South Florida needs long-term plan to aid unaccompanied immigrant children
Thursday, June 19, 2014 | Guest blogger
In the wake of Gov. Rick Scott’s sign-off on in-state tuition for undocumented students, Florida is facing a new immigration issue: the arrival of unaccompanied immigrant children from detention shelters. Unlike border states including Arizona and Texas, the South Florida region has not been the first U.S. stop for many of the children crossing the border from Mexico and Central America. Instead, the children are being transferred to Miami after being held in out-of-state detention centers.
The U.S. has a humanitarian crisis at its borders. Who’s to blame?
Wednesday, June 18, 2014 | Imagine 2050
Americans were stunned a few weeks ago when news broke that 47,000 unaccompanied immigrant children had been detained at the border since October. Further complicating the situation were reports of the poor conditions in which the children were being held, abuse by border agents, and that some were being deprived of food and medical care. That and images of hundreds of kids sleeping on concrete floors in dirty holding facilities resulted in urgent calls for humanitarian intervention.
It also ignited an unsettling (and harsh) response from anti-immigrant groups…
Graham’s S.C. primary win another blow to nativist movement
Tuesday, June 17, 2014 | Imagine 2050
Backed by their far-Right allies in the media, the organized nativist movement in the United States is still riding the waves of last week’s surprising defeat of Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.). While his loss to a little-known Tea Party contender blindsided many who were following Virginia’s primary, it has created space for anti-immigrant groups, including the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) to talk about something other than their repeated failures in this year’s Congressional Republican primaries.
Among the most striking failures is Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s victory over anti-immigrant contenders in South Carolina…
Islamophobes’ silence on Murfreesboro mosque actually speaks volumes
Monday, June 16, 2014 | Imagine 2050
It’s been two weeks since U.S. Supreme Court put an end to a lawsuit against the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro (ICM). And surprisingly, there hasn’t been a peep about it from the organized anti-Muslim movement. On June 2, The Supreme Court did not take up an appeal filed in 2010 by opponents of the ICM that claimed Rutherford County failed to provide adequate notice about the meeting the where the mosque was approved. Since then, ICM leadership has found itself entwined in a nearly four-year-long legal battle, countless protests and one arson attack over the center’s right to exist.
ACT! for America turns Islamophobic Benghazi panel into funding pitch
Friday, June 20, 2014 | Nativism Watch
The anti-Muslim group ACT! for America is now trying to turn a profit off of their president’s mocking of a Muslim audience member at Monday’s Heritage Foundation’s Benghazi symposium. In a mass email sent to supporters yesterday, the group says it needs a public relations firm.
The “Islamist lobby” is already getting its collective voice out “through their own powerful PR firms,” ACT! president Brigitte Gabriel claims. “Why can’t we? Are they more committed to their cause than we love our country? Absolutely not.”
Heritage Foundation to host Benghazi symposium stacked with prominent Islamophobes
Friday, June 13, 2014 | Nativism Watch
The Heritage Foundation is co-sponsoring a symposium to address the accountability for the 2012 Benghazi attacks that will take place on June 16 and feature prominent members within the organized Islamophobia movement. Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy (CSP) and the Benghazi Accountability Coalition, a group founded by Andrew C. McCarthy, are also listed as co-sponsors of the event.
Image source: Overpass Light Brigade