Hip-Hop Hall of Fame rapper Slick Rick, or Ricky Walters, is awaiting his release from USCIS detention after a federal judge reversed a deportation order.  His attorneys hope that he will be released on Tuesday.

Walters, who has been incarcerated 17 months, served two and a half years for attempted murder.  Five months after his release into a work program, Walters was jailed when the then INS initiated proceedings under a law requiring foreign nationals who commit felonies in America to be deported.

The BIA issued Walters a 212c waiver in 1995, allowing him to remain free in the U.S.  But after performing on a cruise ship in 2002, Walters was arrested upon his return to Miami and charged with deporting himself and illegally reentering the country. 

This week a federal judge determined that the BIA should never have reversed its earlier decision that the British-born rapper is a legal U.S. resident.

*****

On November 4, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Border Patrol Agents assisted the Arizona Department of Public Safety apprehend four men suspected to be gunmen involved in a shooting incident between rival immigrant smugglers along Interstate 10 north of Casa Grande, Arizona. 

Authorities believe that the smugglers attacked another group of smugglers for stealing a load of illegal immigrants they had brought across the U.S.-Mexico border.  The incident left four people dead and five more injured.

*****

South Texas human rights advocates recently remembered and honored those who immigrants who died trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.  Human rights advocates in South Texas believe that increased border control enforcement by the Border Patrol has caused immigrants to take more dangerous and often deadly routes to cross the border.  Since 1997, 692 people have died crossing the McAllen sector, the southernmost section of the border that covers only one sixth of the Texas-Mexico border.

A similar ceremony was held in Sunland Park, New Mexico, where around 400 people gathered in remembrance.

The “Day of the Dead”, the Mexican version of the Catholic “All Saint’s Day”, is a happy occasion where the souls of the dead are believed to visit their loved ones.

*****

Migration reform may be in the near future, according to U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza.  According to Garza, the U.S. Congress should and likely will approve limited migration reform in the next few months.  This is the most optimistic statement to come from a Bush Administration official thus far regarding the fate of immigration reform proposals.

Congress has already proposed three separate bills that will give temporary work permits to undocumented migrants in the United States.  Two of these bills lead to the legalization of millions of illegal and undocumented immigrants.  The third bill applies only to the legalization of up to 500,000 agricultural workers.  These bills are a response to the growing number of Mexican deaths caused while trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. 

The bills face criticism from many legislators who believe the programs are de facto amnesty programs that reward migrants for breaking U.S. immigration laws.