Grassroots Leadership In The News

A lawsuit challenging Austin's ban on camping in public places was in court today.

Attorneys representing Gary Bowens, who is chronically homeless, argued in front of Municipal Judge Mitchell Solomon that the city law is unconstitutionally vague and violates the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

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The hearing comes nearly a month after a federal appeals court struck down a similar law in Boise, Idaho. The City of Houston also faces a similar challenge from the ACLU of Texas.

Homelessness advocates held a press conference ahead of the hearing to highlight a new study from Grassroots Leadership. 

  Read more about Austin Ordinance Banning Homeless Camps Challenged In Court

“It is huge money,” said Bob Libal, director of Grassroots Leadership, a nonprofit working to end private prisons in the United States. “The argument is that you need to house these kids somewhere, but we should have them in foster homes or with family, not these huge facilities which anyone would say is not in the best interest of the children.” 

  Read more about Tent City: Tornillo’s refugee camp for kids is mushrooming

Chris Harris, an analyst with the nonprofit Grassroots Leadership, testified against the contract, but said that he respected Council's ability to listen to citizens.

“We see that the community has a much better opportunity to actually get its wishes fulfilled by the Council,” said Harris. “You also have, obviously post-Ferguson, a lot more community engagement on issues of police oversight and brutality.”

Harris now serves on the Police Oversight Advisory Working Group, a collection of police officers, union members and citizens that's gathering input to help inform any oversight reform by Council. The working group's preliminary recommendations include allowing people to file police complaints online and bolstering data reporting on policing. Read more about Austin Wants To Know What It Should Do To Improve Police Oversight

County moves forward with new women's building despite vote to delay and community outcry

Lauren Johnson knows what it's like to be booked into Travis County Jail and to feel the world spinning as her freedom, her community, and her privacy disappear. She knows what it's like for her pregnant body to ache on a thin jail mattress and to give birth with a guard at her hospital room door. And what it's like to hand over custody of her firstborn child just 48 hours later. She knows what it's like to relapse years later and to return to jail, leaving behind three kids, missing every birthday and every holiday, and losing her identity as the glue that held everyone together. And she knows what it's like to get out again, to get clean again, and to spend the rest of her life trying to fix the system.

"Incarceration doesn't create an environment for people to recover," Johnson says from her office at the American Civil Liberties Union. "None of the solutions to the criminal justice system live inside the criminal justice system. It's all about having access to treatment, mental health services, employment, housing. Crime is a symptom of the problem; it is not our problem."

Johnson focuses her ACLU work on statewide legislation but has recently been caught up in a contentious local issue: whether or not Travis County should build a new women's jail. The planned project is just the first part of a $620 million correctional campus overhaul. Johnson cycled in and out of the jail about four times over the course of a decade, and says the county's plans – and the community's pushback – have left her feeling "split in half." Women are left behind in every area of the criminal justice system, so she is attracted to the idea of giving them a "nice, new, shiny thing." But she also understands the advocates who want the county to delay the new building (which would have the capacity to incarcerate more women) until it reduces the female jail population. Read more about A New Jail for Travis County?

“Grandma Rosy” is back home now, in El Salvador, living alone, without the 12-year-old granddaughter she is raising.

Earlier this year the pair spent a month traveling on foot and by bus to get to the United States to seek asylum. But last month the grandmother was deported. The girl, meanwhile, spent about two months in custody as part of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, and was later released to a relative.

Their story has a twist: While you’ve heard a lot about immigrant children who remain in the United States and separated from their parents, the grandmother and granddaughter are part of another group – non-parental families who’ve also been separated at the border.

Most of these non-parent families haven’t been covered much in the media. And it’s unclear exactly how many people are in their situation, nor is it known how many of the nearly 500 immigrant children who remain in federal custody arrived in the United States with people who are not their biological parents.

Advocates say only that they know of numerous cases of grandparents, older siblings, aunts and other family members who are guardians of children they tried to bring into the country, and who have either been deported and blocked from reunification or remain in detention. Read more about For immigrant families without biological parents, separation might be permanent

I recently had the opportunity of helping in a small way with the separated families at the Port Isabel Detention Center in the Rio Grande Valley. When I heard there was a need for attorney volunteers, I contacted my daughter Abigail, who is a staffer in Washington, D.C., for U.S. Congressman Filemon Vela. With their help, I was eventually connected with a nonprofit group out of Austin called Grassroots Leadership.

They were involved in connecting the detained mothers at Port Isabel with attorneys to do interviews and also to represent them in their “credible fear” hearings for their asylum claims.

During the course of two days, I interviewed about 15 women, all from Guatemala and Honduras, except one from Romania.

As I interviewed the women, I was struck most by their demeanors. They were all lovely women who did not seem angry at all, but very sad. They answered my questions fine, until I asked about their children. At that point, each one of them teared up while they explained who their children were, how they had been separated and where they thought they were being held.

The mothers’ stories as to why they were seeking asylum were heart breaking. One mother was repeatedly raped by gangs simply because she was a woman who owned her own business. Law enforcement wouldn’t help because of their corruption and cooperation with the drug lords. Read more about Have courage to stand for basic human rights

Advocates told Rewire.News that some of these children remain purposely separated from the adults they migrated with because they are legal guardians, not "parents."

Immigration officials deported 54-year-old “Grandma Rosy,” as she’s being called by advocates, on August 16 after separating her from her 12-year-old granddaughter “Cindy” (a pseudonym) on May 7.

Rosy, whose name is withheld for safety reasons, and her granddaughter were fleeing gang violence in El Salvador. The grandmother’s own daughter was disappeared by local gangs and presumed killed, her attorney told Rewire.News. Rosy searched for her daughter for months, to no avail. This is how Rosy came to be Cindy’s legal guardian. But when gangs began recruiting Cindy to run errands for them and be a lookout during drug deals, Rosy knew it was time to leave.

“They threatened Cindy’s life. They pointed a gun at her and threatened to harm her. They said they were going to take Cindy from Rosy. They demanded money. Rosy went to the police, but they didn’t do anything,” her attorney, Lizbeth Mateo, told Rewire.News. “The police actually told Rosy that if she didn’t pay, she would end up killed. She had no choice but to leave. She told me that she already lost one child and she wasn’t going to lose another.”

Mateo said that her deportation was unlawful “on multiple levels.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) repeatedly asked Rosy to give up the legal rights to her granddaughter while she was in detention, Mateo said, which suggests that ICE knew she had rights over her granddaughter and that she should have been protected by a recent preliminary injunction. Issued by a California judge, the injunction required the government to reunite parents with their children by July 26, and ordered the government to stop deporting parents without their children unless the parent “affirmatively, knowingly, and voluntarily” agreed to be deported alone.

“She refused to sign her rights away and ICE kept trying, every couple of weeks they would ask her the same thing,” Mateo told Rewire.News in a phone interview prior to Rosy’s deportation. “How can someone like Rosy not qualify for reunification and be told they’re not the parent, and then get pressured to sign away their rights to their child?” Read more about Advocates Want to Know Why ICE Hasn’t Reunited These Separated Families

Two recent cases in Central Texas illustrate how police aggression and the “sanctuary cities” ban have built a nasty pipeline to deportation.

Janelie Rodriguez’s family had already decided: If she had another bad episode, they’d call 911 and have her taken to the hospital. One night last October, it happened. Rodriguez, a 25-year-old who suffers from intermittent psychosis, was struck with paranoid hallucinations; she began hurling wild accusations at her brother in an increasingly heated argument. Her family — five siblings, her mom and stepdad — knew she needed medication, but she often stubbornly refused treatment. Eventually, her little sister made the call for help — but help is not what they got.

“We were thinking we would get professional support to calm her down,” said Rodriguez’s 19-year-old brother, Alexis. “But instead, it was police.”

That night, records show, two Hays County sheriff’s deputies and one police officer showed up at the family’s two-story home in Buda, a booming exurb just south of Austin. Their arrival sent Rodriguez into a panic. Just over 5 feet tall and weighing less than 100 pounds, she didn’t want the three male cops to touch her, and she tried hiding in a bathroom. The officers ran out of patience within minutes, according to family members. “They went from being patient to like they were about to arrest a criminal on the street, instantly,” said Alexis. “They start circling her, and obviously she freaks out; that’s when they pin her down.”

As the three armed men forcibly restrained her on a bed, police allege that Rodriguez bit the wrist of Buda Police Officer Kevin Oates. A spokesperson for the Hays County Sheriff’s Office, Lieutenant Todd Riffe, said the officers were forced to detain Rodriguez because her family members expressed fear for their safety, and added that Rodriguez’s choice to bite the officer was “not in [their] control.” Rodriguez’s brother told the Observer he wasn’t afraid of his sister, and the whole family agrees the police needlessly escalated the situation. Read more about How Texas Cops Turn Mental Health Crises into Deportations

Longtime Westlake resident Ann Finch is not for an open border and isn’t sure how the U.S. and Mexico governments should change policy for granting asylum to refugees who cannot return to their homeland. But she is dedicated to helping asylum-seekers after leading a recent mission to distribute 316 “dignity bags” along the Texas-Mexico border.

That effort, Finch said, was the result of news reports that prompted her to attend a protest in June led by the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge mass hearings for asylum seekers in Brownsville. She also met contacts who helped her understand the problem and identify people with the greatest needs.

Upon arriving home, she went to her church and asked for help funding the gift bags, which are filled with items ranging from raisins and crackers to toothbrushes and first aid kits.

“They sure are generous,” Finch said of her Westlake United Methodist Church leaders. “They gave me some money and said, ‘Go do what you need to do.’” Read more about Heartfelt effort continues to help refugees seeking asylum