THE US IMMIGRATION COURT & THE POWER OF ITS JUDGE KING, PART II

by Ana M. Fores Tamayo

Continued from Part I here.

When the police in Guerrero, Mexico told this young woman to leave their station, not to report her missing brother or something worse could happen, she realized she could not count on the police’s help to go after the cartels. Luckily, her brother was returned, beaten up but alive. hen she began to get harassed later that year, because she saw a woman abducted and then murdered, when she began to get subsequent death threats, when she began to hear that they were going to take her small son unless she complied to whatever they wanted from her, when they began accosting her sexually — so that she had to leave her job — she knew she could not go to the police: she had learned her lesson  that first time.

Continue Reading

THE US IMMIGRATION COURT & THE POWER OF ITS JUDGE KING, PART I

by Ana M. Fores Tamayo

I went to an Immigration Merits Hearing at the Dallas Courts recently — the last hearing before an individual or family is deported or given asylum — and this young mother and child from Guerrero, Mexico, lost – as asylum seekers in the majority of these cases do. Although the judge admitted that the young woman “might be in danger,” he said he could do nothing about the consequences such criminal activity affects these poor folk in the countries from which they are escaping. The actions perpetrated in such countries were individual criminal proceedings, not governmental undertakings, and thus the people who suffered individually were not privy to meriting asylum under our government statutes, according to the judge’s ruling.

How can these learned men say such a thing? Continue Reading

IN FAVOUR OF A CYCLING FUTURE

by Joe Burns

This year, nearly £16m is beginning to be being spent on transport alterations across Norwich. This means new cycle lanes, junctions, and road crossings being built to improve road safety for cyclists. Part of that spending is funded by a £425,000 Department for Transport’s Cycle City Ambition Grant to improve cycle lanes between the inner and outer ring roads. That upcoming cycle lane project is the latest of several efforts to improve road use for cyclists in Norwich, including £800,000 spent as part of the Transport for Norwich scheme to build a cycle lane on Newmarket Road.Continue Reading