On Immigration, Detention, and Asylum-Seeking Thanks to all who attended the Wednesday evening Forum on October 21: “Detention 101” with Peggy Keischnick. Detention 101 is a program sponsored by Seacoast Interfaith Sanctuary Coalition (SISC), an organization concerned with issues of immigration and—most especially—getting just and fair treatment for people seeking asylum in the States. As a follow-up to that presentation, week by week I’ll submit a fact on the present situation of immigration, detention, and asylum-seeking in the Seacoast area. Holy Trinity has an outstanding reputation for supporting immigration, from hosting Vietnamese and Thai folks after that war to supporting an immigrant family from Croatia to sharing its physical facility with a group of Indonesian friends. If you want to keep these kinds of effort alive, SISC is a wonderful way to help. For more information, call Dot Kasik.
This week’s Bite Size Information on Immigrant Detention: “Did you know that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is currently detaining over 50,000 people on any given day? This is a big jump from 1994 when we detained an average of 6,800 people. Policy changes across both Democratic and Republican administrations have impacted these numbers. In 1996 two policies introduced had a particularly large impact: The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penality Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. “