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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has increasingly privatized the detention and imprisonment of first time and repeat entry undocumented immigrants. At a time of increasing openness to sentencing reform, immigrant custody is a pillar maintaining private prison profits. Operation Streamline at the U.S.-Mexico border has resulted in the development of a growing immigration industrial prison complex that produces the Hispanization of detention and federal imprisonment. Undocumented immigration is treated as a color-blind policy but it has major impact on Hispanics, especially Mexicans. Civil and criminal sanctions for undocumented immigrant entrants and reentrants will contribute to Hispanic racial formation by harming community development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic ancestry testing could bring knowledge of racial and ethnic admixture to consumer study of family history. Nevertheless, gaps in genetic testing of the world's populations, the overlap of geographic ancestral origin groups with racial and ethnic terminology, and the persistence of the Black-White binary impact interpretation of genetic origins. Americans may valorize or deny knowledge of their racial-ethnic heritage due to White privilege, a history or passing, or a tendency to discount direct line relatives from cultures and societies they are not familiar with. Status and privilege afforded to Whiteness and the tendency to push Black ancestry into a non-White category impacts the self-identification of multi-racial people. Whites may reject or neutralize multi-racial ancestry while Blacks persist with primary African American identification and accept multi-ancestral group designation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Secure Communities program was extensively critiqued by immigration advocates and generated multiple lawsuits. Certain state governors and local majors have refused to cooperate with SC by sending detainers to ICE. Executive orders and laws have been given/passed to prohibit cooperation. Federal courts have rejected arguments that state and local police should cooperate with federal immigration police. On November 14, 2014, President Obama ended the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Secure Communities program. The Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) replaced it. ICE statistics indicate that their major duty is as a detention and deportation mechanism for United States Border Patrol removals. All immigration deportation activity focuses on Mexicans and Central Americans. Central Americans now exceed or equal Mexican deportations. Criminal removal, the main priority of the Secure Communities program, is secondary-unauthorized immigrants are the majority deported. Examining re-prioritization in the restructured PEP program, it appears that the "criminal alien" priority 1 category will absorb individuals whose only offense is to be unauthorized traditionally, a civil offense for the first entrance, now a crime if a repeat offense. ICE representation of priorities is confusing for the public and masks its main function of dealing with unauthorized entrants rather than serious criminals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic surveillance of U.S. citizens is developing prior to legislation providing for equal protection under the law and right to privacy. The F.B.I., state, and local police are amassing DNA from arrestees to match with unsolved cases through familial search. In DNA dragnets, police ask individuals to 'volunteer' samples. Because of racial-ethnic disparities in arrest/incarceration, this practice will magnify differential treatment. Although the federal CODIS data base deliberately does not code for race, development of forensic genotyping for use by states and local police will produce genetic profiling. Laws need to be developed to protect l citizen's civil rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employer sanctions, for hiring of unauthorized immigrants, varied in levels of use, in conjunction with worksite raids or without them, during recent presidential administrations. After a lapse in use of employer sanctions during the Bush administration, which prioritized demonstrative and sensationalized workplace raids, the Obama administration stepped up use of administrative and financial sanctions and did not utilize raids. Throughout both administrations, the e-verify document system has continued to grow, appearing to make it harder for unauthorized workers to hold down jobs on payrolls. Nevertheless, the sheer number of businesses, large and small, operating in the U.S. make it unlikely, given ICE's diverse duties, that a threshold will be reached to produce a dramatic impact on employers or undocumented workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a dramatic turn in the criminalization of prostitution related to the renewal of the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Act. Just as the United States rates itself on prosecution and prevention of human trafficking, it has actively extended the TIP victim protections to U.S. citizens (USCs) including adolescents and children. This application is changing the prostitution/sex work debate but the degree to which it is impacting child and adolescent prostitution in the United States can be questioned. Traditionally, the estimated number of sex trafficking victims located in the United States has been far below estimates. For police, statistics indicate that treatment of under-age USC victims has not significantly changed. Although new vocabularies for victimhood have been extended with the promise of new police and social service protocols, the United States remains an epicenter of child and adolescent prostitution, [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Americans are deeply concerned about the social costs of the new immigration. Health coverage is one of the social benefits which is problematic for both the native-born and immigrants as the social welfare state contracts and the number of jobs with health benefits shrinks. Among the issues of concern about new immigrants is whether there is a skill mismatch based on educational attainment between immigrants from particular regions and sending countries and the types of jobs providing sufficient wages and health insurance, forcing use of federal or state aid. Prior research indicates an epidemiological paradox because new immigrants may be selected for better health and, at least initially, less in need of non-standard health care. In addition, there are many reasons, including concern about disqualification for permanent residency, which cause immigrants to avoid seeking public health care. This research uses the 2005 and 2006 Current Population Survey to chart the relation between sending region and country, educational attainment and access to health insurance or use of Medicaid through use of percentage data, correlation coefficients and regression analysis. We conclude that educational attainment distributions from particular world sending regions are a major predictor of income and being uninsured as well as not using Medicaid. We would like to expand this analysis to examine household composition and the impact of variations in non-citizen status. We conclude that the native-born are the vast percentage of the uninsured and likely to present the highest cost of insurance because immigrants are selected for health and less likely to seek treatment for various reasons. Immigrants will not necessarily massively increase health costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of immigrant scapegoating for economic troubles in the United States led to the criminalization of undocumented entry in the 20th century and increasingly punitive collateral civil penalties for immigrant crime in its last decade. As a result of the retroactive "re-criminalization" of immigrants convicted of crimes who have served time, a massive deportation of resident aliens is underway without recourse to due process of law. Re-criminalization was accomplished in a series of legislative acts connected to the War on Drugs and the War on Crime and is being deployed in the 21st century War on Terrorism. Although "illegal immigrants" have been criminalized, the stereotype of the "criminal alien" is an emergent social re-construction being developed through deceptive government statistics which may become political fodder for conservative politicians who will come to advance concerns in the media about federal, state and local costs of incarcerating and deporting criminal aliens. Office of Immigration statistical enumerations of criminal aliens and costs are examined to shed light on whether they describe current levels of resident alien crime or may contain cases of retroactive deportation which inflate the numbers. Changes in enumerative practice are suggested and a concern for social justice for nonresident aliens is advocated. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thoroughbred horses are performance animals being subjected to mass production techniques (Ryan, 2004) similar to some factory farming practices. Speciesism is linked to economic commodification (Nibert, 2002) of ever more expensive race horses produced by the tens of thousands for over fifty thousand betting races per year. Factory farming practices include the mass use of highly regarded but unproven stallions for breeding which introduces genetic uniformity and may increase propagation of frail traits and the use of hormonal regimens to time mares in and out of pregnancy and foaling. Race tracks have many mass production trainers who are able to go through vast numbers of good racing prospects in the effort to find a classic winner. The backstretch is increasingly characterized by assembly line training operations in which horses are subjected to (1) strenuous workouts followed by extensive stall confinement; (2) grain, not a grazing diet, linked to ulcers (3) early and intensive training of horses over hard surfaces, and (4) the legalization of medication which may mask developing problems and contribute to the frailty of the modern race horse. These conditions are producing broken down "unwanted animals"-- horses in need of a second life or retirement, but sometimes sent to slaughter. Public awareness of horse slaughter is increasing due to animal welfare activism, state and federal legislative efforts, celebrity horse death and the racing industry's combination of humane interest and desire to prevent negative publicity. While veterinary associations argue in favor of slaughter to prevent unwanted animals, horse rescue organizations and retirement homes are developing sufficient to rescue thousands of horses. Francione (2000) argues that we cannot be morally concerned about animals and treat them as property- advocating guardianship. A computerized registry maintained by the thoroughbred industry and "retirement clauses" would allow breeders and original owners to keep better track of their animals and prevent slaughter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the year 2003, one of the most media-intensive events in thoroughbred racing was the slaughter of Ferdinand, a Kentucky Derby winner, champion and ?Horse of the Year? who had been sent to Japan as an older stallion. Ferdinand?s death raised many questions about the ethics of care for aged thoroughbreds and, in the United States, the continued slaughter of horses.This essay examines how both media and industry reaction to tragic occurrences involving equine celebrities can motivate legislators and the public to act on behalf of more highly regarded animals. In addition, it may illuminate a path towards helping less visible animals. There is a need to pass federal laws such as the Horse Slaughter Act and to extend its protection so that pet food and rendering as fertilizer are not uncovered options. The need to act will not stop there. Animals need the moral status to receive guardianship and not to be treated as property. There is a need to erode the fiction that animals are things and pursue legislation granting greater social and moral value to animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accountability movement has spread to higher education and is having an impact on sociology programs. At minority serving institutions, dealing with curriculum assessment implementation involves several issues including: (1) How will sociologists deal with the question of national vs. local major field exams? Given the history of objective examinations as obstacles to the advancement of minority students, how will this impact minority institutions of higher education?; (2) Will sociologists be able to establish a CORE knowledge and/or skill base for the discipline? How will the needs of minority serving institutions be reflected in such a CORE other than the diversity requirement?; 3) Will sociologists at minority-serving institutions have access to the faculty and resources to pursue spiral rather than segmented or general educational curriculums? and (4) What will be the role of the capstone course in setting the context for and administering these exams? This presentation reviews the current literature on sociological curriculum assessment and discusses its implementation in the sociology program at Texas A & M International University, a traditionally Hispanic serving institution, including the questions it has raised as well as the decisions that are being made. It is a case study of curriculum assessment and learning outcomes design and implementation at a minority serving school which has implications for all sociology programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although deportation of adults continued at a record pace through 2013, Bush and administration anti-trafficking legislation modified the reception of undocumented Central American child migrants by deferring removal pending immigration court proceeding. A humanitarian crisis occurred as unaccompanied Central American children, and then families, peaked in summer, 2014, overwhelming an already strained immigration processing system. General media and political outcry sought to place blame on both the Bush Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) and the Obama Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immediately generated a system of family detention run by private contractors like Corrections Corporation of America that should be questioned, overseen and re-evaluated in light of alternatives to detention.. It is said that the U.S. immigration system is broken, but the wreckage could be characterized as multivalent and contradictory with contested humanitarian and punitive strategies of reception and expulsion. Denying freedom of movement by detaining children and families is questionable when cost effective alternatives to family centers exist. Partisanship produces results for profit and public display while more humane alternatives are overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]