AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank all of the immigrants, their children, spouses, parents, siblings, attorneys, social workers, and friends who generously and courageously shared their experiences with us for this report. We would also like to thank the immigration attorneys, criminal attorneys, immigrants’ rights advocates and organizations, judges, legislators, and government officials who shared their expertise with us for this report. Alison Parker, senior researcher in the US Program of Human Rights Watch researched and wrote this report. The full report was edited by Jamie Fellner, director of the US Program at Human Rights Watch; Lois Whitman, director of the Children’s Rights Division; Bill Frelick, director of the Refugee Policy Program; Dinah PoKempner, general counsel; and Ian Gorvin, consultant in the Program Office. Also at Human Rights Watch, Ashoka Mukpo and Keramet Reiter, US Program Associates, provided invaluable research and production assistance. Layout and production were coordinated by Andrea Holley and Ashoka Mukpo. For their contributions to our research, we would especially like to acknowledge the following people and organizations. In Arizona: the Florence Project (Ashley Kaper and Victoria Lopez); in Chicago: the Cambodian Association of Illinois (Nil Samorn), Centro Sin Fronteras (Emma Lozano), Coalition of Asian African European and Latino Immigrants of Illinois (Dale Asis), Centro Romero (Daisy Fuñez), Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (Joshua Hoyt and Fred Tsao), Latinos Progresandos (Luis Guitierrez, Laura Pichardo), Midwest Immigrant and Human Rights Council (Oscar Chacon, Mary Meg McCarthy, Sara Rose Weinman), Lisa Palumbo, Esq.; in Florida: the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center; in Los Angeles: Siu Ming Cheer, Esq., Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, Homies Unidos (Silvia Beltran, Rocio Santacruz, Will Colely), Khmer Girls in Action; in Massachusetts: Dan Kanstroom; in San Francisco: ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project (Cecilia Wang, Esq.), and the law firm of Van Der Hout, Brigagliano & Nightingale, LLP; in New York: the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project (Judy Rabinovitz), Families for Freedom (Aarti Shahani and Subash Kateel), and the Immigrant Defense Project of the New York State Defenders Association. The following individuals also contributed to this report: Joshua Franco (Chapter VI); pro bono counsel Paul Kemnitzer and Lauren Aronson Teitelbaum of Sidley and Austin (figure 7); Gloria Borges, Lin Chan, and Jayashri Srikantiah of the Stanford Immigrants Rights Clinic (Chapter VI); John Schaefer (Chapter V), Human Rights Watch associate Lee Anne Hasselbacher; and interns Hanna Bauman, Pat Tomaino, and Karin Orr, who each performed a myriad of tasks in contribution to this report. For assistance with our still-pending Freedom of Information Act request, we would like to thank Leslie Platt Zolov, counsel to Human Rights Watch; and Ethan Strell and Catherine Sheehy, of the law firm of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn LLP, for their pro bono counsel. Human Rights Watch would also like to thank Peter Lewis, The Joyce Foundation, and the Open Society Institute, all of whom generously support our work in the United States. Finally, we would like to extend a very special thanks to the JEHT Foundation. Without JEHT’s support, this report would not have been written.
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