THIS IS REVOLUTION>podcast Ep. 84: Fighting for a Just Society w/ Raha Jorjani

"Illegality is the flip of inequality.  It serves to preserve the privileged spaces for those deemed citizens and justify their privilege by creating a legal apparatus to sustain it. Heightened panic about illegality coincides with growing global inequality and the dependence of the privileged on the labor of the excluded."

-Aviva Chomsky, UNDOCUMENTED: How Immigration Became Illegal

 

“Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute,” (Psalm 82:3). “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, and please the widow's cause,” (Isaiah 1:17)

 

In this episode we speak with Public Defense Attorney and friend, Raha Jorjani.  Raha reached out to me because she's dealing with a troubling case and she's looking to amplify the voice of her client.  Walter Cruz Zavala.  Walter came to this country from El Salvador when he was 14 fleeing the horrible conditions of his homeland.  Sexual abuse, gang violence, El Salvador was no longer a safe haven for Walter.  From the Alameda County Public Defender's Office:

 

"He came to the U.S. on his own and joined his father, who was already here. His mother, father, sister, and brother are all U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents of the United States. He has not returned to El Salvador. Cruz-Zavala was recruited into MS 13 as a teenager in the United States. A U.S. government informant convinced him to get two gang-related tattoos; prosecutors then used the tattoos as evidence against him in a federal criminal case. Cruz-Zavala was acquitted of all charges by a federal jury but the tattoos continue to endanger his life. “An individual acting on the government’s behalf gave 18-year-old Walter the very tattoo that makes it likely he’ll be tortured in El Salvador, and now that same government will stop at nothing to deport him there,” Jorjani said. Immigration authorities detained Cruz-Zavala in July 2017 and tried to deport him back to El Salvador after he was convicted of five DUIs and one charge of carrying a concealed firearm. However, in May 2018, an immigration judge decided the government could not send CruzZavala back to El Salvador because he likely would be tortured and/or killed."

 

In this episode we talk about Walter's case, and the many more like Walter that sit in immigration prisons called "civil custody" for undefined amounts of time.  

 

To Send Messages of Support Send Them Here:

Walter Cruz-Zavala

ICE Detainee

Mesa Verde Detention Facility

425 Golden State Avenue

Bakersfield, CA 93301

 

Send a letter to the US Attorney's Office to Ask for Walter to Released While He Waits for his Day in Court:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/meet-us-attorney

 

Hedges v. Obama Case:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedges_v._Obama

 

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