WashPost has a great article explaining how judges are looking at, or should look at, local ordinances trying to withhold benefits to undocumented immigrants and the businesses that support them.

Hopefully this week-long boycott of Prince William Co., VA businesses will show county officials the power of the immigrants in that community. Non-immigrants who support them should really consider joining in.

Pausing the posting break to bring you news of the ACLU settlement with USCIS over conditions for children at their Hutto facility.

The Washington Post reports:

Under the ACLU detention agreement, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agreed to place families who have a legal basis to contest deportation — such as asylum claims — in Hutto only if no other space is available. Families facing expedited removal proceedings, where no hearing is required, may be detained but their cases must be reviewed every 30 days to see if they can be transferred or released.

The agency also agreed to allow children older than 12 to move freely about the facility, to provide a full-time pediatrician, to end a requirement that families stay in their cells 12 hours a day, and to offer field trips, toys, books and more nutritional food to children.

In case you missed it, immigration activist Elvira Arellano was arrested by USCIS officers last Sunday as she stepped out of her church sanctuary to participate in a press conference. Ms. Arellano has an 8 year-old, U.S. citizen child she has tried to protect and has used his citizenship as a basis for her petition to remain in the country. Immigration officials didn’t accept her argument and ordered her deported. She has been living in a church ever since refusing to surrender and speaking out about the separation of families by USCIS.

I was sad to hear this, but not surprised. What did surprise me was reading NOW’s press release on the matter. Apparently USCIS really does have a cruel streak, naming the operation to arrest Ms. Arellano “Return to Sender.”

NOW has called for a moratorium on these types of destructive raids:

CALL FOR MORATORIUM ON IMMIGRATION RAIDS

WHEREAS, the National Organization for Women (NOW) is a convener of the National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights, an important collective of grassroots and advocacy organizations that promotes equality for all immigrant women and families living and working in the United States by advocating for comprehensive immigration reform, reproductive freedom and economic justice; and

WHEREAS, in 2006 NOW passed a resolution calling for fair immigration reform that supports provisions to improve wages and working conditions of immigrant workers, to protect them from exploitation, to preserve the provisions addressing violence against immigrant women and families in the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), and for a more efficient system to process those eligible to work and seek permanent residency/citizenship, one that excludes the building of fences, walls and prisons at the border; and

WHEREAS, tens of thousands of undocumented workers, many women, have been unfairly detained, terrorized, and arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of a program dubbed “Operation Return to Sender,” that has separated hundreds of children from their mothers, who often were their only caretakers; and

WHEREAS, there has been a failure in Congress after two attempts to agree on a positive immigration reform, which could have addressed harsh employment practices, unfair policies, and the unjust, terrorizing raids and arrests that are tearing families apart; and

WHEREAS, immigration raids are targeting workers, typically immigrant women, based on their racial and ethnic appearance, accent or limited English skills; and

WHEREAS, ICE uses military-style tactics to terrorize communities, families, and workers by barging into homes and arresting residents, apprehending parents picking up their children from school, confronting immigrants about their legal status, raiding factories where many undocumented women work, and sweeping up workers and separating families by sending workers to inhumane detention centers that are scattered across the country; and

WHEREAS, the recent raid in New Bedford, Massachusetts, detained and arrested 360 undocumented workers, the majority women. They were taken into custody on March 6, 2007, after a raid by federal agents on the Michael Bianco Inc. factory, a military contractor 60 miles south of Boston. They were sent to detention in Texas which separated them from their children at home, including breast-fed babies. Many other children were stranded at day-care centers, schools, or homes of friends or relatives. This is only one of the thousands of stories of devastation;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the National Organization for Women calls for a moratorium to immediately halt the immigration raids that have been devastating families and our communities across the United States; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that in addition to this moratorium NOW calls for our government to: investigate allegations that detained individuals have been denied access to counsel, illegally interrogated, and subjected to abusive treatment; prohibit the separation of families with long, drawn out detentions; provide safe, appropriate and humane holding facilities; notify counsel and family members within 24 hours of transferring any detainee; halt transfers of those arrested by Department of Homeland Security; and afford detained workers who have been unfairly and illegally exploited at the raided places of employment a pathway to pursue labor claims against their employers; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that NOW continues to recognize the contributions of immigrant women and a right to due process and fairness that will result in an equitable and fair immigration policy that provides legal and safe immigration options, a path to citizenship, reproductive freedom and economic justice.