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  • July 28, 2014 Video
    Large-scale US surveillance is seriously hampering US-based journalists and lawyers in their work. Surveillance is undermining media freedom and the right to counsel, and ultimately obstructing the American people’s ability to hold their government to account, the groups said.
    US: Surveillance Harming Journalism, Law, Democracy
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  • July 17, 2014 Video
    Angie and Peter Kim came to the United States from South Korea with their parents when they were 9 and 7 years old respectively. According to them, their grandmother, a US citizen, had petitioned for their family, they said, but after years of waiting due to a backlog of visas, she died just before they could complete the process. When their father became a permanent resident through marriage to a US citizen, he and Peter became permanent residents. Peter is now a US citizen, but Angie was over 21 years old at the time and could not gain legal status. Without congressional action on immigration, she may never become a US citizen like her brother. Angie knows that in some ways she is lucky. "I'm able to sit next to my brother right now but I know...children, or parents who are literally separated from each other."
    TORN APART: Angie and Peter Kim
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  • July 17, 2014 Video
    Marta Garcia left Mexico for the United States more than 20 years ago, settling in California with her husband and her three children, all US citizens. Marta said her application to gain legal status through her husband was pending, and she thought she could reenter the US legally after leaving to take care of her dying mother in Mexico. But she was arrested by immigration authorities and ultimately deported. Under current law, Marta has little hope of legally rejoining her family in the US. Sitting in a migrant shelter in Tijuana, Mexico in August 2013, she said, "I want to be with my children and watch them succeed."
    TORN APART: Marta Garcia
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  • July 17, 2014 Video
    Alma D. Isais Aguilar, a Catholic nun, works with the Kino Border Initiative, a group that provides food and shelter to migrants in the border town of Nogales, Mexico. Sister Alma reports that until recently, the migrants she encountered were typically heading north for the first time, but that increasingly they are long-term US residents, newly deported and desperate to return to families north of the border.
    TORN APART: Sister Alma
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  • July 17, 2014 Video
    Alina Diaz, a farmworker advocate, with Lidia Franco, Gisela Castillo and Marilu Nava-Cervantes, members of the Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, a national organization that mobilizes farmworker women around the country to engage with policymakers about workplace abuses, including unpaid wages, pesticide exposure, and sexual harassment. Once an undocumented immigrant herself, Diaz is now a US citizen. For her, the farmworkers in her community are "already great citizens" in all but name. She dreams that one day they will go to Washington, not to "demand and scream and march," but to commemorate victory, to say, "Thank you, because you are giving me dignity, because you are treating me as a human being."
    TORN APART: Alina Diaz
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