Photo by cfpereda, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

“Finally,” Evelyn Medina told the Huffington Post on Tuesday as she walked out of the Honduran Consulate. With newly-minted passport in hand, the 23-year-old social work student was ready to join young undocumented immigrants across the city — and nation — in applying for a permit to remain and work in the United States on Wednesday.

With a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama administration announced in June that it would cease deporting illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, provided that they could prove that they arrived in the U.S. before they turned 16, have remained at least five years and are in school, graduated or served in the military — and pose no safety threats to the country.

The Department of Homeland Security announced on Tuesday which documents immigrants would need to provide to qualify for the program: a passport or birth certificate, school transcripts, medical and financial records and military service records. Additionally, they would have to  pay a $465 fee. The application itself appeared online at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website shortly after the announcement, a day before authorities had said it would.

Maria, a young Chilean, was gathered with a number of other undocumented immigrants at a Latino community center in the city when she saw the document, according to CNN. “I found the form!” she shouted as she leaped out of her seat, then began to fill out the form immediately. She told CNN that she was too afraid to divulge her personal details, but would feel differently once her status was ensured.

According to the Huffington Post, hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants could benefit from the program, but Homeland Security officials have stressed that they have no estimate of how many people will apply. Alejandro Mayorkas, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, has emphasized that approved to avoid deportation “does not provide lawful status or a path to citizenship.”

A woman named Mayra Rivera, 47, visited the Honduran Consulate on Tuesday with her 18- and 20-year old kids to help them apply for passports. “They came here when they were children. So, for them, even though they are from Honduras . . . this is their adoptive country and they love it a lot,” Rivera told the Huffington Post in Spanish. “For them to succeed . . . is like winning the Lotto.”

Espaillat Eyes Senate & Concedes to Rangel

City & State reports that State Sen.Adriano Espaillat, who conceded defeat on Monday in his contested primary race against Rep. Charles Rangel, declined to say whether he would run for re-election to the state Senate.
But Espaillat signaled that he would run for his seat, revealing at a press conference Monday that he had given district leaders permission to circulate petitions on his behalf after the June 26 congressional primary.
“I authorized some of the district leaders to begin circulating petitions after the 26th, after Election Day, and I will be considering my personal decision as to whether or not I will accept those signatures and move forward with re-election,” he told reporters outside his district office. “I promise you that in 48 hours, I will have that answer for you.”
Petitions to run for the state Senate and Assembly are due by Thursday. A source close to Mark Levine, an Espaillat ally who had been planning to run for Espaillat’s seat, also confirmed the senator will run for re-election. The source said that Espaillat will use his own petition signatures and not get on the ballot through a Levine vacancy committee, as had been speculated.
During the campaign, Espaillat said he only had his sights on the congressional seat, not his own. Rangel, the longtime congressman who faced his toughest primary challenge in over four decades in office, seized on Espaillat’s comments, saying that he didn’t know where the senator would find a new job when he lost.
Whether he runs for re-election or not, Espaillat could be a serious candidate for Rangel’s congressional seat again in two years. Espaillat, who is Dominican, came within 1,000 votes of ousting the incumbent, capitalizing on changing demographics and redrawn lines that made Latinos a majority in the district.
“There’s no question I come out of this process strengthened,” Espaillat said. “I think two years down the line is a long time. I will not make a decision right here, but I feel very strongly that I have been strengthened in this process.”
Espaillat could also find himself taking on the state’s other leading Dominican elected official, Assemblyman Guillermo Linares. Linares said he would run for Espaillat’s state Senate seat after Espaillat announced his run for Congress, and reiterated his intention to run when Rangel initially declared victory.

Synagogues Get Anti-Terror Dough

Last week, U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand announced that New York would be receiving $3.4 million from the Department of Homeland Security to protect Jewish schools and temples vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The money, which is over 30 percent of the total allocated for the country, will be distributed to 42 organizations throughout the state. Rep. Jerry Nadler secured $825,000 of that grant money for 11 Jewish nonprofit
organizations in his district, one of which is the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue at 30 W. 68th St.
Nadler was the author of the High-Risk Non-Profit Security Enhancement Act,
legislation that creates grants for “soft targets” of terrorism, like schools and religious institutions, to enhance their safety measures and ensure they are able to protect themselves from attack. He worked with the United Jewish Communities, the American Red Cross, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, United Way, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the American Hospital Association and the UJA Federation of New York to secure the funding and identify recipients.
“This funding will make it possible for more charitable institutions and the people they serve to get the proper tools to secure themselves against potential terrorist attacks,” Nadler said in a statement. “The threat against these organizations is, unfortunately, very real, and it is the obligation of government to protect potential targets from attacks by those who espouse hatred and violence.”
The Stephen Wise Free Synagogue will receive $75,000 in funding for security purposes for Fiscal Year 2012.

Disabling the Training Wheels

A special training camp for children with disabilities will be held in New York City for the first time this summer. Lose the Training Wheels, a nonprofit organization that teaches people with disabilities to ride two-wheeled bicycles, is holding a free camp for children Aug. 6–10 in Brooklyn sponsored by the National Down Syndrome Society and the Lyle Foundation. The event will be held at the Aviator Sports & Event Center in Floyd Bennett Field, at 3159 Flatbush Ave.
The program uses special adaptive bicycles that are designed to gradually transition kids to riding regular two-wheeled bikes without any assistance.
Children who ride a bike on their own gain the benefit of independent transportation, a new form of exercise and a boost in self-esteem.
Participants must be at least 8 years old and have a disability. They must be able to walk without an assistive device and sidestep to both sides, as well as be under 220 pounds and have a minimum inseam measurement (taken from the floor with sneakers on) of 20 inches. All participants must be able to attend a 75-minute session for each of the five days of camp. Those with their own two-wheeled bikes are strongly encouraged to bring them to the first day of camp in order for instructors to plan on transitioning the child by the end of the week.
Registration is limited; email bikecampnyc@gmail.com for more information
or to sign up.

Photo by Andrew Schwartz

Slacking off: Adam Minegar carefully balances himself while walking across a slack rope line in Riverside Park.

According to a press release from the City Council, Secure Communities requires fingerprints taken by local law enforcement officials to be automatically shared with DHS for crosscheck so Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can determine whether the person arrested is deportable. If ICE determines that the person arrested is deportable, the release continues, it may issue an immigration detainer that requests the local law enforcement agency to hold the arrestee for 48 hours so ICE can assume custody.

According to the City Council, immigrant advocates first raised concerns regarding the program’s transparency, the potential that it would lead to racial and ethnic profiling and its likely negative effect on community policing in 2008, when Secure Communities was announced. These concerns were reiterated in the report issued by the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s Task Force on Secure Communities in September 2011, but the City Council say the DHS and ICE’s response to these concerns have been inadequate.

“I am deeply troubled by and have always opposed the implementation of Secure Communities, in its current form, in New York City,” said Quinn in a statement. “It has led to the deportation of many immigrants who were arrested for minor offenses and nonviolent crimes. If this program is brought to New York City, it will create fear in immigrant communities and corrode the bond between immigrants and local law enforcement.”

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer added, “This Tuesday, the federal government’s Secure Communities program will go into effect against the will of our state’s governor and many of its elected leaders. As I have said in the past on many occasions, this program will lead to the unjust deportations of thousands of productive and legal immigrants and will cause millions of dollars in unnecessary costs to New York.”

“I strongly urge President Obama and Department of Homeland Security officials to hear the calls of so many around the country and make this program optional for the dozens of jurisdictions that wish to withdraw,” Stringer added.

Murmylyuk, a Russian national living in Brooklyn, created the fake employment website jobcentral2.net, where he is accused of stealing the personal information of more than 300 people. The site, which purported to have government sponsorship and was intended for people with low income, was emailed through job search forums and college listservs. Murmylyuk is alleged to have taken the information submitted to the site and created falsified wage information to receive tax returns in victims’ names. He successfully obtained refunds ranging from approximately $3,500 to $6,500 each from 108 different stolen identities.

“At a time when many unemployed New Yorkers are turning to the Internet to find work, this defendant is charged with preying upon online job seekers and tricking them into divulging personal information,” said District Attorney Cyrus Vance in a statement.

The 31-year-old schemer recruited 11 Kazakh students to the US to open bank accounts around the country where the stolen tax returns were deposited. They then passed on the information to Murmylyuk’s use, and many returned to their native Kazakhstan shortly after. Those students, who range between 19 to 23 years of age, are being charged in absentia.

Murmylyuk is charged with scheme to defraud, money laundering, grand larceny, identity theft, and computer trespass, which have been added to his existing charges from the Department of Justice. Murmylyuk was indicted earlier this year for his alleged role in $1 million scheme where he hacked into retail brokerage accounts and executed fraudulent trades. He will be arraigned on May 2.