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The latest creation of Dominican artist Ruben Ubiera is a mural in Wynwood, Miami, called #IamHere , depicting the faces of eight people—almost all long-time residents of Florida—who have shared their immigration stories. They include a young man put in foster care after his mother was deported, a bi-national gay couple who cannot apply for legal status for the undocumented partner, and a pregnant woman subjected to civil immigration detention for over a month, including solitary confinement, without a bond hearing. If we don’t fix our broken immigration system soon, the faces in the mural will be the only remnant we have left in Florida of many of these people.

By Tanya Greene, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU

Note: This post originally appeared on the National ACLU Blog of Rights. The original blog post can be found here.

Florida will start this long, hot summer with a bang. The state has announced that in the coming months it intends to strap three separate men down, open their veins, paralyze them, and force deadly chemicals into their hearts until they die.

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I met Mary Graham last Saturday at a meeting of Mothers Standing in the Gap, a group of women in Jacksonville who come together to support one another through their sons’ incarceration. Like mothers everywhere, they do everything they can for their sons, with little concern for themselves.

On Saturday, more than a thousand Floridians gathered at Jose Marti Park in Little Havana, to march for a fair and inclusive immigration reform with a path to citizenship for the 11 million aspiring citizens.

ACLU of Florida staff, including myself, participated in the march. We expressed our concerns about how our broken immigration system is rife with severe civil rights and civil liberties problems, and that reform is long overdue. There are about 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country and there is currently no effective way for these aspiring citizens to become citizens. As we move forward to fix this broken system, we must do so in a way that honors our country’s promise of equality to all.

When the U.N. Human Rights Committee reviews U.S. compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) this October, the review will tackle many of the human rights violations plaguing Florida. Last week the committee released its list of issues, which will form the basis for the U.S. review, and demanded answers to questions regarding U.S. laws and policies in areas such as juvenile solitary confinement, felon disfranchisement, and discriminatory enforcement of criminal law.

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