For the 45th Cleveland International Film Festival, IRTF is a community partner for the film Missing in Brooks County. This film documents the harsh conditions under which migrants are often forced to travel to get to the United States. Many of these migrants never make it to the U.S. and succomb to the perilous conditions of South Texas, leaving their families with many questions and tremendous heartbreak.
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Mexico: News & Updates
Mexico shares a 2,000-mile border with its neighbor to the north. The US has played a significant role in militarizing the nation in misguided and ineffective policies to stop the flow of drugs and immigrants. Human rights abuses are prevalent throughout Mexico but especially in the southern, mostly indigenous states of Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas. Human rights defenders and indigenous community leaders—working to protect their ancestral lands and heritage—are targeted with threats, assaults, abductions and assassinations. Their struggles for peace and liberation are linked with those of indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples throughout the hemisphere.
Learn more here.
Content Page
April 8, 2021 to April 20, 2021
News Article
April 12, 2021
*Thanks to The Associated Press for the article*
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration has struck an agreement with Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala to temporarily surge security forces to their borders in an effort to reduce the tide of migration to the U.S. border.
The agreement comes as the U.S. saw a record number of unaccompanied children attempting to cross the border in March, and the largest number of Border Patrol encounters overall with migrants on the southern border — just under 170,000 — since March 2001.
Event
April 12, 2021
Join us for this unique opportunity to interview the filmmakers of Missing in Brooks County, one of the documentary entries of the Cleveland International Film Festival 45. The haunted landscape of Brooks County, Texas, is littered with the bodies and belongings of an unknown number of lost souls. All the while, the national immigration debate drags on, rarely taking into account the very real life and death consequences that are felt in the farmlands of Brooks County and elsewhere. And on both sides of the border, heartbroken families are left devastated, desperate to find out what happened to their disappeared loved ones. Mysteries unfold as two of the families search for answers--and the severity of this broken immigration system becomes more and more apparent.
News Article
February 24, 2021
Despite the language coming from the administration, these children are facing a terrible and possibly illegal situation. In 1997, a class-action lawsuit settlement established standards for the detention and release of unaccompanied minors taken into custody by the authorities. According to the Flores Settlement Agreement, the federal government must transfer these unaccompanied children to a non-secure and licensed facility within days of being in custody. In an emergency, the government can keep the children for up to 20 days while seeking to reunite them with family members or place them with a sponsor. Meanwhile, the Carrizo Springs site is a secure site (the kids can’t leave), is unlicensed by the state of Texas (it’s operated by a government contractor for the Office of Refugee Resettlement), and is expected to hold children for 30 days, as reported by the Washington Post, which is obviously longer than the 20 days dictated by the Flores Agreement. The detention is also very expensive, coming in at a cost of $775 a day per child compared with $290 a day for permanent centers.
News Article
January 21, 2021
From No More Deaths: Part 2 of the Disappeared series concluded that the culture and policies of the US Border Patrol as a law-enforcement agency both authorize and normalize acts of cruelty against border crossers. On February 3 we will be releasing Part 3 of Disappeared, called Left to Die: Border Patrol, Search & Rescue, and the Crisis of Disappearance. The report explores the discriminatory and inadequate search and rescue practices for those presumed to be undocumented in the borderlands, and the systemic interference by Border Patrol of family and community search efforts.
RRN Letter
January 13, 2021
We wrote to officials in the state government of Chiapas and the federal government of Mexico about verbal threats of violence made against fifteen members of the Jovel Valley Environmental Network in Chiapas. A group of aggressors threatened the environmentalists on December 29 while digging a ditch to help protect Maria Eugenia wetlands, a natural area of 115 hectares. A construction company is threatening the wetlands—the main source of drinking water for the área and habitat for a number of endangered species —by filling in land, paving, and building on top of the land. We are urging authorities to: 1) thoroughly and impartially investigate the verbal attacks and threats of violence against the members of the Jovel Valley Environmental Network, publish the results, and bring those responsible to justice; 2) adopt measures to guarantee the physical and psychological integrity of the members of the Jovel Valley Environmental Network.
Content Page
January 10, 2021
From the American Friends Service Committee: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is an abusive agency with a history of human rights violations dating back to its inception in 2003. Neither Congress nor the courts have been successful in ending these abuses. Sign our petition urging Congress to abolish ICE today.
News Article
December 31, 2020
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico’s president said on Thursday that women should decide whether the country should legalize abortion, but he declined to take a position on the issue, which is still opposed by many Mexicans.
Content Page
December 29, 2020
At the U.S.-Mexico border, there are thousands of families in danger and waiting for a positive response to their asylum claims for more than a year. They have sent a message to President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris and you can join them.
News Article
December 28, 2020
We continue to organize our communities in support and defense of immigrants, especially those in vulnerable situations. Connect with Immigration Working Group CLE, a collaborative of community advocates and organizations across NE Ohio. Ask about the group’s Immigrant Defense Fund, Rapid Response Team, Bond Reduction Project, volunteer needs, legislative advocacy, vigils, rallies, marches, and more. Contact iwgcle@gmail.com or see www.facebook.com/iwgCLE
