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BAL MAIDEN's latest film focuses on the real effects of America's broken immigration system, families that are being split apart by an immigration system that doesn't make sense, and the civil rights of all involved, We are following Lydia Guzman of Respect/Respeto, a Latina human rights activist on the frontlines of this issue in Maricopa County, Arizona.

A dirty war is being waged in the United States – a war against immigrants, especially Latino immigrants. The tipping point for this war was the collapse, in 2006 and 2007, of legislative efforts to undertake comprehensive reform of U.S. immigration policy and practice. In fact, it is a war conducted so widely that knowledge of its real scope and cost is obscured by its very pervasiveness – harassment, racial profiling, raids, imprisonment, deportation. It is wreaking havoc on families and communities, schools and businesses, American values and the rule of law. Ground Zero for this war isn’t in some far-off corrupt dictatorship or oppressive state, it’s in Maricopa County, Arizona, home to controversial Sherrif Joe Arpaio, Under the 287(g) agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), he has deputized more police officers and arrested more immigrants than in any other county in the United States. While it’s too early to tell what reforms may come from President Obama’s new administration, it is significant that his new Department of Homeland Security chief is none other than former Governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano, whose first official statement declared her intention to ramp up the 287(g) program, controversial legislation that allows this war to advance on many levels.

287(g) has opened the door for massive “sweeps” and detention of immigrants, happening all across the United States, but many of them end up in the sprawling prison city of Florence, Arizona, thirty minutes outside of Phoenix. While much of the rest of the country’s private sector suffers the worst economic downturn in decades, a kind of ”immigrant gold rush” is on in Arizona, with the prison industry posting record profits. What many people don’t realize is that arresting, detaining and deporting illegal immigrants can mean Big Business.

Our film raises an interesting question as Obama appears to be dismantling the gulag of US run detention and torture centers around the world, what about the detention and torture centers (and people are tortured, by neglect, brutality, deliberate withholding of medical attention, etc) right here "at home"?

As more and more families are being split apart, Lydia Guzman is bringing her fight to Washington in attempts to overturn 287(g), stop Sherrif Arpaio and his detentions and deportions, and create a more humane immigration system in America.

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