Tag: Deportations

Why Is The GEO Group Getting Paid To Fly Deportation Flights To Haiti?

Deportation flights are a big business. Typically these flights are managed by ICE Air Operations – yes, ICE has its own airline. The chain of responsibility runs like this: Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE’s) office of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) is the entity responsible for deporting people. ERO oversees ICE Air Operations. ICE Air Operations owns none of its own planes. So, ICE signs a contract with a private vendor to coordinate removal flights.

The company that has the current contract is Classic Air Charter. For managing ICE Air Operations from October 2017 through the end of September 2022, CAC’s contract is potentially worth $739 million. Classic Air Charters doesn’t actually fly the planes either – that would be too easy.

New Jersey Activists Halted Two Deportations

The Bergen County Jail in Hackensack, New Jersey has been the site of recurring actions in solidarity with detained immigrants. On Tuesday, June 8, one such action ended with cops arresting 14 protesters who were trying to peacefully stop a deportation.

The 14 people arrested had camped out at the Bergen County Jail the previous night to try and stop the deportation of Marvin Jerezano Peña, a father from Red Bank, New Jersey who migrated from Mexico to the United States as a child. He had been arrested by ICE and was being held for marijuana possession, something now fully legal in the state. Nevertheless, ICE planned to deport Peña.

Protesters at the jail Tuesday bravely blocked an ICE van that afternoon in an attempt to stop the deportation.

Deportations ICE Immigration New Jersey

Biden Spent Black History Month Deporting Black Immigrants

In the days it took to pull together this Q&A with two leaders in the immigrant rights movement—Haitian Bridge Alliance’s Guerline Jozef and the UndocuBlack Network’s Patrice Lawrence—the federal government deported more than 70 asylum-seekers to Haiti, including a two-month-old baby and 21 other children. Haiti is in the midst of political turmoil and advocates are calling these deportations “death flights.” Soon, hundreds more Black immigrants are expected to be deported, including 135 Haitian immigrants. Most of them are families.

While the coverage of these deportations hasn’t been extensive, what does exist largely frames the large-scale deportation of Black immigrants as an example of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operating as a “rogue agency” that is refusing to comply with the Biden administration’s orders…

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Migrant Deportations Continue Despite Biden’s Policies

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to deport migrants despite president Joe Biden’s 100-day moratorium on deporting most people in the U.S. without authorization. This decision was barred by a federal judge in Texas last week.

During the first days of Biden’s administration, ICE has deported hundreds of immigrants, including 269 people, to Guatemala and Honduras last Friday. The agency has been accused of violating human rights as a coalition of immigrant groups denounced that Cameroonian asylum seekers were tortured to be forced to approve their deportations.

Deportations ICE Immigrant Rights Joe Biden

Migrant Parents Separated From Their Kids Still Can’t Be Found

Lawyers tasked with identifying and reuniting families separated in 2017 and 2018 under the Trump administration’s so-called “zero tolerance” border policy say they still haven’t been able to locate the parents of at least 545 migrant children, according to a Tuesday court filing from the American Civil Liberties Union.

A majority of these parents — “approximately two-thirds,” the filing said — are believed to have been deported to Central America without their children, some of whom were “just babies” at the time of the separation, ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt told CNN this week.

Deportations Detention Centers Family separation Migrant Children

The Self-Centered Rich Country Response To Pandemics And Crises Is Wrecking Poor Countries

I’m squatting on a round piece of concrete, and a 72-year-old man is sitting in the gutter, his walking stick beside him. He tells me that after being deported from the United States, he has been hiking the streets of Mexico City trying to find somewhere to stay. But all the refuges are closed due to the pandemic, including the one we’re sitting outside of, where I volunteer. He has run out of insulin for his diabetes and says he can’t walk anymore.

I’m aware that he may not survive much longer. He’s the fifth person that day that I have to turn away and I can’t stand it.

Back in the migrant refuge, we organize working groups and events to add structure to the empty days and try to prevent tension building up. It’s bad enough that many of the refugees here have fled violence, only to wait months for their visas, to now be stuck inside because of the quarantine, unable to work, even informally.

COVID-19 Deportations Pandemic Poverty

Deported To Death: US Sent 138 Salvadorans Home To Be Killed

At least 138 people deported from the United States to El Salvador since 2013 have been killed, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch, which investigates human rights abuses worldwide. The 117-page report also says researchers identified at least 70 deportees who were sexually assaulted, tortured or kidnapped. Many victims were asylum-seekers attacked or killed by the gangs they originally fled.

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What Happens When A Person Is Deported?

What happens to people after they are deported from the United States? And if they no longer have family in their countries of origin, how do they make their way in an unfamiliar place? In 2014, Christina Zaldivar found herself pondering these questions with some fellow activists after she had accompanied one of them to an immigration check-in in Centennial, Colorado.

Deportations Immigration Undocumented

Iranian Student Deported From Boston Despite Court Order; Federal Judge Dismisses Case

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials at Logan International Airport denied entry to an Iranian national who was set to study economics this spring at Northeastern University. Despite a federal court order to delay the man’s removal, CBP placed him on a plane Monday night. Kerry Doyle, an attorney for Mohammad Shahab Dehghani Hossein Abadi, said the 24-year-old was traveling to the U.S. with a valid F1 student visa before he was held for secondary questioning by CBP at the Boston airport.

Boston Courts Deportations Iran Students

Protesters Demand Microsoft Stop Profiting Off Concentration Camps, Immigrant Raids, Deportations

New York, NY, September 14, 2019 — Close the Camps NYC coalition led hundreds of protestors to peacefully march on the premiere retail location of Microsoft on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, staging a sit-in to demand that the tech giant stop allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to use its technology in the racist campaign against immigrants and legal asylum seekers.

This action comes one month after the Close the Camps NYC coalition successfully gathered hundreds of protestors who shut down the West Side Highway. That event publicly shamed RXR Realty LLC for allowing ICE to covertly operate among social justice organizations in its Starrett-Lehigh office building.

“By knowingly and willingly providing technology support to ICE, Microsoft Corporation is colluding with ICE and its racist mission to tear apart families, and mistreat children” said Andy Ratto.

Concentration Camps Deportations Immigrant Rights Microsoft

Community Stopped ICE From Using Airport To Deport Thousands Of Immigrants

On April 23, the government of King County, Washington released an executive order expressing the intention to ban deportation flights from passing through King County International Airport – Boeing Field. The decision, which left Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with one less facility for ground support, was won by years of local organizing by immigrant justice organizations.

Monserrat Padilla is a coordinator of the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, an organization building a defense line for immigrant and refugee communities. In 2017, the organization established a hotline, designed to be a resource for individuals to report any observed immigration or detention activity. Through the hotline, the organization heard from passersby who said they’d witnessed ICE vehicles outside of the Boeing Field Airport, and detained persons being escorted through the airport by ICE officials, Padilla tells In These Times.

Deportations ICE Immigrants Sanctuary Cities

‘Trump Is Literally Deporting Kids With Cancer’

US immigration services have informed families struggling with HIV, cancer, cerebral palsy and other conditions they must leave in 33 days The Trump administration has ended a policy that allows undocumented immigrants to stay in the United States and avoid deportation if they are receiving life-saving medical treatments, in a change that advocates have criticised as inhumane. The policy change, which also takes away protections for immigrants whose family members are receiving life-saving care, was announced this month in letters sent to families informing them of their new standing.

Children Deportations Repression Undocumented

Seattle, WA: Rolling Picket Shuts Down ICE Profiteers

On July 26th a lively rolling picket of over 40 people marched through downtown Seattle, shutting down bank branches and occupying the lobbies of investment firm offices. HSBC, U.S. Bank, Prudential Financial, BlackRock Inc. and Barclays bank were targeted. All of these firms have financial relationships with GEO Group and CoreCivic, the primary private detention operators for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The rolling picket, co-organized by Olympia Assembly and El Comite…

Class Struggle Deportations ICE Immigration Undocumented

Protesters Block Entrance Of Coach Company Accused Of Helping The Government To Deport Migrants

Environmental activism group Reclaim the Power are protesting outside the entrance of a coach company accused of assisting the government with deportations. Three protesters have suspended themselves on tripods, blocking access to Hallmark Connections in Stanwell in an attempt to challenge what it claims is its “complicity in the violent deportations of asylum seekers in the UK”. A spokesperson for the group told i volunteers will remain there until the company agrees to end its involvement in deporting migrants.

Deportations Immigration Protests Undocumented

The Top 5 Ways To Defeat ICE Agents

The Democrats and the corporate media will breathlessly tell you how Donald Trump is a racist (he is). They’ll relay the gut-wrenching horror of having your family ripped apart by Border Patrol (I’m sure it is). They’ll let you know that keeping children in cages is not what America stands for and not who we are (it kinda is). But despite all of this, they practically never tell everyone how to actually fight back against ICE raids and Border Patrol detentions. Welcome to the paradoxical sales pitch of the neoliberal morass—“Act like you hate racism while doing almost nothing to stop racist policies that have gone on for decades!”

Deportations ICE Immigration Repression Undocumented

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