Published November 20, 2011

November 18 at 10 am in Lumpkin, Georgia

Advocates call for the for-profit detention center to be shut down

Atlanta, GA – On Friday, November 18 at 10 am, Georgia Detention Watch will hold its fifth annual vigil at Corrections Corporation of America’s Stewart Detention Center.  “This year’s vigil will highlight the traumatic impact of detention on the families, especially children of those detained, while  CCA continues to secure record-breaking profits off of human misery,” said Georgia Detention Watch Steering Committee member, Priscilla Padrón of Atlanta.

Families that have been directly impacted by detention at Stewart will play a major role in this year’s vigil.  In 2010, Emily Guzman spoke on behalf of her husband, Pedro, who was detained inside Stewart for 19 months.  Emily’s mother, Pamela Alberda and seven others were also arrested for a nonviolent act of civil disobedience at last year’s vigil as they demanded the release of her son-in-law.  Earlier this year, victory was declared by advocates as Pedro was granted relief and reunited with his family.  He will now address those in attendance at the vigil himself as a legal permanent resident of the United States.

“There’s so much money they make from us, but they’re not investing any money in detainees,” Pedro Guzman said in an interview upon his release from the for-profit detention center in the remote town of Lumpkin, population 1300. “The treatment you get is like you’re an animal. I have two dogs, and I treat my dogs much better than the detainees are treated in there.”

Others directly affected by the for-profit detention of immigrants at Stewart will also attend this year’s vigil, including Lilian Quiroz.    

Quiroz’s husband, Paul, entered the United States in 1984 when he was only 11 years old and now has two children and a wife in a familial crisis as his detention at Stewart goes on for five months with no end in sight.

 “It is time to close this for-profit detention center and end the mandatory detention of immigrants,” said Anton Flores-Maisonet of Georgia Detention Watch.

Additional individuals slated to speak at the vigil include Theresa El-Amin, a veteran of the civil rights movement and representative of the Southern Anti-Racist Network; Flores-Maisonet; Bryan Holcomb, a former employee-turned-whistleblower of Corrections Corporation of America’s Stewart Detention Center; and Azadeh Shahshahani of the ACLU of Georgia.

§ About the Stewart Detention Center
Located in rural Southwest Georgia, the Stewart Detention Center detains approximately 2,000 immigrant men for deportation proceedings. Stewart, the largest immigrant detention center in the U.S., is operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a Nashville-based corporation with revenue of $1.7 billion in 2010; CEO Damon Hinninger received a compensation package of $3,266,387 the same year. The average cost to the tax payer to house each detainee is $122 per day per bed.

Case-by-case data also show that the highest proportion of deportation orders in the country (98.8 percent) were issued by the judges in the Lumpkin, Georgia Immigration Court.

§ Conditions at Stewart: Substandard and Inhumane
An April 2009 report by Georgia Detention Watch on conditions at Stewart documented violations of ICE’s own detention standards at the facility. The report charged that food and medicine are withheld as punishment and that solitary confinement is routinely imposed without a disciplinary hearing. In March 2009, Roberto Martinez Medina, a 39-year-old immigrant held at Stewart died of a treatable heart infection.  To this day, many unanswered questions surround his death. Additionally, Mark Lyttle, a U.S. citizen formerly detained at Stewart, has a lawsuit pending against the U.S. government for his wrongful detention and deportation.

§About Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)
2010 revenue: $1.7 billion
Prisoner capacity: 90,037
Year founded: 1983
Headquarters: Nashville, Tenn.
Head: Damon Hininger (president and CEO)
Executive compensation: $3,266,387 compensation package for Hininger in 2010 (according to Morningstar)

Sources: CCA: 2010 Annual Letter to Shareholders; A Quarter Century of Service to America; About CCA; Morningstar, Corrections Corporation of America, Key Executive Compensation.

Lead Sponsor: Georgia Detention Watch

Collaborators and Endorsers: 

School of the Americas Watch

American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia 

Alterna

Asian American Legal Advocacy Center

Atlanta Friends Meeting Social Concerns Committee

Coalicion de Lideres Latinos of Dalton

Cobb Immigrant Alliance

Cuentame

Detention Watch Network

DreamActivist.org

Enlace

Georgia Immigrants and Refugees Rights Coalition

Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights

Georgia Peace and Just Coalition

Georgia Rural Urban Summit

International Action Center

International Center of Atlanta

Southern Anti-Racism Network

Southerners on New Ground  

Georgia Detention Watch is a coalition of organizations and individuals that advocates alongside immigrants to end the inhumane and unjust detention and law enforcement policies and practices directed against immigrant communities in our state. Our coalition includes activists, community organizers, persons of faith, lawyers, and many more.

Member organizations of Georgia Detention Watch include: the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, American Immigration Lawyers Association Atlanta Chapter, Amnesty International-Southern Region, Amnesty International -Atlanta local group 75, Atlantans Building Leadership for Empowerment (ABLE), Coalición De Líderes Latinos (CLILA), Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR), Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition, Immigrant Justice Project- Southern Poverty Law Center, International Action Center, Open Door Community, Refugee Resettlement and Immigration Services of Atlanta (RRISA), and others.

Standing up to the Regents’ Ban

Atlanta, Georgia— Today, Georgia Undocumented Youth Alliance (GUYA), along with the Georgia Students for Public Higher Education (GSPHE), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and other area organizations, will urge the University System of Georgia Board of Regents to rescind Policy 4.1.6. The policy effectively bans undocumented students from applying to and enrolling in the state’s five most competitive public institutions. “I was always told that I had potential, and that with an education I could do whatever I wanted when I grew up,” said Emir Palacios, a senior at Lithia Springs High School. “Now, I have to fight for the right to receive a higher education.”

WHO:             Coalition of organizations and students from around the state of Georgia

WHAT:          Press conference and rally against the ban on undocumented students

WHEN:          Tuesday, November 8th, at 1:00pm

WHERE:       In front of the the University System of Georgia building, 270 Washington Street SW
, Atlanta, Georgia 30334

In addition, two students, Juan Carlos Cardoza-Oquendo and Keish Kim, will speak before the Committee on Organization and Law, urging the Board to rescind its ban because it unfairly creates two classes of students and contravenes this state’s cherished principles of equality and justice for all.

“Policy 4.1.6 is a step in the wrong direction. I don’t want to live in a state where the people I’ve grown up with do not have the same chances I’ve had to learn and succeed,” said Cardoza-Oquendo. At the meeting, opponents of the ban will deliver thousands of signatures to express their disapproval of the policy.

Tuesday’s presence at the Board’s meeting is in the spirit of supporting youth like Palacios, whose dreams and hard work are being shattered by the ban.

###

This collective action is supported and organized by a multitude of student and civic organizations who refer to themselves as the November Coalition, united under the common goal of lifting the ban on undocumented students.

FREE SCREENING

BETTER THIS WORLD

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

6:00 pm

Auburn Avenue research Library
101 Auburn Avenue, NE
Atlanta, GA  30303

2 FRIENDS, 8 BOMBS, 1 FBI INFORMANT

This event is a collaboration with the award-winning documentary series POV

Daily Report
Friday, October 28, 2011
Immigration laws harm students
Alabama law seeking children’s status rejected by 11th Circuit, but danger to school access persists
By Daniel Altschuler and Azadeh Shahshahani, Special to the Daily Report

True or false: No child in this country can be denied a public education.

The answer is true, thanks to the Supreme Court’s 1982 Plyler v. Doe decision, which held that schools could not exclude children based on their immigration status. This is settled law, but not for Alabama legislators, who passed an anti-immigrant law (HB 56) with a provision requiring elementary and secondary schools to determine students’ and parents’ citizenship status.

With a federal district court refusing to enjoin this provision, families with an undocumented family member are already keeping their children, including U.S. citizens, out of school. Though an appellate court this month temporarily blocked the K-12 reporting requirement, the right to primary education access for all in our country remains in jeopardy.

This summer, civil and immigrant rights groups, religious institutions, and the Department of Justice challenged HB 56 in federal court. Alabama’s law contains many troubling provisions found in anti-immigrant laws in other states, such as Arizona and Georgia, which were blocked by federal courts. But it goes much further, including the requirement in Section 28 that K-12 school officials track immigration status. The court allowed this section of the law to stand.

As with Georgia’s HB 87, proponents of HB 56 claim they are removing the drain on state resources. But, in truth, officials like Gov. Robert Bentley are scapegoating immigrants for political gain at a time of economic insecurity. They have confessed their desire to expel undocumented immigrants from the state. HB 56 sponsor Mickey Hammon asserted, “This [bill] attacks every aspect of an illegal immigrant’s life. … [T]his bill is designed to make it difficult for them to live here so they will deport themselves.”

The law is so extreme that Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights, concluded that Alabama’s “draconian initiative is so oppressive that Bull Connor himself would be impressed.” Birmingham’s former sheriff, you may recall, once used attack dogs and fire hoses on African-American children.

Even those skeptical of immigration’s well-documented economic benefits should be appalled by Alabama officials’ willingness to target children. In addition to violating the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, Section 28 is morally repugnant. It uses state power to keep immigrant children, who bear no responsibility for their status, out of school. Moreover, while so many Alabama public schools are failing, the law unconscionably redirects scarce education resources toward immigration policing.

Finally, as the court held in Plyler, “It is difficult to understand precisely what the State hopes to achieve by promoting the creation and perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries, surely adding to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare, and crime.”

Sadly, HB 56 may reflect a larger national trend. In May, the Department of Justice issued a memo re-affirming the illegality of asking students about their immigration status. This followed illegal reporting requirements and efforts in other states to pass education provisions similar to HB 56. Recent reports by the American Civil Liberties Union, for instance, found that roughly 20 percent of New York and New Jersey public school districts requested information from students that would indicate their immigration status. Similar practices abound in Arizona, where fully half of school districts surveyed by the ACLU sought such information.

The Department of Justice was right to issue its memo, but, in the wake of HB 56’s passage, it must be even more vigilant about illegal school reporting policies, which may rise as restrictionist officials seek to copy HB 56.

It is encouraging that the appellate court temporarily blocked the education provision of HB 56. But beating Section 28 in court, while essential, will not by itself ensure that all American children can go to school without fear. Legislators and education officials around the country must take heed: our classrooms are no place for the refrain, “Papers,  please.”

Government Linking Various Criminal Behaviors to Certain Racial and Ethnic Groups in Georgia, Documents Obtained by ACLU Reveal

Press Release

ATLANTA – The FBI has been targeting American communities for investigation in Georgia and across the country based on race, ethnicity, national origin and religion according to documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia that were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The documents show that FBI analysts in Georgia and across the country are associating criminal behaviors with certain racial and ethnic groups and then using U.S. census data and other demographic information to map where those communities are located to investigate them.

Examples of profiling in Georgia revealed in FBI memos and intelligence notes include:

• Noting an increase in the “black/African American populations in Georgia” and non-violent protests by the African-American community in the state after police shootings to identify potential threats from “Black Separatist” groups.
• Using the threat posed by the criminal gang MS-13, which was originally started by Salvadoran immigrants, to justify broad investigations targeting a wide variety of Latino communities in Georgia as well as in Alabama and New Jersey.

“The FBI’s own documents confirm our worst fears about how it is using its overly expansive surveillance and racial profiling authority,” said Azadeh Shahshahani, ACLU of Georgia National Security/Immigrants’ Rights Project Director. “The FBI has targeted communities of color in Georgia for investigation based not on suspicion of actual wrongdoing, but on the crudest stereotypes about which groups commit different types of crimes.”

The documents are being released as part of a new ACLU initiative called “Mapping the FBI,” which aims to expose misconduct and abuse of authority by the bureau.

“The use of profiling as a tool to address crime and national security threats is not only unconstitutional, it is ineffective and counterproductive,” said Michael German, ACLU senior policy counsel and a former FBI agent. “Targeting entire communities for investigation based on erroneous stereotypes produces flawed intelligence. Law enforcement programs based on evidence and facts are effective, and a system of bias and mass suspicion is not.”

Other instances of profiling around the country revealed in the FBI memos and intelligence notes include:

• Using the fact that San Francisco is “home to one of the oldest Chinatowns in North America and one of the largest ethnic Chinese populations outside mainland China” to justify opening an investigation involving racial and ethnic mapping because “[w]ithin this community there has been organized crime for generations.”
• Seeking to collect information about Muslim and Arab communities in Michigan, arguing that “because Michigan has a large Middle Eastern and Muslim population, it is prime territory for attempted radicalization and recruitment by… terrorist groups.”  

“It is entirely within Attorney General Holder’s power to put an immediate end to these unconstitutional practices by changing the internal Justice Department and FBI rules that permit them to occur,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project.

In 2003, the Justice Department issued its “Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies,” which prohibited racial and ethnic profiling in all contexts except in national security and border integrity investigations.  Exploiting this loophole, the FBI claimed the authority to analyze the geographic concentrations of racial and ethnic communities in an internal manual called the “Domestic Investigation and Operations Guide,” which was issued in December 2008. This program, called “Domain Management,” is not limited to national security investigations, and the ACLU believes that it violates the Constitution. The organization recently sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to address the problem.

The documents also reveal FBI counterterrorism training materials portraying Arab and Muslim communities in the U.S. as primitive, violent and supporters of terrorism. The documents show that these materials have been in use since at least 2003 through this year.

A 2008 textbook, produced by the FBI and West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, contains essays claiming that Islam is inherently violent, that Muslims and Arabs are intrinsically “different” from other Americans and should be treated with suspicion, and that religious practices and political activism by Muslims and Arabs are signs of increasing danger. The FBI has committed to reviewing its training materials, and the ACLU has written to request that faulty intelligence products be included within this review.

A detailed description of the FBI’s use of racial profiling, including links to the FOIA documents, is available at:

www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-eye-fbi-fbi-engaged-unconstitutional-racial-profiling-and-racial-mapping

A detailed description of the FBI’s use of training materials biased against Muslims and Arabs, including links to the FOIA documents, is available at:

www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-eye-fbi-fbis-use-anti-arab-and-anti-muslim-counterterrorism-training

The ACLU’s letter sent to Attorney General Eric Holder about racial profiling and the FBI’s investigation guidelines is available at:

www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-letter-attorney-general-holder

More information about the ACLU’s new initiative, “Mapping the FBI,” including a searchable database of FOIA documents, is available at:

www.aclu.org/mapping-fbi

2011 Annual Membership Conference

Civil Liberties in the 21st Century: How the Past Informs the Future

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Blackburn Conference Center
Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School
1422 West Peachtree Street
Atlanta, Georgia 30339

10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

On site parking available

At least once each year, the ACLU of Georgia provides
a forum for members, community members, and coalition partners
to come together to celebrate, learn, and share plans, victories
— and sometimes disappointments —
in the fight for justice, human rights and civil liberties.

Join us as we present a day of informative
and interesting speakers, workshops, and panel discussions.

Results for the ACLU Board of Directors Election will be announced at this meeting.

Topics include:

Voting Rights and Redistricting Update
Religious Freedom
Citizen Lobbying and Legislative Strategies
Protestor and Protest Observer Training
Screening of “Better This World”, a film about FBI surveillance of activists and entrapment

To Register

The cost for lunch is $10/per person.

By David Ibata
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Douglasville has settled a federal lawsuit brought by a woman who was jailed over her Muslim headscarf.

“We think it’s a significant victory for religious freedom,” Azadeh Shahshahani, one of the attorneys representing Lisa Valentine in the case, told the AJC in a phone interview Friday.

“Obviously the manner in which Ms. Valentine was treated was inexcusable and unconstitutional,” said Shahshahani, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia. “We hope that through this settlement, no other people will be subject to this same humiliating treatment Ms. Valentine had to suffer.”

Douglasville agreed to adopt a new court screening policy that allows people with religious head coverings the option of being screened in a private area by a person of the same gender, the ACLU said in a news release. Persons with religious headgear will not be forced to remove them in public and can wear the coverings in court.

That policy mirrors a nonbinding recommendation to local courts made in July 2009 by the Georgia Judicial Council after widespread news reports of the Valentine incident.

“I hope that no person of faith will ever have to experience the type of egregious treatment I suffered at any Georgia courthouse because of the expression of my beliefs,” Valentine said in the news release.

Efforts were being made Friday afternoon to reach a Douglasville city official for comment.

Valentine, an African-American woman who converted from Christianity to Islam about 15 years ago, was jailed on Dec. 16, 2008 after she wore a Muslim head scarf known as a hijab while accompanying her nephew to Traffic Court in Douglasville.

When a guard at a court security station told Valentine to remove her headgear, the woman refused, protested aloud and tried to leave. But Municipal Court Judge Keith Rollins ordered the woman arrested and jailed for 10 days for contempt of court.

Valentine was released later that day.

In December, Valentine – represented by the national ACLU and its Georgia chapter and the law firm of Carlton Fields – filed suit in U.S. District Court, Atlanta. The suit accused Douglasville and the officers who arrested Valentine of violating her constitutional rights as well as her rights under federal law.

While the ACLU hopes all Georgia courts will adopt the Judicial Council’s recommended policy, “unfortunately, we continue to receive complaints about people being denied access to courthouses because of the religious headgear they are wearing,” Shahshahani said.

The most recent incident occurred in May in Henry County, when a state judge refused to allow a Muslim man to wear a head covering, a tight-fitting cap called a kufi, in traffic court. The judge later reversed his decision.

Muslim Woman Sued City After Being Jailed for Protesting Policy Forcing Her to Remove Headscarf

ATLANTA – The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Georgia and the law firm of Carlton Fields secured a settlement from the city of Douglasville, Ga. today on behalf of a Muslim woman who was told she could not enter a municipal courtroom unless she removed her religious headgear and was jailed for contempt of court and forced to remove her headscarf when she protested.

According to today’s settlement, Douglasville has adopted a screening policy allowing people who enter the courthouse wearing a religious headcovering the option to be screened in a private area by an officer of the same gender and ensures that people who wear religious headcoverings will not be forced to remove it in public and may wear their religious headcoverings in the courtroom.

In December 2008, Lisa Valentine attempted to accompany her nephew to his traffic hearing before the Douglasville Municipal Court but was told it was against court policy to wear headgear in court. After she protested and attempted to leave, officers restrained and arrested her, forced her to remove her head covering, and jailed her for several hours.

“We are glad that the city of Douglasville has acknowledged that the way that Ms. Valentine was treated was inexcusable and unlawful,” said Azadeh Shahshahani, an attorney with the ACLU of Georgia. “No one should feel singled out in a court of law simply for observing her faith.”

“The ACLU is fighting hard to secure religious freedom throughout the United States, and Carlton Fields was very pleased to be a part of its crusade by assisting Ms. Valentine with her case,” said Gail Podolsky, an attorney with Carlton Fields.

Following Valentine’s arrest, the judge issued a rule allowing for “special provisions” to be made for those who choose to wear religious head coverings in the courtroom, and the city of Douglasville issued a press release admitting that the officer who stopped Valentine did not inform her of an alternative procedure that would have allowed her to keep her head covering. In July 2009, the Georgia Judicial Council adopted a non-binding policy clarifying that religious head coverings can be worn in Georgia courthouses.

According to today’s settlement, Douglasville has adopted a screening policy allowing people who enter the courthouse wearing a religious headcovering the option to be screened in a private area by an officer of the same gender and ensures that people who wear religious headcoverings will not be forced to remove it in public and may wear their religious headcoverings in the courtroom.

“I am glad that Douglasville has agreed to formal policies to make sure this never happens to anyone else.” said Valentine. “Acknowledging that I was improperly treated was the least that my city could do.”

“The idea that everyone is equal before the law is a hallmark of American justice, so nobody should be treated unfairly when she enters a courthouse,” said Ariela Migdal, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. “These simple provisions will ensure that Muslim women receive the same respect and access to civic participation as anyone else.”

“Any government – local, state or federal – should expect to be held accountable when it intrudes on someone’s right to observe her faith,” said Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. “That is why today’s settlement is so important.”

Attorneys on the case include Joseph F. Hession and Podolsky of Carlton Fields, P.A.; Chara Fisher Jackson and Shahshahani of the ACLU of Georgia; Migdal and Lenora M. Lapidus of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project and Mach of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.

The policy can be viewed at:  www.aclu.org/religion-belief/valentine-v-city-douglasville-valentine-headcovering-policy

For more information on this case, please visit: www.aclu.org/religion-belief-womens-rights/valentine-v-city-douglasville