Mexicans seek asylum from surging violence in Ciudad Juarez

Although Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas are separated by the US-Mexico border, the two cities compose one of the largest bi-national metropolitan areas in the world. Before the end of 1848 U.S.-Mexican war, they were the same town, El Paso del Norte. Although they have seen been broken up to form two cities, each day 60,000 still people travel between these two cities.

Despite their proximity, reality is much different depending on which side of the fence you live on. Although Ciudad Juarez’s economy has been doing well in recent years, violence has escalated. Beginning with the brutal killings of more than 400 women and children since 1993 in what has been deemed by some as a “feminicide,” violence has been rising in the area. A recent surge in violence has left 350 people dead in Ciudad Juarez this year alone and 1,000 across the country. Last year, the drug violence was so brutal that 6,290 people lost their lives in Mexico. This article explains the situation in the morgues in Ciudad Juarez, which has gotten so bad that the morgue is forced to turn corpses away: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hQk0IcGHRThAZGok6vKI4lrnPasQD96Q0D7G0.

As the violence continues to increase, more and more people are coming to El Paso to seek asylum in the US. According to a BBC article, “Drug-related violence in Mexico has become so extreme that some policemen and journalists would rather sit in a cell at a US immigration detention centre than run the risk of being caught in the crossfire between rival gangs in their home country.” One journalist who is currently living in El Paso on temporary visa notes that, “I would prefer seven months in jail because it’s a matter of life and death.”

The asylum cases that we are working on involve people from countries that are located far away from the United States, in some cases half way around the globe. Fleeing from land only separated from the US by a fence, these asylum seekers from Ciudad Juarez are a large contrast to what we have seen.

My question is whether the asylum process should be different for them or does it not matter if the asylum seekers comes from .01 miles outside the US or 10,000 miles? To me, I think that we need to pay special attention and give consideration to our neighbors in this process. In addition, the US should continue its effort to control the drug war in Mexico. Along with the obvious concern that the violence could spill over to US soil, it’s impossible not to see what is going on there. As Ciudad Juarez is physically visible from the United States, I hope that we do not turn a blind eye to the situation there.

A Warning Sign? Sierra Leone tribunal convicts 3 warlords

The conviction of 3 warlords from Sierra Leone is certainly a gain for international accountability and human rights around the world. But the author has an interesting point - are we just picking on the weak links? And if so, how credible is the type of international accountability we're creating? How punitive should these tribunals be? Does there come a point when punitive measures are counterproductive?

(I'm admittedly a student from last year - but I couldn't help myself from posting when I saw the article. What can I say? I miss the class!)

Haitians hope for Obama

Haiti is the Western Hemisphere's poorest country.  Last year alone, aside from the political and social unrest, 2008 held numerous environmental disasters including mudslides.  We all heard about the collapse of  a school in November that killed nearly one hundred young students and wounded many more.  In response to this chaos and disarray, the United Nations sent 10,000 peacekeepers to help and support.  The aid is hardly enough.  

Throughout this difficult time, the Haitian government requested that the United States grant temporary protected status to Haitian immigrants.  Bush considered the request for a few short months, before declining it and ordering further deportation of the Haitian immigrants. 

To make matters worse, many of the Haitians deported are not criminals.  Rather elderly, mothers, and people who have lived in the United States for years who have no where to go once in Haiti.  

My question to Human Rights Human Wrongs, spring 2009, is should there be a sixth element to being qualified for asylum including environmental disasters that the government cannot protect its people against?  If people starving in jails can gain asylum because their government is unable to feed them, shouldn't natural disasters count as well?  Surely IJs and ICE attorneys would see this as too large a group etc.  However, Haiti is the POOREST country in this hemisphere, there should be some loophole here.  That is not to say that the U.S. should invite all of Haiti here for a vacation during the rainy season.  But why send innocent people back into the dangers of Haiti?  Perhaps President Obama can help change this unnecessary cruelty against our weakest nation on this side of the globe.

Fake Immigration Attorney+ Real Clients= BIG Problems

By now, we are all aware that the immigration system is very much a believer that immigrants are guilty until they can prove otherwise. Guilty of what you ask? I don’t know and neither does INS or ICE-they are just guilty. This story is a direct result of immigrants and detainees having no right to court appointed lawyers and then having to resort to inexpensive and sometimes inadequate legal service. In this story we have a Dominican immigration attorney who practiced law in Dominican Republic but was never admitted to the bar in the United States. This man, Mr. Espinol, nonetheless declared himself an immigration attorney and targeting desperate immigrants, abused of the trust his Latino immigrant clients put in him. Mr. Espinol received payments from his low-income clients but would not file applications for green cards when he was paid for that among other services. Mr. Espinol infuriates me. Here is a man, in the position to help his community. The assumption is that he knows the despair in his clients; that he understands. Instead Mr. Espinol abused and exploited some of the most vulnerable people who sought him out for help. At the mercy of volunteer lawyers from the City Bar Association (NYC) in a legal clinic, Mr. Espinol’s clients find themselves in a dire situation. Some face deportation and have missed deadlines to file applications among other things. This story should remind us of the great responsibility we have taken. Many of us have met our clients and need no reminder of how REAL this is. I don’t want to resemble this Mr. Espinol not one second throughout this semester in respect to the inadequacy of my service to the client I am working with. This goes for all of us. We may not be real immigration attorneys, but everything we read, write, touch is real in these cases, and we must always be true to that.

Religion as a premise for human rights abuse

Pakistan has been in turmoil for the past few years with rising insurgency within the country. In the North West Frontier Province, Taliban leaders have come to power and have driven many out of the sanctity of their homes because of the ongoing clashes between the government and the militants. The issue of imposing Sharia Law in the country is not new. The militants and extremists have been pushing the government to impose Sharia in order to avoid clashes. The situation is out of control and the government has had great difficulty in curtailing the issue. The announcement of Sharia Law in NWFP is a human rights abuse because according to the militants and extremists interpretation of the law, women have no rights and their education is frowned upon. As the article talks about, it also gives rise to a parallel system of justice where punishment is given in the most inhumane ways. This could pose a threat to the whole country's stability because if the Taliban have been successful in having Sharia imposed in one part of the country, I don't think anything will stop them from doing so in other parts also using the same techniques of violence that they did in Swat. This decision to impose Sharia in Swat will give rise to many human rights abuses especially against women. The condition of Swat will be the same as Afghanistan under the Taliban rule. 

Think you can change the world?

A former student of mine sent the above link -- have some great ideas on changing the world? Want to win $50,000? Enter the contest -- entries are due by March 2nd.
Good luck!

Here...in the US?

I was shocked when my father told me about this story the other day... A woman beheaded here in the U.S? Is this an honor killing? A simple homocide? Is homocide ever simple? I find this story pertinent because we are all dealing with cases regarding various human rights abuses. It's a little ironic that the very abuse that many come to our country fleeing happens here, less than 500 miles away from our school. I like to think that I am culturally sensitive, but I have no tolerance for customs that dictate a painful death. I'm sure death by decapitation is far from comfortable.

Death of Detained Immigrant Inspires Online Game-kind of blows your mind

I discovered a website that will truly blow your mind away. Created by Breakthrough, an international human rights organization, the game centers on an investigation to the death of Boubacar Bah, a detained immigrant who died while imprisoned under suspicious circumstances in 2007. A spokeswoman for ICE said that the video game is “a work of fiction that dehumanizes the individuals depicted and grossly distorts conditions in detention facilities.” She added, “I believe that most informed people know that they leave reality at the door when they enter the world of video games.” I actually played the online video game which is found at www.homelandgitmo.com . In the game, you are an undercover reporter who has applied for a job as a detention guard at the Elizabeth Detention Center in NJ where Bah died (and Fauziya was held). You move around the detention facility picking up clues, talking to other inmates, reviewing incident reports having to due with Bah, all the meanwhile taking notes. While this is a video game as ICE officials are quick to remind us, it is simply a video game because it’s an interactive virtual story being told. Throughout the game, “the content encountered along the way is backed by links to real newspaper articles, court documents and other factual material.”  

Breakthrough, the human rights organization responsible for this video game, is known to mix fantasy with reality with the goal of educating young people on immigration issues. They have another online video game called “ICED-I Can End Deportation” in which “a player assumes the role of one of five characters with uncertain immigration status, trying to avoid deportation and secure citizenship. That game can be found at www.icedgame.com It serves as a good mental workout for us so I would suggest that you take 15 minutes from “facebooking” and play these two pretty wild video games about detainees and legal status. Talk about human rights group stepping up their game huh?

Alison Des Forges: A True Human Rights Champion

I only had the opportunity to see Dr. Des Forges a few times at African Studies Association conferences. I was surprised at how physically tiny and fragile she looked. In my mind -- she was a giant -- what else could she be -- standing up to human rights abusers whatever their ethnicity, religion or political affiliation.
It came as quite the shock to hear that she had died in a plane crash --over Buffalo. To Dr. Des Forges' family -- I am sure that nothing will soothe the pain of her loss -- but I think that you should know that there are many others, like me, out there that admired her from afar. She was an inspiration and a true hero. May she rest in peace.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free,
provided they have satisfactorily filled out forms 3584-A through
3597-Q. Dwight MacDonald 1963.