[act-ma] 4/03 Secure Communities Event @ Northeastern Law TUESDAY

[Charlie Welch]

Northeastern School of Law Chapter of NLG presents...

NEW ORLEANS CONGRESS OF DAY LABORERS v. THE ORLEANS PARISH SHERIFF

A discussion about a community organization’s campaign to end ICE holds 
at one of the worst prisons in America.

With Delmy Palencia and Jacinta Gonzalez of the New Orleans Congress of 
Day Laborers and the New Orleans Worker Center for Racial Justice.

Tuesday, April 3 rd

250 Dockser Hall

12-1:30pm

Delmy Palencia is a mother and leader of the Congress of Day Laborers in 
New Orleans, Louisiana. She was unjustly detained by Immigrations and 
Customs Enforcement (ICE) earlier this year, and is now facing 
deportation in retaliation for her civil rights work. On May 21, 2011, 
Delmy Palencia was wrongfully arrested by the New Orleans Police after 
she locked her husband out of the house following a domestic argument. 
Ms. Palencia was then held in the Orleans Parish Prison for 45-days. ICE 
used Secure Communities to place a hold request on Ms. Palencia and 
request she continue to be detained. After almost two months of criminal 
detention, all charges against her were dropped. Nonetheless, as a 
result of the Secure Communities program, ICE requested that the local 
Sheriff further detain her on an immigration hold. In its cooperation 
with ICE’s Secure Communities Program, the Orleans Parish Sheriff 
violated the constitution and held Ms. Palencia longer than allowed by 
law. When the Sheriff held Ms. Palencia for more than 48 hours, a 
community coalition challenged her detention as part of a pattern of 
unconstitutional custody and secured her release. After a community 
coalition secured her release, ICE conducted a night home raid to 
re-arrest Ms. Palencia, place her in detention without bond, and 
separate her from her infant U.S. citizen son. ICE’s targeting of Ms. 
Palencia for arrest not only separates her from her young child, it also 
chills future civil rights work.

As lead organizer for the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial 
Justice's Congress of Day Laborers, Jacinta Gonzalez helped establish 
and maintain a base of day laborers and immigrant families dedicated to 
building worker power, advancing racial justice, and mobilizing workers 
across race and industry in post-Katrina New Orleans. She was the lead 
investigator and primary author of two reports that documented the 
inhumane conditions in the immigration detention center in Basile, 
Louisiana, and played a role in exposing abuses in the South Louisiana 
Detention Center. Jacinta is currently a Soros Justice Fellow.

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For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/maraiddetentionresistancenetwork?hl=en