Beyond Walls and Cages: Texas: Mexican Human Rights Official Held

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Texas: Mexican Human Rights Official Held

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: October 19, 2009
New York Times

A Mexican human rights official who has accused the Mexican Army of abuses has been detained by United States customs officials and is being held against his will in El Paso, said his lawyer, Carlos Spector. The official, Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, who works in Juarez for the Chihuahua State Commission for Human Rights, was taken into custody by customs agents Thursday night as he tried to cross into El Paso with his border-crossing card to visit friends. Though Mr. de la Rosa told customs officers he was not seeking asylum, agents took him into custody anyway after he acknowledged that he had received threats because of his work. In a statement, Mr. de la Rosa said the officers had told him he was being detained for his own safety. A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said he was being held “due to mandatory detention provisions” but declined to explain why.

Read @ NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/us/20brfs-HUMANRIGHTSO_BRF.html

No comments:

Post a Comment

Beyond Walls and Cages

Bridging Prison Abolition and Immigrant Justice Movements

Description and Purpose:
In the US, some 2.4 million people are imprisoned while 1.6 million migrants have been deported since 1996. On a world scale, while most people’s movement is constrained by a system of global apartheid, policing strategies are shared across national borders that are commonly used to crack down on political organizing and dissent. What are the connections between the prison industrial complex and migration policies that are symbolized by deadly cages and walls? How do these different state policies both divide and connect different groups of people across nationality, citizenship, race, class, gender, and sexuality? What work do these sturdy tools of division, isolation, and control do at this moment of economic crisis? What are the ideologies that make walls and cages seem so durable, and what cracks in these edifices can movements for social justice and liberation open up?

Making links between prison policies and migration policies is important for being able to understand and challenge white supremacy, US imperialism, capitalism, and militarization. We want to understand the ways in which the prison abolition and immigrant justice movements are opposing state violence and the creative ways in which they are working to build a world without walls and cages. How might organizing around the “right to stay” be a way of bridging communities who face economic dislocation – whether through free trade policies or gentrification – and repressive state policies alike?

How did we put this book together?
We called for papers and solicited contributions for a book that brings materials from people who are directly affected by these systems together with work from organizers, activists, advocates, artists, poets, and researchers. We edited these contributions and found a press that was interested in publishing them.

In September and October, 2009, we also took to the road to get a closer look at the ways in which immigrant detention is building on the system of mass incarceration in the South and Southwest. How are these systems shaping the livelihoods and organizing of communities who are most affected by hyper-policing? And what changes, if any, is the current economic crisis having on these systems?

About the editors:
Jenna Loyd is a writer and researcher who is based in Syracuse, NY. Matt Mitchelson is a geographer researching imprisonment and working with former prisoners. Andrew Burridge is a geographer and activist working towards freedom of movement within the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and beyond.

If you are interested in learning more about or contributing to this project, please contact us at nowallsnocages@gmail.com.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Texas: Mexican Human Rights Official Held

No comments:

Post a Comment

Blog Archive

Freedom of Movement