In the news today: July 17, 2007

• At the top of our news-reel is a story in the New York Times today about how a significant percentage of HIV cases in Mexico can be traced back to migrant workers who went to the U.S. and brought the disease back home.

• The Christian Science Monitor takes a look at how an increasing number of local police across the country are enforcing immigration law.
• The Voice of America reports on lacking health care in immigrant detention centers.
  

Video game: You win if you escape deportation

In what is likely the most interesting immigration-related news tidbit in the pop culture sphere, ABC News reports that a New York-based human rights group called Breakthrough has designed a video game called "ICED!", or "I Can Escape Deportation!".

The game, free to download here starting this September, allows players to step into the role of an undocumented immigrant in the United States, with the ultimate goal of avoiding deportation by the immigration authorities.

From the ABC News article:

ICED! players are required to make "moral choices." Jumping turnstiles in the subway or robbing stores causes players to lose points and puts them in danger of getting caught by an immigration official and detained or deported.

Conversely, players can gain points and avoid detention by planting trees, helping the elderly or volunteering around their community.

According to Breakthrough's Web site, the game simply and directly "teaches players about the unjust nature of U.S. immigration policy."

Random deportation trials, long lines to use the phone and sexual harrassment in detention centers are among the situations depicted in the game.

In the news today: July 13, 2007

• A Mexican couple gets a one-year deportation reprieve as their 17-month-old daughter undergoes surgery for a rare heart defect reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
• A Pakistani held at an immigration detention center has sued the Immigration Department for placing him in a room with a heroin user as well as for violence and harrassment endured while a detainee, reports ABC News.
• The Los Angeles Times reports that 10 more suspects have been arrested in an "ongoing federal investigation into a scam involving Asians willing to pay thousands of dollars to immigrate to this country by entering into phony marriages with U.S. citizens from Vietnamese and Chinese communities in Southern California."

Daily features: July 12, 2007

• Daily video

Tomás Contreras, a legal immigrant and entrepreneur, talks about his three-month stay in an immigrant detention center. He was detained on his way back from visiting family in Mexico. This video is part of Voces de la Frontera's reality tour.

• Thursday blog round-up

• 'Gandhian' visa flower protest by Indian immigrants gets noticed, and the SAJA blog compiles news links.
• The StructuralPatterns blog wonders why and how Rudy Giuliani can 'collapse' immigration and terrorism together.
• The GreenFertility blog ridicules Pat Buchanan for stating that immigrants bring disease into the country; followed by a news article that states that the unhealthy are very unlikely to immigrate at all.
  

• Cartoon of the day

By Daryl Cagle at MSNBC.com. Published July 11, 2007.

Monday blog round-up

A daily feature, here we highlight interesting posts, points of view, and links as recorded on the blogosphere.

• ImmigrationEquality's blog provides some interesting links concerning LGBT people held in immigrant detention centers.
• Nelson Guirado divvies up Americans according to how they view immigration. According to him, the groups are: Immigration Charitists, Culture Preservationists, Redistributionists, and Culturally Confident America Firsters.
  
• Winston Smith at the PoliticalCesspool takes a look back at S.1639.
• Noam Biale of the HuffingtonPost wonders what really killed S.1639.
  

MATT.org spotlight

A daily feature, here we spotlight interesting links on the MATT.org website.

• A video discussing an op/ed column that alleges that children at immigrant detention centers are treated like criminals.
• A thread in the forums discussing death threats against Hispanic politicians in California. (FYI: You can join the forums in a matter of minutes.)
  

'New scrutiny' on deaths in immigrant detention centers

The New York Times reports that bipartisan "scrutiny" on deaths in immigrant detention centers may lead to the creation of a body that would be specifically charged with overseeing such centers. Nina Bernstein writes:

No government body is charged with accounting for deaths in immigration detention, a patchwork of county jails, privately run prisons and federal facilities where more than 27,500 people who are not American citizens are held on any given day while the government decides whether to deport them. (...)

Spurred by bipartisan reports of abuses in detention, the Senate unanimously passed an amendment to the proposed immigration bill that would establish an office of detention oversight within the Department of Homeland Security. Detention capacity would grow by 20,000 beds, or 73 percent, under the bill, which is epected to be debated again today in the Senate.