Nebraska Appleseed:

As a meaningful way to celebrate special life occasions or memorialize friends or family members who have been important to you, consider giving a Gift of Hope in honor of someone special.
When you make a $25 donation you'll receive five cards to tell your friends and family that you've honored them with a Gift of Hope. If you need more cards, make a note in the "Special Instructions" section or e-mail us at cvt@cvt.org.

Fall 2009: Asylum Seekers Need Protection, Not Detention

Judge Calls Evidence Against Burge and Underlings "Staggering" and "Damning"

CHICAGO, May 22 – Nineteen years after he was viciously beaten by subordinates of indicted former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, Victor Safforld – formerly known as Cortez Brown – was awarded a new trial today when a Cook County Circuit Judge overturned his wrongful murder conviction, and calls the evidence against the cops “staggering” and “damning.”

FEB 27 - Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) introduced legislation yesterday to adopt humane and legally enforceable standards for immigration detention facilities. The need for Congress to pass such legislation has been underscored by the increasing number of deaths in immigration detention and reports on inadequate medical care for immigrant detainees. Heartland Alliance's National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) applauded the reintroduction of the Immigration Oversight and Fairness Act, H.R. 1215, and calls on Congress and the Obama Administration to take swift action to support the legislation to help restore justice to the U.S. immigration system.

By Douglas Johnson,
Executive Director of the Center for Victims of Torture (Minneapolis), a member of the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights.

In his inaugural speech, President Barack Obama spoke of the "false choice between our safety and our ideals." These words were a subtle but important signal that monumental policy change would be coming in regard to U.S. interrogation rules.

Just two days later we saw those words put into action with Obama's signing of the executive order "Ensuring Lawful Interrogation" — along with  two others that ordered a systemic review of detention policies and the closing of  the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within a year.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - Congress has passed The Trafficking Victims Protection and Reauthorization Act of 2008 (H.R.7311), which will significantly expand protections for unaccompanied immigrant children seeking safety in the United States. The legislation is expected to be signed into law by President Bush.

The bill ensures that unaccompanied immigrant children who are taken into custody by the federal government and placed in deportation proceedings will be sheltered in safe environments and have broader access to legal protections as they pursue asylum or immigration status. 

“No act of war, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture"

On June 25, the eve of International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the Center for Victims of Torture, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and Evangelicals for Human Rights, launched the Campaign to Ban Torture: American Voices for American Values.

The Wall Street Journal (November 7, 2007) ran an Op-Ed by Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz regarding the Democrats apparent soft stance on torture. The Executive Director of the Center for Victims of Torture, Douglas A. Johnson, wrote a response to Mr. Dershowitz editorial and it was printed in the November 12th issue of the WSJ. The text of his letter can be found below:

Alan Dershowitz, while passionately promoting the use of torture, consistently fails to acknowledge how torture really works in the world. His argument is based on a dramatic but purely hypothetical law school exercise.