More than two million people have been deported since President Obama took office in 2008. Among this massive number of deportations, an increasing number of people with valid legal claims to remain in the U.S.—even U.S. citizens—are mistakenly deported, according to a report released by the ACLU today. Once returned to their “home” countries, many have suffered catastrophic consequences, including kidnapping and murder. Produced by Sarah Mehta, an ACLU attorney,“American Exile: Rapid Deportations That Bypass the Courtroom” is the first comprehensive study of deportations ordered by immigration agents instead of immigration judges.

Mehta, who was raised in Arlington, Texas, and now lives in New York, spent a year studying deportation cases and found that an astounding 83 percent of people deported in 2013 were removed without a hearing or a chance to see an immigration judge.

Many of the people Mehta interviewed were deported through a process called expedited removal, whereby an immigration enforcement officer can determine someone’s fate in a matter of minutes. In many cases, the officer’s decision can literally mean life or death for the immigrant. For example, Mehta interviewed a transgender woman from Mexico named Nydia R. who was deported under expedited removal despite having obtained political asylum in the United States. Back in Mexico, Nydia R. was raped and tortured by members of Los Zetas and barely escaped with her life. Mehta also documented other cases of people wrongfully deported who were kidnapped, tortured or even killed after being returned to their home countries. The Observer spoke with Mehta about the ACLU’s new report and how our immigration system, which Mehta calls “deeply corrupted,” has largely become a vehicle for mass deportations without legal due process.

 

Observer: Why did the ACLU decide to spend a year studying deportation numbers?

Mehta: Overwhelmingly, most people now are not going through immigration court and they’re not getting hearings. The bulk of our work to date had been making those hearings fair but increasingly it’s rare for someone to go to immigration court at all. There has been such a dearth of information about who is being deported that we wanted to do a real investigation into who actually is getting deported. When expedited removal was first introduced in 1996 and then expanded in 2005 there was a lot of concern even from congressional representatives that the wrong people—meaning people who had claims and rights—would be swept up and deported. In view of the very cursory nature of expedited removal it’s not really a surprise that mistakes are made nonetheless. We didn’t have any information as to how often it happens, what it looks like and to what extent people who have verifiable claims are still being deported.

Observer: Can you explain what expedited removal is?

Mehta: Expedited removal is where someone is ordered deported not by a judge, not by a lawyer, but by an immigration enforcement officer. It applies predominantly at the border and it allows the officer to order someone deported for five years, 10 years or even for life. It has the same consequences as a deportation order by a judge but without a hearing with evidence and rights to a lawyer. You would think a deportation order issued by an enforcement officer who is not a lawyer or an expert in law would be subject to more oversight and review but it actually gets less review. And it’s almost impossible to get a deportation order reviewed or rescinded once an enforcement officer has issued the order.

Observer: So, who exactly is getting deported?

Mehta: The problem is Border Patrol officers who are doing these deportations are not even asking basic questions. Some people said they were only asked their name and nothing more than that. So it’s not surprising that we have very little information about who gets deported because officers themselves aren’t asking any questions before they order someone deported. One group we looked at is asylum seekers—people who come here fleeing violence. This is one group of people that right now U.S. Customs and Border Protection is supposed to be screening for. They are supposed to ask people who are fleeing violence if they are afraid to go back to their country. The people we interviewed said they were never asked this question before they were deported.

We find that even lawful visitors and people who work lawfully in the U.S. from Canada or Mexico or elsewhere are being deported by expedited removal. The immigration officers assume they are not lawfully in the U.S. even when their claims can be verified, or they make assumptions that they are misusing their visas even when it can’t be verified and there’s no opportunity for them to contest it. Again this is without having to provide any evidence or an opportunity for the person to prove it’s not true.

Observer: Geographically, are there certain areas where there are more expedited removals?

Mehta: One thing I found very surprising is the consistent regularity of problems across the southern border. Along the southern border it didn’t matter where you were. There were consistent problems with Border Patrol officers failing to inform people of their rights and giving them forms often in a language that they didn’t know and ordering them deported in a matter of minutes.

Observer: What were some other surprising things you discovered?

Mehta: One thing that surprised me is the people who get deported who have verifiable claims, people who already have rights to stay in the U.S. It’s not surprising that Border Patrol officers will make mistakes about people who have complicated claims because they’re not lawyers and they’re not trained to give people these very complicated legal determinations but, again, people like Nydia who had asylum—these are things that could have been determined before they were deported. Deportation comes with very specific consequences. It’s very hard to put right even honest mistakes, but in many cases it seemed that Border Patrol officers weren’t even taking the time to do a very basic check to verify a person’s status, to give a person time to collect evidence or to call their attorney or call their family to bring the evidence to prove their claims.

Observer: And why do you think this is?

Mehta: I think in part there’s a general assumption along the southern border in particular that people who are apprehended there don’t have rights or claims to be there and that it isn’t worth the time to verify those claims. And part of the problem is that the Department of Homeland Security interprets the border not as a line but as a 100-mile zone so there are people who are living within 100 miles of the border who are treated as if their lives and rights are disposable. Even if law enforcement officers try to do a good job and have the best intentions they often just don’t have the expertise and sometimes the time to verify a person’s claims and ask the necessary questions that would elicit the information that they need.

Observer: And in fact you even found U.S. citizens during the course of your study who had been deported?

Mehta: Yes, and it’s predictable because it’s a deeply corrupted system that is designed to fail people with their rights. Based on the assumption that anyone arrested in the 100-mile border zone isn’t going to have a right. I think there are mistaken assumptions based on a way a person looks, or his language abilities that lead officers to assume that they aren’t citizens and they unfortunately don’t give them the opportunity to prove that before deporting them. Deportation can come with very catastrophic consequence for some people. Some of the individuals in the report were attacked, kidnapped and raped or sometimes all three. One person was murdered after being deported and they had told the officers about the danger before they were deported.

Observer: So how do we fix the system? We always hear about spending more money on border security but are we spending enough on our immigration court system? What about providing attorneys to immigrants who need them?

Mehta: We have deeply underfunded the court system and all of the mechanisms and safeguards that provide justice and protect people’s rights. While there has been an expansion of funding for the militarization of the border there hasn’t been comparable funding going to the courts. The courts are severely overburdened as it is. We hope that with Obama’s executive action that there will be some reprieve on the courts and they will free up to adjudicate people who were left out in the executive action.

There also need to be attorneys and an opportunity for people to read the deportation order in a language they understand before they sign it and an opportunity for them to know about the rights and the consequences of taking a deportation order or accepting voluntary return. Right now border officers have the discretion to refer people for a hearing but it doesn’t appear they are using that discretion because [in 2013] 83 percent of the deportations were from officers and not through the court system. Border Patrol officers should screen for people who might have claims to be in the U.S. and children in particular. These individuals should get a hearing with all of the protections that go with it.

Observer: I often hear from commenters online who say, “Why should we be so concerned about providing legal representation to people who are not U.S. citizens?

Mehta: For one thing we don’t know if they’re citizens or not in some of these cases. There are a lot of people who are U.S. citizens who were not born in the United States and there are people who were arrested and deported who it turned out are U.S. citizens. Verifying their claims sometimes requires legal assistance. This can be a quick and easy thing but other times it can get complicated and does require a lawyer’s assistance. But beyond the people who are U.S. citizens there are a lot of people with strong ties and rooted lives here who are parents or relatives of U.S. citizens, who are a part of our community and their rights matter. It’s important to have lawyers, it’s important to have justice because the entire integrity of the immigration system depends upon it.

 

After years of struggle and protest, immigrant families finally have something to celebrate. At least four million undocumented immigrants could receive work permits for three years under the executive action.

It’s disappointing though, that the Obama proposal includes more militarization along the border, especially when border communities are begging for more oversight of the existing military-industrial border complex, which has already gotten out of hand.

Another important thing to remember is that this is only a temporary fix. There’s no path to legal residency or citizenship. Without Congress acting to reform our broken system legislatively, we’re going to have an even crazier, more complicated patchwork of temporary visas, temporary work permits, legal resident visas, etc., etc. We’re creating an immigration caste system of people living under provisional agreements, not fully integrated into our society and living under limited legal protections. This creates a nightmare for law enforcement, the courts, and most of all for the families who are subject to the whims of Congress and the next president. What happens at the end of the three-year window?

The battle continues. But for today, let’s celebrate this small miracle. Here’s a  breakdown of Obama’s immigration reform: The good, the bad and the ugly.

 

The Good

 

1) An expansion of people eligible under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, aka DACA.

Prior to the executive action, only those who were under 31 on June 15, 2012, who had entered the U.S. before June 15, 2007 and who were under 16 when they entered the U.S. were eligible. Now all undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. before the age of 16, and not just those born after June 15, 1981 can qualify for DACA. They’ve also bumped up the U.S. entry date from June 15, 2007 to January 1, 2010. The work permits and relief from being deported will last three years, instead of two.

2) Some parents of U.S. citizens and lawful residents can also get deferred action and a work permit if:

• They have been in the country for at least 5 years;
• Their child was a U.S. citizen as of November 20, 2014;
• Must complete criminal, national security background checks and pay a fee.

 

The Bad

 

1) More militarization along the border.

2) Parents of DACA kids do not qualify under the executive action.

3) Nothing in the executive action affects the thousands of women and children being held right now in immigrant detention facilities in New Mexico and Texas.

 

The (could get) Ugly

 

1) A Priority Enforcement Program, aka PEP, replaces the controversial Secure Communities program—which encouraged local law enforcement agencies to enforce immigration law. It looks like under PEP, ICE detainers will be replaced by a notfication system among other things.

Cristina Parker, spokesperson for the nonprofit Grassroots Leadership, which helped lead the charge in Texas against the unpopular Secure Communities program, says that her organization and others who have fought against the program for years are celebrating its demise. S-COMM was the reason that many immigrants were deported for minor misdemeanors or traffic infractions.

Parker says they are pessimistic, however, about the new program and eagerly awaiting more details on how it will be implemented. “ICE doesn’t inspire confidence in how it follows directives. It’s a rogue agency. And this really sounds very similar to the first day of S-COMM,” she says. “That’s kind of where we’re at now but we’re trying to be cautiously optimistic.”

Immigration attorney Dan Kowalski is equally pessimistic about any change in policy. “It’s going to be really tough for ICE officers on the ground and managers in the field and D.C. to execute because their whole training is to detect, detain, arrest and deport. It goes against the grain of their training,” he says.

2) The president also directed Homeland Security to revise policies regarding deportation priorities.

Here’s the new policy in brief from the memo:

“DHS is going to implement a new department-wide enforcement and removal policy that places top priority on national security threats, convicted felons, gang members, and illegal entrants apprehended at the border; the second-tier priority on those convicted of significant or multiple misdemeanors and those who are not apprehended at the border, but who entered or reentered this country unlawfully after January 1, 2014; and the third priority on those who are non-criminals but who have failed to abide by a final order of removal issued on or after January 1, 2014.

Under this revised policy, those who entered illegally prior to January 1, 2014, who never disobeyed a prior order of removal, and were never convicted of a serious offense, will not be priorities for removal. This policy also provides clear guidance on the exercise of prosecutorial discretion.”

Again, this will depend a lot on how ICE implements the directive. In the past, they’ve been criticized for doing their own thing and not exercising prosecutorial discretion. The new policy could get ugly if ICE continues to act on its own, and not according to the president’s directives.

President Obama’s plans for the long-awaited executive action on immigration will finally be unveiled tomorrow at 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT in a televised announcement. This will be followed by a rally at a high school in Las Vegas on Friday with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid where undoubtedly more details of the president’s plan will be revealed.

I asked longtime immigration attorney Dan Kowalski with The Fowler Law Firm in Austin to give Observer readers a broader idea of what Obama’s executive action might contain and how it might impact the estimated 1.7 million undocumented immigrants living in Texas. What’s certain is that whatever plan Obama unveils Thursday evening it will change millions of lives for the better.

Observer: How many people do you think the executive action will impact?

Kowalski: Anywhere from 2 million to 6 million people, but the details are a closely held secret so we won’t really know for sure until tomorrow night, although I think tomorrow night could just be a teaser. I read that Congress will be briefed tomorrow so we’ll see about that. It could be that more details will also be revealed on Friday in Las Vegas.

Observer: So which categories of immigrants do you think will be covered by the executive action?

Kowalski: I think the parents of U.S. citizen kids and maybe some parents of DACA kids (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and they may raise the DACA age and in addition there may be something for agriculture and there may be something for high tech workers. There’s rumors about that. But I think the biggest group to benefit will be the millions of parents of U.S. citizen children.

Observer: That’s a pretty large sum of people isn’t it?

Kowalski: It could be, but the limiting factors will be: No. 1, is there a time qualification? Meaning you have to have been here a certain number of years. And No. 2, what are the other eligibility requirements such as criminal record and what’s the filing fee going to be?

Observer: Typically when these types of executive actions have happened in the past there are quite a few caveats and restrictions to qualifying, correct?

Kowalski: It depends on how tightly they make it. If they make it really tight not many people will qualify. We’ll know a lot more when they release the application forms. But I think the application period won’t probably begin until two to six months down the road. USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) can’t ramp up that fast. They need to hire staff and create procedures and forms.

Observer: So it’s not something that will begin on Jan. 1?

Kowalski: I think it’s going to be March, April at the earliest.

Observer: Will there be funding there to support the huge number of people who will be filing?

Kowalski: Well, the thing about USCIS is that everything is fee-funded. They don’t get appropriations, so everything that USCIS does has to be funded through user fees. It will be a self-funding program no matter what.

Observer: What other groups of people should be included but won’t be?

Kowalski: I would like to see it be as broad as possible but that would require legislation. This action is more of a stopgap and what really needs to happen down the road is something from Congress that makes the visa rules broader and simpler to allow more people to immigrate.

Observer: How long do you think it will take people to go through the process with their paperwork? Immigration courts are already extremely backed up.

Kowalski: Well, this won’t have anything to do with the immigration courts. It will be an administrative process similar to the way that DACA is operating now. This will be much bigger than DACA of course, maybe 10 times as many people.

Observer: Will people who qualify under the executive action get legal residency permits?

Kowalski: No, they won’t get legal status, just a work permit. It will be like DACA—call it DACA-plus. I think they will probably get a work permit for two years, like DACA.

Observer: Anything else you think is important for people to know about this impending executive action on immigration?

Kowalski: A lot of people inside government and Congress and in the media are saying this action will spur Congress into finally doing something about immigration reform legislatively. I have the opposite view. There are plenty of people in Congress and in the administration that like the system broken. Fence-builders, jail-builders and the drone people and the enforcement people make a huge profit from the system as it is now. It’s good to be broken because it’s more work for them. If everything works and there are lots of visas then there’s nothing for them to enforce. Still, it’s going to be exciting to see what Obama announces tomorrow evening. Stay tuned.

An 8-year-old boy was raped and sexually abused at the Artesia Detention facility in New Mexico but Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials at the facility did little to stop the abuse, said Bryan Johnson an immigration attorney who is representing the boy’s family. As the number of detention beds for migrant children and families grows rapidly, including two facilities in Texas, advocates and attorneys worry that abuse is increasing too.

The boy is from El Salvador and came across the Texas border with his mother and younger brother this summer. The family was sent to the detention facility in July after his family sought asylum. A few days later the child was raped by an older boy at the facility, said Johnson. When his mother reported the rape to an ICE official he told her there was “nothing that could be done about it.”

“Obviously the abuser is a very troubled child,” Johnson said. “He was in the same dorm room with my client and it’s my understanding that he abused other children as well.”

Johnson said there are at least 200 children at the Artesia facility and that the game room and bathrooms, where some of the abuse occurred, are not supervised. “There were actually many witnesses the second time my client was abused and this time ICE actually called the local police,” Johnson said. “But the police never spoke with the boy or his mother about what had happened.”

Johnson said it was especially terrible that after the boy’s ordeal, ICE wouldn’t allow the family to be released on humanitarian parole to relatives living in the United States. An immigration judge intervened and asked ICE to reconsider its decision. “They were finally released on a $10,000 bond in October, which is quite a lot for a bond,” Johnson said.

This is not the first case of abuse reported in family detention facilities recently opened to hold families seeking asylum. In October, several Central American women reported that guards sexually abused them at the Karnes County detention facility run by the private prison contractor GEO Group. The company signed a contract to hold as many as 530 women and children at the South Texas facility.

A recent report “Locking Up Family Values Again,” by the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and Women’s Refugee Commission called the U.S. government’s rush to detain families an “inhumane practice.” Since the summer, the government has opened 1,200 beds at the Artesia and Karnes facilities to detain women and children. Another 2,400-bed family detention facility is slated for a 50-acre site just outside the town of Dilley, 70 miles southwest of San Antonio.

As long as children are held in detention there will be cases of abuse, Johnson said. The average age of children held at the Artesia facility is six. “There’s an inherent conflict of interest providing what’s best for children and keeping them locked up in detention,” he said.

Leticia Zamarripa, an ICE spokesperson, said in a statement that the agency notified the Artesia Police Department this summer upon being informed of an incident between two boys at the Artesia Family Residential Center.

Both boys and their mothers are no longer residing at the facility. Both families entered the United States illegally in early July; both were arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents and transferred to the facility. Last month, an immigration judge heard both cases, and ordered the release of both families.

ICE remains committed to ensuring all individuals in our custody are housed and treated in a safe, secure and humane manner. ICE has a zero-tolerance policy for all forms of sexual abuse or assault, and our facilities are maintained in accordance with applicable laws and policies. Accusations of alleged unlawful conduct are investigated thoroughly and if substantiated, appropriate action is taken.

A well-known citizen journalist who used the Twitter handle @Miut3 was reportedly kidnapped and killed Wednesday in the border city of Reynosa.

Early Thursday morning, a string of threats were tweeted on the #reynosafollow hashtag from the @Miut3 account, along with what appeared to be pictures of her before and after her murder.

“Friends and family, my real name is Maria Del Rosario Fuentes Rubio, I’m a doctor and today, my life has come to an end.”

Another tweet read:

“I can only tell you to not make the same mistake I did, it doesn’t benefit you, quite the opposite as I realize today.”

Mexico has become one of the deadliest countries for journalists in recent years. The state of Tamaulipas is infamous now as a place where almost total censorship reigns under organized crime and reporters risk kidnapping and death.

Since 2010, ordinary citizens using Twitter, Facebook and other social media have tried to fill the vacuum left by traditional media. Many Reynosa residents rely on #reynosafollow to warn others of gun battles, narco blockades and other dangers in their city. They take great pains to hide their identities online. Defying the censorship can mean being killed or kidnapped.

@Miut3 was well known among #reynosafollow users and posted on a daily basis, says Sergio Chapa, interactive manager with the Harlingen TV station KGBT, who was one of the first to write about Fuentes’ alleged murder.

“It’s created a great amount of fear,” Chapa says. Reynosa’s online users worry that if the killers have Fuentes’ cell phone they’ll have their contact information as well. “Reynosafollow users are ditching their phones, changing phone numbers and doing other things to try and protect themselves.”

After the threatening posts, the @Miut3 account was deactivated by Twitter. On Thursday afternoon, the Tamaulipas attorney general’s office opened an investigation into Fuentes’ kidnapping and murder. But in a country where 98 percent of murders remain unsolved, the motives behind her killing may never be revealed and her killers never brought to justice. Because of the anonymity of the online community in Reynosa and extreme distrust of corrupt authorities in Tamaulipas, it’s difficult even to verify the simplest details of the case—like whether @Miut3 really was a doctor named Maria del Rosario Fuentes Rubio.

Chapa says one of the original leaders of the #reynosafollow hashtag who has been investigating the death is reasonably confident that @Miut3 was a doctor, but that her death had more to do with her day job than her online reporting. Chapa says his #reynosafollow source was told that Fuentes had been unable to save a young boy who’d been brought into her clinic. After that, a member of the child’s family sent men to kidnap her.

Later, according to Chapa’s source, the cartel members discovered Fuentes’ online identity and took the opportunity to intimidate other users online.

This isn’t the first time that social media users in Tamaulipas have been threatened or killed. Last year, a video on YouTube showed what appeared to be the execution of a contributor to the Valor Por Tamaulipas Facebook page, a popular place for residents to report crimes and corruption. In 2011, four social media users were murdered in Nuevo Laredo. Messages were left with their bodies threatening to kill others who reported crimes over social media.

One of the last messages from the @Miut3 account sent a chilling message to other well known online users in the #reynosafollow community:

“I found death and got nothing out of it. @Bandolera7, @civilarmado_mx and @ValorTamaulipas, death is closer to us than you think.”

After a second nurse from Texas Presbyterian Health Hospital in Dallas was diagnosed with Ebola on Wednesday, a national union said nurses are afraid and not receiving proper training or equipment to deal with the deadly virus.

Deborah Burger, a registered nurse and co-president of National Nurses United, said the Ebola diagnoses of the two nurses in Dallas were “truly heartbreaking, outrageous and totally preventable. We want to make sure it never happens again.”

Burger and at least 11,500 nurses across the nation, and as far away as Spain, participated in the press conference call Wednesday, and called for better training, equipment and resources to treat Ebola patients. In a letter sent to the White House on Wednesday, they asked President Obama to “invoke his executive authority” to order all U.S. hospitals to meet the highest “uniform, national standards and protocols” in order to “safely protect patients, all healthcare workers and the public.”

“We don’t have a national integrated health system,” Burger said during the press call. “We have a series of private corporate hospitals each responding in their own way. “

Several U.S. nurses said their hospitals were unprepared and that they had no protective equipment or training to deal with an Ebola patient, or any patient with a highly infectious disease.

El Paso nurse Yadira Cabrera said she and her coworkers received a 10-minute training, and nothing more. Cabrera did not name the hospital where she worked. “We need to get beyond business as usual,” she said. “Preparation is not a colored flyer or a number to call at [the Centers for Disease Control]. As RNs we need to be educated from triage to waste disposal.”

On Tuesday, nurses at Texas Presbyterian Health Hospital reached out to the union because they felt they were being blamed for the spread of the infectious disease. The nurses in that hospital were very angry, and they decided to contact us,” National Nurses United Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro told CNN Tuesday. The nurses are worried conditions at the hospital “may lead to infection of other nurses and patients,” Burger said.

The nurses, who are remaining anonymous for fear of retaliation, related a number of troubling accusations to the union about how the hospital treated Thomas Eric Duncan, the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States. “Mr. Duncan was left in an area where other patients were present,” Burger said. “The nurses wore generic gowns with three pairs of gloves with no taping and surgical masks.”

The gowns exposed their legs from the knees down and their necks. When the nurses complained, they were told to use medical tape and “wrap it around their necks,” according to Burger. “The nurses had to interact with Mr. Duncan with whatever protective equipment was available. … There was no protocol,” she said. Duncan was extremely ill with projectile vomiting and diarrhea, which the nurses had to clean up. “There was no one to pick up the hazardous waste as it piled up to the ceiling,” she said.

The nurses also had to continue treating other patients in the hospital. Those patients were later kept in isolation for one day, then moved to another section with other patients.

The hospital and the Centers for Disease Control received more criticism Wednesday as news spread that the second nurse diagnosed with Ebola, Amber Vinson, had been on a flight from Cleveland to Dallas the day before she showed symptoms of the disease.

By speaking out, nurses are not “fear mongering,“ Burger said. What they are advocating for is “the highest standards to eradicate the disease.” The U.S. should be setting an example on how to contain and eradicate ebola, she said. ”If I was writing for the newspapers I would say, ‘We need help.’”

Because of the government’s failure to reform immigration laws, faith leaders said Wednesday in a press call with media that they are building a new nationwide sanctuary movement and urging churches across the country to offer shelter to immigrants facing deportation.

The rebirth of the sanctuary movement began in Arizona in May when 36-year-old Daniel Neyoy Ruiz, who was born in Mexico, sought refuge in the Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson. After nearly a month of living in the church, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials granted Neyoy Ruiz a one-year reprieve from deportation.

Currently, Rosa Robles Loreto, a mother of two young boys, is living at the Tucson church trying to fight her deportation to Mexico. Robles said she has lived in Tucson for the last 15 years. “My goal is to stay with my husband and children because they need me,” she said in the press call today. “My struggle goes further than from my immediate family, and it is a call and a national petition so that others can also have hope and establish their lives here, where we have already lived for so long.”

Arizona, specifically Tucson, was the birthplace of the sanctuary movement in the 1980s when thousands of Central Americans fleeing civil wars sought asylum in the United States. Many of the refugees were detained in prisons then deported to their war-torn countries where the U.S. was involved in providing funding and weapons to governments and forces viewed as anti-communist. The founding of the movement is credited in part to Rev. John Fife, minister at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson. Fife spurred other religious leaders to defy federal immigration laws and offer sanctuary to refugees at churches, spurring a powerful resistance movement that spread to Texas and other states.

In the press call Wednesday, faith leaders said the violence many immigrants are facing back home is just as dire as it was more than 30 years ago. They said the current movement is rapidly growing, from two churches in Arizona to 24 congregations promising sanctuary and another 60 faith-based groups offering support.

Rev. Noel Andersen, grassroots coordinator with Church World Service, a faith-based humanitarian agency, said faith leaders are reaching out to Texas congregations to join the movement but none have accepted yet. “We don’t have anyone in Texas but that could change in the coming weeks,” he said.

Rev. Alison Harrington of Southside Presbyterian said the deportations are destroying families across the country. Each day, the U.S. government deports at least 1,000 people, according to government statistics. “In Arizona we have witnessed again and again the destruction of families through inhumane deportation practices. Responding to the commands of our faith to love our neighbors, congregations throughout the state are declaring sanctuary for undocumented individuals like Rosa Robles Loreto who have final orders of deportation.”

Congressman Raul Grijalva, a Democrat from Tucson, blamed elected officials for failing to act on comprehensive immigration reform. “The system has to be fixed,” he said. “There’s been nothing but cowardice on the part of House leadership who won’t even allow a vote on the Senate bill that while flawed deserves a vote.” Grijalva also blamed President Obama for delaying his executive action on immigration until after the election. “It was the wrong move,” he said. “The sanctuary movement is a response to the lack of action. It is a response to the humanity of the issue. And I think it is going to be a cornerstone in pushing the decency of the American people to demand of its elected officials to do something.”

Faith leaders who took part in the announcement included: Rabbi Linda Holtzman of the New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia, Rev. Julian DeShazier of University Church Chicago, Rev. Alison Harrington of Southside Presbyterian Church, Rev. Gradye Parsons, the highest elected official in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A as well as Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona’s 3rd District.

The group said that sanctuary is currently being provided to immigrants in Phoenix, Tucson, Chicago and Portland. Churches in the following cities are providing support: Boston, Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, New York, Oakland, Portland, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Seattle and Tucson.

The Texas National Guard has deployed a team to Brooks County to conduct search and rescue operations for migrants lost in the brush.

Law enforcement has recovered more than 400 bodies since 2009 in the rural county 60 miles north of the Texas-Mexico border. Every year, thousands of migrants try to circumvent a Border Patrol checkpoint in Brooks County by walking through rugged, isolated ranchland. Many die during the journey from heat exposure and thirst.

The deployment is a separate operation from the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Operation Strong Safety and the National Guard soldiers deployed by Gov. Perry to the border, according to a DPS press release. Specially trained teams of 20 to 25 guardsmen will conduct search and rescue missions in the county when requested by the Brooks County Sheriff’s office. The National Guard didn’t say how long the deployment to Brooks County would last.

Eddie Canales, director of the South Texas Human Rights Center in Brooks County, said the guard deployment could save lives. “We welcome any assistance in search and rescue in Brooks County,” he says.“We’re very interested at the center in seeing how this works, and how they work with Border Patrol and the sheriff’s office.”

Canales believes the guard will mostly focus on 9-1-1 distress calls from the brush, which are received by the sheriff’s office. In the past, the Border Patrol has been criticized for taking two hours or longer to respond to distress calls, or in some cases not responding at all.

Another area where they need help is with missing persons reports, Canales says. The center received a dozen phone calls from relatives of missing migrants over the summer. But callers often have so little information about where their loved one went missing or fell ill in the county that it’s difficult—if not impossible—for law enforcement to locate them.

“I just received a call for someone who disappeared on the 18th of September,” he says. “But the only information we have about where he went missing is that it was near the checkpoint.”

Canales says families need help but he’s unsure what the National Guard search and rescue team can do in these cases with so little information. “What is the process to request a search and rescue deployment?” he asks. “I’m exploring all of the avenues right now, hoping they can help.”

As part of his continuing get-tough-on-the-border campaign, Gov. Rick Perry addressed several dozen National Guard soldiers today in a sweltering hangar at the Camp Swift training facility near Bastrop. While he provided little in the way of information on his deployment of troops to the Rio Grande Valley, he did provide some striking visuals for his presidential bid.

The press had been invited to attend presumably to learn more about Perry’s deployment of the National Guard to the border. But as we all stood fanning ourselves in a metal hangar in mid-August, the only new piece of information we gleaned was that 2,200 guardsmen have volunteered for the deployment and will be sent in rotation—1,000 soldiers at a time. There was no talk about rules of engagement, or what exactly the troops will be doing, or how long they will be on the border. When asked when they might be deployed, Perry said he didn’t want to tip the cartels off.

We did learn about the federal government’s inability to secure the border and how the good people of Iowa and South Carolina, not just Texas, are scarred by illegal immigration. Incidentally Iowa and South Carolina are key presidential primary states that Perry has been barnstorming in the past few weeks, always a few steps behind the competition Sen. Ted Cruz.

Lately, Perry’s been enjoying a political boost from the “border crisis” and it’s no secret he’s considering a 2016 presidential bid. Since he announced last month that he’d send 1,000 National Guard soldiers to the border, the governor has received standing ovations from some GOP voters. Never mind that the influx of Central American children and families, which constitute the recent “border crisis,” are mostly presenting themselves to immigration officials and asking for asylum.

It was clear Wednesday that Perry—with such a bump in the polls—couldn’t pass up another photo op with the National Guard. And even better, have it in a controlled setting on a military facility in Bastrop far from the border where he might face protesters who don’t want their communities turned into a war zone.

What Perry wanted the press to know today is that he’s protecting the nation from the “tentacles” of “narco terrorists.” The cost to Texas taxpayers isn’t an issue, he said, “because Texans support a secure border.” In a not-so-curious stroke of timing, Perry also released a web ad last week, paid for by his new RickPAC. The ad is all about border security and features numerous talking heads from Fox News, making Perry look like the last line of defense from the horde of brown invaders from south of the border.

After the press conference, the media were herded on to buses and taken to a firing range to watch Gov. Perry look through the viewfinder of what appeared to be a large box draped in camouflage. We were told by a National Guard public information officer that the contraption provides “specialized training for enhanced optics.” It was the only glimpse we were allowed into what the soldiers will be doing on the border. Regardless, the “border crisis” has provided plenty of “enhanced optics” for Perry’s presidential ambitions.

The Republican leadership in the House suffered an embarrassing setback Thursday after being unable to muster enough votes to pass a $659 million emergency supplemental spending bill for the influx of unaccompanied children from Central America. Now, Republican leaders say they’ll try again Friday to pass the spending bill.

Capitol Hill reporters described the scene at the Capitol as “embarrassing” and “chaotic” as Republican leaders pulled the bill down then met in the basement in a desperate attempt to muster votes before they adjourn for five weeks.

Republican leaders loaded the bill with plenty of red meat to appeal to the most extreme faction of their party. The measure guts a 2008 anti-trafficking law that protects vulnerable Central American children from being immediately deported. Leadership also offered a bill to stop the expansion of the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which defers deportation for young undocumented immigrants, also know as Dreamers. The sentiment of Republicans seems to be “deport ‘em all” but this wasn’t enough to appease the party’s most conservative House Republicans, who had a tea party in Sen. Ted Cruz’s office yesterday. Cruz wants to see DACA completely defunded.

Kevin Appleby, director of migration policy for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called the congressional debacle a “sad day for America” during a press conference Thursday for reporters.

“Instead of choosing immigration reform the House has decided to pass bills that will deport vulnerable children—both those who have recently arrived and those who have lived among us for years. This is a defining moment in the national debate. The real issue here is ‘who we are as Americans?’ As leaders in human rights protections we often instruct other nations to receive refugees or protect human rights of people, yet we see child refugees on our own border and we respond in an inhumane way.”