Immigration - Fact vs. Myth
"Thanks to the Arizona Advocacy Network for writing and compiling the items on this page."
Immigration: Why we must not be bystanders
The immigration debate has been taken over by hate groups whose views are amplified by hate radio and television programs. Arizona%u2019s nativists are not only legitimized by the national media, they are buoyed by Arizona's talk radio stations that are replete with home-grown hate programs. They have champions in the Arizona legislature that propose and pass laws against undocumented immigrants that parallel those enacted against Jewish citizens in 1930s Germany.
The Maricopa County Sheriff%u2019s Office trained 160 deputies to act as immigration agents who hunt for undocumented immigrants while more than 40,000 felony warrants remain unserved. The city of Phoenix has just reversed at 20-year policy of not allowing officers to check immigration status of people they stop or arrest. Now they can turn over to ICE people merely suspected of any crime or infraction other than minor traffic violations. A dark cloud of fear has descended on immigrants, and as a result, immigrant parents are no longer walking their children to school, families are afraid to attend church, and businesses that support immigrant communities are closing.
As founding President of Somos America Arizona, Roberto Reveles, reminds us, %u201CWe can be sure there are now many %u2018Anita Francos%u2019 in Arizona chronicling the fear and oppression under which their families are forced to live more than 60 years after Anne Frank wrote her diaries.%u201D
The nativists do not distinguish between citizen and non-citizen Latinos. Arizona%u2019s Latino citizens, many of whom come from families that have been here for generations%u2014long before air-conditioning and the Central Arizona Project made it comfortable for anglos to flock to the Grand Canyon State--are being subjected to hate, scorn and suspicion.
People of conscience can no longer be bystanders.
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Hutto: America%u2019s Shame
The YouTube video below was produced by the ACLU and features interviews with children and their parents who were traumatized by their internment at T. Don Hutto %u201CResidential Center.%u201D T. Don Hutto, for whom the prison is named, was the founder of Corrections Corporation of America, the leading private prison contractor.
T. Don Hutto - Footage from ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
This government video is eerily reminiscent of Thieresenstadt, the notorious Nazi concentration camp that served as a propaganda tool to show the outside world that the children in that concentration camp were being treated "humanely" by the Nazis. There is no audio, just video of the families inside the taxpayer funded internment facility. The prison is located in Texas.
New Bedford, MA Immigration Raid
An interview with a single mother was whisked away by ICE to El Paso, TX, leaving her six year old daughter fend for herself.