By Jennie Pasquarella, ACLU of Southern California and Axel Caballero, Cuéntame 

Where would you expect to find half-a-dozen patrol cars on New Year’s Eve?  In Bakersfield, California, ranked in the highest ten percent of the most violent cities in America, you’d hope they’d be responding to incidents of violence and preventing murder, rape, and other violent crime.  At the very least, you’d expect them to be patrolling for drunk drivers.

Not so.  At least not when it comes to prioritizing such matters as "barking dogs."  On December 31, 2012, the Kern County Sheriff’s Department deployed six police cars and numerous officers at the behest of a white resident who called for help from, well, the sounds of two small barking dogs.  Her neighbor, Ruth Montaño, a Latina farm-worker, and her three American children owned the dogs. 

 

As Ruth poignantly describes in her own words, when she and her children returned to their trailer around 10pm that night from the grocery store, officers approached her and began shouting and cursing at her.  They said they were responding to a neighbor’s complaint that her two small dogs were being noisy.  Her dogs, a Chihuahua and a Shih Tzu, were enclosed in a fenced-in area outside her trailer.  But when Ruth asked the officers what the dogs had done, they refused to answer.  When she offered to put the dogs inside, they ignored her.  

Instead, the officers questioned her about how long she had been in the United States and insulted her for not speaking English well.  They called her and her children garbage and threatened to arrest her.  When she pled with them to tell her why they were interrogating her, they again refused to say, growing even more hostile and agitated, and aggressively placing her under arrest.  As they walked her over to the patrol car, her children cried and pled for them not to take their mommy.  One officer violently bashed Ruth’s head into the side of the patrol car, before forcing her into the vehicle.  

The dogs, meanwhile, remained outside, untouched.  Barking.

The officers claim that they arrested Ruth for “having animals making excessive noise” and for resisting arrest. But, under Kern County law, “having animals making excessive noise” is neither an arrestable offense, nor is it within the authority of the Sheriff’s Department to investigate – rather it is an issue for Animal Control. 

Ruth believes she was arrested for one sole reason: racism.  We think she’s right.  If not, what’s one other plausible explanation for what happened to her?  Anti-immigrant sentiment runs high in places like Bakersfield, and law enforcement officers often target Latino residents.  Officers know that all they have to do is make an arrest – whether lawful or not – to turn any suspected “illegal immigrant” from today’s contributing resident into tomorrow’s deportee. 

This is because under the federal government’s disastrous Secure Communities (“S-Comm”) program every person who is arrested is immediately screened and identified by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) for possible deportation, regardless of their charges. 

Dragnet federal immigration enforcement programs, like S-Comm, increasingly are to blame for abusive and unlawful police conduct that target Latinos, violate their civil rights, and undermine public safety.  The program encourages police to take action based on race, language, and perceived immigration status – knowing that any arrest could lead to deportation – rather than doing their jobs to ferret out threats to public safety. 

Stories like Ruth’s only reinforce the urgent need for California to finally adopt the TRUST Act, a bill that would ensure that the police can no longer detain for ICE people like Ruth who have done no harm to our communities.  And it demonstrates the need for Congress to pass common-sense immigration reform to ensure that residents like Ruth are put on a road to citizenship, not a highway to family separation. 

Ruth still faces deportation.  Do your part and tell ICE to take her out of deportation proceedings.  Call (202) 732-3000.

 

By Axel Caballero and Kristel Mucino*

The tragedy in Colorado demonstrated the devastating lethality of AR-15 type guns, like the one used in the Aurora shooting, and has caused many to question whether it makes sense to allow the purchase of military-style assault rifles. What a lot of people don't know is that these rifles are also the weapons of choice among ruthless Mexican drug cartels. In the last 6 years, over 60,000 people have lost their lives in Mexico's wave of violence. The failure of the United States to enact meaningful gun regulation is not only affecting the United States; it is also fueling violence in Mexico. Among the victims are countless innocent bystanders, journalists, and children. The brutal truth is this--the AR-15s and many other guns used by drug lords, gangs, and kidnappers come from the United States. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), more than 70 percent of the weapons seized in Mexico in the last three years and submitted for tracing came from the United States.  How do these weapons end up in the hands of Mexico's brutal drug lords? Look at the video on gun trafficking produced by WOLA and Cuéntame and embedded here.   Straw purchasers take advantage of lax U.S. gun laws and, in most states, can buy 10, 20 or even more guns in one transaction, with the intention of reselling them to gun traffickers. In contrast, it is almost impossible to buy firearms legally in Mexico.  But on the U.S. side of the border, in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, there are more than 8,000 federally licensed firearms dealers.  Behind these weapons there is a multibillion-dollar industry. Consider this: DPMS--just one of many gun manufacturers--makes an average of 74,000 AR-type rifles a year, then sells them for about $889 each, earning roughly $65 million dollars in sales. Local gun dealers then sell each AR-type rifle for an average of $1,075. Estimates indicate that such guns could then be resold on the black market for up to $1575.  Finally, when they reach Mexico, the guns could be sold for up to $4,300.  This multibillion-dollar industry uses its resources to ensure that arms remain unregulated. Everyone in the trafficking chain makes big bucks, and those who manufacture and sell the guns have powerful firms that lobby Congress to ensure that their business remains untouched. It is beyond shocking that in the United States the act of trafficking guns is not a federal crime. Instead, gun traffickers get charged with the minor crime of selling guns without a license. The penalties for this are a joke--equivalent to the crime of trafficking chickens or cattle.  There are a few brave members of Congress that are trying to address the problem without limiting the right of honest citizens to bear arms. For example, Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD) are trying to make the act of trafficking firearms a federal offense punishable with up to 20 years. The "Stop Gun Trafficking and Strengthen Law Enforcement Act of 2011" also targets those leading weapon trafficking rings.Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) has introduced legislation to crack down on straw purchases. These bills would be crucial steps to close the loopholes that allow this lethal business to flourish.  But the process of passing laws is long and difficult, and Congress is in gridlock over the gun issue. The crisis in Mexico, as well as horrible tragedies like that of Aurora, call for urgent action--action that President Obama can take without waiting for Congress.  Mexico's growing peace movement and a coalition of organizations in the United States, including WOLA and Cuéntame, have joined the many voices on both sides of the border calling for an end to gun trafficking. As a first step, President Obama should enforce the existing ban on the importation of assault rifles. Second, he should give the ATF the resources and authority it needs to actually do its job, especially in border-states, where it lacks the capacity to stop the massive flow of arms across the border.  Finally, the petition calls on President Obama to require gun dealers in border states to report to the ATF the sale of multiple assault rifles to the same person over a period of five days. The good news is that last summer the Obama administration instituted this reporting rule. But since then, members of Congress and the gun lobby have tried to undermine the rule. To be really effective, this rule should be implemented all across the country. For Mexicans across the political spectrum, the failure of the United States to stop gun trafficking is an act of tremendous irresponsibility that results in the spilling of innocent blood. In the name of the more than 60,000 victims in Mexico and of the victims of the many shootings in the United States, it is time to enact meaningful gun control legislation in this country. *Axel Caballero is the director of Cuéntame and Kristel Mucino is Communications Director at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

The United States Supreme Court is hearing arguments in Arizona v. United States, the Obama administration’s challenge to Arizona’s anti-immigration law, SB1070. What they won't be hearing is what and who has fueled this discriminatory legislation. They won't be hearing about the money being funneled by hate groups with white supremacist and nativist ideology. They won't be hearing about the influence of legislators and public officials with fake reports and statistics from a web of hate which sole purpose is to inject racism into the immigration debate. They won't hear how the law was enacted and to what purpose. No what they will hear is arguments over another state vs. federal fight. More political posturing and even more political agendas in display. Will justice triumph over racial profiling and discrimination fueled by supremacist and nativist fringe groups? We need to stand together in this most pressing time. The video above by Cuéntame exposes the culprits behind the discrimination and injustice proposed by SB1070. It is time to show that we reject this hate agenda once and for all. Sign the pledge stating that YOU side with justice over racism!

In the last few days there has been a barrage of media reports - spearheaded by none other than FOX News - trying to pigeonhole "Occupy Wall Street" to one community and promote a de-facto division by racial lines. This misrepresentation couldn't be farther from the truth. Across the country from - Los Angeles to New York - the movement has shown its diversity, its unity, and its solidarity. Corruption, greed and the hijack of our democracy cut across all sectors of our society. For this reason, the movement aptly adopts the banner of the 99%. Mainstream and corporate media have tried to diffuse our collective strength - first through an incomprehensible blackout and now into its only other possible outcome: A circus - where each image will be their attempt to caricature the thousands of occupiers. The frontlines of the movement are truly diverse. There is no question that individuals show up because it matters, because it's personal, and because it hits home. What we're seeing are communities - carrying different banners, flags and messages - unified through one national movement. As the media struggles to comprehend what they're witnessing, the images from the ground, from the movement itself cannot be ignored. Why? The obvious answer: Wall Street's abusive greed knows no boundaries and continues to affect us all. Let's take the case of one section of the immigration rights movement and the abuse by private prison corporations. As anti-immigrant laws spring up, state-by state, across the country, we see the hand of Wall Street behind it. Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group, the two largest private prison corporations in the country, have seen their profits skyrocket to more than $5 billion in the last year - with each individual share close to $40. Wells Fargo manages 4 million of those shares and retains a solid chunk for their services. Meanwhile, these corporations have donated more than $20 million to the political process - hijacking state legislators and elected officials to push for more anti-immigrant laws - thereby ensuring more inmates are housed in their prisons and more profits reported in their quarterly statements. This is only one major example of greed run amuck, and one major reason why our communities have a vested interest in taking to the street in Alabama, in Georgia, in Texas, in Florida, in Indiana, in Arizona and in every state that made a buck off of human suffering. No wonder the DREAMER movement is joining in (and a much needed mobilization) - fighting for far too long. This is the beauty of this diverse movement - it shares a common goal through the lens of many unique individuals and their many powerful stories. We can't let corporate media dictate for whom this movement was created.