Sandra Figueroa, an undocumented immigrant, first heard about the dance of the Matachines while she was in jail. She promised that she would learn it to honor the Virgin of Guadalupe and thank her for helping her to be free and to reunite with her family.
Less than a month ago Anh Joseph Cao was hardly a household name. Then the freshman congressman from Louisiana broke with his party to become the only Republican in the House to vote in favor of the health care reform bill.
Casa de Maryland, an organization that offers services to immigrants, has been organizing its Immigrant Thanksgiving for the past several years. This year’s event was moved from the organization’s offices in part because the organizers expected a much larger turnout than in years past.
The Number 7 train is nicknamed the “International Express” for the many immigrant communities it connects as it makes its way from the center of the city into Flushing, Queens.
Our own Jocelyn Gonzales visited the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan to check out a new interactive exhibit called Voices of Liberty.
De Colores, a domestic violence shelter in Phoenix, specializes in helping undocumented Spanish-speaking migrant women like her.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona was clearly enjoying his starring role at a series of fundraisers last week in Southern California.
The sheriff, known for his aggressive tactics against undocumented immigrants in and around Phoenix, happily chatted with reporters — even the citizen reporters that were part of a protest against him –at an event on Thursday in Anaheim, Orange County before heading to Mission Bay, San Diego, for a second fundraiser.
The self-described “toughest sheriff in the country” came to California to support an underdog sheriff´s candidate: Bill Hunt in Orange County. On Friday, he did the same for Jay La Sur in San Diego County in a move that is certain to bring the immigration issue to the fore in those races, both to be decided next year.
Watch Pilar Marrero’s video of Sheriff Arpaio’s visit to Anaheim, California.
At first, Arpaio seemed irritated by the protests that awaited him as he arrived at the event in Anaheim. But then he seemed to relish the opportunity to face the cameras in California as he often does in Arizona. “Why are they always following me? When I went to the O’Brien show and the Colbert show in New York they were there too,” he said to puzzled reporters who were asking him about his controversial law enforcement policies. (more…)
This week the public radio program Making Contact features a story by Feet in Two Worlds reporter Valeria Fernández about the impact of an immigration raid on a family in Phoenix, Arizona. Valeria wrote the following reporter’s notebook about her experiences covering this story. You can listen to the story pressing “play” below or to find a station near you that carries the program click here.
[audio:http://media.libsyn.com/media/radioproject/MakingCon_091021_Ax.mp3]
Sandra hugs her daughter Katherine, her mother Mercedes and her sister Griselda after being released by Customs and Immigration Enforcement. (Photo: V. Fernández - Click for more.)
PHOENIX, Arizona — When I arrived at Katherine Figueroa’s house, it had only been two days since her parents –both undocumented immigrants– were arrested during a raid by Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies at the Phoenix car wash where they both worked.
Kathy is an outspoken 9-year-old who makes friends easily. She welcomes people with her easy smile, even those she has just met. She was born in the U.S. and like many children of undocumented parents she has lived in constant fear that her parents could be deported.
I knew this wasn’t going to be an ordinary story. It was going to be one I would follow for months, and very closely every week.
It’s the story behind news reports that people in the Phoenix area have grown accustomed to: another sweep, another immigration raid in Maricopa County. It is about what happens to communities and families impacted by a crackdown that has made Arizona ground zero in a divisive national debate over immigration.
Fear is the emotion most commonly associated with undocumented immigrants living in the United States today. Fear of being discovered during a routine traffic stop or a worksite raid. Fear of being deported and separated from one’s family.
But it turns out that fear is only one part of a complex emotional landscape that immigrants without legal status confront in their daily lives. A recent study of undocumented immigrants from El Salvador and Guatemala found that many “linked the current threats to their families posed by deportation to a history of conflict and terror in their countries of origin.” In other words, they escaped the war at home only to relive their war-related anxieties in the U.S.
The study by the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College, also discovered that the undocumented immigrants it surveyed reported symptoms including anxiety, weight loss and difficulty sleeping. Their children often had trouble keeping up in school and developing language skills.
The Boston College study is notable, not just for it’s troubling conclusions, but for its place in a large and growing movement by academic researchers. Studying undocumented immigrants — who according to most estimates number around 12-million in the U.S. – has become its own academic specialty.
The interest among researchers was highlighted last weekend as hundreds of professors and students from across the country met on the campus of Connecticut College in New London, Ct. for a conference called Undocumented Hispanic Migration: On the Margins of a Dream. (more…)
Arpaio has been a controversial figure in Phoenix and in the immigration debate. Pictured is a demonstration in June 2009.
FI2W reporter Valeria Fernández was interviewed this morning on public radio’s The Takeaway to talk about an announced immigration raid by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
“There’s no federal law that gives him the authority to do these immigration sweeps, but he says that he can do it,” Valeria said during her conversation with The Takeaway’s Celeste Headlee and John Hockenberry, in which she explained the sheriff’s controversial tactics to detain undocumented immigrants in the Phoenix area.
You can listen to the interview below and you can visit the show’s story “A Rogue Sheriff Roams in Arizona.”
[audio:http://audio.wnyc.org/takeaway/takeaway101609j.mp3]