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Life in the shadows

Anonymous — Tue, 10 May 2016 20:22:20 +0000

Life in the shadows Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/10/2016 - 14:22 Kaley LaQuea

Stories of domestic violence and sexual assault on undocumented immigrant women tell of a deep-seated problem in the United States.

*Author’s note: Italicized portions are based on case studies from victim advocate counselors. Names have been changed to protect the persons involved.

Photo: Francesco Scaramella via Flickr Creative Commons

Marisa Raygoza let out a heavy sigh.

“This is a very sad topic.” She shook her head.

Raygoza, the end-of-life coordinator at El Comite in Longmont, Colorado, sat for a minute with her face propped in her palm.

“So many of our women…I’m sorry.”

She paused as her voice broke, reached across the desk for a tissue, dabbed at her eyes under her glasses.

“They’re hidden. They’re in the shadows. They’re in fear. They’re nobodies.”

In 2014, the Pew Research Center estimated that there were roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., 51 percent of whom are women. Most hail from Mexico and Latin America. One in six Latina women survive rape, attempted rape and sexual assault, while rates of domestic violence are even higher.

Studies provide a murky picture, but most estimates put the number at anywhere from one-quarter to nearly half of Latina women who have experienced domestic violence. Accurate statistics are scarce because Latinas often don’t report domestic violence. Undocumented women (and men) often avoid self-identification for fear of deportation.

“Because I am a woman, I do fear more for the women,” Raygoza said. “You think about how they’ve been treated. What has their life been like? We’re talking 15-20 years, most of these people have been here that long now, and in the shadows.”

‘This one is a difficult one’

Rosa Murillo is a victim advocate for the Boulder County District Attorney. She’s heard many stories of domestic violence, but still some stand out more than others.

“This one is a difficult one,” Murillo prefaced.

Juan and Maria were from Mexico. They immigrated to the U.S. and both of their kids were born here. They lived in Lafayette. They had a couple of domestic violence incidents, where Maria would report but then later deny that anything had happened. She would recant for the same reasons every time — they were both undocumented. She had contacted Murillo previously concerning domestic abuse, but continuously recanted out of fear.

Maria didn’t have any family here. She wasn’t close to her mother, so she was in the U.S. by herself with her husband. Juan had a couple uncles and a brother in the U.S., so all the relatives she had were his family.

At one point Maria decided to leave Juan. She was on her own, but doing well with her children. Juan continued to harass her and look for her. She got a car. She got a job at Wendy’s and lived in a small trailer with the kids. She knew she didn’t want to go back to him.

A few months later, Maria began dating a man who was very helpful and supportive.

One evening they went to a dance, where Maria had something to drink. Her boyfriend drove them home.

Juan and his brother came looking for them. They drove to the boyfriend’s home. They stayed in their car and waited for Maria and her boyfriend to come home.

When the couple arrived, Juan immediately went to the driver’s side, thinking that she was driving. Because she hardly ever drank, she was always the designated driver. Juan went to driver’s side of the car and opened the door, and when the boyfriend looked outside, Juan hit him on the head with a bat, breaking the boyfriend’s skull.

Juan’s brother grabbed Maria, pulled her out of the car and pushed her around. Juan came around to the passenger side. He balled his right hand into a fist and punched Maria in the forehead.

Maria came into Murillo’s office the next day.

“I’ve had it,” she told Murillo.

Maria had bruising all around her eyes. Both of her eyes were completely bloodshot, one was swollen shut.

Murillo spent eight hours with Maria that day taking statements and translating for her. Juan his brother were immediately arrested. Maria went to the court hearings, which is unusual for someone who has been assaulted that badly. Usually people who come to the hearings are still supportive of the individual, but Maria knew she didn’t want anything to do with him. Still, she felt a sense of remorse. She cared so much for him. She would bring the kids to the courtroom. Even though Juan almost killed her, Maria was still emotionally involved.

VIMEO - Rosa Murillo, victim advocate for the Boulder County district attorney

‘The vast majority don’t call police’

Exploitation of undocumented immigrants is a pervasive issue. They often are the victims of crime, theft and fraud, in addition to sexual crime.

“One of the scary things about American history is we’ve always had an underclass,” said Stan Garnett, Boulder County’s district attorney. “When you have an underclass, it’s dangerous for lots of reasons, and one of the reasons it concerns law enforcement is because the bad guys think they can take advantage of the underclass and nobody will do anything.”

Crimes against undocumented immigrants are vastly underreported, and shame surrounding domestic violence and sexual assault compounds this silence.

“The vast majority of people don’t call police,” said Agueda Morgan, director of programs at the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

Local police departments have no jurisdiction regarding federal immigration policy, and cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration officials has not always been positive. Federal immigration agents are unlikely to travel to detain and deport someone, especially for misdemeanors and lesser crimes. Despite this, any sort of involvement with law enforcement and police is still avoided at nearly all costs. “They think ‘I’m putting myself into the mouth of the wolf, so why would I do that?’” Morgan said.

The fear and distrust of law enforcement runs deep in the immigrant community.

“There’s a lot of what-ifs and faith or lack thereof in the system, because they’ve heard it, they’ve seen it,” said Carmen Mireles, operations director of El Comite. In cases of domestic violence, especially instances where victims may defend themselves against their abuser and cause bodily harm such as a scratch or bruise, the victim may actually be the one arrested by a responding officer. These victim advocates are then sometimes arrested and even deported.

Immigrant women who experience domestic violence are also at risk for being sexually harassed by their employers or coworkers. A 2009 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that 77 percent of Latina women surveyed felt that sexual harassment was a major issue in the workplace.

‘She would come in and literally shake’

In 2012, Garnett prosecuted a case against an employer who repeatedly raped and assaulted an undocumented employee, threatening to call immigration regarding her status. The woman, who was from El Salvador, eventually sought help from Garnett’s office through local services.

“She’s such an amazing person, but her level of fear was so intense. She would come in and literally shake,” victim advocate Murillo recalled.

That fear began on the job, where she worked for a Longmont-based janitorial service and the man who owned it.

While Cecilia cleaned the bathrooms in restaurants in downtown Boulder, the owner would come behind her and force himself into her. This happened many times.

One time, Cecilia tried to tell the owner she was on her period, but it didn’t matter to him, he still went ahead and raped her.

She first told her boyfriend that her employer was being inappropriate, touching her and making her do sexual things. He didn’t believe her.

So one day Cecilia took her cellphone and recorded him asking her for sexual favors. She showed the boyfriend. A few weeks later, she was at a Latin store in her neighborhood. She lost it at the store. She broke down, sobbing and crying.

An employee from the store asked Cecilia what was wrong, and she told him “My employer has been assaulting me.”

He helped get her in contact with Mental Health Partners (a Boulder nonprofit providing crisis services) and that’s how she finally reported it. Prior to that day, she was so afraid of what might happen to her that she had no intention of reporting.

The owner of the cleaning service who assaulted Cecilia was convicted of second degree assault and sentenced to 2 years of work release. He was also sentenced to ten years of sex offender intensive probation.

Cecilia had separated from an abusive husband when she left El Salvador. When she left she had no choice but to leave her three kids.

During the proceedings, one of her daughters was sexually assaulted by a gang in El Salvador. She heard about that and she wanted to leave. ‘I have to leave, I can’t stay,’ she said.

The counselors were able to talk to her and convince her to stay, and see if she could apply for a visa for her kids. She got a U-visa with the help of immigration legal services. It included her kids because they were at risk in El Salvador.

In Hispanic communities, cultural aspects add a layer of difficulty in the reporting process. Shame and silence surrounding sexual assault and domestic violence prevent reporting. “Culturally it’s not something that we talk about. It’s not acceptable. You don’t talk about it, you don’t talk about what goes on at home,” Mireles said.

One of the most significant values in Latino culture is the emphasis and importance of family structure. An individual’s decision to report domestic violence may create backlash from family members, and the fault may be on the victim for disrupting the family, not the abuser.

“The culture, their religion, they’re told that this is the way the life is, that they are to put up with this stuff,” Mireya Rios, a victim advocate for the Boulder County district attorney’s office said. “Their role is to be by that person, that’s how they’ve seen their parents grow up and that’s how they should grow up.”

‘Who else is being abused?’

Family structure can also create problems if abuse is occurring inside the home.

“Once you start peeling away layers: Who else is being abused? Or who else knows and isn’t saying anything, isn’t supporting the victim?” said Kat Bradley-Bennett, programs director at El Comite.

This family was very close, a very tight knit family. The uncle of the family was someone who everybody looked up to. They respected him. He was a religious man, very involved with his church. He was the person they could trust to go to with any problems. He immigrated into the U.S. with his family, and he was the only one who was documented. He was their main support, the person who was going to help them get a job and try to move on.

He and his family were very welcoming to other members of their family, some of them undocumented. He took advantage of the situation.

The rest of his family came to the U.S. and went to live with him. He took advantage of the female relatives who came into the home. Three older women in their 30s eventually came forward and said he molested them. One of the nieces was 11 years old at the time.

During Christmas one year, he molested his 11-year-old niece. She didn’t tell any adults. She told the other little kids that her uncle had been touching her. Two years later, she disclosed to one of her teachers at school that she had been molested. One of the older girls, whom he also molested, had not told anyone. He was prosecuted on multiple counts and the case went to trial.

The young girl who had been molested told her cousin, because she knew she would believe her, but she didn’t think anyone else would believe what she had been through.

His youngest niece testified against him during the trial. Her mother had also been a victim and testified as well. A lot of family members were in court when she testified, and none of them knew what had been happening for years, even though multiple women in the family had been forced to endure his behavior.

No one wanted to talk about it. Everyone heard rumors, but because he was such an amazing person and always willing to help his family, they didn’t believe the rumors. He’s now serving 16 years in prison.

The girls and women felt like their uncle controlled their lives, that he was more powerful than they were.

“Usually immigrant victims see people that are documented as someone with more authority. They have so much more than you do, they have all this power, they can call immigration on you,” Murillo said.

Many women may choose to survive abuse because knowledge about options for reporting and resources are minimal, and the report may negatively impact members of their family and their children. Even after reporting, however, a lot of survivors of domestic abuse recant.

“No one’s ever ready to leave until they’re ready to leave,” Mireles said. Survivors are often unaware of local resources available to them, such as counseling services, job and housing placement, and language services designed to help them.

Reporting domestic and sexual violence is extremely difficult for any individual, but lack of bilingual and bicultural resources make reporting even harder. According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime, this can cause secondary victimization for a child or family member translating for a victim. Spanish may also be a second language for some immigrants coming from certain parts of Mexico and Latin America where the indigenous language is their mother tongue.

Defining and understanding abuse, consent and aspects of a healthy partnership are also complex aspects of domestic violence. “In the Latino community, a woman has to sexually gratify her husband whether she wants to or not. She doesn’t have a right to say no,” Morgan said.

Women also may not know about laws designed to protect them, such as those provided by the Violence Against Women Act. U-visas are available for individuals who are the victim of a qualifying crime, such as domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, stalking and trafficking. Other qualifying criminal activities are included for eligibility, but the U-visa is designed to encourage individuals to report instances of domestic violence and sexual abuse.

Only 10,000 U-visas are provided at a national level annually. According to immigration attorney Karina Arreola, the application year begins in October, and in the past few years the cap has been met by December. The application must be signed and approved, usually by a chief of police or another designated official, yet political backlash can impede this approval. Departments are under no obligation to sign.

If these officials are part of a non-immigrant friendly community or up for re-election, this can affect policies that make it difficult for visa approval. In addition to this, the entire process can take up to seven years for approval. At present, approximately 64,000 applications for U-visas are backlogged awaiting review.

In Colorado, the Department of Health and the Department of Human Services run programs focused on sexual assault and domestic violence, collecting data and publishing it annually.

Service providers such as the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault (CCASA) are required to provide data to these agencies in order to fulfill grant requirements, but aggregate totals for the state are not being tracked and published. The Department of Justice in other states, like California, maintain databases and collect incident-based data to gain a better understanding of the scope and prevalence of this type of violence.

The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that between 45,000 – 50,000 individuals, primarily women and children, are trafficked into the U.S. as sex slaves annually. A separate T-visa exists for survivors of trafficking and although there are 5,000 available per year, as of January 2009 only 2,000 have been issued.

“The subject is enormous. Think of it like an onion, it’s immigration law and policy but the victimization is just one layer,” Morgan explained. “The heart of it is power and control, having that power to control someone else and oppress and manipulate.”

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Decoding the struggle

Anonymous — Wed, 04 May 2016 20:22:20 +0000

Decoding the struggle Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/04/2016 - 14:22 Lauren Price

Refugees from Myanmar have one of the lowest rates of assimilation among Colorado immigrants

Author’s note: Myanmar is now the official name of the Southeast Asian nation previously known as Burma until the year 1989. Both names are used in the story below.

She spent five lonely months at the Children’s Hospital of Colorado undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia, so when Htee Ku was finally released, she was excited to head home and be with her family in Denver.

Well, sort of.

Home wasn’t exactly the most nurturing place to live for Ku.

Bald and weak from chemo, Ku lived with her father — an alcoholic — and her mother, who, after suffering two strokes in recent years, can barely speak.

Ku, now 22, was 14 when her family obtained refugee status and was placed in Colorado. She was born in a refugee camp, fled to Thailand after the Burmese army killed her grandparents, was randomly placed in the U.S., was diagnosed with cancer, and beat it. After all of this, Ku thought maybe her toughest days were in the past. However, upon her return from the hospital, she realized her battle was not yet over.

For information on the history of violence and unrest in Burma that led to the many bouts of refugees fleeing the state, click here.

Ku is not the only refugee from Myanmar in Colorado struggling with English. Refugees from Myanmar have one of the lowest assimilation rates in the state, despite their immigration to Colorado beginning as early as 1997, according to a report done by the Colorado Department of Human Services. Starting in 2007, more than 300 refugees have come to Colorado from Myanmar every year. Last year, that number more than doubled with 610 refugees coming to the state from Myanmar.

So it was when Ku went to take her follow-up medication her first night home from the hospital that this looming challenge dawned on her. She had no idea when to take which pills; the instructions were in English.

Luckily for Ku, Frank Anello, the founder of Project Worthmore, stepped in to help. Project Worthmore is a non-profit that works specifically to help Burmese refugees integrate into the local community.

Anello went to check on Ku shortly after her release from the hospital. He quickly realized that she was never going to be able to recover or grow in the environment she was living. He invited her to live with him and his wife, Carolyn, for two years. Ku jumped at the opportunity because she saw a chance for a better future.

During her time with the Anello family, Ku began to understand why learning English was so complicated. For example, there are many different ways to say the same word. One evening Anello asked Ku to pass him the lid to a pot while they were cooking in the kitchen and she was completely bewildered. She only knew this covering device as a top.

“Sometimes when I was talking to them I didn’t know how to explain this,” Ku said. “So I would just wave my hands around and use many different noise…and they would understand me.”

Jamie Torres, the director of Immigrant and Refugee affairs for the city of Denver, says refugees from Myanmar struggle with assimilating in the United States because they already lack literacy in their native language, so getting caught up in English is an even larger hurdle.

Torres also noted that refugees coming from other countries, like Afghanistan for example, may have a great background in architecture or a certain skill set that will help them find work. But refugees from Myanmar who have been isolated either in the country or in refugee camps for so long often come without a specific strength.

“In the Burmese population it has a lot to do with geographical and cultural history,” Torres said. “They’ve largely been outside of a mainstream system so it’s harder to adapt with that as well.”

Another reason the language learning difficulty varies among refugees in the U.S. is because there are varying differences in rules at refugee camps all over the world. For example, in refugee camps in Nepal, you can leave the camp for school and work, but in places like Thailand, you can’t.

Speech-language pathologist Jennifer Wood began working directly with Burmese refugees in the Denver community at their homes and realized early on what a huge issue learning the English was. She also noted that the difficulties varied among genders and ages.

“A lot of the fathers were able to go and learn English but the mothers did not have the opportunity to leave the home because they had so many children there,” Wood said. “You would see this big gap in who could access English classes and who was actually able to integrate more because of that.”

Wood explained that the men learn the language and then use it to go interact in the community and get a job so that they can provide for their families. The problem with this is that if the women were able to access education, they could pass it on to their children during their time at home with them.

Frank Anello believes that an underlying issue in the education of refugees is the public school system. Despite the fact that Ku graduated from high school, when taking a test to qualify to begin working as a dental assistant, she failed by scoring with only a third-grade reading level.

“In the Burma community, there’s a huge problem with kids graduating from high school and getting a diploma, but not being anywhere near ready for college,” Anello said. “You can imagine that it’s discouraging as a student to be graduated, but to know that you aren’t ready.”

When Ku first entered South High School in Denver, she was walked to class on the first day and then left to figure things out on her own.

“When the teacher took me to the class, I just stared at the teacher the whole day ’cause I didn’t know what to do,” Ku said.

Luckily, Ku was able to identify a Karenni friend at school, despite Ku’s being a Karen. Karen and Karenni are two different ethnic branches found in the different states of Myanmar. Despite their similar sounding names, the groups are actually nothing alike and speak different languages. The girls were able to bond over their distance from home and made it work, learning new words from each other on their walk home from school.

A major cultural difference that startled Ku at first was the fact that “white girls” always smiled when they talked to you. In Myanmar, it is a sign of disrespect to make direct eye contact with someone while holding conversation.

“They have eye contact when they talk to you and they smile,” she said. “We don’t really do that in my culture, we just shake hands.”

Despite these friendly smiles, a few years into high school, Ku began to get lonely. While she could associate with the other girls, she still didn’t know enough words for them to have productive conversations about their days.

Ku misses her home, but she especially misses the culture of her people. She tries to keep in touch with it when she can, for example, by wearing the traditional dress when attending a Karen church service or by practicing her language.

“I came here to learn new skills, but I don’t want to forget my culture,” Ku said. “To me my language and culture is everything.”

One of the biggest things Ku misses about home is the sense of community among neighbors. Unimportant is the fact that these neighbors were so physically close because they were in a refugee camp together. According to Wood, this dedication to community is reflected in the actions of many refugees, especially in the speech clinic. While they may not all be textbook educated, they have learned a vast amount from their experiences. One example she noted was being able to recognize that their child has autism.

Htee Ku, now 22, smiling after a quick bike ride over to the main office of Project Worthmore located in Aurora, Colo.

“Because these families are so communal, a lot of times the parents come in and know that something is not right with their child, even if it’s their first born because they see them relative to all of the other kids they’re running around with in the refugee camps,” Wood said. “The knowledge base these families bring in with them from living in communities has been mind-blowing to me.”

When Ku was informed she had leukemia, she immediately assumed she was going to die and that this would be the end of her life.

“When I lived in the (refugee) camp and you heard people had cancer, you heard everyone dies, they do not survive,” she said.

But for Ku, her story wasn’t ending there. Despite not yet being a U.S. citizen, she is on track to becoming a dental assistant and hopes that one day she can become a nurse so that she can help others the way they helped her when she was in the hospital. While she does eventually want to return to visit her home in Myanmar, it is the opportunity she is presented with here in the United States that keeps her on track and moving forward.

When Ku realized that cancer wasn’t going to be the end of the road for her, she referenced her personal life motto, one that she first applied when she landed in Colorado eight years ago.

“Just go with it,” she said, beaming.

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Clearing the air

Anonymous — Fri, 29 Apr 2016 20:22:20 +0000

Clearing the air Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/29/2016 - 14:22 CU News Corps

How Chronic Illnesses Impact Hispanic Immigrants

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Hispanic immigrants face many obstacles when they come to the U.S., including employment and assimilating to American culture. But most immigrants must also fight to maintain their health in their new environment.

In the following graphics, CU News Corps looked at the challenges that immigrants and health care providers face with regards to asthma, a condition that Hispanics are particularly susceptible to.

The "Healthy Immigrant Effect"

In order, the most common countries of origin for Hispanic immigrants are Mexico, El Salvador, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Guatemala. Hispanic immigrants come to the U.S. with relatively low rates of chronic diseases like asthma, but these rates tend to increase after multiple generations.

Access to Health Care

Part-time employees and employees of sufficiently small businesses are not legally guaranteed health insurance. The Affordable Care Act also does not allow undocumented immigrants to access public health insurance plans. As a result, many Hispanic immigrants suffering from asthma rely on emergency room treatment by clinicians untrained in dealing with these high-risk groups. Language and cultural barriers often prevent immigrants from receiving the education necessary to manage their asthma.

Substandards of Living

The jobs that most Hispanics can get after reaching the U.S. tend to be in areas where pollution is higher, exacerbating the symptoms of their asthma. Though employment among Hispanics is comparable to other groups, they make up 88 percent of the agricultural workforce, where exposure to pesticides, toxic gases and mold is common. Occupational lung disease is the number one killer for Hispanic farm workers. Additionally, two-thirds of Hispanics live in areas that do not meet government air quality standards. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly one in four Hispanic children living in these conditions will be diagnosed with asthma, and will be three times as likely as their white peers to die from it.

Credit: Justice “Nick” Burnaugh (Narration, Audio Production/Editing); Amanda Cary (Audio Production/Editing, Writing); Max Levy (Audio Production, Writing, Web Development); and Erin Sullivan (Writing, Web Development).

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Living the Dream

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 18:09:07 +0000

Living the Dream Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/18/2016 - 12:09 David Cook

The American Dream is an idea that has always puzzled me. Our media and our policy makers continue to use it to promote the United States as a place of boundless opportunity, where anyone who puts in the hard work can achieve their highest potential.

We’ve effectively branded ourselves as the place where elite housewives live a life of affluence without consequence, and where a 15-year-old girl who gets dumped too many times can pick up a guitar and find a life of fame and influence. We are the land of start-ups and opportunity — the melting pot where any and all cultures find community and comfort.

Yet, this notion is a falsehood. It is the model that constructs hope and implies change for those who are privileged enough to call themselves American.

And, as we know, hope is powerful.

It is exciting for those who live in places where there are none of the “big opportunities” for which the U.S. is known. No wonder these people risk their lives and their freedom to chase a dream that has proven to be just that.

These thoughts passed quickly through my head as I finished my coffee and approached the for-profit facility that houses detainees of the American ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement). My advisor and I had jumped through the appropriate hoops over the two months prior, and were finally granted access to a guided tour of the Geo Detention Facility in Aurora, Colorado.

As we meandered through the patrolled halls of the facility, we passed through metal detectors and countless massive steel doors, our wandering strictly monitored by surveillance and armed guards. The guards took my cell phone and other personal effects from us before we entered the secure parts of the building. So, no recording. Of anything.

We peered at the detainees through glass reinforced with wire, feeling like the strangest of voyeurs, looking down from our perch atop the pedestal of “documented” Americans.

In the prison-like pods, each person wore their own jumpsuit of a designated color, which we then learned were color-coded according to the detainees number of infractions — the brighter the color, the greater the “danger” from the detainee. The color of these uniforms dictated the levels of freedom that each was granted within the center — how much recreation they got, if they could watch television and whether they were allowed to interact with other people detained there.

Still a Prison

While touring that massive collection of buildings, I witnessed first hand what I have been told by those previously detained in facilities like the one we toured, that despite our guides’ insistence, one would never have known that the Geo facility was anything but a prison.

The surgically clean tile floor and massive, beige brick walls echoed the click of my boot heals and the scene-setting jingle of the guard’s keys as we walked. Our passage from corridor to corridor was punctuated by the industrial-grade magnetic locks banging shut, as they were locked and unlocked methodically by an unseen purveyor — clearly monitoring our wander through the red eyes blinking from the high corners of every wall.

The men who lead the tour of the Geo Detention Center in Aurora, Colorado were very kind to us – and, I can’t say that I wasn’t happy to see that consideration. Yet, I couldn’t help but notice the rationalization they employed as they explained to us the conditions the detainees there, face. They articulated countless ways that ORR detainees were treated better than the violent criminals who are held counties over, in maximum security prisons throughout Colorado.

We were lead through the windowless corridors and asked to notice all of the natural light pouring in through the barred skylight. We were instructed of the vast amount of differences between the prison system and the detainee facility. Things such as the fact that the guards’ keys are exposed on their belts were pointed out to us, and we were told excitedly that there were visiting hours where detainees could talk to their loved ones through plate glass any day of the week!

Obviously my preconceptions of the hardship that those caught up in this system endure were wrong all along – I never realized the obvious privilege they had, being able to gaze upon the keys to their freedom on the belts of their captors, and watch CNN and Mexican soap operas through the windows of their “far-from-cells.”

It seemed like a joke. I wanted to laugh at the satire they were conjuring. How could anyone look at the conditions that these men and women were forced into, and see anything but incarceration? But, as my advisor who toured the Geo Center with me, posited, “You and I are bleeding-heart liberals who would never work within a system that we know fucks a lot of people over, but a lot of people don’t have the same strong ideology.”

GEO does it ‘right’

He was right. The people who work in the Detention Center are not bad people — at least not as far as we could see. It seemed that they did their job in the kindest way possible. After all, as we were told many times that day, Geo complies with and often funds the audits that their center receives, always going above and beyond to achieve marks higher than necessary for the ORR to continue utilizing it.

And while the compliance with these guidelines is reportedly making the center safer and (hopefully) less traumatic for those housed there, it is left for us to decide whether or not Geo is working to set these high standards out of the compassion in their hearts, or if the corporation might be more concerned with maintaining the consistent profitability of detaining would-be immigrants.

My advisor and I knew where we stood on the issue. But, in our effort to justify that stance, we came into contact with those who are choosing to look at the other side of the coin. They work in a broken system where people are suffering due to corrupt policy and an incredible amount of misinformation. When faced with that every single day, I felt that those who are employed there must find some way to feel that what they are doing is somehow better than imprisoning innocent people.

Just like the detainees of that monstrous place, the people who hold the keys are only working to provide a happy life, full of opportunity and prosperity for their families and community. It seemed to me that we got a glimpse of those who are taking the very same American Dream that compels so many to cross the border illegally, and employing it to justify their work incarcerating those with the same aspirations. These guards and authorities go to work there understanding the same hope: that working hard at their profession will open doors for them, and for those they love.

The system is undeniably broken and innocent people are suffering. We saw that first hand. But, just as powerful of a takeaway for me, and perhaps an unexpected one, was that our imperialism has convinced those Geo employees, who are just as powerless against that system as those they are detaining, to work directly to reinforce inequality. And it is that inequality that sabotages the ideals of opportunity and prosperity that we perpetuate as true and attainable.

They are being tricked into turning their so-coveted American Dream, into a nightmare.

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Hillary flip-flops; Trump’s illegal profits; immigration poll

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 18:09:07 +0000

Hillary flip-flops; Trump’s illegal profits; immigration poll Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/11/2016 - 11:09 David Cook

Hillary Can’t Decide Whether or Not to Deport Children

Wednesday night, Hillary Clinton abandoned her prior stance on the deportation of children immigrating to the united states, stating that she “would not deport children.” This change is being viewed as a political ploy, as in the past Ms. Clinton has condemned children fleeing cartel-controlled communities in Central America. Many attribute her move to the left on this issue as a result of Sen. Sanders position on repatriating such minors.

Trump’s Modeling Agency Profited off Cheap Foreign Labor

In direct contrast to the views that GOP front-runner Donald Trump has expressed denouncing, and arguably discriminating against, undocumented workers in the United States, a modeling agency owned by Trump has reportedly done just that. An investigation by CNNMoney has found Trump’s agency in direct violation with federal law, capitalizing on the cheap labor of those Trump commonly refers to as “illegals.”

Majority of Americans Fear Rising Number of Immigrants

When asked if they would support a more expansionist policy on immigration, a majority of the Americans polled by Rasmussen opposed such a change. This opinion is reflective of American views not only on illegal immigrants entering the US, but also those migrants who go through the legal steps toward citizenship.

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