by | Dec 5, 2024 12:02 pm | Comments (13)
Paul Bass Photo
Be prepared, not scared: Damjan Denoble at WNHH FM.
New Haven immigration attorney Damjan Denoble is preparing for Trump II Administration sweeps — by ramping down his immigration practice.
What a difference from his experience during Trump I.
by | Dec 2, 2024 8:14 am | Comments (1)
Zachary Groz photo
Classmates Robina, Faryal, and Ghofran, at Troup's annual multicultural luncheon.
Sitting around a lunch table draped in an aquamarine cloth and topped with festive fall ornaments, Robina, 10, Faryal, 12, and Ghofran, 12, giggled and cracked jokes, translating them into English after the fact, in between bites of fried chicken, bread rolls, and rice.
by | Nov 26, 2024 10:40 am | Comments (59)
Zachary Groz photo
Naranjo at ULA's City Hall protest: "We're full of fear.”
Paula Naranjo fought back tears as she spoke on the front steps of City Hall about what Donald Trump’s second presidential administration could mean for New Haven-area immigrants like herself.
by | Nov 15, 2024 10:00 am | Comments (18)
Paul Bass Photo
Cabrera and Winfield at WNHH: Where would it end?
Gary Winfield and Jorge Cabrera are determined not to blink.
Continue reading ‘Winfield & Cabrera: Don’t Bend To Trump Blackmail’
by | Nov 14, 2024 2:10 pm | Comments (29)
Lucy Gellman File Photo
Matos (pictured): Getting the team ready.
New Haven’s Kica Matos is getting ready for Trump immigration raids. She needs New Haven’s help to pay the bill.
by | Nov 8, 2024 3:42 pm | Comments (12)
An Independent story about factory-line marriages involving out-of-state couples including Indian immigrants has sparked calls for investigation and reexamination of how municipalities process licenses.
Continue reading ‘Marriage Stampede Prompts Calls For Action’
by | Nov 7, 2024 4:03 pm | Comments (95)
Paul Bass Photo
Geter-Pataky completes paperwork for a client inside New Haven's vital statistics office.
Wanda Geter-Pataky found a way to supplement her income while on paid leave from her Bridgeport city job and facing criminal charges for ballot fraud: Bring crews of out-of-state non-citizens to marry as many as 100-plus Americans a month at New Haven City Hall.
by | Sep 30, 2024 9:45 am | Comments (28)
Paul Bass Photo
Tabitha Sookdeo at WNHH FM: "It's all connected."
Tabitha Sookdeo has a new job helping undocumented young people stay settled here — and addressing the conditions that lead some others to come here.
To her, the two issues, immigration reform and climate change, are related.
by | Sep 19, 2024 11:02 am | Comments (1)
John Curtis photos
Ibrahim Yusif: “I'm trying [to bring my family from Sudan to New Haven], but it's a difficult thing.”
Ibrahim Yusif grew up near the city of El Geneina in Darfur in western Sudan. One of five brothers and three sisters, he lived on the farm where his family grew mangoes, guavas, lemons, tomatoes, okra, sweet potatoes, millet, corn, and beans. “We harvest it over there and we take it to El Geneina to sell, before the war.”
Yusif is one of a growing number of Sudanese refugees who have relocated to New Haven — and are urging city residents and political leaders in their adopted home country to pay attention to, and to help stop, one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
by | Aug 23, 2024 1:14 pm | Comments (5)
Maya McFadden file photo
NHPS Supervisor of Foreign Languages Jessica Haxhi with teacher handbook she created for last school year.
New Haven’s two comprehensive high schools will introduce a “Pashto Native Heritage Speaker” course this school year for its increasing population of students who need to improve their writing and reading skills in a language native to Afghanistan and Pakistan before they move on to learning English.
by | Aug 21, 2024 1:29 pm | Comments (2)
Federal court filing
An excerpt from Kamash's sentencing memo, illustrated by a traumatic image of the violence that beset the part of Iraq he lived in during the Iraq War.
Mohamed Kamash was born in February of 1991 as American bombs fell upon his home town of Tal Afar, in northern Iraq. The six-week aerial bombing campaign known as Operation Desert Storm killed thousands of Iraqi civilians, and, unable to risk a hospital visit in what would be its final days, Kamash’s mother gave birth to her son at home.
Those details of a life upended by war and migration from the very start emerged in recently filed federal court papers in a yearslong case that has now reached its conclusion. They also put in painful biographical context a refugee’s decision to lie under oath in an effort to distance himself from his past, and try to stay in his adopted new home.
by | Aug 19, 2024 11:52 am | Comments (1)
Jabez Choi photos
Protestors walking down Church Street.
Protestors gathered outside City Hall.
Krisly Carreno teared up as she spotted dozens of yellow-blue-and-red flags on the backs of protesters while she walked down Church Street.
“It was so emotional,” Carreno said. “I had no idea how many Venezuelans [are] in Connecticut.”
by | Aug 8, 2024 5:45 pm | Comments (0)
Anais Nunec: "I wanted to cry, it was so amazing."
Junior Miss Puerto Rico Lysella Pujols and Miss Puerto Rico of Greater New Haven Alanna Herbert.
Dereen Shirnekhi Photos
As rain came down, this year’s Miss Puerto Rico of Greater New Haven, Alanna Herbert, stepped to the microphone and filled the Green with her voice as she sang the national anthem. Behind her was the Puerto Rican flag, grand and waving in the wind, ready to be raised.
by | Aug 8, 2024 11:34 am | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery Photos
Damien Clarke sauteeing vegetables at Jammin Jamaican.
Salmon and chicken, en route to being served.
Damian Clarke, chef and owner of Jammin Jamaican Cuisine at 611 Washington Ave. in the Hill, set to work preparing a salmon entree that has become one of the restaurant’s more popular dishes.
First, he chopped peppers and onions into neat strips. He folded a bunch of scallions in half before dicing them, using both onions and salmon to maximize the flavor. Then he sliced some thyme for extra seasoning.
Continue reading ‘"Jammin" Salmon Seasoned Straight From Jamaica’
by | Aug 5, 2024 9:48 am | Comments (21)
Jabez Choi photo
Keeping the worker-pay pressure up on the labor department.
Immigrant and worker advocates with Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA) rallied outside Hamden’s state Department of Labor offices to demand wage compensation for wrongfully unpaid and underpaid workers.
Continue reading ‘Workers Bring Theft Claims To Labor Dept's Door’
by | Jul 5, 2024 9:34 am | Comments (2)
Contributed photo
UNH film student Elisa Broche (second from right) with her family in Honduras.
Elisa Broche won’t be at Saturday’s premiere of her new documentary about Newhallville community activist Marcus Harvin at the University of New Haven.
That’s because the 19-year-old student filmmaker is back in her home city of Tegucigalpa, Honduras — doing everything she can to raise enough money to return to West Haven to complete her studies.
Continue reading ‘Movie To Premiere In Student Filmmaker's Absence’
by | Jul 2, 2024 10:56 am | Comments (0)
Abiba Biao photo
Dancing to the sounds of Sudanese music.
Kallou Gindeel knew how to get the crowd moving. As traditional Sudanese music played from the speakers behind him, attendees around the room joined to form a conga line.
Continue reading ‘Refugees Recognized Amid Ukrainian Dolls, Sudanese Spices’
by | Jun 10, 2024 10:21 am | Comments (26)
Jabez Choi photos
At Sunday's ceremony in Wooster Sq.
Four years to the month after hundreds of people filled Wooster Square Park to cheer and jeer at the removal of the Christopher Columbus statue, neighbors and politicians and dignitaries returned — to applaud the installation of a new monument honoring the city’s Italian-American immigrant experience.
Continue reading ‘Monument Unveiling Sees "La Via Al Futuro"’
by | Jun 7, 2024 4:53 pm | Comments (6)
Edgar Becerra and Josue Arana (center) join ULA for Friday's protest.
Edgar Becerra and Josue Arana packed their belongings into a total of two mid-sized suitcases and a backpack. On Friday morning, they stepped one last time out of the house at 200 Peck St. where they’d lived for the past year. They did not know where they would be sleeping that night.
The eviction culminated a months-long court battle revealing the triple power of one local business’s role as an employer, landlord, and visa sponsor to the temporary migrant workers it hires.
by | Apr 19, 2024 2:16 pm | Comments (6)
Thomas Breen photos
Raj Kumar winds up.
Hitesh Redy, with improvised "cricket bat."
Raj Kumar lifted his right arm like a windmill against the backdrop of the former English Station power plant as he “bowled” a tennis ball towards Hitesh Redy — who didn’t need a proper cricket bat to enjoy some time in the park in Fair Haven.
A plank of wood salvaged from their Woolsey Street home would do just fine.
by | Apr 17, 2024 2:07 pm | Comments (7)
Edgar Becerra and Josue Mauricio Arana in court.
Laura Glesby Photo
Edgar Becerra protests his former employer, MDF Painting and Power Washing, before the eviction proceedings.
A judge has ruled that Edgar Becerra and Josue Mauricio Arana must find a new place to live, ending an eviction case that sparked protests over alleged exploitation of migrant workers.
by | Apr 1, 2024 1:15 pm | Comments (5)
Daphne Geismar photo
Feras on the job on Nash Street.
Feras celebrated his first job in the U.S. Monday morning by walking into traffic — and slowing down cars.
by | Mar 27, 2024 3:46 pm | Comments (13)
Paul Bass File Photo
Former IRIS chief Chris George (right): Kamash was "generous, community-minded, kind, law-abiding, and upstanding."
A 33-year-old New Havener and Iraqi refugee named Mohamed Najm Kamash admitted this week to lying about his brothers’ affiliation with a terrorist group during his application for U.S. citizenship, and now faces up to five years in prison for the offense.
Kamash himself had no terrorism involvement — and in fact, court records reveal, he had become a volunteer interpreter and mentor for new arrivals, a “responsible, reliable, friendly” city resident who put down a decade of roots in New Haven’s refugee community.
by | Mar 8, 2024 4:42 pm | Comments (51)
Thomas Breen Photo
Patricia Clark in her office before retiring: “Yelled” at applicants when “she did not believe them.”
“Happy Hunting!” wrote New Haven’s vital statistics chief Patricia Clark to a federal investigator as she reported yet another immigrant getting married in City Hall.
The city released a 41-page investigatory report on Friday finding that Clark committed misconduct by reporting 93 marriage-seeking couples to federal immigration authorities and denying services to constituents arbitrarily.
Meanwhile, officials announced that Clark evaded disciplinary action by retiring in late February, the day she faced a hearing.
Continue reading ‘Probe Reveals Marriage-License Misconduct’
by | Feb 23, 2024 9:43 am | Comments (6)
Laura Glesby Photo
Edgar Becerra protests with ULA outside MDF Painting and Power Washing.
“We have human rights,” Edgar Becerra called into a bullhorn, speaking in Spanish. “We have a heart.”
He was surrounded by over 25 immigrant rights activists outside the Branford headquarters of his Fair Haven landlord and former employer — who brought him to the U.S. as a temporary worker, allegedly fired him for work-related injuries, and is now trying to evict him a second time.