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1. New NY Sen. under fire for positions
2. NC co. sheriff defends program
1. Reception center receives facelift
4. Illegal marks one year in sanctuary
5. Suspect deported before trial

1.
Gillibrand’s Immigration Views Draw Fire
By Kirk Semple
The New York Times, January 27, 2009

During her one term in the House of Representatives, from a largely rural, traditionally Republican district, Kirsten E. Gillibrand was on safe political ground adopting a tough stance against illegal immigration.

Ms. Gillibrand, a Democrat, opposed any sort of amnesty for illegal immigrants, supported deputizing local law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration laws, spoke out against Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s proposal to allow illegal immigrants to have driver’s licenses and sought to make English the official language of the United States.

But since her appointment by Gov. David A. Paterson last week to fill the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ms. Gillibrand has found herself besieged by immigrant advocates and Democratic colleagues who have cast her as out of step with a majority of the state, with its big cities and sprawling immigrant enclaves.

Immediately following the announcement, liberal blogs and New York’s ethnic media lit up with complaints about Ms. Gillibrand’s positions. A group of Hispanic state lawmakers have threatened to support a primary challenger to Ms. Gillibrand, who must stand for election next year. And El Diario La Prensa, the Spanish-language daily, described her as “a disappointing choice.”

“If Gov. David Paterson wanted to deliver a slap to immigrant New Yorkers, he effectively did so with his appointment yesterday of Representative Kirsten Gillibrand,” El Diario said in an editorial on Saturday.

The flap over Ms. Gillibrand’s immigration record underscores the political challenges she faces as she broadens her political constituency from an overwhelmingly white district along New York’s eastern fringe to the entire state. Census data show that about 21 percent of the state’s population and 36 percent of New York City’s residents were born overseas, said Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College.

Gun-control advocates, including Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a Democrat from Nassau County, have also taken sharp issue with Ms. Gillibrand’s opposition to some gun control measures, with Ms. McCarthy threatening to run against her.

Ms. Gillibrand, who was sworn in as senator on Tuesday, has tried to allay some of the concerns, reaching out to Hispanic elected officials and pledging to reconsider some of her positions. Outside a reception in Washington following her swearing-in ceremony, she acknowledged that she had an obligation to revisit some of these questions as she now “represents the whole state.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/us/politics/28immigration.html

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2.
Sheriff: Deputies not working for immigration
By Stanley B. Chambers, Eric Ferreri and Eric Ferreri
The Chapel Hill News (NC), January 28, 2009

Hillsborough, NC -- Detention officers using a new federal fingerprinting database are not acting as immigration agents, but they are participating in a system they will soon have no choice but to use, Orange County Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass told the Orange County commissioners last Thursday.

Still, the commissioners are wary of the program, fearing it would violate a 2007 county resolution stating that local officers cannot enforce immigration laws. They plan to discuss the program further with Pendergrass and the county attorney.

Orange, Duplin and New Hanover counties have participated in the Secure Communities program since January. All North Carolina counties will use the system by the end of the year, Pendergrass said.

The software allows jailers to confirm a suspect's identity by placing his fingerprints in a database that pulls information from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Under this system, a search would take minutes instead of days.

It also can identify unauthorized immigrants and alert U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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http://www.chapelhillnews.com/news/story/38787.html

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3.
History of Chinese immigration etched into the walls on San Francisco Bay's Angel Island
By Terence Chea
The Associated Press, January 27, 2009

Angel Island State Park, CA (AP) -- The Angel Island Immigration Station, once known as the "Ellis Island of the West," is reopening after a multimillion-dollar restoration of the historical landmark aimed at showing visitors a chapter of American history that many would rather forget.

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants, mostly from Asia, were detained on the largest island in San Francisco Bay for days, weeks and sometimes months in the three decades before World War II.

They were housed in crowded, dingy barracks while undergoing humiliating medical exams and grueling interrogations administered by officials intent on upholding federal laws restricting immigration from China and elsewhere.

"Angel Island is a commentary on the kind of racist thinking that really impacted how people from Asia were treated," said Eddie Wong, executive director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation. "To correct those errors for other people, not just Asians, it's important to know that history."

Nearly seven decades after it closed, the station is set to reopen in mid-February following completion of the first phase of a $60 million restoration project that was started in 2005. The initial work has focused on restoring the barracks, where many immigrants carved poems into the wooden walls.

The station was built on Angel Island, a short boat ride from San Francisco, to help enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and other laws aimed at curbing immigration at a time when Americans were worried about immigrants stealing jobs and depressing wages.

From 1910 to 1940, about 1 million immigrants from some 90 countries — including an estimated 175,000 from China — were processed at Angel Island.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-ellis-island-west,1,...

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4.
Chicago immigration activist marks year in church
By Sophia Tareen
The Associated Press, January 27, 2009

Chicago -- Flor Crisostomo has quietly spent the last year inside a Chicago church writing letters, meeting with school groups and organizing political demonstrations toward her goal of U.S. Immigration reform.

The illegal immigrant has defied a deportation order to her native Mexico and lived at Adalberto United Methodist Church, hoping to draw attention to Immigration reform at a time when the economy and election of a new U.S. president have taken center stage.

"We have to have a plan," she told The Associated Press late Tuesday, the eve of her one-year anniversary at the church. "My people need a voice."

Unlike her predecessor at the church, the 29-year-old Crisostomo said she has no immediate plans to leave. Immigration activist Elvira Arellano announced the end of her sanctuary at the same church in 2007 on her one-year anniversary. She was arrested and deported to Mexico shortly after leaving.

Crisostomo, who has also pushed for a renegotiation of North American Free Trade Agreement, said her work isn't done and she wants President Barack Obama to make good on campaign promises for reform. She wrote an open letter to Obama and planned to read it Wednesday at a news conference at the church.

"No one wants to end the system of undocumented labor more than the undocumented. That system left me unprotected from exploitation as a worker and unable to visit my children in Mexico. With legalization, we can also have employment verification and enforcement without destroying the lives of families and the economy of the Latino community," she wrote, according to a copy of the letter sent to The Associated Press.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-immigrationactivi,0,2012368...

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5.
Deportation saves accused rapist from trial
By John P. Kelly
The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, MA), January 28, 2009

Dedham, MA -- The courtroom fell quiet Tuesday as a young rape victim’s story of stolen innocence and emotional healing was read aloud.

Shackled and listening, the man who had held her down was sentenced to prison for at least two years.

But someone was missing from the courtroom.

The accused rapist.

Kamil Ostrowski was indicted in 2007 – while jailed for a different crime – on a charge he had raped the girl in Quincy when she was 14. But in April, federal immigration officials deported the 22-year-old to Poland before he could be tried.

The Norfolk County District Attorney’s office said immigration officials never notified them that Ostrowski faced deportation. But spokesman David Traub acknowledged Tuesday that prosecutors had learned Ostrowski was in federal custody but took no steps to prevent the accused rapist from being deported.

The office was told of the immigration matter by Ostrowski’s defense attorney, James Corbo. In future cases, Traub said, prosecutors may now decide to “act on informal information” of that sort.

“It was always the intention of this office to bring both co-defendants to trial,” Traub said.

Michael Sullivan, the 21-year-old accomplice, was sentenced to a state prison term of two to three years for pinning the girl to his bed a few days before Christmas 2003.

But for Ostrowski, who the girl said raped her, the communication breakdown may have resulted in a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Similar mix-ups between state prosecutors and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have occurred before.
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http://www.patriotledger.com/news/x357829931/Deportation-saves-accused-r...