Undocumented Pregnant Women Forced To Give Birth While Shackled In Front Of Police

Just when you thought the nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigrants couldn’t get any more brutal, the Huffington Post reports that pregnant women in Arizona and Tennessee were detained and forced to give birth while shackled to their hospital beds because they couldn’t produce identification.

The shackling of female inmates when they go into labor has been a roundly condemned practice in prisons, but local authorities are now extending that humiliation to non-violent immigrant women whose only crime was being stopped by police without a valid license:

“When I was in bed, I was begging the sheriff, ‘Please let me free — at least one hand,’ and he said, no, he didn’t want to,” Juana Villegas said in an interview with a local Nashville television station. She was describing the experience of being shackled to her hospital bed as she went into labor. Villegas gave birth in the sheriff’s custody, after she was stopped by local police while driving without a valid license.[...]

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NPR: Private Prisons behind Arizona's Immigration Law

by greendem

Thu Oct 28, 2010 at 07:16:56 AM PDT

Well no wonder the Right wants to shut down NPR.

They keep committing acts of journalism.

Long-term investigation out this morning finds:
Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law

This is one of the most shocking things I have heard on the radio in years. The story begins when a mysterious gentleman shows up in Benson, AZ to pitch a plan to the city manager.

What he was selling was a prison for women and children who were illegal immigrants.

"They talk [about] how positive this was going to be for the community," Nichols said, "the amount of money that we would realize from each prisoner on a daily rate."

But Nichols wasn't buying. He asked them how would they possibly keep a prison full for years — decades even — with illegal immigrants?

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Judge Blocks Key Provisions of Arizona Immigration Law

Wednesday 28 July 2010

by: Andrea Nill | Think Progress | Report

A May Day immigration rally participant. (Photo: Joseph Voves)

This afternoon, in a long-awaited decision, 9th Circuit Judge Susan Bolton enjoined several major provisions of Arizona’s immigration law, SB-1070. While it was speculated that Bolton would block parts of SB-1070 relating to warrantless arrests and document requirements, the judge also ended up striking down the law’s most controversial and significant provision: the requirement that police check immigration status. Bolton blocked the following sections of SB-1070 arguing that “the United States is likely to succeed on the merits in showing that…[they] are preempted by federal law” and the “United States is likely to suffer irreparable harm” in the absence of an injunction:

Portion of Section 2 of S.B. 1070: Requires police to inquire about the immigration status of anyone they stop, detain, or arrest if they reasonably suspect the person is in the country illegally.

Section 3 of S.B. 1070: Criminalizes the the failure to apply for or carry immigration documents.

Portion of Section 5 of S.B. 1070: Criminalizes the solicitation, application for, or performance of work by an undocumented immigrant.

Section 6 of S.B. 1070: Authorizes the warrantless arrest of a person where there is probable cause to believe the person has committed a public offense that makes the person “removable.”

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