Chronicle reporter accepts award from anti-immigrant group

Jaxon Van Derbeken, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, has accepted an award and cash prize from a group that has been criticized for its racist roots and anti-immigrant agenda by the Southern Poverty Law Center, The SF Bay Guardian reported Friday.

The Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration is awarded by the Center for Immigration Studies for works that bring light to immigration issues.

Van Derbeken penned a series of articles on San Francisco’s defiance of federal laws requiring the city to turn in any arrested immigrants to the federal government. Today’s San Francisco Chronicle features a Van Derbeken article about District Attorney Kamala Harris’ approval of the release of about a half-dozen undocumented immigrants for first-time drug offenses.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “CIS’s reams of reports, as well as its blog postings, editorials, and frequent panels and press conferences, incessantly push the idea that America’s immigration system is an unadulterated evil and that the only way to save America from impending doom is to cut drastically the number of immigrants. CIS has blamed immigrants, both legal and undocumented, for everything from terrorism to global warming. To make its case seem as strong as possible, CIS often manipulates data, relying on shaky statistics or faulty logic to come to the preordained conclusion that immigration is bad for this country.”

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