immigration Archives - ChicoSol News

Fear Paralyzes Tiny Town in California’s Tulare County After Border Patrol raids, town of Poplar comes to a standstill

photo by Manuel Ortiz

Mari Pérez Ruíz of Community Valley Empowerment Alliance discusses the recent raids with a community of indigenous farmworkers in Tulare County.

by Peter Schurmann, EMS
posted Jan. 18

POPLAR, Ca. -– In the early 1970s, this unincorporated town in California’s agricultural heartland was designated by county officials as having “no authentic future.” That designation—entailing dramatic cuts to basic services remained until as recently as 2023.

Now, following a series of raids on immigrants that began on Jan. 7 in neighboring Kern County, residents here say the future does indeed look bleak.

“People are scared. They don’t want to come out. We’re all scared,” says Gregorio, a resident of Poplar for the past seven years and the owner of a local business that caters to the community’s farmworker population. (We are not using Gregorio’s last name to protect his identity.) read more

KIXE film highlights immigration system breakdown At deadly border crossing, a humanitarian crisis

posted Jan. 10

A film on the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, produced by immigration crackdowns over the past couple of decades, will be shown in a free KIXE PBS film screening at 6 p.m. Jan. 20.

Readers can register here to gain access, watch “Missing in Brooks County” at home, and also participate in an online community conversation afterward that will feature several local panelists, including ChicoSol Editor Leslie Layton, who has covered immigration from the Mexican side of the border. read more

War on immigrants escalates as pandemic worsens Trump steps up assault on immigration and immigrant communities

photo by Leslie Layton

Demonstrator at a Women’s March several years ago calling for immigrant rights.

by Sunita Sohrabji
EMS contributing editor

The Trump administration has made 400 policy changes detrimental to immigrants through its tenure at the White House, with 63 fresh blows meted out amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) in a report released July 31.

“Many of the changes reflect the administration’s really strong knowledge of immigration law and regulations, and their willingness to enforce things that have been on the books for years, but have never been implemented,” said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at MPI, who co-authored the report with MPI Associate Policy Analyst Jessica Bolter. read more

Asylum processing suspended as travel restrictions increase Migrant management strategies are a tool, not a solution

photo by Leslie Layton

Migrants in crowded shelters on the Mexican side of the border who are pursuing asylum in the United States may be stuck there indefinitely.

by Lucy Hood
The United States has implemented travel restrictions on an unprecedented scale in recent weeks that immigration experts say are riddled with loopholes and devised in a way that puts vulnerable populations at risk.

This is especially true at the U.S.-Mexican border, they said, where tens of thousands of migrants living in shelters in northern Mexico now have a very slim, if any, chance of pursuing their asylum cases in U.S. immigration courts.

The Trump Administration recently closed the border to nonessential traffic, and in the process invoked a little-known health code to effectively bring asylum petitions to a standstill, said Alex Aleinikoff, director of the Zolbert Institute on Migration and Mobility and a former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. read more

Teens lead Chico immigration policy protest High schoolers worry that "history will repeat itself"

by Leslie Layton

In matching teal-colored T-shirts, a group of Chico teens Saturday led some 100 people on a downtown march to protest immigration policy and conditions for refugees at the border.

The teens, all of whom are students at Chico High and Inspire School of Arts & Sciences, said they chose teal to reflect the color in the Statute of Liberty torch-holder for a protest designed to recall the conditions that led to the Holocaust.

The protest was titled “March for Freedom: Never Again is Now,” and opened with student and parent speakers at City Plaza downtown. read more

Citizenship gives Santa Rosa dad sense of security Green-card holders seek protection through citizenship

by Lindajoy Fenley

Joel Verdejo Flores worked without authorization for nearly five years in California before obtaining a green card that made him a permanent resident in 1995.

He was 20 years old, Bill Clinton was president and moving beyond residency to citizenship didn’t seem like a pressing matter. But that changed in 2016 with the election of President Donald Trump.

As Trump’s supporters continued shouting, “Build that wall,” the Santa Rosa father of two U.S.-born children heard that immigration enforcement was becoming more rigorous. He stopped wavering. read more