San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/category/immigration/page/2/)
One American city has gone further than any other in creating a workable solution to the current inadequacy of surveillance law: Oakland, which has pushed a pro-privacy public policy along an unprecedented path. Its Privacy Advisory Commission acts as a meaningful check on city agencies — most often, police — that want to acquire any kind of surveillance technology.
They are the latest immigrants whose fortunes have changed for the worse under President Donald Trump: More than 200,000 people from Central America and the region who are losing Temporary Protected Status after legally living, working and raising families in the United States for years.
The Trump administration on Monday ended a three-decade program that provided temporary legal protection to more than 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants who built lives in the United States after fleeing civil war and devastating earthquakes.
Thousands of Salvadorans, Hondurans and Haitians who fled natural disasters or violence await final decision on whether their Temporary Protected Status will be extended or ended. Nicaraguans must leave in 2019 or face deportation.
Ten years after it was launched, Healthy San Francisco today predominantly serves Spanish speakers and people living in the city’s southeast neighborhoods. Because some clients may be here illegally, city officials have vowed to shield them if the Trump administration launches a deportation campaign.
This Charter amendment would allow non-citizen parents, legal guardians and caregivers of children 18 years old or younger who reside in San Francisco to vote for school board candidates. These new voters, who would register with the city’s Department of Elections, would need to be at least 18 years old and not be otherwise disqualified from voting under the California Constitution or state statute.
Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi is facing two challengers in his bid for re-election: Vicki Hennessy, who spent three decades in the department and served as interim sheriff in 2012 (after Mayor Ed Lee suspended Mirkarimi over a domestic-violence case involving the new sheriff and his wife) and John Robinson, a retired sheriff’s commander.
Some who flee captive labor conditions end up with low-wage jobs, insecure housing
People trafficked into the country receive temporary government and nonprofit social service benefits after rescue or flight from captivity: shelter, health care, counseling, employment and legal help. But once these benefits term out, counter-trafficking specialists worry that victims, who generally have little work experience and weak social and family networks, could fall back into labor conditions as exploitative as the ones they fled. As a victim of international labor trafficking, Lili Samad received government help to stay in the U.S. But she is among hundreds of trafficking survivors each year who end up, months after getting help trying to build a new life, living in marginal housing and working in low-wage jobs.
In the heart of East Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood, the Peralta Hacienda Historical Park is an incongruous reminder of California’s Mexican past: 6 acres of open space in a sea of single-family homes. What was once a massive ranchero now features a Victorian house surrounded by carefully tended vegetable gardens. Ben Glickstein is director of outreach here. He says back in 1820, Antonio Peralta had big agricultural dreams for this stretch of land that slopes down to Peralta Creek. “And we’re still using this for agriculture, for food, here in the middle of this pretty urban neighborhood.”
Detainees file into San Francisco immigration court linked together like a chain gang, bound at their wrists, waists and ankles. A metal chain or seatbelt-style restraint is wrapped around the detainees’ waists and connected to their wrists with a link to the detainee in front of them. The detainees often must sit four to a bench and remain bound to each other throughout the court proceedings. While sitting bound, they are limited in movements, and the restraints prevent simple tasks, such as taking notes during the proceeding.