LOS ANGELES - As high school seniors graduate and look to the future this month, local students called on Congress Monday to pass the DREAM Act, a federal bill that would increase access to higher education for undocumented immigrant students and give them the opportunity to pursue their goals after high school.

Students, with support from congressional representatives, community organizations and teachers, are seeking federal reform that would help hard-working students who aspire to attend college or join the military to become eligible for permanent residence and in-state tuition rates.

"My parents came to Los Angeles so that my sisters and I could have more opportunities," said Cynthia, a junior at Fairfax High School. "I want to do the right thing and make them proud of their daughters. College is part of that, but my family doesn't have a lot of extra money and right now there is no way for me to become a permanent resident and make sure that I can really make a difference in this country."

Students announced that they will continue to fight for the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act or the DREAM Act, bipartisan legislation introduced by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) that would help young people who were brought to the U.S. more than 5 years ago when they were 15 years old or younger and have kept out of trouble. Under the DREAM Act, students would be able to apply for conditional status, which would authorize up to 6 years of legal residence while attending college or serving in the military. After six years, if students have met all the requirements they would be granted permanent residence.

"The DREAM Act would not only enable myself, but thousands of other students who have grown up in this country and have proven themselves through their hard work in school that they deserve an opportunity to attend college and find a path to legalization," said Byron P. who graduated yesterday from Manual Arts High School.

Both the DREAM Act and the Student Adjustment Act, a similar bill in the House, would expand existing state legislation and will be introduced in July. Both Sens. Feinstein and Boxer have supported the bill in the last Congressional session.

"Currently our immigration law has no mechanism to consider students' special circumstances," said ACLU/SC Executive Director Ramona Ripston. "The DREAM Act would eliminate this flaw. It is un-American to punish students indefinitely who want to go on to higher studies and use those lessons to contribute to our society. We hope Congress recognizes immigrant students potential and enacts the DREAM Act."

LOS ANGELES - Over the last several months the ACLU of Southern California has been working with countless parents, students and teachers who are deeply concerned about extreme efforts to recruit their children to the military. In order to meet its goals, the government since 2002 has required public high schools to turn over students' personal data to the Pentagon as a condition of receiving federal funding.

Now it has been revealed that the Pentagon is working with a private company to create a behemoth database that contains even more highly personal information including children's social security number, ethnicity, grade-point average, age, e-mail address and even the courses they are studying.

Parents concerned about the strong-arm tactics the military is using to send their children to war have been calling for a more fair approach where they help decide the appropriate path to take after graduating from high school. The Pentagon's latest action recklessly disregards this and instead mandates the collection of ever-more detailed dossiers of American teens' personal information.

Also, the Pentagon in its Federal Register notice about this "system of records" has reserved the right to share these student dossiers for numerous purposes that have nothing to do with military recruitment, including law enforcement. That means sensitive information about the lives of millions of innocent students - including the keys to identity theft like social security numbers - may now end up in the files of not just the Pentagon but a host of public and private parties.

We understand the Pentagon is not meeting its recruitment goals, but collecting such information about high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students is an egregious violation of privacy and personal freedom.

LOS ANGELES - The ACLU of Southern California strongly objects to a City of Los Angeles proposal that would effectively end civilian oversight of six law enforcement departments and agencies. The Police Commission is expected to vote on the plan Tuesday.

The move would transfer security services of the Departments of Recreation and Parks, Library, Convention Center, Zoo and El Pueblo Historic Monument Departments, and the Community Redevelopment Agency under the direction of a newly-created Office of Public Safety in the General Services Department. Currently the agencies all fall under the watch of public commissions, but General Services does not.

In a letter sent to the Police Commission today, the ACLU of Southern California asked that the plan be reconsidered as civilian oversight is inherently important to public safety. If created, the new Office of Public Safety would include "Special Officers" who will be trained like LAPD officers and will be certified to carry firearms, make arrests and use force when needed, but the public would not have a method to monitor the actions of these officers as it does the LAPD.

"The creation of a secondary police force in the City that is not subject to similar review flies in the face of the letter and spirit of the City charter, which clearly establishes the value and need for civilian oversight of the LAPD," said ACLU/SC Criminal Justice Director Ricardo Garcia in the letter to the Commission.

The absence of public scrutiny if the new department is created is at the heart of the problem, not the idea of consolidating the security agencies, said ACLU/SC Executive Director Ramona Ripston.

"We should not diminish checks and balances in the police department, especially when the public's safety is in peril," said Ripston. "The Police Commission must not vote to move armed officers out of their supervision, where important oversights exist."