Border Journalism Network
Border Journalism Network
Los Dream 9: El movimiento dreamer cruza fronteras
24 de agosto de 2013
Por Jacqueline García para El Nuevo Sol de California State University, Northridge
Ceferino Santiago en un video de YouTube producido por la Alianza Nacional de la Juventud Inmigrante. NIYA. Cortesía de NIYA.
Ceferino Santiago, de 21 años, era un estudiante atleta de Lafayette High School en Lexington, Kentucky. En 2010, fue nombrado uno de los mejores atletas en la categoría de “cross country”. A los 18, Santiago ya era un joven independiente con ganas de salir adelante para poder ayudar a su familia. Sin embargo, sus sueños se truncaron cuando en abril de 2012 se vio forzado a regresar a su natal San Cristóbal Amatlán, Oaxaca, en México, debido a una severo problema en el oído, el cual requería una cirugía.
“Yo trabajaba y estudiaba, y aquí me cobraban $25 mil dólares por la operación”, dice Santiago, quien en ese momento ignoraba por completo la oportunidad que se iría de sus manos. “Regresé a Oaxaca y allá me curaron y me cobraron sólo $1,000 dólares”.
Tres meses después de su regreso a Oaxaca, Santiago se enteró por las noticias que Obama había firmado la orden conocida como Acción Diferida para los Llegados en la Infancia (DACA por sus siglas en inglés), la cual ofrecería permisos de trabajo renovables por dos años a los jóvenes que habían llegado a Estados Unidos antes de los 16 años y calificaran bajo ciertas características. Santiago cumplía con casi todos los requisitos, pero había quedado fuera del programa puesto que no estaba en Estados Unidos en ese momento.
Vea el reportaje completo en el sitio de El Nuevo Sol
Vea nuestra cobertura de la frontera en el sitio de El Nuevo Sol
December 15, 2012
Photo taken by Murphy Woodhouse
This photo won the Institute for the Environment’s 2013 Eye on the Environment photo contest. It was also featured in the New York Times and used as the cover for “In the Shadow of the Wall,” the first report from the Migrant Border Crossing Survey.
Update: Autopsy Paints Troubling Picture in Border Patrol Shooting
February 22, 2013
By Murphy Woodhouse, for NACLA
On February 7, authorities released the autopsy report of 16-year-old Nogales, Sonora resident José Antonio Elena Rodriguez. A U.S. Border Patrol agent, firing from the United States last October 10, killed Jose Antonio. The findings of the autopsy paint a troubling picture of that evening’s tragic events.
A small altar marks the spot where José Antonio died. Blood stains were visible for several days after he was killed October 10, 2012.
According to a report on the autopsy, Border Patrol shot the young man between eight and 11 times. All but one of those bullets struck him in the back. Most of the wounds were found to have an upward trajectory, a strange finding given that the Border Patrol agent was firing down into Mexico from the top of a roughly 15-foot cliff. Medical examiners conducted the autopsy the morning after the shooting with the Nogales, Sonora State Attorney General’s office.
Read the rest of the story here.
Guest column: Uninformed hate blinds scope of recent immigration column
March 25, 2013
By Murphy Woodhouse, for the Daily Wildcat
This guest column is a response to Immigration reform does not mean ending deportation (by David Weissman, March 21):
There’s hate, and then there’s uninformed hate. David Weissman’s recent op-ed on undocumented immigration is a clear example of the latter.
Indeed, most of the numbers he calls to his defense come from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which is considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and whose founder, John Tanton, is a proud white supremacist. I took issue with most of Weissman’s piece, but because of space constraints I will only address two of the author’s most noxious views.
Read the rest of the Op-Ed here.
Interview: Waging the Fight for Migrant Justice From Under a Border Patrol Truck
March 12, 2013
By Murphy Woodhouse, for Truthout
As with many deportations, René Meza Huerta’s started with a traffic stop. The Tucson Police Department (TPD) had received a call about a suspected kidnapping of six children from a man who saw Huerta’s and his girlfriend’s children getting into the hatchback of their newly purchased 99 Mercury Cougar. TPD was searching for the car when they pulled Huerta over in the early afternoon of Sunday, February 17. After determining that no kidnapping had taken place, TPD officers asked Huerta for his driver’s license, a document he did not have. Deciding that they had probable cause to suspect Huerta was in the country without proper documentation, TPD called the Border Patrol (BP), which came to detain him.
Raul Alcaraz Ochoa, Lydia Lopez, Rene Meza’s mother-in-law, and one of René Meza’s six children. (Photo: Murphy Joseph Woodhouse)
This is a scene that plays out constantly in communities within 100 air miles of the US-Mexico border, the so-called “constitution-free zone” where BP has expansive powers of search and seizure. In Arizona, this is compounded by Senate Bill 1070 (also called SB 1070), the state’s infamous 2010 “show me your papers” law that was partially upheld by the US Supreme Court in June of 2011. Section 2(b) of the law, which was not struck down, requires all state law enforcement officers, “when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person, except if the determination may hinder or obstruct an investigation,” when “reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien and is unlawfully present in the United States.”
There’s a lot about Huerta’s deportation that makes it totally unexceptional, most importantly that it resulted in the separation of yet another parent from his children. What sets it apart is that somebody tried to stop it: Raúl Alcaraz Ochoa, a day labor organizer with the Southside Worker Center and member of the migrant justice group Corazón de Tucson.
Ochoa’s decision to place himself under a BP truck to prevent the detention and likely deportation of Huerta was a bold act of civil disobedience and a tremendous personal risk. Ochoa, who was born in Mexico, is a legal permanent resident, meaning that he is subject to deportation if convicted of certain crimes. Ochoa’s and Huerta’s arrests sparked a 300-strong protest in front of TPD’s headquarters the next day, little more than 12 hours after the previous afternoon’s events. Attendees demanded the immediate release without charges of both men, an end to TPD/BP collaboration and a halt to all deportations.
Truthout interviews Raúl Ochoa below. The interview is followed by a video of René Huerta’s account of his arrest, incarceration, “trial” and deportation. The two men discuss the events of that February afternoon and, more broadly, their thoughts on what contemporary immigration enforcement means for undocumented communities and the role civil disobedience should play in the ongoing struggle for migrant justice.
Read the interview and watch the video at Truthout.
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