Daily Archives: June 30, 2009

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America’s ICE Backwards Approach to Immigration

Truth Dig

This article is a collaboration with the Center for Investigative Reporting.

By Andrew Becker and Hugo Cabrera, CIR

The U.S. has hired thousands of Border Patrol agents and prosecutors while adding only three immigration judges since 2006. The result is a clogged system that leaves immigrants and even U.S. citizens in prison limbo. AP photo / Khampha Bouaphanh

The U.S. has hired thousands of Border Patrol agents and prosecutors while adding only three immigration judges since 2006. The result is a clogged system that leaves immigrants and even U.S. citizens in prison limbo. AP photo / Khampha Bouaphanh

While the nation’s understaffed immigration courts strain under a backlog that has grown to more than 200,000 cases, thousands of new border agents have been hired and the number of government attorneys who argue for deportation has increased by 35 percent, pushing more cases onto an already overburdened system.

As a result, cases often take months if not years to complete, leading to more immigrants being held in a growing network of detention facilities and jails. On any given day there are more than 30,000 people in immigration lockup. Continue reading →

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Denial and dismissal

 New Internationalist 

Despite growing evidence, the Kenyan Government evades accountability for murder

On 5 March, Oscar Kingara and John Oulu were shot dead in suspicious circumstances. Both were staff members of the Oscar Foundation, an organization recently involved in documenting the extrajudicial executions of members of a militia organization known as Mungiki. They were heading to a meeting with the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights when their vehicle was blocked by two cars – one of which was allegedly driven by a man in police uniform – and sprayed with bullets. Hours before their deaths, a Government spokesperson had accused them of supporting Mungiki.  Continue reading →

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The momentum is moving in the MDC’s favour yet its foreign friends remain cautious

Africa Confidentialzim

 After a three-week tour through Western capitals and having raised some US$150 million for his fragile government, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai now knows that diplomats and business people in the West are as ambivalent as their African counterparts about the prospects for Zimbabwe in the short term. The difference is that African governments have already ‘taken the risk’, as Tsvangirai puts it. The stakes are much higher for Zimbabwe’s neighbours if things fall apart again. Continue reading →