SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
On Tuesday, the family of Eduardo Gualajara Castro and Voces de la Frontera launched an online petition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") Louisiana Field Office Director David D. Rivera urging him to use his administrative power to release Eduardo from ICE detention. Eduardo was detained on April 25th at the Walworth County Courthouse in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, after he went there to pay a traffic ticket. Click here to see the petition.
Eduardo is a father of four US Citizen children and the owner of a small business which employs three workers, Edward's Pallets, and has lived in Lake Geneva for over 17 years. He is currently applying for a U Visa, which protects victims of crimes and their family members. ICE recently moved Eduardo to a detention center in Louisiana, thousands of miles from his family, indicating that they plan to deport him quickly.
"ICE is seeking to deprive our children of their father," said Eduardo's wife Adriana Robles. "They are depriving him of the chance to be with his children. To do this to him while his visa application is in process is a grave violation of his rights. My husband is a hard worker, someone who has provided jobs for others while trying to do better for himself and his family."
Around the country, ICE has arrested scores of community members in courthouses who have come forward to seek protection, pay tickets, and access the justice system. Protests led ICE to halt courthouse arrests under the Obama Administration, but Trump has brought ICE back into the courts with a vengeance. While Eduardo did receive a ticket for DUI over 12 years ago, he quickly paid the fine and attended the required classes. He has never had any other encounters with law enforcement except a ticket for driving without a license. ICE has thus far refused to consider Eduardo for an immigration bond, saying he was ordered removed from the US over twenty years ago after trying to enter the country. However, this does not change his eligibility for the U Visa.
"What is happening to Eduardo and his family shows a disturbing trend of ICE resuming their presence in courthouses, after Voces de la Frontera and the national ACLU organized to push them out in 2014," said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, Executive Director of Voces de la Frontera. "They have returned to sensitive areas where they shouldn't be, and they are clearly trolling through traffic citation court records looking for immigrant community members. Eduardo is a loving father, the employer of 3 people, and has a pending U Visa application. His deportation is fueled by hate. Separating someone like Eduardo from his family will only harm his community and traumatize his children."
Voces de la Frontera is Wisconsin's leading immigrant rights group - a grassroots organization that believes power comes from below and that people can overcome injustice to build a better world.
"We already know how devastating the Biden asylum shutdown is and it should be ended immediately rather than expanded," said one campaigner.
Two months after U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order barring migrants who cross the southern border without authorization from receiving asylum, senior administration officials are reportedly considering making the policy—which was meant to be temporary—much harder to lift.
Biden's June directive invoked Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act—previously used by the administration of former Republican President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, to deny migrants asylum—"when the southern border is overwhelmed."
The policy shuts down asylum requests when the average number of daily migrant encounters between ports of entry hits 2,500. Border entry points may allow migrants to seek asylum when the seven-day average dips below 1,500.
"The move to make the asylum restrictions semi-permanent would effectively rewrite U.S. asylum law."
The changes under consideration would reopen entry only after the seven-day average for migrant encounters remains under 1,500 for 28 days.
"The asylum ban itself is arbitrary and duplicative. It has no relation at all to a person's asylum claims, meaning even a person with an extraordinarily strong claim would be denied for crossing at a time when many others, potentially thousands of miles away, are doing the same," Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group, said Wednesday.
"There is no doubt that we need to rethink the current asylum system, which would include giving it an infusion of resources so that people don't have to wait five years for a decision," he continued. "But cutting it off to whole swathes of people for reasons unrelated to their claims isn't a fix."
"The move to make the asylum restrictions semi-permanent would effectively rewrite U.S. asylum law, which since it was created in 1980 has mandated that all people on U.S. soil be permitted to request humanitarian protections, regardless of how they got here," Reichlin-Melnick added.
U.S. officials say Biden's order has resulted in a dramatic decrease in asylum claims.
According toThe New York Times:
Since Mr. Biden's executive order went into effect, the number of arrests at the southern border has dropped precipitously. In June, more than 83,000 arrests were made, then in July the number went down further to just over 56,000 arrests. Arrests in August ticked up to 58,000, according to a homeland security official, but those figures still pale in comparison to the record figures in December when around 250,000 migrants crossed.
Migrant rights advocates condemned the new rules. Less than two weeks after Biden issued the order, a coalition of rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union sued the administration, arguing the policy was illegal and endangered migrant lives.
"We already know how devastating the Biden asylum shutdown is and it should be ended immediately rather than expanded," Amy Fischer, Amnesty International USA's director of refugee and migrants rights, said Wednesday on social media. "High numbers of people being denied their human rights is not a sign of success, it's a disgrace."
"Our kids are sitting in a classroom where they should be fulfilling their God-given potential, and some part of their big beautiful brain is concerned about a shooter busting through the door of their classroom," said the Democratic presidential nominee.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday addressed the fatal mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, and addressed the attack that left at least four people dead—two students and two teachers—and injured nine, calling it a "senseless tragedy on top of so many senseless tragedies."
"It's just outrageous that every day in our country in the United States of America, that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive," Harris said at a campaign rally in New Hampshire that took place shortly after news of the shooting broke. "It doesn't have to be this way."
"This is just one of the things that's at stake in this election," Harris added.
President Joe Biden also spoke about the shooting, demanding that Republicans in Congress "finally say 'enough is enough' and work with Democrats to pass commonsense gun safety legislation."
"We must ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines once again, require safe storage of firearms, enact universal background checks, and end immunity for gun manufacturers," said Biden. "These measures will not bring those who were tragically killed today back, but it will help prevent more tragic gun violence from ripping more families apart."
The Biden-Harris administration has taken some action to prevent gun violence, including closing a loophole that had allowed firearms dealers to sell guns without running background checks on purchasers. Gun violence prevention advocates applauded the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022, but denounced Congress for not coming to an agreement on legislation that would require background checks for all gun purchases and ban assault weapons. The legislation banned gun sales to people convicted of domestic violence and funded state "red flag" programs to remove guns from people deemed a threat to themselves or others.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has vowed to appoint federal judges who oppose limits on firearm ownership and has called himself "the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House."
Both Harris and Biden expressed concern for schoolchildren across the country who are coming of age in a country where mass shootings make national news several times per year and where lockdown drills are routine at school.
"Our kids are sitting in a classroom where they should be fulfilling their God-given potential, and some part of their big beautiful brain is concerned about a shooter busting through the door of their classroom," said Harris.
The gun violence prevention group Giffords shared an account from Apalachee High School senior Sergio Caldera, who was in his chemistry class when he heard gunshots and someone pounding on the classroom door.
"They prepare you for these things," Isabella Albes Cardenas, an 11th grade student at Apalachee High School, told The New York Times. "But in the moment, I started crying."
The student-led group Students Demand Action said that "back to school season should not come with the fear of being shot."
"We deserve to go to school and focus on our education, NOT fear for our lives," said the group. "We don't have to live and die like this. WE DEMAND ACTION."
"Battery workers are seizing their power!" said the United Auto Workers.
"The new jobs of the South will be union jobs," said Tim Smith, a regional director for the United Auto Workers, after the union announced Tuesday that 1,000 workers at Ultium Cells in Spring Hill, Tennessee had voted to form a collective bargaining unit.
The vote made the electric vehicle battery plant the second Ultium Cells workplace to join the UAW, and the second auto industry plant in the U.S. South to vote in favor of unionization following the launch of a major $40 million organizing effort in the region this year.
Anti-union companies such as EV automaker Tesla have eyed the South as a region to make a manufacturing push, due to its historical antagonism toward labor and low levels of unionization.
But Smith said the vote at Ultium Cells proves that "in the battery plants and EV factories springing up from Georgia to Kentucky to Texas, workers know they deserve the same strong pay and benefits our members have won. And we're going to make sure they have the support they need to win their unions and win their fair share."
The first Ultium Cells battery plant to join the UAW was the Lordstown, Ohio location, where employees ratified a contract in June that included a 30% raise over three years for production workers, an immediate $3,000 bonus, and health and safety protections.
"Being unionized will help us reap the benefits as far as better healthcare, better pay, and overall, just having decency within the workplace—not just for us, but future generations," said Tradistine Chambers, a worker at Ultium in Spring Hill.
General Motors, which jointly owns Ultium Cells with South Korean company LG Energy Solution, voluntarily recognized the new union on Tuesday.
"The workers organized without facing threats or intimidation and won their union once a majority of workers signed cards," said the UAW.
Trudy Lindahl, a worker at the plant, said it was "a great day for Ultium workers and for every worker in Tennessee and the South."
"Southern workers are ready to stand up and win our fair share by winning our unions," said Lindahl. "And when we have a free and fair choice, we will win every time."
Two months after the UAW launched its organizing drive in the South, workers at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee overwhelmingly voted to join the union. A vote at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama in May failed even though a majority of workers had signed union cards, and the UAW filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board that the automaker had launched a union-busting campaign.
Despite that setback in Alabama, organizer Keith Brower Brown of Labor Notes said the union in Spring Hill could serve as "a potential union anchor for massive factories under construction for the emerging Southern battery belt."
Tens of thousands of new EV battery jobs are expected to come online across the South in the coming months, including at plants owned by Ford in Tennessee and Kentucky.