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

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

Monday: Protest the Aurora Expansion of the GEO Immigrant Dente

"There is something morally wrong about the privatization of prisons and detention centers.”

Rev. Patrick Demmer,
Graham Memorial Community Church

"When the goals of the city are achieved…
- Aurora’s diversity continues to be celebrated as an essential
characteristic of the community.
- Public, private, and religious organizations meet the educational
and service delivery needs of immigrants.
- Aurora has no households that are isolated from the community
by a language barrier.
- Immigrants continue to take advantage of abundant opportunities
to assimilate or acculturate, and fully participate in civic affairs."

City of Aurora Comprehensive Plan

The two quotes above express our values and vision for Aurora. The expansion of the GEO Detention Center contradicts those values and calls into peril the ability of our community to be the one we envision it to be. Detention expansion sends a clear, negative and chilling message to the immigrant community potentially impacting their willingness and ability to be celebrated, to be served, to serve and to assimilate and acculturate.

When any part of our community is isolated and cut off from the rest, all of Aurora and the Metro area suffer. Come out this Monday to the City Council meeting and express support for a united, open Aurora that reflects our values and respects our whole community.

City Council Hearing to Decide on GEO Detention Center Site Approval
DATE: Monday, June 2
TIME: 6:30 pm Protest and Press conference
PLACE: Aurora Municipal Center, 15151 E. Alameda Parkway
WHAT: Come protest the GEO Group's proposal to triple the size of its immigrant detention center in Aurora. We need to let Aurora City Council see AND hear strong opposition to inhumane immigrant detention.

Bringing Love to the Immigration Conversation

“I may not agree with it all, but I love you for what you’re doing.”

This was not the closing comment I had expected from a self-identified “businessman, ardent capitalist, and, conservative.”

We had spent the past hour discussing one of the most politically divisive issues of our time: immigration. As an immigrant justice advocate in this discussion, I did not even think love would come up, and certainly not for the task at hand- opposing the construction of 1,100 more beds at the immigrant detention center in Aurora.

Then again, perhaps love is really the point.

Immigration has become such a political hot button that real humanity gets lost in the discussion. We get caught up in the buzzwords and fear-mongering, and we lose the heart.

“John,” we’ll call my conversation-mate, is moved by love, along with his own economic self-interest, when he talks about his best young worker, an immigrant from Central America. John believes “Carlos” deserves the opportunity to make a better life for himself, to make enough money at his job to ultimately go to school.

John, like most Americans I know, believes we should all have the opportunity to work hard and go far. And John admits wanting to sponsor Carlos so that he can get legal status to be in the country and pursue all the opportunities this country has to offer.

Of course, “It’s not quite so easy,” I have to explain. John can’t simply help Carlos fix his immigration status. That is one of the myths many of us believe, that it is easy enough to immigrate “the legal way.”

Most folks who actually know an immigrant and have explored avenues for legalization or family reunification are the first to understand that our nation’s policies require a complete overhaul. Love, we are told when we try to get people rights or reunite families, is beside the point.

Just last week, an Aurora City Council Member asked for some support for an immigrant family quite dear to her. She recently had met the father, a Filipino immigrant, legal permanent resident, and health care professional. The man told her of his family’s failed attempts to bring their three-year-old child to the US.

I looked into it and, saddened, came up with the same conclusion as the attorney’s with whom this man had consulted. According to the current visa bulletin, which outlines wait times for legal immigration to the US, it will be 5-7 years before this family can be reunited with their infant son.

One has to conclude that the US visa system does not take love, or the wrenching pain of divided families, into account. Neither does a proposal to triple the size of the immigrant detention center in Aurora, making it the largest facility of its kind in the country’s interior. Immigrant detention is pretty ghastly. Just check out these recent reports about mass sexual assault, untimely detainee death and generally abhorrent conditions:

http://www.woai.com/content/troubleshooters/story.aspx?content_id=2690837e-5c2a-4ea0-92dd-2e64a54996b2
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/immigration/cwc_d1p1.html?referrer=emaillink
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/419/immigrants-prisons.html

Regardless of the flood of scandals, if you think about the premise of immigrant detention at all- locking good, hard-working families up in prison facilities because there is no good way for them to get “legal” status- well, there isn’t much love in that.

But can a self-proclaimed conservative and I, the leftist of left, sit at the same table, discussing the issue of immigration, and agree that love is really what this whole immigration discussion should be about? It seems so. He chose that language of “love”, not me.

Love. Simple and deep.

In the struggle for social justice, we often talk about “changing hearts and minds,” cultivating a new debate where people value humanity above profits and xenophobia. Yet John, “businessman, ardent capitalist, and, conservative,” has taught me something. What if it’s not necessary to change hearts and minds, but simply connect the two?

When it comes to our country’s conversation about immigration, one of the most controversial, politicized, and hateful debates there is- how much further could we get if we just brought a little love to the table?

Protest Detention Center Expansion

COALITION ASKS AURORA PLANNING COMMISSION TO VOTE AGAINST CONSTRUCTION OF PRIVATE IMMIGRANT DETENTION CENTER

Contacts: Chandra Russo, CIRC, (303)893-1500; Miram Peña, CPC, (303) 866-0908

Immigrants Rights Groups join with neighbors, former employees of the GEO Group and faith leaders to oppose construction

WHAT: Protest to oppose private detention center and ask Aurora Planning Commission to vote against construction

WHY: The GEO Group, a billion dollar corporation, wants to build an 1,100-bed immigrant holding facility in Aurora. A coalition of immigrant rights groups, criminal justice reform advocates, faith leaders, Aurora residents and business owners oppose this proposed construction for a variety of reasons:
· Detention destroys families and communities
· Detention hurts asylum seekers and other victims of torture and trauma
· Conditions in detention are atrocious
· Private prisons profit off of misery

WHEN: Wednesday, April 9, 2008 - 5:15pm: Press Conference and Protest
6:00pm: Planning Commission Hearing

WHERE: Aurora Municipal Center
15151 E. Alameda Parkway; Aurora, CO
Press conference and protest outside; Hearing in Council Chambers

SPONSORS and SPEAKERS INCLUDE:
· Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition
· Colorado Progressive Coalition
· Rights for All People
· Loretta Perry-Wilborne, ex-employee of the GEO facility in Aurora
· Rev. Patrick Demmer, Graham Memorial Community Church

For more info check out these previous blog posts:
Detention to Expand
Reflections on Aurora Detention Center

Event in Aurora

There is an awesome upcoming event in Aurora which will facilitate conversation in the community around day laborers. Over the last year an ongoing dialogue with city council, code enforcement and the police in Aurora resulted in a sort of truce. This event will spark conversation between all residents of Aurora, including those who work in day labor. I hope to see lots of new faces at the event and am really excited to see this multi-media display about the lives and work of day laborers.

Detention to Expand

Being in the detention business has always been profitable. This has become particularly true for those detaining immigrants. The Geo ICE facility in Aurora will be expanding from 400 beds to 1100 at the end of this year and is projected to generate $30 million in revenue annually. 1

Meanwhile, a recent report issued by the Government Accountability Office states that Immigration officials are not exercising discretion in who they deport. The GAO states that the officials are arresting and deporting far more immigrants whose only offense is being here without documentation than those who have been convicted of crimes. 2,3

More beds won't encourage agents to use greater discretion. It will instead allow them to continue rounding up and separating families.

1 BizJournal
2http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0867.pdf
3http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-08-67

Reflections on the Aurora Detention Center

Yesterday morning I opened to a cartoon in the Denver Post. It had been drawn decades ago but was reprinted to show that things have not changed much with our immigration system. The cartoon portrays a couple dressed in stereotypical Mexican garb standing in the middle of a complex and completely overwhelming maze. And the woman says to the man something approximating: “You’re brother came via the river and you had to go through immigration!”

Perhaps what has changed since the cartoon was written is that today people seeking to come to the U.S. outside of the official immigration system have a much harder time just swimming across the Rio Grande. Operations Toe-the-Line and Gate-keeper which sought to seal off the border in the urban crossing points of El Paso (the Rio Grande) and Tijuana (which borders San Diego) have sent crossers into ever more remote parts of the desert. The new policies mean people today are dying at record numbers as they attempt to come to the U.S.

What has not changed is that our immigration system, that series of laws that our Congress cannot seem to collaborate and change, is a veritable maze to navigate.

Yesterday, I followed my leisurely coffee and newspaper with a day in the Aurora Detention Center. A group of us were hosted by the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network (RMIAN) to tour the facility. I then spent the afternoon at the side of Andrea Gomez, an RMIAN attorney. Andrea did a know-your-rights presentation for those who will see the judge this week, followed by individual intakes with those who needed further help lowering their bond or figuring out if they have a legal case to stay in the country.

Without RMIAN doing this work, those in detention who cannot afford to hire an attorney (the vast majority) would never have a legal orientation before meeting with the judge. At the most basic level, most detainees should know that they have the possibility of having their bond lowered so that they do not have to fight their case from within detention. At a less basic level, immigration law is incredibly complex and not having the opportunity to talk with a lawyer about one’s immigration situation is a travesty of justice.

By the end of the educational presentation and individual meetings with nearly ten individuals (and this is but one of three presentations weekly), I looked at Andrea both amazed by her incredible stamina and wanting to cry at how messed up the system is. I thought of the comic labyrinth from the morning newspaper and did not find it so funny.

Every individual we spoke with had a very good reason to be in this country. Aside from economic necessity, the original motivation to come to the US for everyone we happened to speak with, people had loving communities here- spouses and partners, children, parents, siblings, workmates, friends.

Clearly, there had not been a legal avenue that they knew of to enter the US when they decided to come here, be it fifteen years ago or last month. If there had been, they would have used it. Based on their testimonies, the desperate complexities of trying to navigate an existence of “illegality” and the now grim prospects for anyone fixing their situation, it was obvious that our current immigration system is crushing human beings, along with their families and communities.

The hope of this all is that RMIAN is, despite the odds, doing fantastic work in the heart of what they have come to term “the underbelly of our immigration system”: detention. When people do have a legal defense out of detention and back into their communities, RMIAN ensures they know it and have the tools to fight for it. And we, outside of the underbelly, continue to do our work to change the system, so that the underbelly will not continue to grind away at human life.

Day Labor Center in Aurora

I've had the greatest experience this week volunteering at the Day Labor site in Aurora. The site is located in a parking lot with the owner's permission. My father is a member of the Electrical Workers union (IBEW). I know that I have reaped the benefits of the organizing of previous generations. I view this opportunity to help out the site as an opportunity to pay back that debt.The workers at the site have organized to ask $10/hour. They negotiate together with employers.Before, the workers were making only $5 or $6 an hour. I believe that supporting others in their crusade to organize will drive wages up and helps to put all workers on the same playing field. Some of the police and the city attorney are taking the side of Temporary businesses in the area.http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_6024604These businesses charge employers $10-16 dollars an hour and then pay the worker only $5 or $6. So, as in all other labor struggles, the government has sided with business and has begun using its authority to intimidate.The police have threatened to call Immigration. The city attorney has threatened to cite the property owner using a code that says Temporary Employment Offices cannot be located within 1500 feet of each other. The police assume people don't have papers, based on what they couldn't tell us.The city attorney may not be aware that Temporary Employment Offices are defined as:"Temporary employment office means a business office engaged in procuring, for a fee, employment for others and employees for employers on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis." (Sec 46-2001 of Aurora Zoning Code)This means that the day labor site is NOT a Temporary Employment Office and so the statute does not apply. A more sinister possibility is that maybe the city attorney did know the definition of a Temporary Employment Office and hoped that we did not. Intimidation will not work. It is my hope that the attorney and the chief of police, as well as the owner of the business, will meet with us so we can negotiate an end to the conflict just as many of my predecessors negotiated with corporations.