Category: Uncategorized

Immigration: Dad Can Take Bodies to Mali

Wednesday March 14, 2007 10:46 PM

By VERENA DOBNIK

Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) – The man whose wife and four children killed in a fire in the Bronx won special permission Wednesday to return to the United States after taking their bodies to his African homeland for burial.

Mamadou Soumare had faced the possibility of not being able to accompany his family’s remains for fear he wouldn’t be allowed to return to New York.

A space heater was blamed for the fire last week in the building that Soumare’s family shared with Moussa Magassa, the father of five other children who died in the blaze.

On Wednesday, the federal Citizen and Immigration Services office in Manhattan gave Soumare a so-called “advance parole” that will allow him to return to the United States from Mali.

“We’re happy we’re able to do it,” said an agency spokesman, Shawn Saucier.

Saucier would not say what Soumare’s current immigration status is or why he needs the parole, citing federal privacy laws.

Soumare had applied for asylum in 1992, but the case was never adjudicated, said Sen. Charles Schumer.
Rep. Jose Serrano said after Monday’s funeral for the 10 fire victims that some members of the Soumare family may be living in the United States without immigration papers.

Advance parole for re-entering the country typically is issued to people living in the United States who have applications pending for legal residency.

Soumare’s family is to be flown back to Mali later this week and buried in his remote village of Tafaciriga. In addition to the four children who died, Soumare has three sons in Mali.

“He goes home to three children. This is a day of light in what was a week of hell for this man,” immigration lawyer Michael Wildes said after his client received the re-entry permit.

The Magassa children were buried in New Jersey.

Three surviving fire victims are still hospitalized in good to fair condition.

Email from Jay Johnson-Castro.

To those around the county and the around the world…

To those all over Texas …

To those in the Metro-plex…

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter” Martin Luther King, Jr.

May we never be guilty due to our silence. May we use our collective voice to protest the cruel ICE raids, incarceration and inhumane treatment of innocent and beautiful people who only seek the American dream.

Even if it is one person at a time…one family at a time…we will be unrelenting until all those seeking to be Americans are freed. In the case of this vigil…it is scheduled to coincide with the immigration hearing on Thursday morning for the Hazahza family (see pictures below).
NOTICE: On the evening of Wednesday, March 28th…from 5pm to 9pm…we will hold a sunset-candlelight vigil…at the JFK Museum located at the Dealey Plaza on 411 Elm Street in Dallas .

On Thursday morning, March 29th…beginning at 9:00am to noon…there will be a continuation of our vigil in solidarity with the Hazahza family…and all the imprisoned victims of ICE. This will be held at the U.S. District Courthouse located at 1100 Commerce Street in Dallas.

We give special focus to Suzi Hazahza…and her sister, Mirvat. They represent thousands of women who are blessings to our country. Without having committed a crime and to fill “for-profit” prisons…they are now in prison cells are being treated as criminals and are now victims of sexual abuses. Suzi and her sister Mirvat, along her father and young brother, are still incarcerated in different cells in the Haskell prison camp in Governor Perry’s hometown. Their mother and little brother…now released…spent months imprisoned in the Hutto prison camp for “families” near the Texas Capitol. ICE say Hutto is a humane facility to keep families together. So much for that lie.

So, we are holding this vigil to show solidarity with the entire Hazahza family. We want them completely released from the ruthlessness of our ICE government. This vigil is also to show solidarity with all of the victims of ICE. We demand that the raids to stop…immediately…all over our country. We want the imprisonment of helpless immigrants to stop. We demand that the atrocities to stop!!! We want these un-American and demented “for-profit” prisons to be shut down. We want all the children, the women and hard working men to be freed…so they can be free…in this land of the free.

Yet… “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people” Martin Luther King, Jr.

This vigil is a uniting of Americans. Americans of all backgrounds. Latin Americans, African Americans, Jewish Americans, Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Anglo Americans…and Heinz 57 Americans like me. We are all either immigrants or descendents of American immigrants. At this time in our country’s history, we are uniting our spirit to defend and to protect the our new generation of immigrant Americans.

May the Hazahzas, may all the “huddled masses” of immigrants and victims of ICE, may the leaders of our communities and our great state, may ICE and our Congress, may all fellow Americans…and may the whole world that is watching us…may they all know. Grass roots Americans…we the people…will not be complicate by silence with the atrocities being committed on helpless and sincere immigrants by the terrorist forces of ICE.

In whatever part of the Texas , our country and our world…thousands and millions of us have a common thread. We are fighting dark and greedy cancerous forces…which have a depraved stranglehold on the lives of millions of innocent people.

Remember one quick phone call can change it all. Call NANCY PELOSI directly at 202 225 4965 and simply say…

“We want an immediate end of the ICE raids on immigrants. We want the ICE victims like the Hazahza family freed from the “for-profit” prisons…and returned to their homes, schools and jobs. ” Make the difference…and make that call today.

Please feel free to join us in Dallas if you can. You may also share in this solidarity by sharing this invitation with others…

Jay

P.S. Thanks to especially to Dr. Asma Salam, as well as Ralph Isenberg, Reza Barkhordari and Jose De La Rocha for their time, resources and dedication to coordinate this special vigil. JJJ

Email from Joshua Bardavid, Esq.

Just wanted to give you an update. We will have a hearing tomorrow at 10am before the Magistrate Judge. We hope that the Judge will give the government a deadline to either release the Hazahzas or to provide a written response to our habeas by providing the legal justification for continued detention.

Also, I will be on Democracy Now!, (88.7FM KAZI in Austin) tomorrow morning at 7am.

Take care,
Josh

bardavidlaw.com

By Greg Moses

There are some people who live in the shadow of Lady Liberty, and some people who don’t.

We feel nothing but sympathy for Mamadou Soumare, the much publicized New York cabdriver, whom immigration authorities will allow to return to the USA after he buries his family in Mali.

And we feel nothing but heartache for Radi Hazahza, the widely ignored Texas vehicle inspector whom immigration authorities will not release to the embrace of his living family until at least the end of April.
Toward the arbitrary gavels of power that grant humanitarian treatment, international press coverage, and involvement of a US Senator in one case, while the other case begs for anything that could be counted on two hands–we feel nothing but rage.

Our readers lately have turned to symbols of Civil War to make sense of the moral gravity we feel about the struggles that surround us. And the contrast between news from New York and Texas does remind us of the difference between blue and gray.

As Jay Johnson-Castro prepares for a walk next week to dramatize the injustice of immigrant detention, he sends a list:

The Rio Grande Valley is home to several detention facilities. Other than the newly built county jails in Cameron, Hidalgo and Willacy counties, there are the Segovia State Prison, Lopez State Prison, La Villa Detention Center, Wackenhut Detention Center, and the federal detention centers for immigrants in Raymondville and Bayview.

When we compare the political economies of New York City with the Rio Grande Valley or the Texas Rolling Plains, we do find Civil War parallels in contrasting maturities of industrial development.

Yet we do not forget that New York also has its prisons and immigrant detention hells, which also get ignored more than they get reported. And although the jails of New York are mixed into neo-liberal development, we do not forget that their functions are no different than the ones in Texas.

So we ask for something besides a military-prison economy in Texas, but we ask for something better than even New York has seen. Today it looks like the shadow of Lady Liberty covers New York better than Texas, but we’ve been down Malcolm X Boulevard, where the shadow of Lady Liberty’s gown also blows this way and that.