Already media outlets have taken notice and our video has been played in full on MSNBC, The Nation, Hola TV, The Huffington Post among many others. It won’t be long before private prison corporations begin retaliating and will put their unlimited resources in efforts to derail our powerful exposé.

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This is why we need your support today! Here are two ways you can help us prepare for the battle ahead and continue producing our documentary:

1.   Donate $20 that will go directly to our efforts and make sure we continue making a powerful impact.

2.   We need you to recruit at least 5 of your friends by sharing our animated video on your Facebook wall or by forwarding this email and letting us know what your friends thought by posting a comment on our Facebook page wall.

The battle ahead won’t be easy but with your support and building strength in numbers we will be ready to take it on. We hope you enjoy our latest work by checking out some of our videos below.

- Axel Caballero and the rest of the Cuéntame team

Immigrants For Sale [ immigrantsforsale.org ]

•   Private prison using chemicals on detained migrants: — Cuéntame locked an exclusive interview with an ex CCA employee – here is a preview. The revelations are horrifying – including the use of chemicals and agents to quell detained migrants. Stay tuned for the full story. [ MORE VIDEOS ] [ IMMIGRANTSFORSALE.ORG ]

•   Journey through Georgia: Victims of private prisons: — Pedro Guzman was locked-up in a private detention facility for 19 months because of a procedural mistake. His wife Emily has gone through great lengths to get him out here is a preview of their powerful journey. Stay tuned for the full story. [ VIDEO ]

•   MSNBC’s ‘The Last Word’ covers Cuéntame: — Thanks to all of your help in sharing the ‘Immigrants for Sale‘ video. We now need to double our effort! Please continue to make a difference by sharing the video with your friends and letting them know about our work! [ VIDEO ]

•   Boycott Georgia corporations funding discrimination!: Georgia has followed in Arizona’s footsteps with discriminatory bill HB87. Like in AZ, the discriminatory bill has been taken to court and will cost taxpayers millions. Did you know GA also houses the largest private detention facility in the nation? Boycott the corporations which have funded those responsible for this discriminatory bill. Pledge to boycott GA @ Mycuentame.org/BoycottGeorgia [ VIDEO ]

•   Gov. Brewer asks people to pay SB 1070 legal fees: — AZ Gov. Brewer is asking the public to pay the legal bill as she tries to defend her discriminatory SB1070 law in the U.S. Supreme Court. This should be a note to GA as it follows in AZ’s footsteps. We created a pop-up video message highlighting how these laws are unconstitutional and expensive! [ VIDEO ]

The L.A. Film Festival: Important Latino films to be featured — The Los Angeles Film Festival is focusing their International Spotlight this year on Cuba. When people think about this country, some only remember stories heard on the news about their political unrest and poverty. I bet what they didn’t know is that Cuba is filled with amazing culture and art among so many other of its colorful qualities… [ READ THE ARTICLE ]

Playlist: The Apartheid States in The U.S.

Playlist: American Anti-Immigrant Xenophobia — Exposing American Anti-Immigrant Bigots, Racists and Xenophobic Extortionists.

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Fox on Immigrants: Just Hang ‘Em All!; Immigrants Are Serial Killers!
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Fox Obfuscates The Fact That A Majority Detained By ICE Program Are Nonviolent Immigrants: During Fox News’ coverage of Secure Communities, a deportation program begun under the Bush administration, Fox pushed the idea that opting out of the program would create “sanctuary states” for dangerous undocumented immigrants. In fact, a large proportion of individuals who are detained and deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry only misdemeanors and minor infractions or have no criminal conviction or background. [ READ MORE ]

Fox Suggests If States Opt Out Of Program, Serial Killers May Be On The Loose: On Fox, Lars Larson Seizes Opportunity To Rehash Immigration Myths — On Fox News, radio host Lars Larson repeated the myths that immigrants commit a disproportionate amount of crime and that the Obama administration “has not been great on deportations.” In fact, data don’t support the claim that undocumented immigrants have high crime rates; moreover, under Obama, deportations are at an all-time high. [ READ MORE ] [ READ MORE ]

On Fox, Lars Larson Seizes Opportunity To Rehash Immigration Myths:

MMFA: On Fox News, radio host Lars Larson repeated the myths that immigrants commit a disproportionate amount of crime and that the Obama administration “has not been great on deportations.” In fact, data don’t support the claim that undocumented immigrants have high crime rates; moreover, under Obama, deportations are at an all-time high. [ READ MORE ]

Reference: Resistance Grows — A failure of Decency and Good Sense. – Massachusetts, New York and Illinois reject the Obama administration’s enforcement-only way on immigration. — A New York Times Editorial

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The Anti-Immigrant SKUNK from Colorado, former congressman Tom Tancredo could not resist the smell of LATINA STEW. The filthy bigot who would love to see every single immigrant removed from the United States, is officially out of his hiding hole, with his anal scent glands excreting a strong foul-smelling odor of Racism. Even in retirement, this scumbag cannot hide his hatred for Latinos.

   President Obama Nominated Judge Sotomayor To The Supreme Court on Tuesday

Appearing on CNN, Tancredo suggested that Judge Sotomayor’s affiliation with the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights group, was equivalent to being a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

A congressman from the 6th Congressional District until he retired last year, Tancredo has made statements over the years threatening to bomb Mecca, calling Miami a Third World city and suggesting the U.S.-Mexico border wall separate Brownsville, Texas, from the rest of America.

Two years ago, before giving up his failed presidential campaign, Tancredo famously sang “Dixie” standing in front of Confederate flags in Columbia, S.C. His audience: a secessionist group and others called bigoted hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

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Anti-Immigrant and RACIST Xenophobe, Chris Simcox, who founded the border-patrolling Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, plans to challenge former Republican presidential nominee and current Arizona senator John McCain in the Republican primary in 2010.

On his website, the filthy BIGOT notes: Immigrants new to this country need to learn what freedom is and how you go about keeping it. They need to learn to speak our language to be a productive part of our work force. For American citizenship to have real, lasting meaning, we must reject the amnesty that causes even more to come here illegally, we must secure our borders and create a legal immigration system built on a rubric of national security and economics with the welfare and job security of the American citizen first and foremost in the design.

Everywhere This BIGOT Goes — He Is Met With Protests

Chris Simcox is a thief. He stole millions of dollars in donations that was to be used to build a barrier along the border with Mexico. He built and completed 10 miles of 5 strand barbed wire cow-fence and called it a success, then refused to show the public where the money went!

McCain, long known as a moderate on immigration, gave up on his immigration reform legislation during the Republican primary campaign.

Reference: The two faces of the anti-immigrant bigots in the Republican Party — NICOLE COLSON looks at the ties between anti-immigrant groups, the far right and the Republican Party.

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Immigrants face detention, few rights
By MICHELLE ROBERTS

America’s detention system for immigrants has mushroomed in the last decade, a costly building boom that was supposed to sweep up criminals and ensure that undocumented immigrants were quickly shown the door.

Instead, an Associated Press computer analysis of every person being held on a recent Sunday night shows that most did not have a criminal record and many were not about to leave the country — voluntarily or via deportation.

An official Immigration and Customs Enforcement database, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, showed a U.S. detainee population of exactly 32,000 on the evening of Jan. 25.

The data show that 18,690 immigrants had no criminal conviction, not even for illegal entry or low-level crimes like trespassing. More than 400 of those with no criminal record had been incarcerated for at least a year. A dozen had been held for three years or more; one man from China had been locked up for more than five years.

Nearly 10,000 had been in custody longer than 31 days — the average detention stay that ICE cites as evidence of its effective detention management.

   Raymond Soeoth stands outside the federal government compound in Los Angeles’ San
   Pedro district, where he was held for over two years at the Immigration and Customs
   Enforcement facility.

Especially tough bail conditions are exacerbated by disregard or bending of the rules regarding how long immigrants can be detained.

Based on a 2001 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, ICE has about six months to deport or release immigrants after their case is decided. But immigration lawyers say that deadline is routinely missed. In the system snapshot provided to the AP, 950 people were in that category.

The detainee buildup began in the mid 1990s, long before the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Since 2003, though, Congress has doubled to $1.7 billion the amount dedicated to imprisoning immigrants, as furor over “criminal aliens” intertwined with post-9/11 fears and anti-immigrant political rhetoric.

But the dragnet has come to include not only terrorism suspects and cop killers, but an honors student who was raised in Orlando, Fla.; a convenience store clerk who begged to go back to Canada; and a Pentecostal minister who was forcibly drugged by ICE agents after he asked to contact his wife, according to court records.

Immigration lawyers note that substantial numbers of detainees, from 177 countries in the data provided, are not illegal immigrants at all. Many of the longest-term non-criminal detainees are asylum seekers fighting to stay here because they fear being killed in their home country. Others are longtime residents who may be eligible to stay under other criteria, or whose applications for permanent residency were lost or mishandled, the lawyers say.

Still other long-term detainees include people who can’t be deported because their home country won’t accept them or people who seemingly have been forgotten in the behemoth system, where 58 percent have no lawyers or anyone else advocating on their behalf.

ICE says detention is the best way to guarantee that immigrants attend court hearings and leave the country when ordered.

“It’s ensuring compliance, and if you look at the stats, for folks who are in detention, the stats are pretty darn high,” said ICE spokeswoman Cori Bassett.

By comparison though, most criminal suspects, even sometimes those accused of heinous offenses, are entitled to bail.

“We’re immigrants, and it makes it seem like it’s worse than a criminal,” said Sarjina Emy, a 20-year-old former honors student who spent nearly two years in a Florida lockup because her parents’ asylum claim was denied when she was a child. “I always thought America does so much for justice. I really thought you get a fair trial. You actually go to court. (U.S. authorities) know what they are doing. Now, I figured out that it only works for criminal citizens.”

The use of detention to ensure immigrants show up for immigration court comes at a high cost compared to alternatives like electronic ankle monitoring, which can track people for considerably less money per day.

Based on the amount budgeted for this fiscal year, U.S. taxpayers will pay about $141 a night — the equivalent of a decent hotel room — for each immigrant detained, even though paroling them on ankle monitors — at a budgeted average daily cost of $13 — has an almost perfect compliance rate, according to ICE’s own stats.

For years, ICE and its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, had the power to detain immigrants. With little bed space or public clamor to lock people up, though, millions of foreigners quietly went about life in the United States.

In 1996, Congress passed a pair of laws requiring that immigrants who committed crimes be locked up for deportation, beginning a dramatic run-up in incarcerations. So-called “criminal aliens” — immigrants convicted of a crime, including some misdemeanors like low-level drug crimes — became mandatory detainees even if their original crime brought no prison time.

A system that housed 6,785 immigrants in 1994 now holds nearly five times that amount in 260 facilities across the country, most under contract with local governments or private companies. For this fiscal year, ICE has enough money budgeted for 33,400 people on any given night.

Emy, who was raised in Orlando, Fla., spent 20 months in a detention center even though she had no criminal record. She traded her Baby Phat clothes for a gray uniform and window-shopping at the mall for a law library behind razor wire.

Her only crime? Her parents, who feared her father’s political affiliations endangered the family, brought her and two brothers to the United States from Bangladesh when she was 5, according to court documents.

She doesn’t speak Bangla and never imagined a future without college. No one in her family realized her father’s work certificate from the Labor Department didn’t equate to legal immigration status.

Family members were rounded up in July 2007, treated as fugitives on a dated but active deportation order.

Her parents were deported first. Emy languished in custody while continuing her fight to stay.

But because the asylum application had been filed on behalf of the entire family, only the parents got a hearing. Emy never saw a judge, according to Emy and her attorney.

“Justice is not being served,” she said from a prison pay phone.

In January, a federal appeals court denied her petition to stay in the U.S. Fearing she’d celebrate another birthday behind bars, Emy agreed to be deported and left the country Feb. 18.

Immigration law “is the only United States law where we punish the children for the actions of their parents,” said Emy’s attorney, Petia Vimitrova Knowles.

Immigration violations are considered civil, something akin to a moving violation in a car, so the government can imprison immigrants without many of the rights criminals receive: No court-appointed attorney for indigent defendants, no standard habeas corpus, no protection from double jeopardy, no guarantee of a speedy trial.

“You’re locking up people without even a hearing,” said Judy Rabinovitz of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants Rights Project. “That, to me, is the outrage: basic due process. Since when do we allow the government to lock up people without even giving them a bond hearing?”

Most immigrants are navigating a complex legal system without an attorney. Fifty-eight percent went through immigration proceedings without an attorney in fiscal year 2007, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a branch of the U.S. Justice Department.

But, ICE officials often argue, immigrants largely hold the keys to their own freedom. If they simply agree to return to their home country, they can go, Bassett said.

“They’re making a choice (that) they’re going to appeal, which is their right,” she said.

But even giving up, or winning a claim, doesn’t always spell freedom because ICE acts as police officer, arraignment judge, jailer and prosecutor. It has sole jurisdiction over when a detained immigrant is sent back after a deportation order is issued, and can continue to hold immigrants while it appeals a decision that didn’t go its way.

In another telling case, Ahmad Al-Shrmany, a 34-year-old Iraqi with no appeal pending, begged for a year to be deported and yet remained in detention. He wanted to be allowed to go to his native Iraq or his adopted Canada, where he had been granted asylum a decade ago. A lawyer filed a habeas corpus petition in December that went unanswered.

“Just deport me. That’s your job,” he said in a late January interview with the AP that ICE officials tried to block minutes before it was scheduled at a Houston lockup.

   [Enlarge]

Less than a week after the interview, Al-Shrmany was deported to Canada, said his lawyer, Afreen Ahmed.

Immigrant advocates say ICE prefers incarceration for non-criminal immigrants, even though alternatives are available, for one major reason: to strong-arm people.

“When you’re there for weeks and weeks or months or months, your determination to fight your charges is reduced,” said Judy Green, a policy analyst with Justice Strategies, a nonpartisan think tank on incarceration issues. The goal is “to keep intense pressure on detainees to agree to removal and not to fight on whatever grounds they have for relief.”

The Rev. Raymond Soeoth, a Pentecostal minister from Indonesia who had never been imprisoned, said his lengthy incarceration — and the uncertainty of how long it would last — wore on him as he fought his immigration case and pursued a lawsuit accusing ICE officials of forcibly drugging him and other detainees.

“We just wait. We cannot do anything,” said Soeoth, who was released after more than two years, given a special visa as part of the government’s settlement of the drugging lawsuit.

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For once I agree with brother Juan Williams, the HAPPY NEGRO affiliated with Fox News.

During last nights Hannity Show, Juan correctly rebuked Sean Hannity’s Xenophobic Anti-Immigrant statements, while he[Hannity] was challenging comments made by Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

Said Williams: “[I]t’s her responsibility to challenge unjust laws, and when you’re taking little babies away from their mothers, I say that’s an unjust law.”

As is customary, the racist, syphilitic, anti-immigrant bigot, Sean Hannity — sought to hide behind THE LAW, to demonize immigrants, who are being incarcerated in large numbers, and herded into American Gulags and “For Profit” Concentration Camps.

It’s The Law!!…It’s The Law!!….We Are A Nation of Laws!! ….Screamed Sean KLANNITY.

Yeah, asshole — the same kind of UNJUST law(s) that you used to shackle, lynch and rape Indians, Blacks, the Japanese, and everybody else who stood in your way, while you were stealing America and huge chunks of Mexico.

You Sean Hannity, are no different than the “Straight-Talk” Neo-KLAN Lynch Mobs, that you, Palin and McCain call the BASE. A breed of ANIMALS ….sick to the bone!

Most of these RACIST LAWS have since been repealed, and so will the UNJUST immigration laws in the books, that provide cover for people like YOU, Sean Hannity. You are not interested in anything JUST for immigrants. If given the opportunity, you would gleefully roast every single person of color in a NAZI Oven.

You are a despicable racist who uses the LAW as a “vehicle” with which to transport and proliferate RACISM in this country, ….a dying breed — hopefully!

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