April 15 - Grace Meng of Human Rights Watch: How Immigration Enforcement Misses the Point

A respected Mennonite Minister for a dozen years in Iowa, Max Villatoro, had crossed the US border illegally, gotten himself a fake ID and been pulled over for driving under the influence.  The judge who heard his case, hearing about the life he'd been leading, gave him a suspended sentence.  But that left him with a criminal record. And just last month, he was arrested by Immigration agents and summarily deported to Honduras, despite the protests of his community, his fellow ministers and his family which includes four children aged seven to 15 who are U-S citizens. This kind of heartless justice is all too typical, Human Rights Watch researcher Grace Meng told KSFR's Dave Marash on HERE AND THERE, of the way immigrants are being treated following last summer's surge of women and children border-crossers from Central America. For the At Noon excerpt of this interview, Click Here. For a full podcast of this episode of HERE AND THERE, Click Here.