Category: News

This short yet powerful report sheds light on the realities faced by workers under the H‑2A visa program—the treatment they receive and the complex challenges they navigate.

Worth a watch. Something to sit with.

The Justice and Peace Advocacy Center (JPAC) is deeply honored to have received a Recognition Award from the State of Michigan during Latino Legislative Advocacy Day 2025 at the Capitol.

This powerful day was made possible through the leadership of the Hispanic/Latino Commission of Michigan, Mi Poder, Somos Votantes, and the Michigan Legislative Latino Caucus — who united over 130 advocates and more than 12 Latino-led organizations from across the state.

Together, we raised our voices for immigration justice, education equity, healthcare access, and so much more.

We accept this recognition with gratitude — not only as an organization, but on behalf of the families, youth, elders, and communities we serve and walk alongside in the journey toward justice and peace.

To everyone who shows up, speaks out, and organizes for lasting change: this honor belongs to you, too.

On November 11, 2023, a remarkable event unfolded as 230 attendees from 13 parishes across the Diocese gathered for the “Assembly for Human Dignity.” Hosted with unwavering support from Bishop Walsh and attended by three priests and three Parish Life Directors, this assembly surpassed all of our expectation.

One of the most uplifting moments of the event was witnessing elected officials from both sides of the aisle pledge their support to bring resources to our region with a particular focus on supporting a pilot project for mental health services tailored to Spanish speakers in Traverse City and surrounding areas. We are pleased to report that Sen. John Damoose, Rep. Betsy Coffia, and Rep. John Roth, all in attendance, pledged their support for the initiative. Their commitment marks a significant step forward in our collective efforts to address critical issues and enact positive change.

With the momentum gained from the Assembly for Human Dignity, we are emboldened in our mission to make a meaningful difference in our community.

Celebrando la unidad y el progreso: Aspectos destacados de la Asamblea por la Dignidad Humana

El 11 de noviembre de 2023, la “Asamblea por la Dignidad Humana” reunió a 230 participantes de 13 parroquias para abordar cuestiones regionales urgentes. Con el apoyo del Obispo Walsh, la Asamblea alentó las discusiones sobre asuntos críticos como la atención de salud mental, el apoyo de personas de habla hispana, la vivienda asequible y las licencias de conducir para inmigrantes. El éxito de la Asamblea fortalece aún más el compromiso de la comunidad con un cambio positivo.

Un evento destacado incluyó a funcionarios electos que prometieron apoyo bipartidista para un proyecto piloto enfocado en servicios de salud mental en español en Traverse City. El Senador John Damoose, la Diputada Betsy Coffia y el Diputado John Roth se comprometieron a abordar temas regionales críticos, alentando aún más la dedicación de la comunidad a un cambio significativo. Próximamente se actualizarán los progresos realizados.

Con el impulso ganado por la Asamblea por la Dignidad Humana, estamos empoderados en nuestra misión de marcar una diferencia significativa en nuestra comunidad. Estén atentos a las actualizaciones sobre nuestro progreso.

In Captive Audience: How Companies Make Millions Charging Prisoners to Send an Email, WIRED Magazine explores how private prisons profit from the simple act of communication with loved ones.

ON THE SURFACE, e-messaging seems like an easy and efficient way for families to keep in touch—a quicker 21st century version of pen-and-paper mail. Companies like JPay cover the price of installing the systems; prisons pay nothing. And, the argument goes, closer family connections are a win-win for prisons and inmates. “Maintaining a positive network of support is really important to their future success when they rejoin the community,” says Holly Kramer, a communications representative for the Michigan Department of Corrections, which has contracted with JPay since February 2009. “Electronic messaging can help facilitate that.”

In the outside world there are numerous companies offering free email accounts—Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Mail.com—but inside prisons companies charge a fee, a token JPay calls a “stamp,” to send each message. Each “stamp” covers only one page of writing. Want to send photos of a nephew’s graduation, a niece’s prom dress or a new baby? Each picture costs an additional stamp. A short video clip? That’ll be three stamps. With the postal service, stamp prices are fixed, but JPay’s stamp prices fluctuate. Shortly before Mother’s Day, for instance, a stamp cost 35 cents; the price rose to 47 cents the following week. For a few hundred dollars, prisoners can skip kiosk lines by buying a tablet—a relatively expensive purchase that tends to lock them into JPay’s services.

Inside prisons, e-messaging companies are quietly building a money-making machine virtually unhindered by competition—a monopoly that would be intolerable in the outside world. It’s based in a simple formula: Whatever it costs to send a message, prisoners and their loved ones will find a way to pay it. And, the more ways prisoners are cut off from communicating with their families, the better it is for business. Which means that stamp by stamp, companies like JPay—and the prisons that accept a commission with each message— are profiting from isolation of one of the most vulnerable groups in the country. And, with prisoners typically earning 20 cents to 95 cents an hour in jobs behind bars, the cost of keeping in touch most likely falls to family members and friends.

This year, Jones decided against choosing from the 24 electronic birthday card designs that JPay offers. Instead, she waited for her son to call, paying 21 cents a minute to JPay’s parent company Securus, which provides phone services to Louisiana’s prisons. “I just talked to him on the phone and cried,” she says.

Read on for much more.

WMUK reports that Kalamazoo County Won’t Detain Immigrants for ICE, joining Ingham and Wayne counties in officially declining to detain undocumented immigrants on behalf of the federal government.

On Wednesday, Kalamazoo county commissioners passed a resolution against the separation of immigrant families, and against putting county resources toward federal immigration policy enforcement. An amendment made shortly before the vote effectively stops the county from granting so-called ICE detainers. Those are requests from federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement for local police and sheriffs to hold a person who’s been arrested, even when they’re due for release.

Attorney Jessica Glynn spoke to the board before the vote, and before the amendment was added that targets ICE detainers. She said the threat of detention discourages victims of domestic violence and human trafficking from coming forward.

“These policies of cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the county level really undermine the justice system,” she said.

Kalamazoo County Sheriff Rick Fuller also spoke before the vote. Fuller told the board that his department will continue to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies on criminal investigations. But the sheriff told the board he was “comfortable” with the amendment against detention requests.

“We’ve been working on a written directive for the sheriff’s office for a good amount of time here. This is in line with what we’re working on,” he said.

Read on for more.

The article Women Migrants Are Fleeing Countries The U.S. Helped Decimate provides a much-needed look at how the violence driving people to seek shelter in the U.S. has its roots in American foreign policy. It says in part:

Since the day Donald Trump began his run for the presidential office, he has promoted the idea that people who flee to the U.S. are bringing their problems here.

But as his administration takes ruthless steps to discourage asylum-seekers, experts and advocates are working to remind Americans — and the world — that some of the violence driving people to seek shelter in the U.S. has its roots in American foreign policy.

Take domestic violence. Today, a large proportion of people trying to enter the U.S. across the Mexican border are Central American women and children fleeing abusive family members. In June, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the U.S. would no longer recognize domestic violence as a valid basis for an asylum claim, saying, “the asylum statute does not provide redress for all misfortune.”

But domestic violence in Central America is not the product of random misfortune, advocates for these asylum-seekers say. The region’s civil wars, which became bigger and more brutal because of U.S. intervention, created a generation of abusers and decimated the institutions that ought to have kept survivors safe.

or many decades, but particularly in the 1980s, the United States funneled billions of dollars in military aid to authoritarian Central American governments with the stated goal of combating communism. The funding, equipment and training transformed civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador into conflicts of exceptional brutality. Government forces, sometimes trained by the United States, often exterminated whole villages. In El Salvador, a country of a few million people, 75,000 people died; roughly a fifth of the population fled. In Guatemala, a truth commission would later blame the degree of brutality on training military officers received at the U.S.-run School of the Americas…

Read on for much more.

In Lawsuit Says Migrants Subjected To Dirty Detention Facilities, Bad Food And Water, NPR reports:

Migrants detained in recent months at the U.S.-Mexico border describe being held in Customs and Border Protection facilities that are unsanitary and overcrowded, receiving largely inedible food and being forced to drink foul-smelling drinking water.

Documents filed Monday in U.S. District Court in California and viewed by NPR late Tuesday contain interviews with some 200 individuals detained under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, many of whom related poor conditions at the centers.

The documents are part of a long-running lawsuit that resulted in the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement. They were filed on the migrants’ behalf by the Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law, which is demanding that the government meet minimum standard conditions as laid out in the Flores agreement. The Department of Justice could not immediately be reached for comment.

The documents contain the stories of migrants arriving mainly from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who were detained at various locations at different times, including one facility referred to by several interviewees as the “Dog House” or “Dog Pound,” and another as the “Ice House.” Last names of detained interviewees have been redacted.

“On the second or third day there, my daughter soiled herself … I asked if I could clean her because her underwear [was] soiled,” Fatima said. “The guards said, ‘No.’ … She remained in her dirty underwear until we arrived at Dilley [Texas] several days later.”

Several of the interviewees complained about the lack of, or poor quality of, drinking water and many others said they were offered sandwiches that were frozen solid, appeared to be spoiled or that they otherwise found inedible.

“[T]he worst thing was the water,” said Delmis V. of Honduras, the mother of a two-year-old boy. “I had to plug my nose to be able to drink it. It came out of the faucet and smelled terrible.”

Mayra S., the mother of children aged 2 and 9 years, said she “begged for water” for her daughter but was refused. “My daughter started crying. The officers told me to shut up.”

Iris A. was one of several who complained about getting “frozen” food that she said “smelled bad” and was “not fit for consumption.” Another said lettuce was “black.”

Others complained about sleeping in cold rooms or of several people being jammed into a small room without enough mattresses.

Read on for more and be sure to share what is being done in our name with everyone you know.