Author: mopress

TheRagBlog / DissidentVoice / CounterPunch

by Greg Moses

“We’re not criminals,” says the young man on the phone. “I’m not here to use the system.”

If he could address the US Congress when it votes on the long-lost DREAM Act, 21-year-old Hector Lopez would ask for freedom from a “106-day nightmare” that started in late August when American immigration authorities ripped him out of his tax-paying, college-going, hard-working life and deported him to Mexico.

He would happily save American taxpayers the money they are now spending on his room and board in a lockup built for migrants near Florence, Arizona.

“What I’ve said the whole time is that people like us–the college dreamers–didn’t have any choice. We were brought to this country as children and now we’re your future doctors, lawyers, and neighbors. We’re the future of this country and they’re trying to kick us out. Here you have people who are willing to fight for this country and all we’re asking is permission to call this country our home for the rest of our lives.

“Congress could enable so many productive people by passing the DREAM Act,” says Lopez. “And they would be foolish not to.” With all the things that Lopez has to worry about on Tuesday night, the main thing that keeps his mind busy is how to manage the expectations of what Congress will do with the DREAM Act on Wednesday. “The DREAM Act is finally being voted on,” he says. “I’m trying not to think about it, but it’s making me a nervous wreck.”

Hope is a serious thing to contend with when you’re locked up in Arizona thinking about holiday food. If Congress passes the DREAM Act, Lopez has been advised by attorneys that he would be made a free man. The DREAM Act would make it legal for young folks like him to return to college, get back to work, and make a future in the hometowns of America.

“We could ask for my immediate release,” he says, letting his hope build up momentarily. “So I’m hoping for the best. But on the other hand, I’m trying to stay pessimistic, too.” After all, it’s the US Congress we’re talking about here. They have had good days in history. Maybe even enough good days to make up for the bad.

Whichever way the DREAM Act goes this week, Lopez has backup plans. It’s been three weeks since he crossed the border from Mexico with papers in hand requesting a hearing for “credible fear.” The hearing is usually done in two parts, says immigrant advocate Ralph Isenberg. Lopez is still waiting for part one.

“If people have to wait a long time for the hearing process to begin, that’s a problem in itself,” argues Isenberg from the office of his real estate business in Dallas. “ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has the discretion to release Hector to his home immediately.” Alongside the effort to free Lopez, Isenberg is also working for the return of another college dreamer, Saad Nabeel, who was deported from Texas in 2009 during the first semester of his freshman year.

If Congress and ICE continue to harass Hector, Saad, and the millions of college dreamers that they typify, then Isenberg will sponsor a civil rights delegation to visit Hector on Friday.

Rev. Peter Johnson was born into a civil rights family in Plaquemine, Louisiana. He was at the Freedom Rock Baptist Church the night state troopers rode their horses right up to the pulpit. That was the night James Farmer had to be smuggled out of town alive in a coffin.

“I want to tell Hector that he is not alone,” says Rev. Johnson over speaker phone. “There are people all over the world who believe in dignity for all human beings and who have a problem with America when it sets out to destroy families.

“There is a long history of America destroying families,” says Johnson. “Under slavery, they would send the father to Georgia, the mother to Alabama, and the children to Virginia. Today America is literally destroying families. I know of cases where a mother puts her kids in school for the day. The mother is picked up by immigration and sent to Haskell (Texas) prison. And when the children get out of school their mother is gone. They are literally destroying families.”

Johnson plans to take books by Gandhi and King as gifts for Lopez. He has a Gandhi book on nonviolence and a favorite by King, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Destroying families is chaos, not community. Where will we go from here?

“Look here,” says Isenberg jumping into the conversation. “I’m reading the inscription in Rev. Johnson’s copy of Where Do We Go from Here? It says: ‘Peter, Read this book. There will be a test. In fact, now that I think about it, life will be a test for you, (signed) Martin.’”

“That’s right,” says Rev. Johnson, “and when Dr. King gave you a book to read you made sure you read it because you knew he was going to question you about it. Where Do We Go from Here was a book written in preparation for the Poor People’s Campaign (of 1968). The Poor People’s campaign was going to unite Black and White and Hispanic people so they could confront the trap of poverty and unemployment.” It was a handbook for a movement to come.

“King specifically talked about people South of the border. He said it was America’s moral obligation to help them find a better life.” The timing of Friday’s visit to Florence, Arizona will have three dimensions of significance for Rev. Johnson. It’s nearly a month away from the annual celebration of King’s birthday. The holiday season is coming, which is “a season of forgiveness and atonement.” And finally, Dec. 10 will be the 62nd Anniversary for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“Fundamentally, the case of Hector Lopez is a question of human rights,” says Rev. Johnson. “America is punishing a man who was brought here only weeks after he was born. In our treatment of Hector Lopez, we need to remember the human rights values of dignity and respect for all.”

DissidentVoice / CounterPunch / MeltIce

by Greg Moses

Pain isn’t the first thing you remember about the policeman thwacking your arm with a bamboo cane. First thing is the shock. “What on earth just happened?”

Two weeks ago you’re riding with your father in a rickshaw along a jam-packed street in Dhaka, Bangladesh when you see a few street children half naked, starving, skeletons dressed in skin. At once the rickshaws around you rustle with murmurs and shouts at the policeman beating the children on the head.

So you jump out of the rickshaw and say to the policeman, “Stop beating those children!”

You’re a foot behind the cop who turns to demand that you stop speaking English. “Speak Bangla!” commands the cop. But you can’t speak Bangla or understand what else is being said all around you as the policeman harangues you while the crowd harangues the cop.

Then thwack. That bamboo cane smacks a bruise on your arm, just below the left shoulder. There is no time to sort anything out. Your father tugs you by the arm and you run with him as fast as you can, escaping into the inexorable crowds of Dhaka.

If you are asked a question about why you did it, you reply with a question: “On what planet is it okay to beat children on the head because they are begging to stay alive?” But mostly nobody asks. You are an exile–a deportee–and you usually try to stay anonymous before the eyes that come near you.

As Ralph Isenberg tells you via cell phone from Dallas: “You may not be an American citizen yet, Saad Nabeel, but you are an American teenager.” And who expects an American teenager to sit quietly when he sees a cop beating a starving child on the head? None of the American teenagers you know.

And yet, how is it possible to make sense of all this? Even now, two weeks after the cop caned Nabeel, and after he grabbed a tourist visa and fled from Bangladesh, he hesitates to tell people that he lived as an exile in Bangladesh because he was deported from America for no crime whatsoever.

“There’s so many things that don’t compute,” says Nabeel, speaking into his headset through the beat-up Sony Vaio that he somehow put back together after it was tossed back to him by American immigration. “I’ve been trying to put it together in my head but it doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Patiently he tries to find the right words to express what it’s like to be two or three countries away from the life he grew up with and the dreams that keep flying away.

“My dream is to go to Stanford,” he explains. “But there is no Stanford over here. And how do I get to Stanford when I have been barred from America for the next ten years.”

Friends in America know the facts of Nabeel’s case. How he was brought by his parents to America at the age of three or four. How his parents applied for asylum because of politics in Bangladesh. How asylum was denied to his family when he was six years old.

Nabeel’s parents were tenacious in their determination to stay in America. They moved from L.A. to Texas. By late 2009 they were finally within reach of approved green cards and legal residency. Then the whole game board was thrown over. One month the young Nabeel was working on becoming a straight-A freshman engineering student at the University of Texas at Arlington. The next month he was separated from his parents and locked up. For what? For nothing he did. He was ordered to sign a ten year bar, then he was deported.

Friends of Saad Nabeel don’t think the facts make any sense. “I probably feel just like everyone else does–hurt,” says Liberty High School student Samantha Jarrell of Frisco, Texas. “Just look at it like this, one of your best friends is in a strange country he knows nothing about and the one place he wants to return to is the same place that put him where he is. His family paid taxes. It’s not like they were out causing havoc on the streets of America.”

As Nabeel wrestles with so many dead-end traumas of life uprooted, another American college student Hector Lopez is working to keep hope alive. The circumstances for Lopez don’t look too good at first glance. He’s locked up by immigration authorities in Florence, AZ. But his voice over the phone is upbeat, as if this student of marketing were showing you a pair of shoes back at the Nike store where he used to work in Portland, OR.

Like Nabeel, Lopez was pursuing a college degree when he was abruptly uprooted and tossed out of the country by American immigration authorities. Like Nabeel, Lopez was brought to America at a very young age. Like Nabeel, Lopez was deported first, before the father who brought him here. Julianne Hing has covered the story nicely for Color Lines, and Lopez is looking forward to more press coverage this week.

What’s different for Lopez is that he was deported to the neighboring country of Mexico and was able to walk back up to the US border with letters and documents in hand, requesting readmission. He’s in detention awaiting his interview for a “credible fear” hearing which he doesn’t want to discuss in detail yet. Suffice it to say that Lopez feels safer in Arizona detention than he felt as an American deportee in a country far from home.

On scraps of paper in his pocket, Lopez keeps notes about his life, his memories, the things he recalls growing up as an American kid. Like in 2008, he remembers the gold-edged packet that he received from the White House inviting him to a meeting of youth leaders. There was no way he could afford the $5,000 expense at the time, so he passed on the opportunity.

“I just think it’s kind of funny,” says Lopez over the phone. “One moment I’m invited to the White House for a leadership conference and the next moment they are kicking me out of the country. Of course, looking back, I wish I would have gone to the White House back then.”

Lopez was picked up by immigration authorities on Aug. 23 of this year, a full two weeks after President Barack Obama famously declared in a speech at the University of Texas–backed up by a report in the New York Times–that his administration was not deporting college students who had lived in America most of their lives. In Texas the White House got downright choosy about who they weren’t going to let the President see that day, so Dallas immigrant advocate Ralph Isenberg was handed back the $10,000 ticket he bought for the purpose of telling the President about Saad Nabeel.

On Thanksgiving Day, 2010 Nabeel was packing to flee Bangladesh. At Facebook he scrolled through Thanksgiving pictures that he was not in. He had eaten with the Anderson family on Thanksgiving 2007. In 2008 he had gone over to Shamir’s. But in 2009, Thanksgiving Day arrived with the sound of his mother crying at a border station in New York. He would spend the next 40 days and nights detained. “Yeah, my friends knew that Thanksgiving was my one-year anniversary of going to jail.”

Nabeel has been out of Bangladesh for a week. He has joined an exiled uncle who many years ago fled Bangladesh to avoid political detention. For the time being, Nabeel is restarting his college education at a campus where 90 percent of the students are from out of country. But what should he tell them about where he is really from and all the places he can’t belong? “The main difference between me and the other students here is that they can go home, but I can’t.”

Ralph Isenberg is not giving up on the idea that Nabeel can and should be allowed to come home to America. Meanwhile, he is also helping Lopez. “These two kids are showing all of us what the American Dream is all about,” says Isenberg. The sooner that Nabeel and Lopez can resume their college educations in America the better for everyone he says.

“Maybe it’s because I’m only a teenager, but I like to believe in people,” says Saad’s friend Samantha. “I like to believe that when given the chance people will do the right thing. I don’t know much about how revising immigration errors goes, but whoever has the power to remove this bar should review Saad’s case and bring him home. He isn’t asking for anything more than to return to his real home in the United States. To me, at least, it doesn’t sound like that’s requesting too much.”

Is it too much to ask the President of the United States to do what he promised before the election? To stop throwing good kids and their families out of America? Surely the teenage test that Samantha applies to her friend Saad also applies to Hector. Surely by the time Human Rights Day arrives on Dec. 10 it wouldn’t be too much to ask what Hector Lopez hopes for. To be home in America with his family for the holidays.

On what planet is it okay to pretend that you haven’t got the power to help teenagers dream free?

This

report finds that President Bush has neither exhibited leadership on pressing civil rights issues, nor

taken actions that matched his words. The report reaches this conclusion after analyzing and

summarizing numerous documents, including historical literature, reports, scholarly articles,

presidential and administration statements, executive orders, policy briefs, documents of Cabinet-level

agencies, federal budgets and other data. (from Executive Summary, pdf p. 8)

“Redefining

Rights in America: The Civil Rights Record of the George W. Bush Administration 2001-2004,” US Commission on Civil Rights (Sept. 2004).

Dear Friends:

Words cannot adequately convey the gratitude that we feel for the spirituality bestowed on my husband, Ramsey Muñiz. Spiritual insight and messages received have increased in profoundness. Ramsey is surrounded by loving spirits who acknowledge his pain, sadness, and suffering felt as a result of his unjust incarceration. Ramsey now knows that these loving spirits have supported him since his years of greatest suffering.

During these holidays we share this sacred spirituality seeking your prayers and hoping that everyone will gain a sense of gratitude for the spirituality that the Creator has given us. Ramsey asks God to share this spirituality that given us the strength to endure the pursuit of freedom, justice, and equality for all humanity.

We live in a spiritually wounded world. Our struggle for our freedom and for the freedom of all humanity is a creation that will one day be able to close the world’s open wounds, which means that God’s creation is unfinished.

We thank you with all the love in our hearts for your kindness, support, and for believing in our God-given freedom.

Sincerely,

Ramsey and Irma Muñiz

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Dear Friends:

Ramsey Muñiz remains wrongfully incarcerated. On December 13, 2010, he will turn 68 years of age. Ramsey is approaching 70 years of age and he has suffered greatly. We will not abandon efforts to free him until he is reunited with his family once again!

The National Committee to Free Ramsey Muñiz received correspondence from Dr. Andres Guerrero, graduate of the Harvard School of Divinity, who stated, “We must notify all of the LULAC Chapters and the American GI Forum. Saginaw, Michigan has a great group which I will notify. Ya Basta tanto silencio de todo esto. Where are our leaders when we need them? God, tell us where are they?” Dr. Guerrero speaks of the wrongful incarceration of Ramiro “Ramsey” Muñiz, a past Hispanic leader of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement, whose contributions and political activism brought about advancements for Hispanics, Mexican Americans and Latinos.

As supporters of civil and human rights, we ask that you talk about the case of Ramsey Muñiz with your family and friends to educate them about his case. Below is a past LULAC national resolution regarding Ramsey Muñiz that will help in this effort. It was signed by past president of National LULAC, Rosa Rosales.

Tell your family and friends that they can help by mailing two letters to request a transfer for Ramsey Muñiz from Beaumont, Texas to Three Rivers, Texas, which is closer to his home. One letter will be addressed to their senator, and the other will be addressed to their United States congressman.

If your senator or congressman has written a letter and received a denial to our transfer request, ask him/her to respond to the correspondence. There is no reason for our request to be denied, since Judge Paul Brown ordered Ramsey’s placement in Three Rivers, Texas in the 1994 trial. In trial Ramsey Muñiz stated, “I would like to ask the Court if I could be placed in an institution close to my family, which is Three Rivers, Texas.” Judge Paul Brown agreed, stating “Well, I will make that recommendation, Mr. Muñiz.” See the attached pages of the transcript which serves as evidence.

Ask your senator and congressman to write to Gerardo Maldonado, Jr., Director of the South Central Region Bureau of Prisons, to ask that Ramsey Muñiz be transferred to Three Rivers, Texas, as ordered by the Judge Paul Brown in the 1994. (If your congressman was not re-elected, ask him to help with this urgent humanitarian issue before leaving office. He/she do not officially leave until in January).

Attached is a sample letter that you can mail to your senator or congressman. The address for Senator John Cornyn is shown below. Please obtain the address for your United States Congressman/Congresswoman and send the same letter to him/her.

The Honorable John Cornyn
United States Senator
500 Spring Valley Road, Suite 1125 E
Dallas, TX 75244

We extend our deepest gratitude for your assistance in this urgent matter. For additional information about Ramsey Muñiz, please go to www.freeramsey.com.

Sincerely,
Irma Muñiz

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National Committee to Free Ramsey Muñiz
http://www.freeramsey.com

November 24, 2010

The Honorable John Cornyn
United States Senator
500 Spring Valley Road, Suite 1125E
Dallas, TX 75244

Re: Ramiro “Ramsey” Muñiz 40288-115

Dear Senator Cornyn:

I write to request that that Ramiro “Ramsey” Muñiz be transferred to the Three Rivers Federal Correctional Institution in Three Rivers, Texas. His placement there will be closer to home, and this will ease physical and financial hardships faced by his closest family members who are unable to make the trip to Beaumont. His mother-in-law is 82 years of age, and his brothers are in poor health.

Ramiro “Ramsey” Muñiz has suffered greatly for almost seventeen years of his life. He is approaching 70 years of age, and it is time that to have him transferred close to his family.

In the 1994 trial transcript Ramsey Muñiz stated, “I would like to ask the Court if I could be placed in an institution close to my family, which is Three Rivers, Texas.” Judge Paul Brown agreed with his request stating, “Well, I will make that recommendation, Mr. Muñiz.”

Court orders are followed by all citizens, as a judge’s decision and recommendation are given the highest consideration. Those standards are expected in the Ramsey Muñiz case, and we seek enforcement of the order made by Judge Paul Brown in court.

According to the family of Ramiro Muñiz, he has been in good health since his arrival at Beaumont. He has not taken medication for illness and he has not requested medical attention in Beaumont, Texas. Please confirm his current medical status.

The family, friends, and supporters of Ramiro Muñiz request that he be transferred closer to his family during the remaining years of his life. Thank you for your help in securing his transfer back home as soon as possible.

Please forward my request to Mr. Gerardo Maldonado, Jr., Director of the South Central Region Bureau of Prisons at the address shown below. Thank you for your assistance.

Gerardo Maldonado, Jr., Regional Director
South Central Regional Office
Federal Bureau of Prisons
4211 Cedar Springs Rd.
Dallas, TX 75219

Very truly yours,