Aurora City Council considering criminalizing day laborers

City Council Hearing and Rally TONIGHT

WHAT: Rally and Testimonies at City Council Meeting to Oppose Anti-Day-Laborer Ordinance

WHERE: Steps of Aurora Municipal Building 15151 E. Alameda Parkway, Aurora, CO 80012

RALLY: 6:30pm
HEARING: 7:30pm

SEE BELOW FOR DETAILS
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UPDATE 7/15/2008

The City Council delayed their vote on this issue last night. Several City Council members were not present. The Council expressed a desire for "more community input". Several members of the council who are opposed to a change in the ordinance wanted to have the vote. Several members, including the sponsor, voted to postpone the vote. Stay posted for more details on the next hearing date. Thanks to all who gave up their Monday night for the rally and testimony!

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7/10/2008
The Aurora City council will consider a new ordinance which would place El Centro, and other non-profit employment centers, under the same code as for-profit temporary employment centers. If passed, El Centro will not be able to purchase property close to where day laborers and employers currently meet.

Come out on Monday to the Rally and stay to give testimony.

WHAT: Rally and Testimonies at City Council Meeting to Oppose Anti-Day-Laborer Ordinance

WHERE: Steps of Aurora Municipal Building 15151 E. Alameda Parkway, Aurora, CO 80012

WHEN: Monday, July 14, 2008 Rally at 6:30p.m. (7:30p.m. City Council Meeting)

BACKGROUND
For the last two years the City of Aurora has been escalating their constant harassment against the day laborers who congregate in the intersection of Dayton Street and Colfax Avenue.

Their actions include wrongfully ticketing of day laborers for trespassing; threatening to close down the business owned by a Hispanic woman who gave supported workers by allowing them to seek refuge on her property while waiting for work; and police calling building owners to intimidate them into not renting or selling their buildings to Centro Humanitario.

After the Peter Boyles Show, which hosted Mayor Ed Tauer and other city officials, the Colorado Minutemen Project has shown up to harass the day laborers at Dayton and Colfax.

Since our first call for help on June 16, 2008, the City of Aurora has amended their current laws regarding the control of temporary employment agencies to include non profits, specifically agencies that provide assistance to day laborers.

The City of Aurora is meticulously reviewing and amending their current laws to make sure the ordinance against day laborers is “perfectly enforceable.”

For more information, please call Centro Humanitario:

Photo Taken by Heather A. Longway-Burke

Raids in Loveland

On July , 2008 ICE raided a concrete plant in Loveland Colorado and arrested 18 people. Those detained are being held in various different detention centers from Park County to Teller to Aurora.

It remains to be seen whether Immigration, Control and Enforcement will be pursuing criminal charges for "identity theft" or simply trying to bully people into signing their own deportation forms.

Some workers are being allowed to bond out. The families of those who could bond out have now spent all they have to bond the workers out. The workers cannot work while out on bond. Many of the families are without money to pay rent for August.

If you want to help, please send checks to:
Fuerza Latina Relief Fund
c/o First National BankP.O. Box 578
Fort Collins, CO 80522

These types of "enforcement" actions are meant to terrorize workers and their families. Why else would they have called in "air support" from the Border Patrol to arrest 18 people?

The raids do not change our broken system. Raids do not make people leave the United States.

Raids make it easier to exploit us all by making immigrant workers more vulnerable to exploitation and unsafe working conditions, lowering the bar of what is acceptable. Raids make people afraid to demand their labor rights, afraid to be a part of the community, afraid to speak with people they don't know. Raids divide us.

The question is Who do these raids benefit? Who gains from weakened worker's rights? Some of the answer is: consumers who want to buy more stuff for less money. Some of the answer is: those employers who are unscrupulous. A big part of the answer is: multi-national corporations who pit workers from all over the world against one another in a race to the bottom.

More info
Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition
News articles

Detention Centers Violate Human Rights

Undocumented immigrants have not broken a criminal law, but rahter a civil one. Civil law encompasses such offenses as parking tickets, speeding and jaywalking. Most immigrants come here, build their family and work. They become integral parts of their communities. It is our immigration laws and procedures which make them vulnerable to abuses.

Ask if the "crime" of working and building fits the punishments being inflicted?

A report released today details the human rights violations that occur once immigrants are in detention.

The Tacoma Center was built over neighborhood objections that a toxic-waste site was not an appropriate place for detention. Now the center has been found to violate many human rights.

"Conditions at the detention center violate obligations under international law, including customary international law and the refugee convention. The center’s holding of asylees in detention violates U.S.’s obligations under the Refugee condition and constitute Cruel, Inhuman and degrading treatment.”

Skinner also says the conditions at the center violate the 5th Amendment of the Constitution in that they amount to punishment... Other rights being violated include the right to counsel, the right to family unity, due process violations due to the forced signing of papers, right to medical treatment, especially emergency medical treatment and mental health treatment."

Many centers, including the GEO center in Aurora, have similar problems. There have been allegations of racism and harassment at the Aurora GEO Center. The waiting room at the facility is very small and visiting family members are forced to wait outside in the heat and cold if they want to visit their family. The facility also only allows two visitors at a time so families have to bring someone with them to watch their other children or not visit at all. Even prisons do not have such restrictions.

To read the executive summary click here
To read the full report click here

Court Intrepreter Relates Injustices During Potsville Raids

Erik Camayd-Freixas, Ph.D. has 25 years experience as a court interpreter. He also teaches interpreting ethics. He felt that the injustices perpetrated on Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants during the Potsville immigration raid were so egregious, he had to report them.

Professor Camayd witnessed immigrants coming into court 10 by 10 to be arraigned. They were all, men and women alike, in shackles.

On Democracy Now Professor Camayd-Freixas reported

"here were many (immigrants) in that same predicament. They were basically begging to be deported. And, of course, what made this case unique was that, for the first time, at least in this scale, they were not being deported but actually criminally prosecuted and sent to jail for five months or more. And the fact that they did not have a right to bail and that if they wanted to plead “not guilty” they would have had to wait possibly longer, up to six or eight months in jail without bail waiting for a trial, made this situation very, very difficult to really say that there was justice done in many of these cases."

We have to ask ourselves

• Is this what we mean by justice? Families hungry, workers jailed without proper proceedings
  
• Has the government reflected our values: liberty, equality, justice, pursuit of happiness?
  
• How much longer will we uphold unjust laws?

To read the full report of the Professor's experience click here

The Migrant Trail: We Walk for Life

The Migrant Trail: We Walk for Life
May 26-June 1, 2008

A 75 mile walk from Sásabe, Sonora, MX to Tucson, AZ
The precarious reality of our borderlands calls us to walk. We walk together on a journey of peace to remember people, friends and family who have died, others who have crossed, and people who continue to come. We walk to bear witness to the tragedy of death and of the inhumanity in our midst. Lastly, we walk as a community, in defiance of the borders that attempt to divide us, committed to working together for the human dignity of all peoples.

For Immediate ReleaseMay 30, 2008Contact: Kat Rodriguez, Stephanie Dernek: 520.561.2427
Press Conference:Migrant Trail Arrives in Tucson to Testify About Border ExperienceSunday, June 1, 200811:30amKennedy Park, Ramada #3 Tucson, Arizona
Tucson- An international group participating in the fifth annual Migrant Trail Walk from Sásabe, Sonora to Tucson, Arizona will arrive on Sunday, June 1st. The 75-mile Walk will culminate in a press conference, followed by a community gathering at Kennedy Park in Tucson, Arizona. The Migrant Trail, a Walk through the most traveled corridor on the Arizona-Sonora border, sponsored by a coalition of nineteen organizations, bears witness to the thousands of women, men and children who have lost their lives in an attempt to provide a better future for themselves and their families. "The deaths of more than 5,000 women, men and children are the direct result of our failed and unconscionable U.S. border policies," says Jodi Read of Mennonite Central Committee. "We, as people of faith and conscience, are called to make this journey together as witnesses, to be the voices that our migrant brothers and sisters no longer have." For the last five years, this collaborative effort has joined friends and allies from across the country and from international backgrounds for a one-week experience through the Sásabe corridor, where most crossings occur and the vast majority of bodies are recovered along the Arizona-Sonora border. An act of solidarity, the Walk is a means of bearing witness to the death and devastation that has resulted from the violence, division, and xenophobia in response to the mass migration that has resulted from failed border and trade policies. "I recently returned from Juarez/El Paso where the militarization, violence and death toll increase daily. I am impelled to action for those I met and for the migrant community in Chicago, Illinois," says Stephanie Dernek of 8th Day Center for Justice and Chicago New Sanctuary Coalition, who has made the journey for the last three years to the Arizona border. "I walk the Migrant Trail to be a witness to the human rights violations, unjust and racist border/immigration policies. I walk in remembrance of those who died in the journey and to recommit myself and my community to work to bring about justice and peace for the migrant." The Migrant Trail Walk will begin the final 6.7 miles of their journey at 9am at the BLM campsite on Ajo Way and San Joaquin Road. Participants will be welcomed home at Kennedy Park with speakers, music, food, and testimonies from participants and supporters. This event is free and open to the public.

The Migrant Trail
c/o Arizona Border Rights Foundation
P.O. Box 1286 Tucson, AZ 85702
Tel: 520.770.1373Fax: 520.770.7455
www.derechoshumanosaz.net

Tom Kowal on the Migrant Trail Walk

Statement by Tom Kowal from Denver, at the press conference in Tucson at the end of the 5th Migrant Trail Walk, June 1, 2008:

There is a reason why we are here. We are here in memory of the 5,000 women, men and children who have died in the past 14 years on this border. These brave people committed no crime. They came across this desert because they need to feed their families. They died because the US laws are broken. These laws are unrealistic, inhumane and lethal. They serve only those who would exploit other human beings, and those who seek to divide us.

We are one community – somos un pueblo. So when these brothers and sisters -- these friends and neighbors -- suffer and die in the desert because the safe routes have been closed by failed policies, we all suffer this loss.

And so Coloradans For Immigrant Rights, the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition and the American Friends Service Committee stand here in witness to those sacrificed in this killing field. We mourn with their families and we call for reform. We call on our government to end this evil madness; to immediately pass humane and realistic comprehensive immigration reform; to reprogram the billions of dollars being wasted on border militarization to human needs.

It is not too much to ask to stop the killing and to begin healing our border communities.
~ Tom Kowal