Washington, D.C.  - The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and the American Immigration Council (Council) welcome a decision released Friday evening by U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Flores v. Lynch, No. 85-04544 (C.D.Ca.), which ruled that children should generally be released from detention within five days—preferably to a parent, including a parent with whom they were apprehended. The government must implement the Court’s ruling by October 23, 2015. “There is no denying that the government has breached the Flores settlement agreement. The status quo is unacceptable, and the government must take immediate and dramatic steps to end family detention,” said Victor Nieblas Pradis, AILA President. “Our CARA Project* staff and volunteers submitted numerous  declarations  to the Court showing how the government is still detaining accompanied minors in secure, unlicensed facilities. It can no longer hide from the American people the ugly truth of how it trea...

Bruno Eduardo Rodriguez Parrilla, Cuban Foreign Minister Hotel Nacional Havana, Cuba August 14, 2015 FOREIGN MINISTER RODRIGUEZ:   I had the pleasure to welcome Secretary of State John Kerry at the headquarters of our foreign ministry on the occasion of his visit to Cuba to attend the official ceremony for the reopening on the U.S. Embassy in Havana today in the morning. Once again, we have met in a respectful and constructive climate, and we addressed bilateral issues of interest, including the steps that both countries should take to move forward in the process towards the normalization of relations. Both sides agreed on the importance of opening new areas of dialogue, consolidating the already-existing mechanisms of a bilateral cooperation and expanding them to include new ones, such as environmental protections, health care, science, and law enforcement, among others. As part of this s...

B y  Universal Life Church Monastery It’s impossible to watch, listen to, or read the news today without finding at least one reference to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. We hear that it is a terrorist organization, but we also hear government officials talk about it more like a belligerent country in an ongoing war. So, what exactly is the Islamic State, where did it come from, and what do its people want? Born in War The organization we know today as the Islamic State has its origins in the invasion of Iraq by the United States in 2003. The very short version of that war’s first year is that the administration of President George W. Bush accused the government of Iraq, then under the control of military dictator Saddam Hussein, of possessing weapons of mass destruction. The United States Congress authorized a military invasion of Iraq, which very quickly deposed Hussein’s rule. Though Hussein was no longer in power and was later caught and executed, ...