Obama could be planning work around on immigration
According to a leaked internal memo from the Department of Homeland Security, the Obama Administration has been working on plans to bypass the federal court injunction issued in June, which suspended the president’s November 2014 immigration initiative. The DHS memo details four separate plans of varying scope, from granting EADs to all who are physically present in the United States to granting them only to individuals who are in “certain lawful nonimmigrant status” such as refugees, and includes “pros” and “cons” for each. The memo shows that rather than waiting for the court’s decision, the administration is aggressively planning how to implement reform.
Hunger strike in Texas immigrant detention center
Twenty-seven detainees began a hunger strike Oct. 28 at the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas, according to Grassroots Leadership, an organization that advocates ending for-profit prisons. The detainees at the for-profit women’s-only center are demanding immediate release. Since Grassroots first learned of the hunger strike, the number of women participating has mushroomed into an estimated 500. Several of the women said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is pressuring them to eat. ICE officials denied the hunger strike: “Currently, no one … was identified as being on a hunger strike or refusing to eat. ICE takes the health, safety, and welfare of those in our care very seriously and we continue to monitor the situation.”
Navy names ship after fallen Latino Marine
The U.S. Navy has christened its newest destroyer battleship the USS Rafael Peralta, in honor of Sgt. Rafael Peralta who was killed in Fallujah, Iraq on Nov. 15 2004. Peralta, who is believed to be the first Mexican-born serviceman to have a warship named for him, was credited for falling on a live grenade to save his fellow soldiers.
Ranking engineer leaves Twitter because of diversity concerns
Leslie Miley, who had been Twitter’s lone black engineer in a leadership position, announced his departure from the company, criticizing the way it handles diversity issues. In a recent blog post Miley recounted that he was told, “Diversity is important, but we won’t lower the bar.” According to its latest diversity report Twitter’s workforce is 13 percent female, 3 percent Latino and 1 percent African American. Miley wrote that Twitter’s diversity problem is due to its reliance on sourcing talent from only a few select places, and that it has caused a “type of group think to dominate.”
Police allegedly forging alliance with Facebook
News of an alleged partnership between law enforcement and Facebook surfaced at the Oct. 24-27 International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Philadelphia. Independent journalist Kenneth Lipp, who attended the conference, reported that a senior officer from the Chicago Police Department revealed that the CPD was working with Facebook’s security chief to block users who post “criminal content” from the site by account and device. There is concern that this tactic can be deployed to prevent activists from using the social media platform to organize.