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Victory: SF Supes approve legislation limit deportations

PRESS RELEASE
FREE SF Statement: Due Process vote represents progress; 
Coalition will keep fighting to end detentions and deportations

San Francisco — This afternoon, just moments ago, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved broadly-supported legislation by Supervisor Avalos to update the city’s pro-immigrant policies. The new law will largely keep local law enforcement out of deportations and upholds key values of Due Process, inclusion, and rehabilitation.

Specifically, the updated ordinance protects community members from new, deceptive deportation practices by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which led to the near-deportation of car theft victim Pedro Figueroa and have added to a growing crisis of confidence in local law enforcement.

In response to these developments, the FREE SF Coalition – including  Asian Law Caucus; Causa Justa::Just Cause;  California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance; California Immigrant Policy Center; Centro Legal de la Raza; Community United Against Violence; Dolores St. Community Services; EL/LA;  Faith in Action Bay Area; Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area; Mujeres Unidas y Activas;  Pangea Legal Services, Young Workers United – issued the following statement:

Today’s compromise agreement is an important step forward for San Francisco’s immigrant communities. The policy the Board approved today will protect many people from ICE’s new, deceptive deportation tactics. In largely upholding Due Process, San Francisco has taken a stand against hate and scapegoating.

At the same time, while we recognize this important step, we believe that any entanglement between troubled local law enforcement agencies and a deportation system that lacks due process is unjust, no matter how limited. As the crisis in confidence in local law enforcement had made clear, communities of color face discrimination and criminalization.

Thus, we pledge to continue to fight to uphold the basic human rights of all people and to continue the fight to end harmful detentions and deportations. We will closely monitor this policy’s implementation and will continue to push for real solutions that honor our values of rehabilitation and move us forward together.

Background: The City’s 2013 Due Process for All ordinance, passed unanimously, guarded against most ICE request to “hold” immigrants for extra time. These requests were later found to be unconstitutional by federal courts. ICE then instituted new, deceptive practices with the same painful results, including requesting “notification” of when a community member is about to be released from jail or for personal information like home addresses.
The newly passed legislation upholds those protections to prevent equally damaging requests for law enforcement to notify ICE of personal information, and also removes an obsolete carve-out in the city’s Sanctuary Ordinance that had left the door open to significant abuse.
After a series of negotiations with Sheriff Hennessy, the finally passed legislation contains limited exceptions.  Specifically, law enforcement can only turn over someone to federal immigration authorities if they have been convicted of (1) a violent felony in the last 7 years; or (2) a certain type of serious felony in the last 5 years; or (3) three felonies as specified in California’s AB 4 in the last 5 years; AND the person is held to answer on an AB 4-eligible felony.
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San Bernardino – May Day 2016

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On Sunday May 1, nearly 300 people gathered at the San Bernardino Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Facility on W. Rialto Ave. in San Bernardino and made the nearly 5-mile trek to San Bernardino City Hall.

Some participants held signs that said “Luchando Por Justicia” or “Fighting for Justice” while others held signs that said “Vota!” or “Go DAPA Go.” DAPA refers to another deferred action program under review by the Supreme Court that would grant undocumented parents of U.S.-born children and legal permanent residents protection from deportation if implemented.

Among them was 19-year-old Eric Melendez of Colton, who said his cousin was deported after serving in the U.S. Army and returning home from Iraq. “There is something very wrong with our immigration system,” Melendez said. Melendez said his cousin, Marco Melendez, who deployed to Iraq twice, was arrested and convicted on charges of driving under the influence in Los Angeles County. After his conviction, he was placed on an immigration hold and deported back to Mexico. “He’s lived here his entire life,” Melendez said. “He didn’t even speak Spanish and after serving this country during a war they just sent him to Mexico after one mistake.”

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The march was sponsored by the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, local families and community members. Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity is an active member of the Coalition and very active in the planning of the event.

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Ending the Banana Challenge

For a period of 40 days, close to 50 participants and 6 congregations participated in the Banana Challenge. Participants of the Banana Challenge fasted from eating bananas for 40 days and formed book discussions groups to learn more about how transnational banana corporations helped shape Latin America.

Why bananas? This year, we decided to tackle one of the many examples of the many export and commodities that we get to enjoy from Latin America. We believe these extractive economies are a root cause of migration. This year we decided to focus on bananas. Next year, for example, we will focus on palm oil.

These extractive economies, driven by transnational corporations and international agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA, have been the cause of much political instability in Central America. There is a connection between the coup of the democratically elected president in Honduras in 2009 with transnational corporations that has left the country in much peril. Activists, like Berta Cáceres, have been targeted and assassinated since the coup in alarming numbers for wanting to protect their lands from these extractive forces of the local economy.

This is why we decided to focus on bananas, and other extractive economies, as a study in root causes.

What we learned during the Banana Challenge was both disturbing and transformative. We learned how the United Fruit Company had unquestionable control over many so called “Banana Republics” and how their benefits shaped the politics of these countries. Learning the history of the United Fruit Company “makes me never to want to eat bananas again” a Banana Challenge participant told us.

Transnational corporations like the United Fruit Company built a monopoly in Latin America by buying or trading massive portions of lands and putting small growers out of business. They grew to such proportion that, with the help of the CIA, they successfully arranged a coup of the democratically elected Guatemalan president in 1954, after he planned to take back the company’s lands and give it to poor peasants.

United Fruit, as part of their monopolizing strategy, undervalued their land to have less tax liability. By the 1930s they were successful in obtaining tax exemptions, duty free imports of needed goods, and guaranteed low wages. United Fruit also owned the major ports, railroads, and telegraphs services. They could charge whatever they wanted.

After reading and discussing the somber history of these transnational corporations, some participants expressed a desire to only buy local bananas as a way to protest an extractive economy, and also to reduce the heavy carbon footprint from transporting them from the tropics.

Some have decided to buy only fair trade bananas, and others to even grow their own bananas in their backyards!

The Banana Challenge was a poignant and transformative experience. Many of us can’t look at a banana the same way anymore. For many of us, it has become a symbol of colonization and exploitation of our brothers and sisters in Latin America.

If you want to learn more about this, I invite you to read these articles:

NY Times article on the 1954 coup in Guatemala.

We are What We Eat: The Colonial History of the Banana.

How Chiquita Bananas Undermined the Global War on Terror.

bananaspray