San Juan’s sidewalks: An obstacle course for people with disabilities
For El Centro de Periodismo Investigativo
As was their routine every afternoon, Antonio Luis Ruiz Ramos and a classmate were walking home from school in Río Piedras. It was an October day in 2003, and it was raining heavily, so the two teenagers took shelter under the balcony of a business on 65th Infantry Avenue in San Juan. When the rain began to let up, Ruiz Ramos continued walking, but instead of stepping on solid ground, he fell into an open manhole that had been hidden by the floodwaters. Inside the manhole, his body was swept away by the current. Although emergency crews arrived at the scene, it was too late. They found his lifeless body.
Asylum-seekers are desperate for lawyers. Scammers are filling the gap.
I have lost everything,’ one asylum seeker facing deportation said. ‘It was my error, because I trusted these people.’
In the months leading up to his immigration hearing, Leon Garcia was desperate for legal advice.
All of the nonprofits he contacted had long waiting lists, and Garcia, who is seeking asylum in the United States from South America, needed to find an attorney in time for his November court date.
Out of options, Garcia, who, like others in this piece is using a pseudonym to avoid retaliation, messaged a lawyer on WhatsApp he heard about from fellow bike messengers.
The attorney agreed to take his case, so Garcia wired the first payment: $3,200 through a Western Union transfer. He promised to pay the remaining $2,800 once the work was completed…
More than 400 people in S.F. have sought to self-deport, many with no good options
For Mission Local
Three years ago, Victoria Hernandez fled Colombia after what she called an attack on her life by members of an armed group.
She had previously cared for some of its members in her job as a licensed nurse, she said. Then, she said, they began to threaten her.
On the night of the attack, men carrying guns ambushed her car while she drove home with her young son, she said. Hernandez managed to escape by speeding down a dark mountainous path into the Colombian countryside. She and her son stashed the car and waited in the dark by a rural home…
Where pa’lante meets sumud: Puerto Ricans organize in solidarity with Palestine
For Mondoweiss
The Zoom camera clicks on and Natalia Ibrahim Abufarah Davila, 35, appears. The Palestinian-Puerto Rican organizer has a soft aura and wears glasses, her face framed by a side part and thick braid. Born to a Palestinian father and a Puerto Rican mother, Abufarah Davila grew up between the two cultures and has since become a familiar face within Puerto Rico’s solidarity movement for Palestinian liberation.