por Suzanne Potter
Groups advocating for people detained in immigration facilities are calling for the reinstatement of a program which allowed 500 free minutes of phone calls per month.
In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement cut off the free domestic and international calls, telling advocates pandemic-era funding has run out.
Rosa Santana, interim co-executive director of the Envision Freedom Fund, said families of the detainees often struggle to afford the calls, which can cost up to $3 for 15 minutes.
“Usually the person who is in detention is the breadwinner and now families have to be able to figure out how they could bring food and everything that the breadwinner used to bring, pay rent,” Santana pointed out. “And on top of that now, it’s having to pay for phone calls.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to a request for comment. People in at least 16 ICE detention centers across the country have reported losing access to the free calls, including three sites in California: Golden State Annex, Mesa Verde Processing Center and Otay Mesa Detention Center.
“Absent the phones, how would we know that rights are being violated?” Golding asked. “How would we know if nobody has the ability to communicate?”
People in detention do still have access to work programs where they can earn about $1 for eight hours of work to spend on calls or items at the commissary.
Latino environmental groups push for greater access to public lands
Conservation groups are circulating a petition asking the feds to give “America the Beautiful National Parks and Recreation Lands” passes to new citizens at their naturalization ceremony. Members of the group GreenLatinos have met with multiple federal agencies to pitch the idea.
The pass normally costs $80 per year and gets one car with up to four adults into all national parks and monuments. Last year, more than 878,000 people became U.S. citizens.
The group also wants to start holding naturalization ceremonies at sites on public lands. And they’d like to reverse the trend of national parks going “cashless,” as they have at Yosemite and Death Valley.
The petition currently sports more than 900 signatures and is available on the GreenLatinos website.
