‘You are breaking a family apart’

The following article has been updated: “Breaking a Family Apart.”

BREAKING

NEW PALTZ, NEW YORK: Joel Guerrero, a green card holder and New Paltz resident, was arrested at his biannual check-in appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on March 1 in New York City.

He was accompanied by his wife Jessica, a U.S. citizen who is six months pregnant with their first child.

ICE arrested Guerrero at his appointment on the grounds that Joel had once missed a court date—in 2009. Guerrero has attended every court date since that missed one, but nonetheless ICE this week put a deportation order in effect for the single court appearance that he missed seven years ago.
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Thank You to The Public

The Public, a Buffalo, New York, alternative newspaper and web site with a circulation of 35,000, published my article about José Coyote Pérez, an immigrant laborer and labor activist in upstate New York, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), earlier today.

The article, with the headline “Labor Activist Detained by ICE,” which is a far superior headline to the one that I slapped on it in a rush, appears here: “Labor Activist Detained by ICE.”
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#RareDiseaseDay 2017

In 2015, when I wrote about Rare Disease Day, a friend asked, tongue firmly in cheek, “Why not have Rare Disease Day on February 29th?” I admit that when I learned about Rare Disease Day several years ago, after I was diagnosed with one, a similar joke crossed my mind.

Each year, the last day in February is the date for International Rare Disease Day, and Leap Day or not, today offers the opportunity for us to remind the world that rare diseases are not at all rare.

Today, February 28, is International Rare Disease Day, and “Research” is this year’s theme.
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