GILA BEND, Ariz. — Soon after Antonio Torres, a husky 19-year-old farmworker, suffered catastrophic injuries in a car accident last June, a Phoenix hospital began making plans for his repatriation to Mexico.
Mr. Torres was comatose and connected to a ventilator. He was also a legal immigrant whose family lives and works in the purple alfalfa fields of this southwestern town. But he was uninsured. So the hospital disregarded the strenuous objections of his grief-stricken parents and sent Mr. Torres on a four-hour journey over the California border into Mexicali.
For days, Mr. Torres languished in a busy emergency room there, but his parents, Jesús and Gloria Torres, were not about to give up on him. Although many uninsured immigrants have been repatriated by American hospitals, few have seen their journey take the U-turn that the Torreses engineered for their son. They found a hospital in California willing to treat him, loaded him into a donated ambulance and drove him back into the United States as a potentially deadly infection raged through his system.
By summer’s end, despite the grimmest of prognoses from the hospital in Phoenix, Mr. Torres had not only survived but thrived. Newly discharged from rehabilitation in California, he was haltingly walking, talking and, hoisting his cane to his shoulder like a rifle, performing a silent, comic, effortful imitation of a marching soldier.
“In Arizona, apparently, they see us as beasts of burden that can be dumped back over the border when we have outlived our usefulness,” the elder Mr. Torres, who is 47, said in Spanish. “But we outwitted them. We were not going to let our son die. And look at him now!” — [READ MORE]
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MILTON, Fla. — Three months after the local police inspected more than a dozen businesses searching for illegal immigrants using stolen Social Security numbers, this community in the Florida Panhandle has become more “law-abiding, emptier and whiter.”
Many of the Hispanic immigrants who came in 2004 to help rebuild after Hurricane Ivan have either fled or gone into hiding. Churches with services in Spanish are half-empty. Businesses are struggling to find workers. And for Hispanic citizens with roots here — the foremen and entrepreneurs who received visits from the police — the losses are especially profound.
“It was very hard because the community is very small, and to see people who came to eat here all the time then come and close the business,” said Geronimo Barragan, who owns two branches of La Hacienda, Mexican restaurants where the police arrested 10 employees. — [MORE]
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Behind The Veil: America’s Anti-Immigration Network — Video details the common origins of many of the country’s leading anti-immigration groups and their ties to White supremacists.
Lou Dobbs and Codewords Of Hate — A study by the Anti-Defamation League on the use of hate rhetoric in the immigration debate
SPLC Report: An ‘American Legion’ booklet, full of anti-immigrant falsehoods
America’s largest veterans organization has launched another campaign — a hard-line attack on undocumented immigrants that’s at odds with the legion’s mainstream image. As part of this effort, the legion, which purports to speak for 2.7 million members, recently issued a booklet that regurgitates discredited and often completely false information about how “illegals” are bringing crime, disease, and terrorism to this country, even as they wreck the economy for natives.
An American Legion post in East Haven, Conn., opened its doors last year to anti-immigration activists including Walter Moore (with sign). (AP)
The legion’s 34-page booklet, A Strategy to Address Illegal Immigration in the United States, asserts that “poverty, political instability, disease and war” are “on our back doorstep” because of porous borders and the failure of the government to stringently enforce immigration laws. But in making its case, the legion repeatedly cites dubious sources, ignores well-known facts and makes baseless claims — such as the false assertion that the undocumented infected more than 7,000 people in America with leprosy during a recent four-year period…..[ more ]
NOTES: CNN’s Resident “Anti-Immigrant Nativist,” anchor Lou Dobbs, repeated and popularized false claims about immigrants and leprosy. When confronted by “60 Minutes” and numerous critics, Dobbs refused to correct his statements, saying his program did not make errors.
Lou Dobbs is a major media Bigot. A Racist, Xenophobic Extortionist of NAZI proportions — in the mode of Dr. Joseph Goebbels — “Minister for Public Enlightenment & Propaganda in Nazi Germany.” Lou Dobbs’s anti-immigrant campaign is very similar to that conducted against Jews in NAZI Germany…..[ more ] [ Lou Dobb's NAZI Propaganda ]
The increasingly nasty immigration debate, driven by demagogic politicians and right-wing pundits, is stoking the fires of racist extremism — spawning a new breed of well-armed vigilantes and fueling a dramatic growth in hate groups.
Unfortunately, mainstream journalists like CNN’s Lou Dobbs are playing a major role in fomenting anti-immigrant hysteria.
Despite being confronted with undisputed evidence to the contrary, Mr. Dobbs says he stands “100 percent behind” the claim that there have been 7,000 new cases of leprosy in the U.S. in recent years. What’s more, he has attributed part of the increase to “unscreened illegal immigrants.”
The truth, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is that new leprosy cases peaked in 1985 at 361 and have declined since, even as the number of undocumented immigrants has increased. The source for Dobbs’ outrageous leprosy claim is an anti-immigration zealot who once publicly stated that “most” Latino immigrant men “molest girls under 12, although some specialize in boys, and some in nuns.”
This is not the first time that Mr. Dobbs has chosen to rely on dubious sources with a virulent anti-immigrant agenda. He has repeatedly given legitimacy to individuals and groups who promote wild, unsupported claims about immigration.
Given that Mr. Dobbs refuses to retract his leprosy claim, we believe it is CNN’s responsibility to do so. We feel so strongly about this that we’ve placed open letters in today’s New York Times and USA Today calling for CNN to correct the record on Mr. Dobbs’ show.
Please join with us in asking CNN to tell Lou Dobbs to get his facts straight. Contact CNN and tell company executives that it is dangerous to present false claims about a serious public health issue and demonize an entire group in the process.
Thank you for your commitment to justice and fairness.
Sincerely Yours
Richard Cohen, CEO and President
You can donate to the Southern Poverty Law Center online.
NOTES: CNN’s Resident “Anti-Immigrant Nativist,” anchor Lou Dobbs, repeated and popularized false claims about immigrants and leprosy. When confronted by “60 Minutes” and numerous critics, Dobbs refused to correct his statements, saying his program did not make errors. 
