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Immigrant Rights

The Constitution guarantees basic rights and freedoms to all people in America, not just U.S. citizens. Advocating fair treatment for non-citizens has been an important part of the ACLU’s work since its founding in 1920, when it opposed the summary arrest and deportation of Eastern European immigrants during the Palmer Raids.
Court says government must do more to reunite refugee families
Timeline of the Muslim Ban

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News Release, Published: 
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
A study released by the University of Washington today offers detailed analysis of the impacts of King County Jail’s collaboration in the immigration enforcement policies and practices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security.
Published: 
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Is respect for immigrants’ rights patriotic?  Yes, indeed, and now this has been recognized by no less an authority than the Washington Supreme Court.  In its recent unanimous ruling in the case In re Discipline of McGrath, the Court included this powerful statement:
Published: 
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Martin Niemoller’s well-known insight (“first they came for the Socialists, I was not one… when they came for me, there was no one left to speak up”) affirms the urgency of speaking out against torture and seeking remedy for torture victims and survivors around the world. To speak out against organized harm requires courageous naming, as observed by writer and rights advocate Marge Piercy, who wrote that “we must name the giant in whose belly we are chained.”  
Published: 
Friday, June 15, 2012
The due process and equal protection clauses embodied in our Constitution and Bill of Rights apply to every "person," and are not limited to U.S. citizens. But for the youth who are impacted by today’s announcement, their immigration status means that those basic principles of due process and equal protection are increasingly in jeopardy as applied to them.
Published: 
Monday, December 5, 2011
Gov. Chris Gregoire and a group of farm-group representatives recently made headlines when they returned from Washington D.C., where they had sought to persuade Congress to oppose a bill requiring employers to use a system called E-Verify.  In stern words, Gov. Gregoire criticized the measure and its likely detrimental effect on our state’s agriculture industry. 
Published: 
Friday, July 29, 2011
A dynamite cover story in the latest Seattle Weekly – “Twilight for Immigrants” by Nina Shapiro – details the havoc being wreaked on lives and a community’s fabric by the U.S. Border Patrol’s heavy-handed tactics on Olympic Peninsula. The article is full of disturbing incidents which challenge the Border Patrol’s bland assertion that it does not engage in racial profiling.
Published: 
Friday, February 18, 2011
I am a proud, naturalized American citizen who believes firmly that immigration reform needs to begin from a positive starting point, not a negative one rooted in criminalization and stripping immigrants of basic civil rights. I arrived in California as a refugee when I was five years old and gained my citizenship as a teenager. This process was spurred on by my mother, who had heard rumors that the US would be deporting all non-citizen immigrants including those with legal status. My family couldn’t afford to all apply for citizenship at once so my mother and father, being the typical self-sacrificing immigrant parents, started my paperwork first, even with the false specter of deportation over their own heads.
Published: 
Friday, September 3, 2010
Do you think Arizona, with its “papers please” law, is the only state where law enforcement officials are approaching travelers and asking about their citizenship? Think again. Federal immigration officials are asserting the authority to ask individuals about their citizenship far away from any border crossing or port. And they regularly question people as far as 100 miles away from any border. Nine of the most populous U.S. cities and two-thirds of our nation’s population reside within this “Constitution-free zone.” Read more
Published: 
Friday, July 30, 2010
This week the ACLU and Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a joint report on people with mental disabilities in the US immigration system. Highlighting another tragic failing of our nation’s system for dealing with immigration, the report found that “people with mental disabilities, including US citizens and others with claims to remain in the US, receive unfair hearings and are at risk of erroneous deportation in the absence of courtroom safeguards.” Read more
Published: 
Thursday, July 1, 2010
  Es costumbre que el cuatro de julio es un tiempo de celebrar la independencia estadounidense y nuestra libertad política con cuetes y carne asada.  Pero este año, hay un sentido mutua en nuestras comunidades que nuestra libertad y dignidad colectiva esta amenazada con la ley de discriminación racial de Arizona, SB 1070.  

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