LP Scholarship for 2016

February 1, 2016 
Happy February! We come bearing exciting news!

Last year, we awarded our first ever $500 scholarship to Lesly Chavez, an Immokalee High School graduate, who is now a student at FGCU. We also awarded a runner up scholarship to Nancy Roque, a Naples High School graduate, to support her education at FGCU.

And now, our second round of scholarships is open once more! The scholarship is open to all students (pending other requirements) in Lee and Collier Counties.

The application is open until April 30th. See details on the application for more information.

Please share this exciting news with our community!

LP Scholarship_SP2016

Questions can be directed to launchpad@collierstoriesmatter.org 

DAPA/DACA+ Free informational Sessions in May and June 2015

May 2015

We are hosting two FREE informational sessions in Naples!

May 30th, 10 AM, Golden Gate Community Center 

June 14, Sunday, 2 PM, St. Peters Catholic Church

Email us if you have questions at info@collierstoriesmatter.org

#not1more/#ni1mas

Art for Dignity and Justice

I had the great privilege to create a piece on behalf of the Collier County Neighborhood Stories Project for the October 5th National Day of Action March for Dignity and Justice! The piece is currently featured on Culture Strike and Not1MoreDeportation. We, as CCNSP, are very humbled to be able be part of such a pivotal moment for our communities and we will continue demanding dignity and justice for as long as it takes! We hope to see you all out on October 5th, too!

Feel free to share the graphic widely through your social networks! Please, credit Rommy Torrico and link back to collierstoriesmatter.org or blog.collierstoriesmatter.org. We hope to get prints soon so if you’re interested, feel free to email us with your name and the quantity so that we have an idea of how many we will need to order. Send all inquires to rommy@collierstoriesmatter.org

Also featured on Not1MoreDeportation is our Paletero piece! We will have 5×8 postcards available on donation at our trainings, events and online. Keep a look out!

NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT!! SPEAK UP ABOUT DETENTION

From our friends at Detention Watch Network (this post has been duplicated from an original email they sent) 

 

Dear colleagues,

The immigration debate has been evolving rapidly. The latest information is that the Senate Judiciary Committee will discuss detention, criminalization and interior enforcement provisions in the bill on Monday May 20th.

We encourage you to make calls TODAY and TOMORROW to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to urge them to oppose the amendments that would further harm immigrants in detention and support amendments that would further critical detention reforms. (see attached a more detailed analysis of these and other related amendments)

We are particularly concerned about Grassley Amendment 53 which would dramatically expand immigration detention during removal proceedings and indefinitely afterwards for those who cannot be removed as well as severely limit the use of alternatives to detention and bond hearings. Passage of this amendment would be a huge setback to our collective efforts to dramatically reduce detention.

Please make calls TODAY and TOMORROW. They do make an impact!! Please also share this action alert widely with your networks and allies.

Thank you.

NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT!!

THE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE WILL CONSIDER DETENTION RELATED AMENDMENTS TO THE IMMIGRATION BILL S. 744

MONDAY May 20th

Call Senators from the Judiciary Committee TODAY and TOMORROW

and ask them to:

 

OPPOSE DETRIMENTAL DETENTION AMENDMENTS

 “Hello, my name is [YOUR NAME] and I am calling to strongly urge Senator [NAME OF SENATOR] to OPPOSESenator Grassley’s amendments 41, 47, 51 and 53 and Senator Sessions’ amendment 12. These amendments are too extreme and out-of-step with the bipartisan spirit of S.744.

 

SUPPORT FAVORABLE DETENTION AMENDMENTS

 

“I further strongly urge Senator [NAME OF SENATOR] to SUPPORT Senator Coons’ amendment 6 and Senator Blumenthal’s amendment 2.  These amendments are easy fixes that address critical issues needed to reform the immigration detention system.”

[SEE LIST OF SENATORS AND PHONE NUMBERS BELOW]

 

DETRIMENTAL DETENTION AMENDMENTS

 

Grassley 41: Issue:  This amendment strikes provision in bill that codifies the Office of Legal Access Programs and expands Legal Orientation Programs.

Grassley 47: Issue:  This amendment strikes Section 3717, which provides for custody hearings for all detained immigrants and increases fairness of custody review and stipulated orders of removal procedures.

Grassley 51: This amendment strikes Section 3715, which directs DHS to create a secure alternatives program in every field office (including contracting with CBOs) and includes case management services. Section 3715 also requires DHS to make individualized assessments to determine level of supervision and to review the level of supervision monthly. It also permits secure alternatives to constitute custody in certain cases.

Grassley 53: Issue:  This amendment expands immigration detention during removal proceedings and indefinitely afterwards for those who cannot be removed. Severely limits use of alternatives to detention and bond hearings.

Sessions 12: Issue:  This amendment mandates bond levels of no less than $5,000 for nationals of non-contiguous countries, who have not been admitted or paroled, and who are apprehended within 100 miles of the border or present a flight risk as determined by ICE.

 

FAVORABLE DETENTION AMENDMENTS

 

Coons 6: Issue:  This amendment requires interoperability of ICE, CIS, CBP, and EOIR databases containing information on all detainees. Specifies categories of information that must be maintained in the database of each agency and establishes regular reporting requirements to Congress.  Makes reports available to public without FOIA request.

Blumenthal 2: Issue:  This amendment restricts the use of solitary confinement in immigration detention and outlines guidelines and oversight for its use.

 

 

Contact the Senators below who are on the Judiciary Committee

Senator Patrick Leahy (VT)
DC: (202) 224-4242
Email: https://www.leahy.senate.gov/contact/

Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA)
DC: (202) 224-3841
Email: https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me

Senator Charles Schumer (NY)
DC: (202) 224-6542
Email: https://www.schumer.senate.gov/Contact/contact_chuck.cfm

Senator Dick Durbin (IL)

DC: (202) 224-2152

Email: http://www.durbin.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/footer-contact?p=contact

 

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI)

DC: 202-224-2921

Email: http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/contact

Senator Amy Klobuchar (MN)
DC: (202) 224-3244
Email: http://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/emailamy.cfm?contactForm=emailamy&submit=Go

Senator Al Franken (MN)
DC: (202) 224-5641
Email: http://www.franken.senate.gov/?p=email_al

Senator Christopher A. Coons (DE)

DC: (202) 224-5042

Email: http://www.coons.senate.gov/contact/

 

Senator Richard Blumenthal (CT)

DC: (202) 224-2823

Email: https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/contact/#

 

Senator Mazie K. Hirono (HI)

DC: (202) 224-6361

Email: http://www.hirono.senate.gov/contact.cfm

 

Senator Orrin Hatch (UT)

DC: (202) 224-5251

Email: http://www.hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/email-orrin

 

Senator Lindsey Graham (SC)

DC: (202) 224-5972

http://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.EmailSenatorGraham

Senator John Cornyn (TX)
DC: (202) 224-2934
Email: http://www.cornyn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=ContactForm

Senator Mike Lee (UT)

DC: (202) 224-5444

Email: http://www.lee.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact

Senator Jeff Flake (AZ)
DC: (202) 224-4521
Email: http://www.flake.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact-jeff

 

BREAKING: Senate Bill Outline Revealed

View this document on Scribd

BREAKING NEWS: AP drops the term “illegal immigrant”

http://blog.ap.org/2013/04/02/illegal-immigrant-no-more/

04/02/2013
The AP Stylebook today is making some changes in how we describe people living in a country illegally.

Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll explains the thinking behind the decision:

The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term “illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.

Why did we make the change?

The discussions on this topic have been wide-ranging and include many people from many walks of life. (Earlier, they led us to reject descriptions such as “undocumented,” despite ardent support from some quarters, because it is not precise. A person may have plenty of documents, just not the ones required for legal residence.)

Those discussions continued even after AP affirmed “illegal immigrant” as the best use, for two reasons.

A number of people felt that “illegal immigrant” was the best choice at the time. They also believed the always-evolving English language might soon yield a different choice and we should stay in the conversation.

Also, we had in other areas been ridding the Stylebook of labels. The new section on mental health issues argues for using credibly sourced diagnoses instead of labels. Saying someone was “diagnosed with schizophrenia” instead of schizophrenic, for example.

And that discussion about labeling people, instead of behavior, led us back to “illegal immigrant” again.

We concluded that to be consistent, we needed to change our guidance.

So we have.

Is this the best way to describe someone in a country without permission? We believe that it is for now. We also believe more evolution is likely down the road.

Will the new guidance make it harder for writers? Perhaps just a bit at first. But while labels may be more facile, they are not accurate.

I suspect now we will hear from some language lovers who will find other labels in the AP Stylebook. We welcome that engagement. Get in touch at stylebook@ap.org or, if you are an AP Stylebook Online subscriber, through the “Ask the Editor” page.

Change is a part of AP Style because the English language is constantly evolving, enriched by new words, phrases and uses. Our goal always is to use the most precise and accurate words so that the meaning is clear to any reader anywhere.

The updated entry is being added immediately to the AP Stylebook Online and Manual de Estilo Online de la AP, the new Spanish-language Stylebook. It also will appear in the new print edition and Stylebook Mobile, coming out later in the spring. It reads as follows:

illegal immigration Entering or residing in a country in violation of civil or criminal law. Except in direct quotes essential to the story, use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant. Acceptable variations include living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission.

Except in direct quotations, do not use the terms illegal alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented.

Do not describe people as violating immigration laws without attribution.

Specify wherever possible how someone entered the country illegally and from where. Crossed the border? Overstayed a visa? What nationality?

People who were brought into the country as children should not be described as having immigrated illegally. For people granted a temporary right to remain in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, use temporary resident status, with details on the program lower in the story.

Newspress Article: Collier County Neighborhood Stories Project asks Rubio for immigration reform that keeps families together

Collier County Neighborhood Stories Project asks Rubio for immigration reform that keeps families together Written by Christina Cepero Feb. 27

news-press.com

Newspress article online PDF 

Bonita Springs resident Jorge Rodriguez never wants to be separated from his family again.

In June 2011, the 34-year-old Mexican native was stopped on I-75 on his way to a remodeling job in Miami. When he couldn’t provide documents showing legal status, he was taken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Broward Transitional Center.

“Daddy, when are you going to come back?” his two young children asked him when he talked to them on the phone.

After being detained there for two months, he was able to go home after paying a $5,000 bond, but his immigration status remains in limbo.

Rodriguez joined a dozen other advocates of the Florida Immigrant Coalition’s Say Yes to Citizenship campaign today during a meeting with Sen. Marco Rubio’s legislative aide, Zach Zampella, at Edison State College in Naples. Media was not allowed into the meeting.

“We need Sen. Rubio to be on board and say yes to an immigration reform that benefits our communities and our families,” said Angela Cisneros, a volunteer with the Collier County Neighborhood Stories Project, at a press conference before the meeting.

“We not only want him to consider a real and reasonable path to citizenship but to push for a moratorium on deportations which would benefit the many currently detained who could qualify for eventual immigration reform.”

Press contacts for Rubio did not return a voicemail or email from The News-Press this afternoon.

The Collier County Sheriff’s Office detained 2,956 individuals between fiscal year 2008 and the start of fiscal year 2012, according to case-by-case records obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse through a Freedom of Information Act request. Of those, 2,034, or 69 percent, had not been convicted of a crime and 922 had.

In Lee County, 1,225 were detained. Of those, 835, or 68 percent, had no criminal record, and 390 did.

Grey Torrico, also with the Collier County Neighborhood Stories Project, said Rubio’s aide did not address the request for a moratorium on deportations.

“We went in there knowing that a lot of the conversation was going to revolve around operational control of the border,” Torrico said. “He did speak about this nebulous framework around citizenship. … It doesn’t seem like a really concrete laid-out plan.”

Dr. Juan Puerto, who has worked in Immokalee for 30 years, said he sees children who have stopped smiling after a parent was deported.

“They’re depressed; they get behind in school,” he said. “When you disrupt a family, you disrupt the basic unit of society.”

Pastor Miguel Fernando Estrada Salvador, who runs La Mision Bethel Farmworker Ministry in Immokalee, doesn’t want to see any more families torn apart. He said it’s often the breadwinner who is deported, putting the family in a difficult economic situation.

“We just came here to work,” said Maria Bautista, 28, of Naples, who attended with her two young daughters who were born in the United States, adding she and her husband don’t drive for fear of being deported. “We don’t want them to suffer like their parents have.”

Immigration attorney Alex Vernon said: “These people are workers, business owners, employers, mothers, fathers, neighbors and community members. The businesses and communities and families that depend on them are sorely challenged by these indiscriminate immigration detention and enforcement polices, and I think that this community deserves better.”

Paul Midney, a nurse at an Immokalee clinic, urged Rubio to not make the process unnecessarily burdensome. “The harder you make it for families to legalize and to normalize, it just is more difficult for the children to become successful later on in life and to get the educational opportunities so they can reach their potential,” he said.

Domestic Violence in the Immigrant Community and Poli-Migra

Excerpt from ASISTA article, “What Can Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Organizations Do to Help Immigrant Survivors Affected by “Secure Communities” and Related Immigration Enforcement Programs?”

 What is the impact on community policing? 

Law enforcement officials and civil rights organizations across the country have raised serious concerns that Secure Communities, and other laws like it blur the lines between local law enforcement and immigration enforcement, encourage racial profiling, and lead to pretextual arrests for minor offenses (such as traffic violations). These programs threaten public safety and undermine community policing initiatives by eroding the trust of community members. Also, when law enforcement doesn’t help immigrants–exposing them to ICE instead-they are failing in their duty to provide justice and protect the safety of all people in the U.S., regardless of immigration status.

What is the potential impact on immigrant victims of violence? 

Local law enforcement entanglement with ICE puts survivors of domestic violence (DV) and sexual assault (SA) at increased risk in situations such as:

• Dual arrests (arresting both people), particularly where language is a barrier

• Perpetrators calling the police on unfounded allegations in order to expose victims to ICE

• Victims who run the risk of getting arrested for driving without a license (when an abusive spouse who is a citizen or legal permanent resident has refused to legalize their immigration status)

• Local law enforcement entering victims’ fingerprints into the FBI/ICE database because they either incorrectly think they must, because they fail to adequately determine that the person is a victim, or because they think being in the United States without documents is a crime (it is not) and fail to follow ICE prioritization standards

Read more in the ASISTA article

 

Enough is Enough, Senator Rubio: Call-in Days and Letter Writing Campaign

February 18th, 2013

Visit the Facebook Event Page 

With an unprecedented number of deportations in the last four years and the recent announcement that ICE has “annual performance goals” to fulfill, our communities are hurting more and more with every passing conversation around “immigration reform”.

What does this mean, anyway? For many families, it doesn’t matter so long as there’s no conversation around a moratorium on deportations. No immigration reform bill or conversation with a legislator can be devoid of the very grim reality that immigrant communities are facing each and every day to survive.

1. It cannot be devoid of the fact that the government, spending billions on immigration detention, is not a sound fiscal decision. Everyone living in the United States should be treated with dignity and be able to exercise rights afforded to him or her under our laws.
2. Our current system is broken. Immigrants deserve access to a just, fair legal system; immigrants should not be unfairly detained, nor detained access to legal resources if detained; corporations should not profit off detention.
3. We need to focus on policies that result in economic growth. Our current detention policy removes people-oftentimes the family breadwinner-from their communities, jobs and families.

So, in this re-energized conversation around immigration reform, it is our duty to make sure these points are uplifted and are heard loud and clear. Tell Senator Marco Rubio that “enough is enough”. 

Here are two things you can do starting NOW:

1. Call-in Days: It is a simple task with a longstanding effect. For every 1 pro-immigrant call the Senator is getting, 3 more anti-immigrant calls surface. We must take action and call our Senator and Congressmen as many chances as we get.  

Call the Senator at his local Naples Office between 9-5 PM weekdays at 239-213-1521 or his DC office at 202-224-3041

       2.  Write a personalized letter to Senator Rubio to be on the “right side” of history. Tell             him that enough is enough for immigrant families who can longer live with fear of being deported or separated from their families. We need comprehensive immigration reform that fixes our broken system once and for all.

     We will deliver letters on February 28^th when we meet with Marco Rubio’s Staff. Our            goal is to have at least 500 letters written, including from those detained or family members of detained loved ones. 

You can send letters to Collier County Neighborhood Stories Project at 15275 Collier Blvd #201-152 Naples, FL 34119. Email us at info@collierstoriesmatter.org if you have questions