Immigration

News Article Newsweek September 25, 2019

Trump Administration Has Doubled Private Prison Spending With Most Money Spent on Detaining Immigrants

Newsweek reporter Chantal Da Silva discusses the sharp increase in funding by the Trump Administration of the for-profit private prison company GEO Group, even as overall national incarceration rates in 2017 were at a twenty-year low.  In just the first eleven months of fiscal year 2019 over $595 has been obligated to GEO by the Administration, 53 percent of which went to ICE for the detention of immigrants.  Justice Strategies’ Executive Director is extensively quoted in this article.

JS Publication March 20, 2019

"Zero Tolerance" policy greatly accelerates immigrant criminalization through end of 2018

This brief by Judy Greene of Justice Strategies and Bob Libal of Grassroots Leadership provides data and infographics showing that in 2018 more than 109,000 people were prosecuted for improper entry or re-entry into the United States. 

JS Blog Post November 23, 2018

Save your Black Friday Spending to Instead Support Children of Incarcerated Parents for #Giving Tuesday

Riley Hewko, Esq.

Every year, on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving #GivingTuesday provides individuals an alternative to spending their money on “Black Friday.” This year consider staying away from companies that support the prison industry and instead donate to organizations helping children of incarcerated parents. The U.S has approximately 7 million people in prison, jail, probation or parole, 100,000 in juvenile detention, 478,000 in immigration detention.

News Article The Huffington Post July 6, 2018

More Democrats Want To Abolish ICE. Decriminalize Migration? Not So Much.

This article by Huffington Post reporter Roque Planas quotes Justice Strategies’ Executive Director Judith Greene, pointing out that at the root of the current family separation crisis is the criminalization of migration itself.  The article recounts the origins of this practice to a 1929 law introduced by South Carolina Senator Coleman Livingston Blease and embedded in the anti-Mexican and segregationist legacy of the times.  Despite calls from current day Congressional Democrats to end the Trump Administration’s practice of family separation, few are willing to call for an end to the racially charged practice of criminalizing migration.

News Article NPR All Things Considered June 19, 2018

The Last "Zero Tolerance" Border Policy Didn't Work

In this story on the “Zero Tolerance” border policy by NPR’s All Things Considered reporter John Burnett, Judy Greene, Justice Strategies’ Executive Director, discusses the role of Operation Streamline and its failure to deter migration.  Read the original article or listen to the story by following the provided link.

JS Publication June 21, 2018

It's Time to Decriminalize Immigration

This Texas Observer article by Executive Directors Judy Greene, of Justice Strategies, and Bob Libal, of Grassroots Leadership calls on Congress to repeal the law that allowed the Trump Administration to separate children from their migrant parents, and for an end to the criminalization of migration.   In it the authors provide the historical links of this destructive policy to the mass incarceration tactics of the failed War on Drugs, now used in a new War on Immigrants, the growing for-profit private prison industry, and increasing attempts under the Trump Administration to federalize local and state criminal justice enforcement mechanisms.  These policy choices have led to a federal court docket 45 percent of which is occupied with the criminal prosecution of migrants for entry into the United States, a misdemeanor, and re-entry, a felony that carries a penalty of from two to five years in federal prison.

JS Blog Post February 13, 2018

Washington State Senate Passes Bill to Expand Parental Diversion but Leaves Immigrant Families Out

Lill M. Hewko

Last Friday February 9th, 2018, the Washington State Senate passed Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5307 (ESSB 5307), which will help expand Washington State’s Family Offender Sentencing Alternative program beyond individuals with non-violent crimes and expands the definition of family to help keep more parents in the community. The bill now moves to the House Public Safety Committee for a hearing on February 15th, at 8am. Read more »

JS Blog Post May 26, 2017

A Local Response to the White House: Denver Passes Jail Sentencing Reform & Aims to Help Immigrants, Families and Our Communities

Lillian M. Hewko, J.D.

Just this week, on May 22nd Denver City Council approved a comprehensive bill that reforms sentencing ranges for low level infractions and in doing so will protect immigrants from deportation. As many people sentenced to jail-time are parents, such changes will largely affect children of incarcerated parents by mitigating the negative emotional and behavioral outcomes caused by separation. The changes can also help avoid unnecessary separation and termination of parental rights for those involved in the child welfare system or in family law custody cases. In 2009 alone, more than 14,000 children entered foster care due at least partly due to the incarceration of a parent

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s office proposed the ordinance and stated: Read more »

News Article The Intercept December 17, 2016

Fatal Corrections: Inside the Deadly Mississippi Riot That Pushed the Justice Department to Rein In Private Prisons

Justice Strategies' Director, Judith Greene, is quoted in this recent Intercept article about the deadly riot that occurred on May 20, 2012 at the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi, a facility run by the Corrections Corporation of America, now know as CoreCivic.  The author, Janosch Delker, traces the events leading to the Natchez private prison riot, including complaints by prisoners about the inadequate medical care, substandard food and poor supervision that led to fatal consequences for prisoners prior to, and for staff, that day.  The riot at CoreCivic's Natchez prison, and similar events elsewhere, prompted investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and a call by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, in August of 2016, for ending the use of private prison contracts by the federal Bureau of Prisons to house immigrants.  During his campaign for the presidency, Donald Trump called for increasing the use of private for-profit prisons.  The Natchez Adams County Correctional Center private prison riot was the subject of a Justice Strategies' report released in Sept. 2012 entitled Privately Operated Federal Prisons for Immigrants: Expensive, Undafe, Unnecessary. 

News Article Huffington Post November 22, 2016

Trump Has Not ‘Softened’ His War On Immigrants

Judith Greene and Grassroots Leadership's Bob Libal explain why we should expected an unprecedented deportation regime from Trump, who has not "softened" his vision for the war on immigrants.

"Some news reports have offered an unjustifiably charitable interpretation of Mr. Trump’s recent statement to suggest that he is becoming more “targeted.” Mr. Trump’s numbers are wrong, and his vision is anything but “soft.” To realize these numbers during a four-year term, to say nothing of a shorter “immediate” timeframe, would require deportation rates never before experienced in this country."

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