There's No Such Thing as a "Criminal Alien" - Local Forum Brings Up Questions About Immigrants' Rights

On Saturday, I gave a Know Your Rights workshop for the thirty-two people who came to the Union Trabajadores Immigrantes immigrant rights forum. I was invited because everyone, Spanish-speaking Latinos being no exception, should understand their basic 4th, 5th and 6th Amendment rights when interacting with police.

With the help of a translator, I talked about the basics: don’t talk to police, don’t consent to searches, how to tell the difference between detention and arrest and so forth. The questions that people had started off about basic traffic stops. But the questions got harder.

Can you get arrested for having a broken tail light? No, that’s just a citation. Can police ask you about your immigration status if you get pulled over? No, they shouldn’t. Can police ask about the rest of the people in the car? No, they shouldn’t do that either.

What if they say they are going to check your ID on a national immigration database and ask you a bunch of questions? No, local police shouldn’t be doing that and you shouldn't talk to police. If they pull you over you either need a ticket or a good reason to be arrested.

What do you do when you try to assert your right to remain silent by saying “no se,” and the police get angry that you don’t speak English and it makes it worse? What happens if you get arrested for the third time for driving without a license, sent to county jail and they find that your work visa expired a few years ago? What does a mom do about her kids who were born here and are citizens if she is facing deportation?...

I read about the problems in our broken immigration system every day in the newspaper. I see politicians debating about it and I see tea baggers protesting about it. But then I talk to the people whose lives and families are directly impacted by the debates, the expense, the need for legal counsel, the wait, the bureaucracy, I wonder why we don’t have a year of general amnesty? Why can’t we license drivers separate from state identification or citizenship verification? Why are states doing more and more to criminalize those who were brought here by their parents or who overstayed their visas?

The national ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Project just put out a new Issue Brief on this debate. Below is the basic info you should know and some links to more information.

When someone is present in the United States in violation of immigration laws, it is not a crime by itself. Entering without documentation is an offense, but most immigrants in the country did enter legally but have overstayed work or school visas. Many others who are undocumented enter the country for work with the promise of secure jobs and legal documentation, but don’t get what they are promised. Also when someone is removed from the country and then comes back without permission it becomes a crime.

It is not a federal crime to simply be undocumented. A very controversial proposal (H.R. 4437, also called the “Sensenbrenner bill” for one of our state Congressmen) did pass the House but was rejected by the Senate after massive street protests. At this time, the lack of legal presence is a civil rather than a criminal law and no immigration laws refer to anyone in violation of that law as a “criminal alien.”

The government is also routing valuable resources away from prosecuting violent crime as it pursues non-violent immigrations violations. As our federal resources are spent pursuing immigrants who are statistically less likely to commit crime, money for gun trafficking, white-color crime and organized crime has decreased.

Criminalizing Immigrants Unlawful and Harmful blog post

Immigrants' Rights Issue Brief

- Stacy Harbaugh, Community Advocate, ACLU of Wisconsin Madison Area Office

Racine! Come Out to the Advancing Voting Rights Event on Saturday

Racine - here's an opportunity to hear from Renee Shavers Crawford of the ACLU of Wisconsin and Craig Oliver from the Racine NAACP talk about how to advance voting rights in our state.

Hosted by Community for Change
Saturday, Feb 6, 2010 (9:30 AM) at Hopes Center
506 Sixth Street, Racine, WI Google Yahoo Mapquest
554-7669 communityforchange@gmail.com
communityforchange.com

ACLU of Wisconsin Applauds the Passage of the Healthy Youth Act

The ACLU of Wisconsin applauds the passage of the Healthy Youth Act, the legislation that will raise state standards for public school human growth and development instruction. The Healthy Youth Act will give Wisconsin teens the tools they need to make healthy and responsible life decisions by providing comprehensive sexuality education that is age appropriate and medically accurate.

“Our state legislators looked at the facts about current teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection rates in Wisconsin and took action in support of educating students,” said ACLU of Wisconsin Community Advocate Stacy Harbaugh. “Armed with the facts about reproduction and how to protect themselves from risk, the Healthy Youth Act will help young people make healthier choices."

The Healthy Youth Act will better honor equal protection, free speech and freedom of religion in our public schools. Students have the right to ask their teachers questions about reproduction and teachers should be able to answer them with age appropriate facts. Human growth and development curriculum on relationships and reproduction should recognize equality in gender and sexual orientation. Our schools should also respect religious diversity and this legislation ensures that curriculum will not promote a bias against religion. All parents will have the right to inspect teaching materials at any time and will continue to be able to take their children out of portions of the curriculum with which they disagree.

Comprehensive sexuality education enjoys a broad base of support including major medical organizations such as the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Society of Adolescent Medicine, the American Nurses Association, the American Public Health Association, and the Institute of Medicine. Comprehensive sex education is also supported by major educational organizations including the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and the National School Boards Association. More than 85 percent of Americans support school-based sexuality education programs that teach students how to use and where to get contraceptives.

The ACLU of Wisconsin has approximately 8,000 members who support its efforts to defend the civil liberties and civil rights of all Wisconsin residents. For more on the work of the ACLU of Wisconsin, visit our webpage. Find us on Facebook and Twitter at ACLUMadison and ACLUofWisconsin. Join the ACLU of Wisconsin today and help us fight for civil liberties in Wisconsin.

Healthy Youth Act Passes the State Senate on Party-Line Vote

The Healthy Youth Act has passed the state Senate! Raising the state standards on human growth and development curriculum to be more comprehensive and fact-based is one step closer to law in Wisconsin.

On an 18 to 15 party-line vote, the Senate passed a bill that is very similar to the Assembly version. A unanimous amendment added language that would teach students about statutory rape laws and sex offenses. The bill will go back to the Assembly for a vote and then on to the Governor to sign.

The Healthy Youth Alliance, a coalition of individuals and organizations including the ACLU of Wisconsin, encourages voters to contact their Senators to comment on how they voted.

Ayes:
Carpenter, Coggs, Erpenbach, Hansen, Holperin, Jauch, Kreitlow, Lassa, Lehman, Miller, Plale, Risser, Robson, Sullivan, Taylor, Vinehout, Wirch

Nays:
Cowles, Darling, Ellis, Fitzgerald, Grothman, Harsdorf, Hopper, Kanavas, Kapanke, Kedzie, Lasee, Lazich, Leibham, Olsen, Schultz

The Healthy Youth Alliance maintains that the Healthy Youth Act is a commonsense measure to improve the health of young people throughout Wisconsin. The bill requires Wisconsin schools that choose to teach sex education provide students with comprehensive information about healthy relationships and preventing unintended pregnancy and STDs.

If schools teach sex education, it must include medically accurate and age-appropriate information about abstinence, birth control and barrier methods to prevent unintended pregnancy and STDs. They must also teach teens about the life skills they need to say no to sex, to insist on contraception, and to communicate with parents and other trusted adults about these issues.

Thanks to all the ACLU members and supporters who called in with their support! Stay tuned to Cap City Liberty or to our Twitterfeed for more action alerts on civil liberties related issues in Wisconsin.

Today is Data Privacy Day - It's About More Than Your Credit Card and Social Security Number

Today is Data Privacy Day and it is an opportunity to remind everybody that while we enjoy the ever-changing and evolving technologies available to us, from Facebook to medical record sharing, we should always know that our data and our information belongs to us. Any searching or sharing of our information needs our permission.

A year ago, Wisconsin Senator Erpenbach took the lead on authoring a resolution recognizing Data Privacy Day (PDF) in Wisconsin. We now have an official statement about what data privacy means to our state government. In this statement, and in the continued educational work of the ACLU of Wisconsin, privacy rights are more than protection against credit card fraud and identity theft: it is a practice of safety, protection and practices for everybody.

"Privacy rights need to be defended year-round," said ACLU of Wisconsin Executive Director Chris Ahmuty. "Today is a great day to recognize how we can protect ourselves against identity theft, encroaching surveillance and data insecurity."

Nationally the ACLU has been in the center of courtrooms, legislative hearings and the media to show what is wrong with public video surveillance, why the Real ID program doesn't secure our identities and should be overturned, and how government surveillance technology is outpacing legal restraints to abuses of power.

Read more about the work that the ACLU is doing nationally to support privacy rights. Aspects of privacy rights that we work on include biological technology privacy (our DNA is our own), consumer privacy (don't spy on what I buy), Internet free speech and privacy (make those Facebook photos private!), medical privacy (sharing electronic records is great for doctors, but shouldn't be searched by non-medics), students rights (with cell phones and their non-directory information), and workers' privacy (from camera surveillance to lack of protection of personal records).

Action Alert: Call Your State Senator NOW and Say YES to the Healthy Youth Act!

Take action today in support of the Healthy Youth Act! The comprehensive sexuality education bill is scheduled to be voted on by the state Senate Thursday/tomorrow which is the last step before it is signed into law by the Governor!

Tweet this alert or put it in your Facebook status update: Call your Wisconsin State Senator NOW and say YES to the Healthy Youth Act http://bit.ly/9IQXBz

FAQ:
Where do I call?
The hotline to contact your state Senator is 1-800-362-9472. The hotline is open during regular business hours. You can also find your Senator's contact information on-line.

Who is my state Senator?
Look up your Senate rep on-line with your address.

What do I say?
Tell your Senator that you support the Healthy Youth Act (SB 324), which would raise the state standards on human growth and development classes in our schools.
***Remember to leave your name and address so they know you are a constituent.
***You can read more about what the ACLU of Wisconsin said about the bill on our blog.

Why now?
By a 4 to 3 vote, the Senate Education Committee passed the Healthy Youth Act (AB 458 version) this morning. This excellent news means that the bill is scheduled for a full floor vote in the Senate tomorrow (Thursday, 1/28). The state Assembly already debated and passed their version - the Senate will take it up for debate and if passed is expected to be signed into law by Governor Doyle.

Read more on the increase in sexually transmitted disease and infection rates in Wisconsin, especially among teens.

Closing Guantánamo: A Deadline Missed

Today an important deadline was missed. One of the most shameful chapters of American history was to have been brought to a close with the shuttering of the prison at Guantánamo Bay. President Obama's executive order to close the prison within a year (PDF), made on his second full day in office, was a bold act that signaled a strong commitment to breaking away from the unlawful policies of the Bush administration.

Sadly, the prison is still open. President Obama has recently reaffirmed his commitment to closing the facility, and that is encouraging. Yet, at the same time, it is worrisome that when Guantánamo finally does close, it appears that some of its most shameful policies will continue on U.S. soil, potentially reducing the closure to a symbolic gesture.

The administration has admittedly run into significant obstacles to closing the prison. Congress, awash in fear-mongering and claims of "Not in my backyard," helped turn Guantánamo into a political football by blocking transfers of detainees cleared for release to the U.S. and launching a failed attempt to block the Justice Department from prosecuting detainees in federal court. But the administration is also to blame, as it has essentially discouraged other countries from accepting detainees by refusing to accept any into the U.S., fought the release of cleared detainees even up to the Supreme Court, and declared recently that it won't release detainees to Yemen. The notion that Americans are made safer by continuing to detain prisoners who have been deemed appropriate for release simply because they come from certain countries will only serve to inflame those who believe that the U.S. has lost respect for the rule of law.

It is vital that the failure to meet the closure deadline does not give in to a sense of inertia or inevitability that the prison will be open for a long time to come. But it is also just as important that when Guantánamo is finally closed, it is closed right. That means that along with closing the facility, we must also put an end to its illegal policies like indefinite detention. Unfortunately, the latest indications from Washington don't bode well.

Last month, the Obama administration announced its intention to purchase the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois for the purpose of holding some of the detainees currently remaining at Guantánamo. However, all indications are that some of the detainees who would be sent to the Thomson prison would be held under a policy, unchanged from the Bush administration, of indefinite detention without charge or trial. The Obama administration may have inherited the problems of Guantánamo from the Bush years, but by continuing the prison's lawless policies on U.S. soil, it would take undisputed ownership of them.

In deciding how to handle detainees, the administration should conduct a thorough review of each case. Detainees against whom there is no credible evidence should be repatriated back to their home countries or resettled elsewhere where they won't be tortured. Detainees against whom there is evidence of terrorist activity should be tried in federal courts. The American criminal justice system is more than capable of trying terrorism suspects while protecting both sensitive security evidence and fundamental rights. The federal courts have successfully prosecuted more than over 200 terrorism cases, including those of "Blind Sheik" Omar Abdel-Rahman for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussoui for conspiring in the 9/11 attacks.

No one disputes that the government has the right, under the laws of war, to detain prisoners captured on the battlefield until the end of hostilities. But the Bush and Obama administrations have defined their powers to do so far too broadly. They have used such authority to pick up and detain prisoners from around the globe who they deem engaged in the "war on terror," essentially defining the "war zone" as the entire globe. Moreover, the "war on terror" will never come to a public, decisive end, so the duration of the war is essentially forever, opening up the possibility that America would detain individuals for the rest of their lives without giving them their due process rights. But even for those detainees at Guantánamo for whom the laws of war would ordinarily apply, the unique situation demands that they be charged or released after so many years of imprisonment without the protections of domestic and international law.

Guantánamo must close, and when it finally does, celebration will be in order. But the illegal policies embodied by the prison must disappear along with it. This moment in time presents a crucial opportunity to turn the page on the tragic policies of the past and firmly reclaim our moral authority. Continuing the failed policies of Guantánamo, on U.S. soil or elsewhere, would be an error of historic proportions.

Cross-posted from the ACLU's Blog of Rights to Daily Kos and Huffington Post.

Please join the ACLU today and help us continue the fight for accountability in government and an end to abuses of power.