RCBR Director Vicki Gaubeca testifies in a congressional hearing on “Lines That Divide US: Failure to Preserve Family Unity in the Context of Immigration Enforcement at the Border”— chaired by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) in Washington, D.C. April 10, 2013. (Vicki's testimony begins at 8:15)

 

 Regional Center for Border Rights Addresses Family Separation in New Report and Presents Findings Today to Congressional Hearing

LAS CRUCES, NM—Today, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico Regional Center for Border Rights (RCBR) released a new report, TORN APART: How U.S. Immigration Policy Fragments New Mexico Families, that features first-hand testimonies from mixed immigration status families about the effects of immigration enforcement in New Mexico. Along with these personal accounts, the RCBR lays out specific recommendations to make immigration policy fair and humane. Coinciding with the release of the report, RCBR Director Vicki Gaubeca will present the findings in a congressional hearing on “Lines That Divide US: Failure to Preserve Family Unity in the Context of Immigration Enforcement at the Border”--- chaired by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) today in Washington, D.C.

“We compiled this report to document  the daily personal and societal toll that our broken immigration policy has on our communities here in New Mexico,” said RCBR Director Vicki Gaubeca. “As Americans, we need to seriously assess whether our current immigration policy properly reflects our values and whether we believe that forcibly separating fathers, mothers and children across national boundaries is in line with who we are as a nation. Currently, the United States distinguishes itself in the international community by our refusal to recognize a fundamental right to human unity. This report highlights the need for U.S. immigration policy to allow immigration courts to recognize family separation as a legal defense against deportation.”

Like many families living in the U.S.-Mexico border region, the majority of the families identified in this study are made up of members who have different immigration statuses. When U.S. immigration officers deport a father, his spouse and U.S. Citizen children often remain behind to suffer mental, emotional and financial hardship. Family separation is especially hard on children, who in addition to the psychological stress of having a loved one torn away, also may suffer disruption of education, food insecurity and diminished access to healthcare.

In more than half the testimonies in this report, families were separated as the result of local law enforcement inquiring into the immigration status of a person during a routine traffic stop, such as failure to signal or a broken windshield. In two cases, officers targeted vehicle passengers who were unrelated to the reason for the initial stop.

“When local law enforcement officers try to enforce federal immigration law, they not only break up families, they break the trust of the communities they are supposed to protect,” said Gaubeca. “Families of mixed immigration status will be afraid to call the police when they are in danger or have witnessed a crime if they believe that they might be torn away from their children in the process.”
Download a PDF copy of TORN APART: How U.S. Immigration Policy Fragments New Mexico Families.
 

###

Immigration reform must not be contingent on the false premise that an airtight 2,000-mile border is required. Instead, Congress should turn to ameliorating the tragedy of family separation along the southern border.
Thousands of families from San Diego to Brownsville have suffered the loss of people they love to deportation. Many of these families are comprised of members who are U.S. citizens, lawful residents and people who've lived here for years and tried unsuccessfully--sometimes for decades--to become residents or U.S. citizens.
Some of their stories of separation are chronicled in a new report released today by the ACLU of New Mexico. These are families – parents, children and siblings – who have been torn apart by our country's harsh immigration policies. One of the stories included in the report is that of Dorothy, a 24-year-old U.S. citizen, who is a mother to two young boys:

Near Dexter, New Mexico, Dorothy was pulled over for driving with a broken windshield. The officer had asked her husband, who was a passenger, for his license. When Dorothy replied that he did not have one, the officer demanded to know whether her husband was here "legally." Her heart sank as she whispered, "No."
Dorothy had met her husband in high school. He had come to the United States as a child and had lived in New Mexico for almost 20 years. After graduating from a local high school as valedictorian, he found work on a dairy farm. He was the major breadwinner of the family and had never been in trouble with the law. But that didn't matter. The police officer who confronted Dorothy that day called Border Patrol and, in less than 48 hours, they deported him to Mexico. Dorothy is now receiving public benefits to care for her children and is considering moving to a country she knows nothing about to be closer to her husband. "You know," she concluded, fighting back tears, "I never asked to see his papers before I fell in love with him."

Today, before thousands descend on Washington, D.C. to rally for citizenship, I will testify as part of a panel at an ad-hoc congressional hearing, Lines That Divide US: Failure to Preserve Family Unity in the Context of Immigration Enforcement at the Border. I will talk about the U.S. government's failure to keep families together when conducting immigration enforcement in the border region. I will also talk about the urgent need for more accountability and oversight of immigration officials.
Since 2003, the U.S. Border Patrol has doubled in size and now employs more than 21,000 agents, with about 85 percent of its force deployed at the U.S.-Mexico border. This number does not include the thousands of other Department of Homeland Security officials deployed at the same border. It also does not include the thousands of other federal agents or the physical infrastructure and technologies, such as about 650 miles of border fencing and drones patrolling our skies. U.S. taxpayers now pay more for immigration enforcement agencies ($18 billion a year) than we do for all other major law enforcement agencies—the FBI, DEA, ATF, U.S. Marshals, Secret Service—combined.
This spending runs directly counter to data on recent and current migration trends. Over the last decade, apprehensions by the Border Patrol have declined to levels that are lower than at any time since the Nixon administration. Although the U.S. economic downturn is a partial explanation of this reduction, economic growth and declining birth rates in Mexico – the source of 87 percent of 2010 apprehensions – consistently indicate that emigration pressure will continue to decline there.
Border communities are counting on Congress to act in their best interests in enacting immigration reform. True border security means supporting families in those communities by keeping them together and commonsense border enforcement that focuses on addressing threats to public safety. As a nation, we'd be better off ending wasteful overspending on border enforcement that ends up tearing families apart. Don't take it just from me, ask House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, who warned last year that "a sort of . . . mini industrial complex syndrome . . . has set in there. And we're going to have to guard against it every step of the way."
Learn more about immigration enforcement and other civil liberty issues: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.