Immigrant mother: Time at detention center depresses kids

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Immigrant children at a federal detention facility in Texas are acting depressed after months of regimentation and confinement, said a Honduran mother who was recently released with her 2-year-old son.

Kenia Galeano, 26, said at a small protest Tuesday in front of a downtown cathedral that the children are suffering after long periods of being held at the 500-bed facility in Karnes City.

U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement authorities, however, have said in the past that the facility provides a number of play and schooling areas where children and residents can move about freely. ICE officials said they would look into questions from The Associated Press about the emotional state of the children at Karnes, but could not provide a response Tuesday.

Tens of thousands of Central American migrants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border last summer, most of them mothers with children and unaccompanied minors.

Galeano, who entered the country illegally last November and was detained for more than five months, said the children are unaccustomed to being restricted to the facility and have trouble with the more rigid eating and schooling schedules. She said the food, such as reheated vegetables and chicken mixed with pineapple and oranges, is also foreign to them.

Galeano said her former roommate, Delmy Piñeda Cruz, has been detained for nearly eight months with her 11-year-old son who now refuses to go to school and hides under the covers, crying that he wants to leave.

“The kids feel like they are in a prison,” she said. “And they suffer.”

Last September, ICE provided a tour of the facility, which is run by national prison operator GEO Group. Immigrant children were seen playing kickball and sitting in classrooms as they were read stories in Spanish. Officials have defended the facility before, noting that the children get daily schooling and outside play time and that residents are free to use the Internet, flat-screen televisions and a hair salon — all while their cases are processed through the courts.

Despite these amenities, Galeano was among more than two dozen women who nearly two weeks ago ended a five-day hunger strike at the Karnes Family Residential Center, southeast of San Antonio, which houses mostly women and children from Central America who crossed illegally and are now seeking asylum.

Last February, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against ICE’s policy of detaining the mothers and children without bond. Since then, immigration attorneys say the women have been receiving bonds of $7,500 to $15,000, which they cannot afford. Also, mothers known to have previously entered the country illegally are not issued bonds.

Some 15 to 20 mothers have been detained at the facility longer than five months and two have been there at least 10 months, said Mohammad Abdollahi, advocacy director at the San Antonio-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES. He said 10 women have begun a second protest in the facility, refusing any scheduled activities and eating one meal a day to bring attention to their prolonged detainment.

ICE will monitor residents at Karnes to verify that they are eating meals and snacks provided to ensure their welfare, spokeswoman Nina Pruneda said in a statement.

“ICE fully respects the rights of all people to voice their opinion without interference, and all detainees, including those in family residential facilities such as Karnes, are permitted to do so,” she said.

Source Article from http://news.yahoo.com/immigrant-mother-time-detention-center-depresses-kids-230353725.html
Immigrant mother: Time at detention center depresses kids
http://news.yahoo.com/immigrant-mother-time-detention-center-depresses-kids-230353725.html
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SAN ANTONIO — Immigrant children at a federal detention facility in Texas are acting depressed after months of regimentation and confinement, said a Honduran mother who was recently released with her 2-year-old son.

Kenia Galeano, 26, said at a small protest Tuesday in front of a downtown cathedral that the children are suffering after long periods of being held at the 500-bed facility in Karnes City.

U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement authorities, however, have said in the past that the facility provides a number of play and schooling areas where children and residents can move about freely. ICE officials said they would look into questions from The Associated Press about the emotional state of the children at Karnes, but could not provide a response Tuesday.

Tens of thousands of Central American migrants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border last summer, most of them mothers with children and unaccompanied minors.

Galeano, who entered the country illegally last November and was detained for more than five months, said the children are unaccustomed to being restricted to the facility and have trouble with the more rigid eating and schooling schedules. She said the food, such as reheated vegetables and chicken mixed with pineapple and oranges, is also foreign to them.

Galeano said her former roommate, Delmy Piñeda Cruz, has been detained for nearly eight months with her 11-year-old son who now refuses to go to school and hides under the covers, crying that he wants to leave.

“The kids feel like they are in a prison,” she said. “And they suffer.”

Last September, ICE provided a tour of the facility, which is run by national prison operator GEO Group. Immigrant children were seen playing kickball and sitting in classrooms as they were read stories in Spanish. Officials have defended the facility before, noting that the children get daily schooling and outside play time and that residents are free to use the Internet, flat-screen televisions and a hair salon — all while their cases are processed through the courts.

Despite these amenities, Galeano was among more than two dozen women who nearly two weeks ago ended a five-day hunger strike at the Karnes Family Residential Center, southeast of San Antonio, which houses mostly women and children from Central America who crossed illegally and are now seeking asylum.

Last February, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against ICE’s policy of detaining the mothers and children without bond. Since then, immigration attorneys say the women have been receiving bonds of $7,500 to $15,000, which they cannot afford. Also, mothers known to have previously entered the country illegally are not issued bonds.

Some 15 to 20 mothers have been detained at the facility longer than five months and two have been there at least 10 months, said Mohammad Abdollahi, advocacy director at the San Antonio-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES. He said 10 women have begun a second protest in the facility, refusing any scheduled activities and eating one meal a day to bring attention to their prolonged detainment.

ICE will monitor residents at Karnes to verify that they are eating meals and snacks provided to ensure their welfare, spokeswoman Nina Pruneda said in a statement.

“ICE fully respects the rights of all people to voice their opinion without interference, and all detainees, including those in family residential facilities such as Karnes, are permitted to do so,” she said.






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    Source Article from http://www.startribune.com/nation/299775101.html
    Immigrant mother says long confinement at Texas detention facility has left children depressed
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    Immigrant-Rights Activists In Seattle Claim Victory In Child Deportation Case

    A federal judge in Seattle has given immigrant advocates a victory. He is allowing a challenge to move forward dealing with the Obama Administration’s effort to fast-track deportation hearings for immigrant children.

    Source Article from http://www.npr.org/2015/04/14/399641322/immigrant-rights-activists-in-seattle-claim-victory-in-child-deportation-case?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=law
    Immigrant-Rights Activists In Seattle Claim Victory In Child Deportation Case
    http://www.npr.org/2015/04/14/399641322/immigrant-rights-activists-in-seattle-claim-victory-in-child-deportation-case?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=law
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    March to mark 5th anniversary of signing of immigration law

    Grant Ronnebeck was working at a Quick Trip store when an illegal immigrant shot and killed him. His family is speaking out and they are upset with ICE.

    Source Article from http://www.fox10phoenix.com/story/28801181/march-to-mark-5th-anniversary-of-signing-of-immigration-law
    March to mark 5th anniversary of signing of immigration law
    http://www.fox10phoenix.com/story/28801181/march-to-mark-5th-anniversary-of-signing-of-immigration-law
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    Tradition is more important than education in determining participation European immigrant women's role in the workforce

    This news release is available in Spanish.

    Through his latest research, Javier Polavieja, a professor Sociology in the Social Sciences Department who holds a UC3M- Santander Named Chair of (Cátedra de Excelencia), has shown how European women who emigrate to other countries within the same continent take the cultural norms of their home countries with them. Those norms are decisive when it comes to determining their work behavior.

    To reach this conclusion, the researcher compared the attitudes of over three thousand immigrant women from some twenty European countries with those of over forty thousand non-emigrant compatriots with similar characteristics. The study shows that immigrant women from the same country of origin tend to share values of traditionalism and religiosity regardless of the country they have settled in. Using this propensity, which is seen as a predictor of the women’s work behavior, Polavieja found that the negative impact of traditional values on female participation in the workforce proved to be much greater than what had previously been believed: its influence on the likelihood of a woman participating in the workforce is so strong that it is twice that of education.

    An innovative method for studying the impact of culture

    With this research, which was recently published in the journal American Sociological Review, Polavieja also offers a new way to respond to some of the great social science and economic questions: How does culture influence people’s behavior? This apparently simple question poses one of the most important methodological challenges facing the social sciences, explains Polavieja. In the words of the author, “the problem is that individuals’ values, tastes and preferences (their cultures) are determined by the social context they are immersed in, which in turn influences their opportunities and behavior as well. This makes it terribly difficult to separate the role of values, tastes and cultural preferences from social surroundings when human behavior is being explained.” Polavieja’s research proposes using the phenomenon of migration to separate the effect of culture from the effect of social surroundings, for which the study developed an innovative statistical method.

    This research was carried out using data from the European Social Survey. The survey measured the traditionalism and religiosity of over three thousand women from 23 European countries, including Turkey and the Ukraine, who are residents in 25 different European countries. The immigrant women’s attitudes and values were compared with over 40,000 non-emigrant European women who were interviewed in the home countries.

    The Spanish immigrants, among the least traditional in Europe

    According to the study, the women from Turkey, Portugal, Poland and Ireland are the most traditional of the European immigrant women, while the Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Spanish women were the least traditional. The degree of traditionalism was defined by noting the importance the women gave to following customs, norms and values transmitted through religion and the family. The degree of traditionalism decreased as the level of education increased in all of the groups that were studied. This cultural characteristic was associated with “strong gender norms in public and in private,” explains the researcher.

    The rate of participation in the workforce for the Spanish immigrant women (77%) was among the highest of the intra-European immigrants, clearly higher than the rates of the women from other countries in the southern part of the continent, such as Italy (60%) or Greece (53%). This figure was only higher in the cases of the women from Sweden (84%), Norway (82%) and Finland (80%) and it was significantly higher than the rates of the French immigrant women (62%), the German (61%) and the British and Irish (both at 59%). The Turkish immigrant women had the lowest rate of participation in the workforce (43%) of the 23 groups that were studied.

    The possible applications of the methodology used by Professor Polavieja for this research transcend the relationship between traditionalism and the labor market. He explains this himself when he states that the method that was developed can be used to study any type of cultural impact on human behavior, as long as it can be measured using surveys. This research is part of the Competition, Adaptation and Labor Market Achievement (CALMA) project, which is part of the sixth national program of the Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness’s Scientific Research Plan (Plan de Investigaciones Científicas del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad).

    ###


    Further Information:

    Polavieja, Javier G. 2015. “Capturing Culture: A New Method to Estimate Exogenous Cultural Effects Using Migrant Populations”. American Sociological Review Vol. 80(1) 166-191. http://asr.sagepub.com/content/80/1/166.abstract


    Source Article from http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/ciuo-tim041315.php
    Tradition is more important than education in determining participation European immigrant women's role in the workforce
    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/ciuo-tim041315.php
    http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=immigrant
    immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results
    immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results

    Tradition is more important than education in determining participation European immigrant women's role in the workforce

    This news release is available in Spanish.

    Through his latest research, Javier Polavieja, a professor Sociology in the Social Sciences Department who holds a UC3M- Santander Named Chair of (Cátedra de Excelencia), has shown how European women who emigrate to other countries within the same continent take the cultural norms of their home countries with them. Those norms are decisive when it comes to determining their work behavior.

    To reach this conclusion, the researcher compared the attitudes of over three thousand immigrant women from some twenty European countries with those of over forty thousand non-emigrant compatriots with similar characteristics. The study shows that immigrant women from the same country of origin tend to share values of traditionalism and religiosity regardless of the country they have settled in. Using this propensity, which is seen as a predictor of the women’s work behavior, Polavieja found that the negative impact of traditional values on female participation in the workforce proved to be much greater than what had previously been believed: its influence on the likelihood of a woman participating in the workforce is so strong that it is twice that of education.

    An innovative method for studying the impact of culture

    With this research, which was recently published in the journal American Sociological Review, Polavieja also offers a new way to respond to some of the great social science and economic questions: How does culture influence people’s behavior? This apparently simple question poses one of the most important methodological challenges facing the social sciences, explains Polavieja. In the words of the author, “the problem is that individuals’ values, tastes and preferences (their cultures) are determined by the social context they are immersed in, which in turn influences their opportunities and behavior as well. This makes it terribly difficult to separate the role of values, tastes and cultural preferences from social surroundings when human behavior is being explained.” Polavieja’s research proposes using the phenomenon of migration to separate the effect of culture from the effect of social surroundings, for which the study developed an innovative statistical method.

    This research was carried out using data from the European Social Survey. The survey measured the traditionalism and religiosity of over three thousand women from 23 European countries, including Turkey and the Ukraine, who are residents in 25 different European countries. The immigrant women’s attitudes and values were compared with over 40,000 non-emigrant European women who were interviewed in the home countries.

    The Spanish immigrants, among the least traditional in Europe

    According to the study, the women from Turkey, Portugal, Poland and Ireland are the most traditional of the European immigrant women, while the Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Spanish women were the least traditional. The degree of traditionalism was defined by noting the importance the women gave to following customs, norms and values transmitted through religion and the family. The degree of traditionalism decreased as the level of education increased in all of the groups that were studied. This cultural characteristic was associated with “strong gender norms in public and in private,” explains the researcher.

    The rate of participation in the workforce for the Spanish immigrant women (77%) was among the highest of the intra-European immigrants, clearly higher than the rates of the women from other countries in the southern part of the continent, such as Italy (60%) or Greece (53%). This figure was only higher in the cases of the women from Sweden (84%), Norway (82%) and Finland (80%) and it was significantly higher than the rates of the French immigrant women (62%), the German (61%) and the British and Irish (both at 59%). The Turkish immigrant women had the lowest rate of participation in the workforce (43%) of the 23 groups that were studied.

    The possible applications of the methodology used by Professor Polavieja for this research transcend the relationship between traditionalism and the labor market. He explains this himself when he states that the method that was developed can be used to study any type of cultural impact on human behavior, as long as it can be measured using surveys. This research is part of the Competition, Adaptation and Labor Market Achievement (CALMA) project, which is part of the sixth national program of the Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness’s Scientific Research Plan (Plan de Investigaciones Científicas del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad).

    ###


    Further Information:

    Polavieja, Javier G. 2015. “Capturing Culture: A New Method to Estimate Exogenous Cultural Effects Using Migrant Populations”. American Sociological Review Vol. 80(1) 166-191. http://asr.sagepub.com/content/80/1/166.abstract


    Source Article from http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/ciuo-tim041315.php
    Tradition is more important than education in determining participation European immigrant women's role in the workforce
    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/ciuo-tim041315.php
    http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=immigrant
    immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results
    immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results

    Tradition is more important than education in determining participation European immigrant women's role in the workforce

    This news release is available in Spanish.

    Through his latest research, Javier Polavieja, a professor Sociology in the Social Sciences Department who holds a UC3M- Santander Named Chair of (Cátedra de Excelencia), has shown how European women who emigrate to other countries within the same continent take the cultural norms of their home countries with them. Those norms are decisive when it comes to determining their work behavior.

    To reach this conclusion, the researcher compared the attitudes of over three thousand immigrant women from some twenty European countries with those of over forty thousand non-emigrant compatriots with similar characteristics. The study shows that immigrant women from the same country of origin tend to share values of traditionalism and religiosity regardless of the country they have settled in. Using this propensity, which is seen as a predictor of the women’s work behavior, Polavieja found that the negative impact of traditional values on female participation in the workforce proved to be much greater than what had previously been believed: its influence on the likelihood of a woman participating in the workforce is so strong that it is twice that of education.

    An innovative method for studying the impact of culture

    With this research, which was recently published in the journal American Sociological Review, Polavieja also offers a new way to respond to some of the great social science and economic questions: How does culture influence people’s behavior? This apparently simple question poses one of the most important methodological challenges facing the social sciences, explains Polavieja. In the words of the author, “the problem is that individuals’ values, tastes and preferences (their cultures) are determined by the social context they are immersed in, which in turn influences their opportunities and behavior as well. This makes it terribly difficult to separate the role of values, tastes and cultural preferences from social surroundings when human behavior is being explained.” Polavieja’s research proposes using the phenomenon of migration to separate the effect of culture from the effect of social surroundings, for which the study developed an innovative statistical method.

    This research was carried out using data from the European Social Survey. The survey measured the traditionalism and religiosity of over three thousand women from 23 European countries, including Turkey and the Ukraine, who are residents in 25 different European countries. The immigrant women’s attitudes and values were compared with over 40,000 non-emigrant European women who were interviewed in the home countries.

    The Spanish immigrants, among the least traditional in Europe

    According to the study, the women from Turkey, Portugal, Poland and Ireland are the most traditional of the European immigrant women, while the Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Spanish women were the least traditional. The degree of traditionalism was defined by noting the importance the women gave to following customs, norms and values transmitted through religion and the family. The degree of traditionalism decreased as the level of education increased in all of the groups that were studied. This cultural characteristic was associated with “strong gender norms in public and in private,” explains the researcher.

    The rate of participation in the workforce for the Spanish immigrant women (77%) was among the highest of the intra-European immigrants, clearly higher than the rates of the women from other countries in the southern part of the continent, such as Italy (60%) or Greece (53%). This figure was only higher in the cases of the women from Sweden (84%), Norway (82%) and Finland (80%) and it was significantly higher than the rates of the French immigrant women (62%), the German (61%) and the British and Irish (both at 59%). The Turkish immigrant women had the lowest rate of participation in the workforce (43%) of the 23 groups that were studied.

    The possible applications of the methodology used by Professor Polavieja for this research transcend the relationship between traditionalism and the labor market. He explains this himself when he states that the method that was developed can be used to study any type of cultural impact on human behavior, as long as it can be measured using surveys. This research is part of the Competition, Adaptation and Labor Market Achievement (CALMA) project, which is part of the sixth national program of the Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness’s Scientific Research Plan (Plan de Investigaciones Científicas del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad).

    ###


    Further Information:

    Polavieja, Javier G. 2015. “Capturing Culture: A New Method to Estimate Exogenous Cultural Effects Using Migrant Populations”. American Sociological Review Vol. 80(1) 166-191. http://asr.sagepub.com/content/80/1/166.abstract


    Source Article from http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/ciuo-tim041315.php
    Tradition is more important than education in determining participation European immigrant women's role in the workforce
    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/ciuo-tim041315.php
    http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=immigrant
    immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results
    immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results

    Tradition is more important than education in determining participation European immigrant women's role in the workforce

    This news release is available in Spanish.

    Through his latest research, Javier Polavieja, a professor Sociology in the Social Sciences Department who holds a UC3M- Santander Named Chair of (Cátedra de Excelencia), has shown how European women who emigrate to other countries within the same continent take the cultural norms of their home countries with them. Those norms are decisive when it comes to determining their work behavior.

    To reach this conclusion, the researcher compared the attitudes of over three thousand immigrant women from some twenty European countries with those of over forty thousand non-emigrant compatriots with similar characteristics. The study shows that immigrant women from the same country of origin tend to share values of traditionalism and religiosity regardless of the country they have settled in. Using this propensity, which is seen as a predictor of the women’s work behavior, Polavieja found that the negative impact of traditional values on female participation in the workforce proved to be much greater than what had previously been believed: its influence on the likelihood of a woman participating in the workforce is so strong that it is twice that of education.

    An innovative method for studying the impact of culture

    With this research, which was recently published in the journal American Sociological Review, Polavieja also offers a new way to respond to some of the great social science and economic questions: How does culture influence people’s behavior? This apparently simple question poses one of the most important methodological challenges facing the social sciences, explains Polavieja. In the words of the author, “the problem is that individuals’ values, tastes and preferences (their cultures) are determined by the social context they are immersed in, which in turn influences their opportunities and behavior as well. This makes it terribly difficult to separate the role of values, tastes and cultural preferences from social surroundings when human behavior is being explained.” Polavieja’s research proposes using the phenomenon of migration to separate the effect of culture from the effect of social surroundings, for which the study developed an innovative statistical method.

    This research was carried out using data from the European Social Survey. The survey measured the traditionalism and religiosity of over three thousand women from 23 European countries, including Turkey and the Ukraine, who are residents in 25 different European countries. The immigrant women’s attitudes and values were compared with over 40,000 non-emigrant European women who were interviewed in the home countries.

    The Spanish immigrants, among the least traditional in Europe

    According to the study, the women from Turkey, Portugal, Poland and Ireland are the most traditional of the European immigrant women, while the Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Spanish women were the least traditional. The degree of traditionalism was defined by noting the importance the women gave to following customs, norms and values transmitted through religion and the family. The degree of traditionalism decreased as the level of education increased in all of the groups that were studied. This cultural characteristic was associated with “strong gender norms in public and in private,” explains the researcher.

    The rate of participation in the workforce for the Spanish immigrant women (77%) was among the highest of the intra-European immigrants, clearly higher than the rates of the women from other countries in the southern part of the continent, such as Italy (60%) or Greece (53%). This figure was only higher in the cases of the women from Sweden (84%), Norway (82%) and Finland (80%) and it was significantly higher than the rates of the French immigrant women (62%), the German (61%) and the British and Irish (both at 59%). The Turkish immigrant women had the lowest rate of participation in the workforce (43%) of the 23 groups that were studied.

    The possible applications of the methodology used by Professor Polavieja for this research transcend the relationship between traditionalism and the labor market. He explains this himself when he states that the method that was developed can be used to study any type of cultural impact on human behavior, as long as it can be measured using surveys. This research is part of the Competition, Adaptation and Labor Market Achievement (CALMA) project, which is part of the sixth national program of the Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness’s Scientific Research Plan (Plan de Investigaciones Científicas del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad).

    ###


    Further Information:

    Polavieja, Javier G. 2015. “Capturing Culture: A New Method to Estimate Exogenous Cultural Effects Using Migrant Populations”. American Sociological Review Vol. 80(1) 166-191. http://asr.sagepub.com/content/80/1/166.abstract


    Source Article from http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/ciuo-tim041315.php
    Tradition is more important than education in determining participation European immigrant women's role in the workforce
    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/ciuo-tim041315.php
    http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=immigrant
    immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results
    immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results

    How Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s immigrant path explains his guilty verdict

    Asra Q. Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is the author of “Tantrika: Traveling the Road of Divine Love” and “Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam.”

    By Masha Gessen

    Riverhead. 273 pp. $27.95

    ‘The Brothers” is a troubling book about a tragic episode in post-9/11 America: the bombing of the Boston Marathon two years ago by brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The book is tragic not only because of the deaths and maimed lives, but also because of the backstory: the brothers’ difficult experience adjusting to immigrant life in America. And it’s troubling because Gessen contends that the United States was as responsible as the misguided youths for the explosions near the marathon finish line that killed three and injured more than 260. The younger, surviving brother, Dzhokhar, was convicted Wednesday on 30 counts related to the attack.

    Gessen, herself once a Russian-speaking teen immigrant in Boston, is well-equipped to navigate the Tsarnaevs’ story. She covered the wars in the Russian region of Chechnya, where the Tsarnaev family has its roots. Her reporting for the book took her from the Boston suburbs to locations throughout Russia. More recently, she covered Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s trial for The Washington Post. Hers is a valuable contribution for its insights into the complicated psychological history of the Tsarnaev brothers. If we are to draw a lesson from their calamitous outcome, we need to understand the emotional path the boys took from wide-eyed immigrant children to murderers.

    Gessen describes the Tsarnaevs’ early immigrant days in a section aptly called “Dislocation,” with chapters titled “Love,” “Wandering” and “Dreaming of America.” These titles could easily decribe the early experiences of many immigrant families. The Tsarnaevs hoped for a better life here; they sought to escape the long, troubled history of the Chechen region, which has been riven by separatistism, Russian aggression and periods of war.

    In America, the Tsarnaev family — mother, father, two sons, two daughters — struggled after arriving in 2001. Gessen takes us through this dark reality in a section titled “Becoming the Bombers,” in which she chronicles “a decade of broken dreams.” Here we see the financial and psychological pressures that force some immigrants to rely on the kindness of strangers, the charity of the state and the kinship of fellow immigrants. The family found a “miracle,” Gessen writes, in a Cambridge, Mass., former Peace Corps volunteer, Joanna Herlihy, who provided the family with an apartment, introductions and a lot of patience, as the Tsarnaevs broke promises and missed rental payments. At this time, younger brother Dzhokhar was “the sweet kid, the kid everyone loves,” the author writes.

    Despite the assistance, the Tsarnaev family “witness[ed] the slow and catastrophic demise of a whole set of immigrant dreams,” Gessen writes. Things began to crumble as the brothers’ drug use picked up. “Pot was the scourge,” she explains. “Each member of the Tsarnaev family was descending into a separate personal hell,” Gessen writes. Media accounts have chronicled run-ins with police over alleged shoplifting, counterfeit money, marijuana possession and intent to distribute.

    The family was experiencing a common trauma of the immigrant arc: grief over losing a former life. Years after leaving their homeland, Gessen writes, “it was as though the Tsarnaevs had never come to America.” Peering into their American home, one would see “the look every Chechen living room had.”

    Drawing perhaps on her own experiences, Gessen is eloquent in describing the sense of loss an immigrant feels. “You never talk about the pain of dislocation,” she writes. “You do not describe the way color drains out of everyday life when nothing is familiar, how the texture of living seems to disappear. You breathe not a word of no longer knowing who you are, where you are going, with whom, and why — and the unique existential dread of that condition. Most important, you never question your decision: from the moment you cross the border, there is only ever the future.” The result is immigrants who fail to properly mourn the lives they’ve left behind.

    As the daughter of Muslim immigrants from India, I understand that dynamic intimately. In 1992, when I was 26, I decided that I should marry within my culture and religion. So I left a Lutheran boyfriend from Iowa (who was a good match for me) for a Pakistani Muslim living in Washington (who was not). When I mentioned this to my boss, he gently pointed out that ill-advised actions often result from an inability to grapple with the past. In my case, I married the Pakistani Muslim, and my union lasted just a little longer than the first bethrothal of Kim Kardashian. Clearly, like many immigrants, I was struggling with how to shape my newly emerging identity.

    Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother, and his mother, Zubeidat, may have been facing the same struggles in 2009 when they began to study the Koran, getting their lessons from “the Internet and . . . occasional intense conversations with better-informed acquaintances.” The book provides little insight into the brothers’ Muslim teachings as young children, except to say that they were not schooled in extremist thought. At this later time, however, Zubeidat started wearing a hijab, and Tamerlan showed increased devotion to his religious life. He threw away binders he’d put together when he was younger that contained clippings on how to seduce women and hypnotize people.

    The book has a splendid opportunity to reflect on the community’s role, particularly that of the Muslim community, in guiding young people toward positive, healthy lives. It is important to hold individuals, families and communities accountable for the development of young newcomers to America. But Gessen misses her chance to explore this crucial piece of the immigrant puzzle. Neuroscientists, psychiatrists and psychologists increasingly analyze the immigrant experience in the context of trauma. Immigrants experience not only a geographical upheaval but a severe blow to their identity. The Tsarnaev story reminds me, as a mother of a 12-year-old next-generation immigrant boy, that it is vital to promote a psychology of integration, adaptation and healing.

    In place of a deep analysis about overcoming the challenges of assimilation, Gessen chooses to engage in a narrative of Muslim immigrant victimhood. She lays much of the blame for the Tsarnaevs’ actions on alleged harassment by the FBI. Whether or not the Tsarnaevs were influenced by extremists, she rejects notions that some Muslims become radicalized by jihadists, arguing that the United States and its reactions have “probably done as much” as al-Qaeda to create a “worldwide community of jihadists.”

    She even asks, “Is it conceivable that the Tsarnaev brothers were not the marathon bombers?” — and answers: “Yes, it is conceivable.” Gessen contends that the FBI hatches terrorist plots as sting operations to nab possible terrorists but sometimes reels in law-abiding citizens. From Sept. 11, 2001 to 2013, Gessen writes, “the number of terrorist attacks carried out on American soil by people connected to Islamic organizations numbered zero, but trumped-up terrorist plots numbered in the dozens, and the people who went to jail because of them in the hundreds.” Gessen proposes bizarre theories for which she doesn’t provide evidence, such as one about Tamerlan possibly having been a FBI informant who went rogue.

    She notes that the mother-in-law of a friend of Tamerlan’s had an FBI agent’s number saved on her phone under the name “Terrorist.” That friend, Ibragim Todashev, was killed by an FBI agent in a scuffle during his questioning about possible involvement in a triple murder. To me, many Muslim organizations stoke distrust of the FBI and law enforcement by concocting conspiracy theories built on narratives of “bad cops.”

    As we saw at his trial, the younger brother, Dzhokhar, didn’t assert his innocence in the marathon bombing. Before his capture, he wrote a note found bloody and bullet-ridden in a boat where he hid after the attack. “We Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all,” the note read. “I don’t like killing innocent people it is forbidden in Islam but due to said [illegible] it is allowed.” A bullet hole was responsible for the illegible word.

    As the Tsarnaev story shows, immigrants suffer the emotional challenges of dislocation, hardship and trauma, and sadly, these vulnerable brothers turned their struggles into terror for which there is no excuse.

    bookworld@washpost.com

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    How Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s immigrant path explains his guilty verdict
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    Salvadoran immigrant held at Adelanto ICE facility dies

    An immigrant rights group is calling for an independent investigation after a Salvadoran man died while in U.S. immigration custody after months of incarceration at a privately run detention center that has been accused of medical neglect in the past.

    Raul Ernesto Morales-Ramos, 44, died Monday after being transferred from Adelanto Detention Center to a hospital in Palmdale, according to a statement from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He had been in ICE custody since 2010, and was fighting extradition to El Salvador to face criminal charges, the agency said Tuesday.

    According to ICE, Morales-Ramos was taken to the hospital on Friday after he experienced “unusual bleeding.” Tests at the hospital indicated that he had intestinal cancer and required inpatient care and possible surgery, the statement said.

    Christina Fialho, an attorney who helps runs a visitation program at Adelanto, said doctors at the detention center did not do enough to help Morales-Ramos, even when he complained about worsening symptoms.

    In the three weeks leading up to his death, Fialho said her organization received multiple complaints from others detained at Adelanto “about a man who was suffering from diarrhea, severe abdominal pain and uncontrollable leakage of urine.”

    “When this man asked for a catheter, medical staff at Adelanto denied him,” said Fialho, who called for an outside investigation into the death.

    ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates detainee deaths, has begun an inquiry. The Los Angeles County coroner’s office is conducting an autopsy.

    GEO Group, the Florida-based prison company that is paid roughly $100 per detainee per day to operate the detention center, did not respond to requests for comment.

    The Adelanto facility has been accused of neglect in the past.

    In 2012, a Mexican immigrant named Fernando Dominguez died of pneumonia after being detained at Adelanto. He was one of 141 people to die in ICE custody between 2003 and 2013, according to agency data.

    An inspection report that year by the Department of Homeland Security said Dominguez “received an unacceptable level of medical care” at the facility, and that his death could have been prevented. A medical malpractice suit filed by his family against GEO is pending.

    An inspection report from 2014 found that medical care at Adelanto met the agency’s standards.

    Morales-Ramos was transferred to Adelanto last May after spending four years in ICE detention at two other Southern California facilities.

    He was arrested in 2010 after authorities in El Salvador charged him with conspiracy to commit aggravated homicide, ICE officials say.

    According to news reports in El Salvador, Morales-Ramos was accused of hiring a hit man to kill several relatives in his home country, allegedly so he wouldn’t have to share a multimillion-dollar settlement he won after his wife and their three children died in a California road accident.

    Morales-Ramos was ordered deported in August 2010, but filed multiple legal appeals seeking to block his removal, ICE said. At the time of his death, Morales had a petition for review pending before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

    His brother, who lives in the U.S., is arranging to have his body sent back to El Salvador and is considering filing a lawsuit, according to Julio Calderon, vice consul at the Consulate General of El Salvador in Los Angeles.

    Twitter: @katelinthicum

     

    Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times

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