PUENTE's sidewalk this weekend...
You know, people whose crimes were working, supporting their family, and contributing to another person's retirement account have not perpetrated the kind of harm on individuals or the community that we reserve higher felony designations, imprisonment and deportation for, so I don't understand how Montgomery's chosen course of action could possibly NOT be a racist abuse of prosecutorial discretion.
Lets
get real: we took this region by brute force - just as we keep it by
inflicting violence against any who might challenge the reign of white
supremacy here...By allowing Montgomery to do this unchallenged by all but those who are directly affected, we are permitting the undermining of all of our communities, ripping decent people away from their homes and loved ones for every reason except the pursuit of justice.
Having massacred and kenneled nearly all the Indigenous people in the first few decades of our own invasion of the deep southwest, Arizona's war on Latinos is all about protecting the "right" of white settlers to continue to assert our dominance over this stolen land and its living creatures as if we were divinely entitled to do what we please with them. That is really at the core of what we still call "justice" in America - especially here - and it makes me sick.
So, perpetrating racist violence in the name of law and order is what this is really all about, Bill. I had hoped you'd be above the ego, politics, and defensive posturing alongside the other Good Old Boys here - it's such a shame to find you wallowing in the mud with Arpaio and his mad posse on this one...
Photo: Ivon Matamoros and her baby daughter
News Report
Valeria Fernández
Posted: Mar 14, 2013
PHOENIX--Ivon
Matamoros has been packing most of her baby daughter’s clothes and
blankets to start a reluctant journey back to Mexico. Matamoros, 24,
could be among hundreds of youth who qualify for a deportation reprieve
under President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
But she didn’t apply.
Matamoros didn’t think she would qualify
because she has a felony on her record -- for working with false
documents as a cashier and buser at a Pei Wei chain restaurant.
An
immigration judge told her this was a “crime of moral turpitude” and
that she would have to leave. He gave her a date to do so, willingly:
March 21.
“The judge said it reflected badly on my character,”
said Matamoros. “If I didn’t have that felony, I would have been able to
qualify for DACA.”
Groups Denounce Raids, ProsecutionsAs
discussions ramp up in Congress to come up with a federal comprehensive
immigration reform bill, pro-immigrant groups and attorneys in Arizona
are denouncing the raids and prosecutions of workers like Matamoros,
which could hurt their chances of becoming documented residents.
Most
immigration reform proposals exclude people with criminal records;
millions of workers currently using false documents to work on the
United States could lose out if they get arrested.
Matamoros was
among hundreds of unauthorized workers in Maricopa County who ended up
in deportation proceedings as a result of business worksite raids
carried out by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Workers in her
situation are being charged with multiple counts of identity theft,
typically a Class 4 felony, and offered plea bargains to a lower charge,
such as “taking the identity of another,” a Class 6 violation.
“Maricopa
County is the only county that is doing these raids. They don’t have to
do these raids--that is immigration’s job,” said Carlos Garcia,
director of Puente, a pro-immigrant and human rights organization in
Phoenix.
Puente organized a march this week to protest Maricopa
County Attorney Bill Montgomery for prosecuting these cases and charging
undocumented workers with felonies that can lead to their deportation.
“Immigration
reform starts at home,” Garcia stated. “If we don’t stop Arpaio and
Bill Montgomery, the people from the 71 raids are never going to be able
to obtain citizenship or any other legal status in the country because
of the felonies.”
“Criminalizing the Community”In
February, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and a
group of immigration attorneys denounced Montgomery, alleging that he
engages in discrimination for bringing charges against undocumented
immigrants and essentially ensuring their deportation.
“This
office will not engage in any sort of systematic effort to ensure people
are deported from the U. S.,” said Montgomery in response during a
press conference.
The county attorney acknowledged that U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) provided his prosecutors their
customary training on the types of charges that could have an
immigration-related consequence for people.
Immigrant rights
advocates argue that Montgomery could choose whether or not to offer
plea deals that won’t have an immigration-related impact, but claim that
he is deciding not to do so.
Montgomery, who has expressed
support for SANE (Solution to Federal Immigration Reform), a
comprehensive platform developed by the Real Arizona Coalition, said he
is simply following the law.
But Garcia countered, “Bill
Montgomery is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. On the one side
he’s supporting the SANE platform and on the other, he is criminalizing
the community. If he’s doing this, he is just as bad as Arpaio.”
Recently,
Los Abogados Hispanic Bar Association asked Montgomery to explain what
the group calls “unequal treatment” toward undocumented Latino workers.
In
a letter to Montgomery, Los Abogados Board President Gaetano Testini
wrote, “Over the last year, we have witnessed a marked change in the
charges filed, the plea offers made and the negotiations entered into,
with respect to this class of noncitizens.” The letter goes on to claim
that Montgomery’s office “purposely provides plea offers that guarantee a
noncitizen’s deportation from the United States and denies them their
day in Immigration Court.”
Targeting Workers, Not Employers The
worksite raids began in 2008, after Arizona passed an
employer-sanctions law meant to impose civil penalties on companies that
knowingly hire undocumented workers. But Sheriff Arpaio and former
County Attorney Andrew Thomas decided to use the new law to crack down
on workers using false documents and charge them with identity theft.
Thomas
said at the time that this was a strategy to ensure that a criminal
record would keep undocumented immigrants from ever becoming U.S.
citizens.
When Thomas –who was eventually disbarred in connection
to alleged ethic violations--left office to run for the state’s
attorney general, the interim county attorney Rick Romney discontinued
the prosecutions.
Montgomery, though, began prosecuting people
arrested in Arpaio’s sweeps, as soon as he took office, he said, in
order to fight identity theft.
Although hundreds of workers were
arrested in the 71 Maricopa County worksite raids, only three employers
faced civil sanctions for knowingly hiring undocumented workers.
“I
have to deal with these cases as I have them,” Montgomery said. “If I
started seeking different resolutions just because I wanted to improve
relationships with a particular part of the community, that would be the
worst example of prosecutorial discretion I can imagine.”
When
the raids started five years ago, many immigrant families didn’t know
about the legal ramifications of pleading guilty to a Class 6 felony
charge.
In some instances, undocumented immigrants who find
themselves in deportation proceedings can apply for the cancellation of
their removal, if they’ve been in the United States for more than 10
years and have a relative who is a U.S. citizen.
But that isn’t
possible if they have a felony charge from working with false documents,
explained immigration attorney Dori Zavala.
“When it comes to immigration, they say they don’t qualify because they have this crime of moral turpitude,” said Zavala.
Challenge to Felony ChargesLast
year Zavala and her colleague, attorney Delia Salvatierra, decided to
take their battle to the criminal justice courts by challenging these
felony charges.
Zavala currently represents Miguel Venegas, an
embroidery factory worker arrested with a dozen others on Feb. 8. Unlike
Matamoros, Venegas now has a chance to fight against the felony
charges.
“He is willing to do anything he can, because he’s been
living here for 20 years,” said Venegas’ wife, Julia Ojeda, who joined
the protest with the Puente group.
Ojeda said her husband was the main breadwinner for her and their three U.S.-born children.
“Sometimes the kids catch me off guard when they ask me when their dad will be released,” she said.
Zavala
explained that the conditions in county jails for many of these
workers, who have never been in a jail before, and their inability to
afford an attorney often deter them from asserting their innocence.
“I
took the plea because I couldn’t be in that awful jail anymore,” said
Matamoros. “I didn’t know what was going to happen later.”
Several
immigration attorneys have told Matamoros that her case is a “lost
cause,” she said. She has accepted that she’ll have to go back to Mexico
and leave her husband, Luis, behind so that he can support the family.
Matamoros
was arrested on March 4, 2011, the day before her wedding was supposed
to take place. She was finally able to get married four months later
when she was released after paying bail of over $12,000—all of their
savings.
Arguing to Stop Deportation As an
attorney, Zavala said immigrants like Matamoros have few options once an
immigration judge orders the person’s voluntary removal.
But
Zavala argues that ICE should grant people affected by these immigration
sweeps a stay of their deportation, considering that the Department of
Justice (DOJ) is suing the sheriff for alleged racial profiling
involving traffic stops and worksite raids.
In its December 2011
findings, DOJ said the Criminal Employment Squad (CES) from the
sheriff’s office “routinely raid businesses in a manner that harms
innocent Latino workers.”
DOJ found, “Specifically, CES's
deputies typically detain and investigate the immigration status of all
employees at a raided worksite, whether or not the employees are listed
in the warrant authorizing the raid.”
Zavala argues, “ICE should say any convictions coming from that should be considered differently.”
Matamoros is worried about returning to a country she hasn’t been in for almost a decade.
She worries about the violence in Mexico and about the type of health care her American daughter will get.
She wishes she’d had a chance to continue her education, rather than having to go to work.
If
she’d gone to school instead of working, she wouldn’t have been
arrested and charged with using false documents -- a felony that
prevents her from being eligible for DACA now or any kind of
regularization of her status in the future.
“We were just working to get ahead,” she said. “Families are being separated every day because of this.”
.jpg)
