By Kristin Collins, New Observer, Aug. 30, 2009

The U.S. government admitted in April that it had wrongly deported an N.C. native, but newly released documents show that federal investigators ignored FBI records and other evidence showing that the man was a United States citizen. At the time of Mark Lyttle’s deportation, immigration officials had criminal record checks that said he was a U.S. citizen. They had his Social Security number and the names of his parents. They had Lyttle’s own sworn statement that he had been born in Rowan County. None of this stopped them from leaving Lyttle, a mentally ill American who speaks no Spanish, alone and penniless in Mexico, where he has no ties.

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By CATHERINE SOLYOM, The Gazette, August 27, 2009

MONTREAL – The idea that two state police officers would kidnap a woman in broad daylight seems incredible – or rather not credible, in the language of the Immigration and Refugee Board – certainly not in sunny Mexico. But Santa Ramos Castro, 41, says it’s what she witnessed on her way to work three years ago, an incident that has turned her family’s life upside down, and has kept them living in fear as they face deportation to Mexico Thursday.

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By Aura Bogado, AlterNet. Posted August 7, 2009.

When more than 60 prisoners at the South Louisiana Correctional Center in Basile, LA, began a hunger strike last week, in protest of the facility’s deplorable conditions, guards at the immigrant detention center placed at least six of them in solitary confinement for 60 days. The planned 72-hour strike was the fifth of its kind in one month at the facility, whose parent company, LCS Corrections Services, holds a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to manage the detention center. Last week, the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, along with other human rights and civil liberties groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, urging her to address the mounting complaints at the detention center. “Over the past one month this center has become a symbol of all of our national concerns about ICE’s widespread failure to ensure its facilities … meet ICE’s own minimum detention standards,” wrote Saket Soni, Executive Director for the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice. Detainees, he wrote, are “risking their own health to call attention to ICE’s violation if its own minimum standards and to demand permanent improvements.”
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By Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post Staff Writer, August 7, 2009

The Obama administration announced plans Thursday to restructure the nation’s much-criticized immigration detention system by strengthening federal oversight and seeking to standardize conditions in a 32,000-bed system now scattered throughout 350 local jails, state prisons and contract facilities. John Morton, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said his goal within three to five years is to hold noncriminal immigrants in a smaller number of less prison-like settings. Those facilities would meet federal guidelines ensuring access to pro bono legal counsel, medical care and grievance proceedings, he said.

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By SUE MONTGOMERY, Gazette Justice Reporter July 11, 2009

MONTREAL – Mohammud and Seema Sabir Sheikh didn’t even have time to change their shoes when three immigration officers arrived at their Park Extension apartment about noon Friday. The day before, a federal court judge refused to stay a deportation order against the couple, who has been in Canada almost a decade – but gave their four children, including a 5-year-old, a reprieve. A stunned Mohammud Sabir Sheikh, 52, and his wailing 46-year-old wife, were faced with a heartwrenching decision – to leave little Canadian-born Sabrina behind with her older siblings, or take her with them.

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