Wendy Feliz
Wendy Feliz is the Director of Communications at the American Immigration Council. Prior to joining the Council, Ms. Feliz served as Director of Development at New America Media, after having worked at the Open Society Institute, and public radio station WAMU 88.5 as the Manager of Foundation Relations and Public Information. Ms. Feliz has spent much of her career in the non-profit world including with The California Hispanic Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse in East Los Angeles and The Young Adult Institute and Latino Worker’s Center in New York City. Ms. Feliz received her M.A. in Public Communication from the American University in Washington D.C. and she holds a B.A. in Liberal Arts from the New School University in New York.
A Texas Judge has placed a preliminary hold on the two initiatives announced by President Obama last November that would expand the two-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of U.S. Citizens and Legal Permanent Residents (DAPA). These two programs would provide temporary relief from deportation to approximately 5 million […]
The New York Times details the government’s dangerous and expanding practice of detaining women and children who have recently crossed our southwest border in the magazine’s cover story this weekend “The Shame of America’s Family Detention Camps.” The facility the Times describes in Artesia, New Mexico, has since been shuttered, but the newly opened Dilley […]
When the family detention center in Artesia, New Mexico, was hastily propped up by the U.S. government in order to detain and rapidly process women and children for deportation, immigration rights advocates raised alarms. Over the course of several months, as an uptick in families and unaccompanied minors appeared at the U.S. border, the media-fueled […]
President Obama delivered his sixth State of the Union speech this week, which was followed up by two GOP rebuttals, one in English, the other in Spanish. Comparing all three speeches is a lesson in the parties’ contrasting views on immigration reform and who they believe truly has a stake in the fight. First, the […]
Texas is leading a lawsuit challenging President Obama’s executive action on immigration and has asked for a preliminary injunction that will be considered in a hearing on Thursday, January 15 in a federal district court in Brownsville, Texas. Texas is arguing that the president’s actions will harm states economically and socially. Challenging these claims, Washington […]
On Monday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia heard oral arguments in the first of two cases being brought against parts of President Obama’s recently announced executive action on immigration. Notorious Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is seeking to stop the implementation of the DACA and DAPA programs based on the increased […]
Imagine what it would be like to be in a foreign country, and law enforcement officials take your phone, identification and money. Then, what if you are moved through a series of short-term holding cells and then longer term detention facilities and eventually released by being deported to another country without any access to your […]
The anti-immigrant crowd’s latest arguments against executive action are emerging. Not surprising, they are no different than the ones they have long levied against legislative efforts at immigration reform. Their linguistic fear-mongering includes the mischaracterization of temporary reprieves from deportation as amnesty/green cards and citizenship for all, as well as pushing the myth that immigrants […]
In 2011, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), unlawfully detained a 4-year-old girl when she arrived at Dulles Airport in Virginia, deprived her of any contact with her parents, and then sent her back to Guatemala. The girl’s father subsequently filed a lawsuit on his daughter’s […]
This week, the nation’s largest association of immigration attorneys and professors sent a powerful letter to Congress and the President urging them to immediately close the family detention facility in Artesia, New Mexico, where the U.S. currently detains women and children fleeing violence and persecution in Central America. The letter, signed by attorneys who have […]
