Also, we’ll examine the rhythmic harmonies of composer and drummer Dafnis Pieto.

Pinal County Jail, Florence, Arizona.

Earlier this year, Jacqueline Stevens, a visiting professor at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the Berkeley Law School, UC Berkeley, wrote an article for The Nation about secret detention centers operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Stevens spoke to Latino USA about comments that ICE officials could make people “disappear” within their system if they so wanted.

Recently, Stevens uncovered evidence of ICE agents lying to immigration judges with impunity. The problem has grown to the point that, according to Stevens, ICE is illegally detaining American citizens.

For more, see Stevens’ BLOG and listen to her conversation with Latino USA’s Maria Hinojosa.

Demographers say that in many growing areas of the country, Latinos are becoming a “majority-minority.” But the term “minority” has been one Latino USA has sought to avoid throughout the years. Maria Hinojosa explains why.

Elisabeth Harrison is education reporter for public radio station WRNI in Providence, RI. She has a B.A. in English and French from Wellesley College, and a joint M.A. in Journalism and French Studies from NYU.

Photo by Harry Lopez.

Cuban drummer, composer and educator Dafnis Prieto arrived in New York in 1999 and has since spent more than a decade influencing Latin and jazz music. At a summer concert in 2009, the New York Times said this of him: “Dynamic to the extreme, his music advances a slippery amalgam of complex polyrhythm and incantatory melody. There’s always a lot going on, especially at the level of his forceful but supple drumming.”

In addition to being a performer and composer, Prieto heads his own music company called Dafnison Music. And he has been a music instructor at New York University since 2005.

Dafnis Prieto Si o Si Quartet at MOMA 2009

Video Posted by Dafnison.

Central Falls, Rhode Island is not a region that immediately jumps out as being an immigrant Latino hotbed. But as the region has struggled with English as a Second Language and shifting demographics, the “No Child Left Behind” provisions of federal education standards has critized the school’s performance. In a drastic move to combat falling performance standards, the local school board recently fired the entire teaching staff of the local high school. The story has made national headlines.

Mario Orozco-Suarez

Elisabeth Harrison

Lejos Cerca

Thinking About You