In a vote, the board decided they felt the internal investigation, though thorough, came to the wrong conclusion. Those are things that are completely inappropriate to rely on. Many have valid defenses against deportation that they are unable to assert because they lack the resources to pay immigration counsel.
We have to know our rights and share that message with others and keep organizing and support our communities to get through this. As a result, the U. This practice of family separation was also enforced against parents applying for asylum at U. Under this new immigration policy, the U. Yet, we know that May was not the beginning of family separation--hundreds of children were separated from their parents at the border before the official announcement.
ICE case. One prominent example of an early family separation case was that of the youngest known separated child, Constantin Mutu , who was four months old when we met him. You can learn more about his family's story in this week's episode of "The Weekly" from the New York Times, available on Hulu. We are so grateful to our baby client's family for sharing their story and allowing us to share the role we played in it.
MIRC represented every child placed in Michigan who was separated from their parents while the official zero-tolerance policy was in effect. We're relieved to report that all of these children were reunited with their families by October 23, This was not the end of the family separation crisis, though. Even after the federal judge in the Ms. L case ordered the government to end this practice and President Trump rescinded the policy, family separations have continued.
MIRC continues to represent every child brought to Michigan to ensure their legal rights are protected. In addition to representing unaccompanied children placed in Michigan foster care, MIRC also represents Michigan parents facing other immigration-related legal situations that lead to family separation.
For example, when ICE U. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains an undocumented parent for driving without a license --this is family separation. When a migrant farmworker parent loses his or her child after being charged with neglect for living in substandard, employer-provided housing--this is family separation.
And when a parent is detained in a detention facility hundreds of miles away from his or her children, or when that facility doesn't permit in-person visitation--this is family separation. We step into the breach.
With support from our funders and other supporters, MIRC has increased capacity by hiring ten new staff attorneys and six other new staff since November MIRC is now a program of 30 staff, including attorneys, intake coordinators, legal assistants, policy staff, and an expanded leadership team.
This capacity-building allows us to respond not only to the family separation crisis, but also to other significant efforts to restrict the rights of immigrants in this country. For example, MIRC now fields free calls from every detainee and every respondent in immigration court in Detroit. This was not possible a year ago.
We are grateful to our funders, supporters, partners, stakeholders and community advocates who make it possible for us to respond to recent attacks on our immigrant communities. View Facebook album from the launch! Welcoming Michigan is a statewide immigrant inclusion initiative of the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center that launched on May 7, Through this program we partner with community-based organizations, local governments, individuals and institutions across the state that are interested in making local communities more welcoming for immigrants, refugees, and all residents.
We provide technical assistance and collaborate on projects to create more inclusive policies or foster more positive relationships between residents. Working with a constellation of amazing community partners, we host events to help U.
Over the years we have partnered on projects across the state, including in Kalamazoo and Van Buren County. Here is a snapshot of recent efforts in southeast Michigan:. Host an annual Welcoming Michigan Statewide Convening to build a community of practice around operationalizing welcoming, equity, and belonging. We hope to see you there! We partner with community organizations and institutions to help them create more inclusive environments, policies, and practices to help newcomers feel welcome and fully a part of the community.
This includes supporting municipalities that have committed to institutionalizing policies and practices to advance immigrant inclusion. We are proud to say that Michigan is now home to 21 Welcoming Cities and Counties, the most of any state in the country!
In , Welcoming Michigan started as one of 14 original affiliate members of Welcoming America. Over the years we have partnered with Welcoming America on a number of resource guides to assist communities in their welcoming efforts:.
Since launching in , we've held events and reached 19, people! We thank you for being a part of our efforts to make Michigan a more welcoming state and look forward to the next seven years! The right to a minimum wage is one of the most basic and fundamental protections a worker can count on in the workplace. Agricultural workers are among the most vulnerable and often-exploited workers, doing one of the most dangerous, and essential jobs, in today's economy.
While the former Attorney General did not change his position, there's a new AG in charge. Our need to protect workers right to a basic minimum wage for the labor they provide is not only crucial to ensure the entry-level justice for these workers, but it's only essential for the future viability of agricultural labor here in Michigan, which means the future of the food we put on our plates every day.
You can speak out by adding your name to this letter by April 26, to the Attorney General's Office that states that you want her to rescind AG and issue new guidance that clarifies that all agricultural workers in Michigan are entitled to Michigan's minimum wage. I was born in Honduras and came to the States a couple of months before I turned 4.
I grew up in the Bronx in the s and like many first or second generation Latinx immigrants, I learned and spoke English at school and Spanish at home and church. My parents emphasized working hard, following the rules, and keeping close to family and the small Central American community around us. Even if the work leaves you sapped of all physical and mental energy, even if the way you are treated is demoralizing, even if your hours or pay are not quite enough or right, you keep working.
Why would a farmworker not speak up when pesticide is being sprayed around him? Without work, what would you do? How would you define yourself? How would others perceive you?
Since beginning my legal career I have come across countless low-wage immigrant workers who have been harassed at work, shorted hours, exposed to dangerous work conditions, threatened with deportation, or quite simply robbed of their wages by unscrupulous employers who rely on these illegal tactics to maintain a competitive business advantage. Wage theft 1 and workplace exploitation exists in our immigrant communities because of weak state laws 2 , current attacks on federal workplace protections 3 , and lack of enforcement by state and federal agencies 4 , but also because of our immigration laws and how those laws are used by employers to control or dispose of workers who assert their rights.
I am proud and excited to be part of the growing network of Michigan immigrant rights groups that MIRC is a part of. In , the Economic Policy Institute surveyed the 10 most populous states, including Michigan, to determine the rates of minimum wage violations in those states. Michigan low-wage workers experienced more minimum wage violations than workers in North Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.
In Michigan, farmworkers are excluded from state paid sick leave, overtime pay, and some minimum wage protections. No private right of action exists for workers who experience the most extreme form of wage theft.
Meaning, if a worker is not paid for her work, her only option is to file an administrative complaint within one year and she is not entitled to file a lawsuit for her unpaid wages.
These anti-worker policies, along with anti-immigrant rhetoric and devastating immigration policies have a disproportionate negative effect on farmworkers and low-wage immigrant workers. For an example of harmful state agency interpretations, see the lack of minimum wage protections for workers on certain farms in Michigan. I have held that position for about a year and a half.
The Washtenaw County immigration legal services grant that funds my work was born of the work of local community advocates and the County Board of Commissioners. In , community advocates such as the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights WICIR saw the need for increased practical support for immigrants and their families dealing with the enormous—and often devastating—repercussions of increased and indiscriminate immigration enforcement.
The Board approved additional short-term funding for emergencies brought about by immigration enforcement—such as rent assistance for families and children left struggling after the deportation of a parent. It also created new funding for a new attorney at MIRC to provide direct legal services to immigrants in Washtenaw County, community education, and technical assistance to government agencies and organizations who work with immigrant communities. In many ways, the U. Depending on your immigration status, you may lack access to safe work, healthcare, housing or even a valid ID card to prove who you are.
We are fortunate that the Washtenaw County grant allows us to address any immigration-related issues people might have, both in direct immigration legal services and in those other challenges that are exacerbated by immigration status.
Over the past year and a half, I have had the privilege to work with clients at all different stages in their journey—from teenagers who have just arrived seeking asylum, to adults applying for citizenship, to people who have spent decades living in the U. The community is defined by supportive partners—WICIR, the Washtenaw Health Plan, the Washtenaw ID project—whose work aids clients in accessing non-legal resources, and who share technical support on their areas of expertise for our clients.
I also am reminded every day how vibrant and interconnected each member of the community is. When a client is detained or threatened with deportation, I know that not only she and her family will be devastated—coworkers and congregants she worships with will suffer, and children who go to school with hers will be forced to wonder if the same will happen to their parents.
This threat to our community is what motivates me in this work. I am also a Washtenaw County resident and I want support my neighbors as they seek the same dignity and equal opportunity in this community, their home. Abogando por migrantes implica interacciones cotidianas repletas con el racismo tanto interpersonal como internalizado. Por ahora, trabajo para usar la respetabilidad que tengo en estos espacios por muchas de mis identidades, empujando a descolonizar y rechazar la perspectiva de proveedor de servicio dominante.
Y convertirlo en menos blanco. Source: www. Este ensayo es la segunda entrega de una serie de piezas escritas por activistas locales que lideran el trabajo de cambio en todo Michigan. Funciona exactamente como fue intencionado: para preservar y perpetuar el dominio blanco.
El programa busca impactar positivamente un estimado de 4. Erika Murcia es una coordinadora de admisiones de MIRC apoyando con un sistema robusto de admisiones y asistiendo con desarrollo de capacidad en Detroit. My position is to support all our staff in the Washtenaw county office with the management of our robust intake system and with capacity building in the Detroit Metro area.
This only means that human rights of immigrants are being violated more and in various new ways. Through December 3, we have opened 2, cases this year.
Most of these cases were opened via our two phone intake lines. In , between March and June we developed a customized Needs Assessment survey questionnaire which was used to gauge the gaps in immigrant legal services in the Detroit Metro area, and to identify the barriers that exist for immigrant legal service providers in satisfying the most pressing unmet needs in the community.
Representatives of 19 immigrant legal service providers completed the survey. Thus, through our Detroit Front Door Program we have added a new intake line. This year a detainee intake line has been destined specifically for low-income immigrants who are in detention. These clients can call directly from the detention center at no cost Therefore, our phones have been literally ringing more than twice as often as last year. Our work at MIRC also includes creating partnership and building capacity in collaborative ways.
I noticed the need to have more social workers exposed to our legal immigration pro bono work. We hope this will create long lasting opportunities both to educate students on the great legal needs immigrants face but most importantly to take into account the voices and skills of social workers within legal settings. This may strengthen our work from an interdisciplinary standpoint.
Working at a legal office has offered the opportunity to better understand the various challenges attorneys face when representing immigrants. Among these challenges, we've shared in many accomplishments over this past year. First, I have worked on developing mindfulness strategies at MIRC to enhance awareness when working with trauma survivors and at the same time understanding how vicarious trauma impacts our own life as advocates.
MIRC has also established our Racial Equity Working Group where I participate in its space for dialogue, reflection and action steps to improve our direct services, capacity building and coalition building work. As of December 6, , 32 states plus the District of Colombia and Puerto Rico, have legalized medical marijuana. Ten states, including Michigan , have legalized marijuana for recreational purposes, too.
People who are not U. Unfortunately, that is wrong!! It is still a federal offense to possess marijuana even if, under state law, it is legal for medical or recreational purposes. I represent children and youth who are in deportation proceedings and metro Detroit area residents on a variety of immigration matters.
Over the past year alone, MIRC has represented approximately children in immigration matters as a part of the Unaccompanied Minors program. Like all the children I represent, I am an immigrant. I immigrated to the United States when I was a toddler.
I became eligible to apply to become a permanent resident and eventually became a United States Citizen. Undoubtedly, my work is a life calling and a dream come true. My personal experience helps me relate and connect to the people I serve. I make sure that I take appropriate care to develop their cases and seeing me hopefully inspires them to continue hoping for a better future. Today, I need your help to demand that all children are protected.
The FSA has been in place for decades. It is designed to protect the well-being and basic rights of children in the custody of the federal government, including people seeking asylum. It does so by setting basic standards of care and prevents the U. We urge organizations to submit robust comments detailing their opposition to the proposed rule and we will commit to supporting organizations in those efforts as we have done for the Michigan Civil Rights Commission MCRC.
We are grateful that the MCRC continues to defend the civil rights of immigrant children and their families. In our own comment, we partnered with the National Association of Social Workers - Michigan Chapter to express our strong opposition to the proposed rule to amend regulations relating to the apprehension, processing, care, custody, and release of children.
We believe the proposed rule undermines the purpose underlying the FSA. Rather than advancing the child welfare principles for immigrant children seeking protection in the United States, the proposed rule expands the authority of the Department of Homeland Security DHS to jail families in impoverished conditions and dismantles established protections for immigrant children in DHS and Health and Human Services custody.
Anyone can submit a comment. Please visit www. A child is a child no matter what country they are born in. A child is a child even when they cross the border. And our children deserve to be safe. The report was compiled using data from interviews and evaluations with frontline legal service providers across Southeast Michigan between May and June Funding for this report, along with an array of comprehensive legal services focused on Southeast Michigan, comes from The Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan and The Kresge Foundation.
I joined the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center in March of this year as part of their newest program to expand legal services to the Detroit Metro area. The past six months have been filled with challenges and lessons learned. However, the past few weeks alone have been especially challenging with the case of Francis Anwana.
Many are familiar with his story by now. Francis was born deaf in Nigeria. He was completely unable to communicate up until he was thirteen years old and came to the U. Because he overstayed his visa, he was ultimately put in deportation proceedings and has been checking in with ICE for the past decade. His advocates immediately went into action to prevent that from happening. The first time I met Francis, we were alone in a room waiting for an interpreter. He flashed his signature smile and I smiled back.
He then signed something to me and I awkwardly tried to signal my lack of understanding. He chuckled and took my hand with his and with the other began signing. I then, through the interpreter, explained my role. Every time I would see Francis, he would smile at me and sign and every time I would clumsily sign whatever I had just learned.
Thanks to the help of many advocates, friends, journalists, co-workers, and countless others, Francis will be able to stay in the U. Currently, there is a private bill that, if passed, would allow Francis to be a lawful permanent resident. I urge any supporters to call your reps to support Rep. Dan Kildee's Bill to make Francis a lawful permanent resident.
It is H. My mother is from Mexico. The question comes in different packages depending on the person asking. I also happen to have a Mexican mother who recently naturalized! American father.
I happened to have been born in the United States I happened to have lived in Mexico throughout significant and scattered moments in my life. So to sidestep that issue, my default answer would focus on my mother rather than on me. Also, I felt that being white passing in a way erased my Mexicanness and thereby my mother. An added element was my environment and locations.
I grew up in southern Alabama. I even attended a Brown v. Board of Education legacy school still under court mandate to integrate blacks and whites. Because of this, my perception of race came from a kind of peripheral position.
An outsider. A foreigner. I realized early on that my mom looked —and was treated— very different than me. In school, I was friends with mostly international students and fellow children of immigrants. But because of my mixed-race and white appearance positionality, I was also close to a lot of white U. Being on the side lines yet somehow on Team Hegemony meant that I was able to see first-hand the privilege that came with my whiteness and, in consequence, the unfairness of it to my family and friends.
I think this led me to have such an interest in social sciences, especially topics such as race, identity, equality, migration, justice, and interculturalism. Progress is slow since my childhood. Fortunately, the U. It is an honor to be invited to speak in front of a group of so many inspirational advocates, scholars, social workers, researchers, teachers, organizers, and yes, even lawyers.
I also have played various roles as an organizer with the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights and, together with a few amazing people, one of whom — Maria Ibarra — had her amazing-ness acknowledged today — organize the Urgent Response system that WICIR operates. You have started municipal ID programs throughout the state.
And you keep winning anti-deportation campaigns like that of Fredy Mencia, Papa Doumbia and Francis Anwana, even though, allegedly, those are supposed to be impossible to win now. And you also returned every single child separated at the border of Texas and Mexico who was brought to Michigan into the arms of their parents where they belong.
When I look at the audience, I actually know a good portion of the people out there, mostly from advocacy and field work I was doing while I swore to my committee that I was indeed writing a dissertation. Instead, I see people. I see individuals. And, as a friend, the memories that stick with me, are not always of these collective accomplishments.
But the times you, as an individual, reached the limit on what you could handle. In fact sometimes, what sticks with me are not the times you succeeded, but the times you failed.
The times you cried. The times, numerous as they seem to be as of late, when I have seen you at your breaking point. I remember a case that I worked on with a dear friend. He took this role gracefully, not complaining that the next three weeks would be among the hardest he had ever experienced in his long advocacy career. He worked tirelessly for Veronica. He called the family every day. He left messages with lawyers and advocates and pastors and friends. And he visited churches to see who would house her if she sought sanctuary.
When he had tried everything there was to try, he coached her family through what it meant to have a mother and wife removed, and agreed that he would join her, silently, at the airport to bear witness to the cruelty of the deportation machine.
So disturbed was Veronica by the thought of being forced to return to Honduras, where she had not been for 15 years, that amid her attempts to pack her Michigan life in to two suitcases, she feel to the floor unconscious.
So I went with him to the ER and I watched him stand by her ER bed, hug her husband and her children, talk to her doctor, and make sure she got home again safely. By this point, Veronica had missed her deportation date, so he started all over again. A week later ICE had decided that Veronica had sufficiently recovered from her ordeal and ordered her back to the airport for deportation. So again he went.
Again he stood in silent protest as she walked onto the plane to San Pedro Sula, her husband and daughters sobbing besides him. I, and others, were pretty sure the moment broke him. And to be honest, none of us would have blamed him if you never came back to this work again. Of course this is just one story. A few others come to mind for me as well.
I think of the time the founder of a legal services organization told me that she could barely keep herself together as she completed the U Visa application for a girl the same age as my daughter who had been so brutally sexually assaulted that she needed reconstructive surgery. These moments of darkness are real. This violence and trauma that our community experiences, that makes its way into our own lives and bodies, its real. For me, they are formative, and I can only come to this work knowing that they exist, and that they will color and shape my world and that of my family for the rest of my life.
If our work is so frequently and deeply challenging, Why do we keep doing it? Why do we come back to it? My job is to diagnosis illness and disease, and illustrate precisely how damaging they can be and in what way. Thus I spend my time focusing on the social disease of immigration enforcement, in describing how this disease spreads fear and panic, and draws on the worst parts of our humanity to create deep racial divisions and strip our communities of rights.
I talk about how this disease somehow pushes people to argue that separation of families at the border is their parents fault, that a door kicked in when a mother. I want to spend my career diagnosing and describing what I believe to be among the worst social disease of our time. But I do know someone who is perfect for this task. I know someone who can explain to you why you are here, because, at one point, she did the same thing for me.
She arrived in a cold Michigan day on January 25th of When Lourdes arrived in Ann Arbor, she liked it. She liked being close to a university, and felt that there was ample opportunity to find work. So Lourdes did what so many of us do when we find a place in which we feel happy, healthy, and secure. Lourdes started a family. She bought a house. She found a church. And she went on with her daily life.
Along the way, Lourdes gave birth to two daughters and a son. All three children, were born in the US and thus, unlike their undocumented father and the mother who was still on a tourist visa at that point, were US citizens.
Now I want to take a second and pause, because I think we can all empathize with Lourdes story in some way. For some of you, you may even be like Lourdes, and have crossed the border yourself to start a new life in the US.
For others, including myself, we are more like her daughter, the first in a bloodline to attend a university in the United States. And for a large portion of you, we are the people and organizations who supported Lourdes and her family along the way. We are the ones who helped her daughter with her fafsa or who helped Lourdes with her tourist visa. Thus, it was in her own home that she was cuffed in front of the first child in her blood line to go to college and taken to Battle Creek where she was stripped naked, searched, and imprisoned for 23 days.
You heard that correctly. ICE traded human beings, allowing Lourdes to stay if her husband agreed to be deported in her place. Lourdes walked out of the ICE office and back to her family, and agreed to check in with ICE every year for the indefinite future. She did so religiously, from to But in we elected a man who made a career out of saying that a Black man had faked his papers, who said our mexican parents were rapists, who said immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and other African countries were from shithole countries, who said the football players who kneel to protest racially disparate police killings of african americans are sons-of-bitches, and who said gang members quote are not people, these are animals.
When Lourdes, who had checked in for six years at that point, checked in at the ICE office on Wednesday, July 19th of , she was told to return on Monday to review the plan for her deportation. So Washtenaw County did everything we knew how to do. We emailed, we called, we marched, we prayed, we gathered, we fought. This woman, a mother whom we had come to know and love, who had been in Michigan for 20 years, was to be forcibly removed to Mexico.
And yet again, we found ourselves standing in silence, bearing witness to the unmistakable cruelty enacted by the party of family values that is determined to break families apart. Now for me, I remember this moment, and I know there was nothing left in me. I know that every cell within my body had been wrung dry, and I stood frozen in my own futility.
As Lourdes moved from the airport entrance to the metal detector in the security screening area, it felt like a funeral procession. She hugged cousins and uncles and friends until finally she arrived at the metal detector, the last barrier between her and the plane to Mexico. And I will never know how she did this, but in the span of about 10 seconds, Lourdes managed to make direct eye contact with what felt like every single person in the entire airport, and she said simply, and loudly,.
What Lourdes helped me understand was that the losses, our seemingly constant and painful losses, these are just moments. They pass.
We break down and we cry and we crack and we retreat and we are wrung out and exhausted. But these are just moments. The helpdesk will provide in-person legal information and assistance, as well as follow-up services remotely and in-office. These services are critical because immigrants in deportation proceedings who cannot afford attorneys are not provided legal representation at government expense.
The program enables the MIRC to help more immigrants navigate and understand the complexities of deportation proceedings.
The helpdesk program is available to all unrepresented immigrants with cases before the Detroit Immigration Court, including asylum-seeking families on a special dedicated docket. This will also help with the MIRC being overwhelmed by requests for legal assistance for these families who are facing expedited proceedings and will help identify and address due process concerns. Reed, MIRC managing attorney, said. Immigrants seeking legal service services or with questions about their rights can call the MIRC at
0コメント