Author: mopress

By Nick Braune

I noticed that an activist friend of mine was quoted in an article, and the issues being raised seemed very important. I called Martha Sanchez at her office in Mission and asked for a quick interview. She is an organizer for La Uni*n del Pueblo Entero (LUPE).

Nick Braune: I noticed in the Rio Grande Guardian that you and Juanita Valdez-Cox, the LUPE director, have been meeting with police officials recently about enforcement practices. What is the problem you are trying to resolve?

Martha Sanchez: We met with the police chiefs of La Joya, Peñitas, and Palmview because we had received phone calls from our members with complaints of incidents where the police had stopped people for traffic violations and then called the Border Patrol. We are trying to let the police chiefs know that we are active advocates for our members. We also want to provide a dialogue between the police and members so that our members will not be afraid of them.

Braune: If I understand this right, you are hoping that the local police do not see their role as enforcing immigration laws. Is that a major issue?

Sanchez: We remind them of their real role to protect and serve, which is not to do the work of immigration. And we explain to them that when they act as immigration officers, they lose the confidence of the people, and these people will be less likely to call on the police when major crimes and emergencies happen.

Braune: What is the concern about driver’s licenses and the LUPE cards?

Sanchez: Many working people we advocate for don’t have an ID. We are offering our membership cards as an alternative; this way the police can identify the individual instead of simply calling the Border Patrol as some of the departments were doing.

Braune: I read in the Valley Morning Star today about Operation Streamline starting up near Brownsville, and I was shocked. The paper made it clear to me that it is a major Border Patrol sweep, and it is not just sending immigrants back home for being out of compliance in their paperwork. Operation Streamline intends to hit the undocumented with criminal charges and apparently intends to send many tens of thousands more to prison, for periods of up to six months, before deportation. And I loved Juanita Valdez-Cox’s comment in the Guardian that it would make the private jail companies rich. Any more comments on this Operation Streamline?

Sanchez: About Operation Streamline, we are asking this: Who is going to be making money on these jails? And we make the further point that we are all going to suffer with the shortage of workers. Who is going to pick the crops and who is going to clean the dishes in the restaurants? Who is going to take care of the children when we work outside of home? We hope that everybody knows we will have to pay more money for services if Operation Streamline takes hold. But the big issue is this: When the government slaps more and more people with criminal charges, this will make it impossible for these undocumented workers to ever have a chance of getting legitimate work papers, because they will then have a criminal record.

Curious about Operation Streamline?

An article in Harlingen’s Valley Morning Star on June 11 reports that the new policy intends “criminal prosecution of every migrant caught crossing the border without documentation,” and the article calls it a “zero-tolerance” deterrence policy. (I personally consider both “zero tolerance” enforcement and “deterrence” generally to be ethically problematic, but I’ll hold that thought.)

Although Operation Streamline has raised criticism in other places like Del Rio, the Valley Morning Star says that it is now hitting our Valley. “The Border Patrol rolled out the policy Monday along a four-mile stretch of Cameron County’s border with Mexico from Brownsville to Fort Brown.”

“Formerly, first time offenders were offered the option of voluntary deportation and were processed, put on a bus and sent back to Mexico within hours of their arrest.” But under Operation Streamline they will be “detained, sent to court, jailed for up to 180 days if found guilty, and then deported.”

In Del Rio where this policy was recently tried, one federal Public Defender, William Fry, was quoted as worrying about due process. “We get a case on Wednesday and the court expects us to be ready to go by Friday. That’s not enough time to adequately represent a client.”

I called Meredith Linsky, a Harlingen attorney practicing immigration defense law:

Braune: What did you think of the report in the Valley Morning Star?

Meredith Linsky: I am greatly dismayed by the expansion of Operation Streamline. Our country has clearly made a priority of criminalizing immigrants and their efforts to seek work, opportunity and a better future. What would this country look like if this had been done to our parents, our grandparents and our great-grandparents? There needs to be some recognition of the push and pull effects of immigration. If we want to stop illegal immigration, we should invest in Mexico and Central America and punish the employers who provide jobs to undocumented workers.

Braune: The Border Patrol’s streamlined, “zero tolerance,” deterrence policy seems like a mess-maker to me. Do you agree?

Linsky: Yes, expanding law enforcement efforts like Operation Streamline causes needless suffering, including painful separation of families, and it will cost the American taxpayers millions of dollars. Although illegal entry is a crime on the books, the people who enter illegally are usually economic migrants and asylum seekers who come to this country seeking hope, promise and protection. America needs to recognize its own roots and find a legal way to meet the needs of employers and citizens from impoverished nations.

NOTE: a breifer version of this article first appeared in the Mid-Valley Town Crier.–gm

By Susan Van Haitsma

A brief reflection posted on Susan’s makingpeace blog fits with our theme this Flag Day 2008. And Susan says it will be okay if we post it here, too.–gm

I’m glad that for another year, Austin is hosting the Republic of Texas Biker Rally and the Austin Pride Parade on the same weekend. As the years
go by, I hope there will be more overlap of people between the events.

Last month, my partner and I spent a weekend in Fredericksburg when there happened to be several biker rallies in the vicinity. We had a chance to talk with a group of bikers about their passion for the open road and biker culture.

I asked if they knew of any male-female biker couples who rode with the woman driving and the man sitting behind her. They responded with
quips like, “only if he’s sick and she’s taking him to the hospital.”

They said there are definitely more women riding solo at the rallies, but women just don’t drive with men on the back. One of the women in the group said she wouldn’t necessarily want a guy sitting behind her anyway.

But I’m going to hope some biker dudes decide that being a real man means
not being afraid to be the passenger for a change. Isn’t part of biker culture about freedom from convention?

Be a rebel, guys. Defy the biker status quo, and see how good it feels when a woman is doing the driving.

I was thinking about the issue of gender expectation and tradition in relation to the Pride Parade also. One of the families in our neighborhood is a household of two gay men and their 3 children, each born of a surrogate
mother and fathered biologically by one of the men.

As I observe my neighbors raising their children, I notice ways they take on more equal
parenting roles. The men are freed from the baggage associated with societal expectations and traditions of man-woman parenting couples. I
think their more naturally equal relationship gives all couples some cues for ways that parenting can be more equally shared.

So, thank you to all the parents, couples and individuals of all ages out there who show what equality means by living it. Whether you’re two men on a bike, two women, or a pioneering pair with a woman in the driver’s seat, you’re helping build a republic of Texas that we’ll be proud to live in.

I almost wrote something about sexists often having good intentions, but no. There is really no excuse for wondering whether Hillary Clinton lives in a sexist world. This is especially true in a Google world where all you have to do is search under “hillary sexism.” Melissa McEwan is righteous insightful. Back in February she already had logged 62 examples on her Hillary Sexism Watch. The New York Times this week qualified for example 107. And as McEwan says, this is just a sampling.

There is much more to say about the typical evasion strategies of the “oh-no-it-can’t-be-sexism” crowd. And some of them, being anti-racist, should have known better how to keep their concepts in focus.

If we all share a sexist world, what kind of armor do you think Clinton wears that would be able to shield her from the pervasive effects of patriarchy?

In these matters (racism, sexism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, etc.) the course of wisdom runs in the direction of self-reflection not self-deflection. We all of us have more to learn about how to get over these things together. And more of us should have taken the opportunity of the Clinton candidacy to educate ourselves about how sexism keeps working.–gm

Is it possible for a constitutional structure of governance, founded in the name of democracy, to willingly discard the principle of a human right to habeas corpus? In a 70-page ruling in the matter of BOUMEDIENE v. BUSH, the US Supreme Court (on Thursday) came within one vote of declaring the US President an absolute sovereign in his relations with citizens of the world.

So it was with special regard that we read the following passage from the concurring opinion written by Justice Souter, and joined by Ginsberg and Breyer. We thank the stars on the flag for these three of nine justices, who declared that it is “a basic fact of Anglo-American constitutional history:

“that the power, first of the Crown and now of the Executive Branch of the United States, is necessarily limited by habeas corpus jurisdiction to enquire into the legality of executive detention.

“And one could explain that in this Court’s exercise of responsibility to preserve habeas corpus something much more significant is involved than pulling and hauling between the judicial and political branches.

“Instead, though, it is enough to repeat that some of these petitioners have spent six years behind bars. After six years of sustained executive detentions in Guantanamo, subject to habeas jurisdiction but without any actual habeas scrutiny, today’s decision is no judicial victory, but an act of perseverance in trying to make habeas review, and the obligation of the courts to provide it, mean something of value both to prisoners and to the Nation.”

For what it’s worth, Justices Souter, Ginsberg, and Breyer, we’d like to say that, as we prepare to reflect upon the meaning of “flag day,” the Nation stands ready to persevere with you.

We stand with you in this matter partly because we think that Edmund Burke long ago made a good point when he argued that the history of Anglo-American Constitutional Law is founded upon a contract to which all subject peoples are rightful parties.

As Burke would put it, locking people up without them having a right to seek judicial review — this is no “mere mischief” — it is the kind of action that breaks the contract between the government and the people. That famous statesman who drew a line between good and bad causes for revolution would say that wherever the essential principles of the contract had been broken, the executive would have in fact “abdicated” his Presidency, and the office would be “thereby vacant.”

Come to think of it — a curious irony indeed — it would eventually take a Justice (Souter) appointed by Daddy Bush to support an opinion on habeas corpus that would protect the Office of the President from being vacated on account of the tyrannical whims of George, Jr.

Finally, on this strictly nonpartisan basis, we could say that John McCain’s anti-habeas reflex, exampled in his intemperate denunciation of the Court ruling (although he said he had not had time to read it yet), says at least 51 percent of what we shall need to know come November.–gm

Flag Day P.S.: The White House is reportedly seeking ways to limit the scope of the Court’s habeas ruling. Does the White House not notice that its antagonism to habeas corpus is sufficient evidence that its whole global agenda of aggression cannot be viewed as an intention to promote greater democracy?