immigration Archives - ChicoSol News

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.

The film tells the moving story of Eddie Canales, who has assumed an unofficial role as a human rights detective assisting families hunting for missing loved ones in the punishing landscape of Brooks County in south Texas. 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.

Jordan Michelena, an organizer who is an Inspire student, said the protest “turned out pretty well for such short notice.” 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.

“When the new president entered, I think that a lot of residents got worried and began to look for a way to become citizens,” he told ChicoSol in an interview in Santa Rosa’s Bicentennial Park, a neighborhood playground his children enjoy. “In the airports, they check your record more and detain you more frequently,” he added. read more

Chico’s “undocumented” attorney earns U.S. citizenship Sergio Garcia says family-based migration is crucial

photo by Karen Laslo

Salvador Covarrubias (left) brought his young son Sergio Garcia to Chico, knowing that the boy would qualify for residency.

by Leslie Layton

It took Sergio C. Garcia longer to become a U.S. citizen than it took for his native country, Mexico, to win independence from Spain.

It took longer than it took for him to win the right to practice law, becoming the nation’s first, so-called undocumented attorney.

Garcia will be sworn in as a U.S. citizen in a ceremony today in Sacramento – the end of a journey that began in 1994 when he was brought to the country as a teen who knew even then that if he was going to live in the United States, he wanted to belong as a participating citizen.

That it took Garcia 25 years to arrive at the belonging he longed for shows how cumbersome the immigration machine can be for people like him who qualify. His story also shows how family ties – one of several ways to qualify for a green card – can be weakened or broken by distance. read more