Federal immigration officials announced Friday that they will be ramming the Secure Communities program down the throats of all states and cities nationwide by 2013 -- irrespective of whether the states and localities have an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to participate in the program or whether they wish to participate at all.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it was ending its signed agreements with governors and localities across the country because of confusion about whether jurisdictions can opt out of the Secure Communities program. In DHS's view, although they can't point to any law mandating the program, ICE plans to keep rolling it out nationwide.
There are so many shocking things about this announcement that it's difficult to know where to start.
For those who aren't familiar with the Secure Communities program, it's one of a handful of ICE programs (others include the 287g program and the Criminal Alien Program) that rely on local and state police departments to support federal immigration enforcement and share information with federal immigration officials. If the information shared, including fingerprints, shows that the individual may be eligible for deportation, ICE can request that the person be detained for further questioning and deportation.
According to ICE, 40 governors and localities have signed agreements with ICE to participate in Secure Communities. The initiative was sold by ICE as an optional program which aims at removing "criminals" who pose a risk to community safety. But when governors in states like Massachusetts, New York, Illinois found out that most of those being deported through the program were not criminals, they announced plans to opt out of the program. The damage done to police-community relationships was also cited as a significant factor in those states opting out.
But DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and other high-level immigration officials with their "my way or the highway" approach said: There will be no opting out. States and localities are getting an offer they can't refuse.
This recent position ignores the previous statements of federal officials such as Secretary Napolitano, Assistant Secretary John Morton of ICE, and Asst. Attorney General Ronald Welch of the DOJ who told Members of Congress and others that communities could opt out of the agreements if they chose to.
On Friday's call with immigrant and civil rights groups, John Sandweg, Counselor to Napolitano, initially said that he wasn't sure what federal law mandated participation in Secure Communities. Later on the call, he told participants, including staff of the Rights Working Group that U.S. Code 1722 mandates Secure Communities. Right. It does nothing of the kind. Read it.
Civil liberties, civil rights and immigrant rights groups, including the Rights Working Group, have been calling for the termination of Secure Communities because it has become obvious that the partnerships between local and state law enforcement agencies and ICE have facilitated if not encouraged racial profiling based on skin color and appearance.
A clear example of this is evident in Irving, Texas where complaints of racial profiling were borne out by the facts.
A University of California-Berkeley Law School study showed a 150 percent increase in the arrests of Latinos in Irving, Texas, from April 2007 to September 2007, after the Irving Police Department began a partnership with ICE that gave police round the clock access to check the immigration status of those they arrested. When Irving police got full access to ICE, the round up began.
In addition to resulting in racial profiling, these partnerships damage relationships between communities of color and police. When people are afraid that calling police could result in deportation, they don't bother and police don't get the help they need to solve crimes.
Programs like Secure Communities have enabled President Obama to show he's tougher on immigration enforcement than President Bush -- he's increased deportations to a record level of 400,000, annually.
It's shocking and ironic that a president who heavily courted Latinos and won two-thirds of their votes in 2008 after promising a push for comprehensive immigration reform would, instead, do nothing on immigration reform while championing the deportation of undocumented migrants.
Candidate Obama promised to pass laws that would ban racial profiling in his 2008 Blueprint for Change but President Obama is backing policies that lead to more profiling.
Candidate Obama often talked of himself as a progressive former community organizer who believed in making life more equal for everyone. But President Obama seems to rarely champion anything progressive.
President Obama, what happened to the other Obama you used to talk about? Civil rights, civil liberties and immigrant rights groups want to know.
Follow Keith Rushing on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@rightsworking
Rep. Luis Gutierrez: Why I Got Arrested for Protesting Obama's Deportation Policy
Jim Wallis: Chipotle Firings: One Story of a Broken Immigration System
Sameer Ahmed and Amna Akbar: Abusing Immigration Law to Target Muslims
Jorge-Mario Cabrera: Takes Two to Tango
New York Quits Secure Communities Immigration Enforcement Program ...
Officials Resist Federal 'Secure Communities' Program - NYTimes.com
It's no longer uncommon to hear false or distorted statistics and half-truths coming from more mainstream groups like FAIR,( Federation for American Immigration Reform,) and The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and aired on innumerable radio talk shows and major cable programs like the Fox News Channel. Very few of the current roster of negative stereotypes — not to mention the conspiracy theories about immigration that are also increasingly widespread — contain any truth at all.
Today in an even more poisonous atmosphere, millions of Americans apparently believe the lies touted by nativist extremists. What follows is an attempt to distinguish demonizing propaganda from reality.
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2007/summer/paranoid-style-redux/getting-immigrat
Broken Immigration laws allow American corporations to use radio spots and newspaper adds to lure Mexicans and others in Mexico to the U.S. by promising a job, regardless of their immigration status, if they can make it across the border.
Broken immigration laws allow those immigrants to work, the IRS provides them with an ITIN number to pay taxes, even though they have no representation within our government system and they are ineligible for public benefits like food stamps, Medicaid, SSI, and housing assistance.
Broken Immigration laws allow immigrants to get married, have children, buy a house and set down roots in this country, but does not provide a way for them to fix their immigration status.
Then 10, 15, years later those same broken immigration laws allow American families to be ripped apart by the deportation of a mother or father of American citizen children or American citizen spouse. These broken immigration laws violate the Constitution of the United States of America and need to be changed or fixed.
The FBI and the DEA have offices in several Mexican cities. In February 2010, spokespeople for de facto president Calderón admitted that U.S. agents were active in Ciudad Juárez. The number of U.S. military contractors sent to Mexico has increased during Calderón’s administration. There are videos of contractors who have trained Mexican police taking part in the torture of prisoners. In 2008, U.S. involvement in Mexico took the form of that business enterprise called Blackwater. Exposed for its crimes against humanity in Iraq, it has changed its name to Xe Services. It came to “help” Calderón in his supposed war against the narcotraffic.
Five transnational corporations control the U.S. mass media for imperialist interests and say nothing or spread lies about the people’s uprisings in Mexico and the Mexican immigrants in the United States. This is because the U.S. government is focusing its sights on the rising Mexican opposition in order to gain greater control over Mexican oil, minerals, uranium, water, biodiversity, and immigrant labor. And it wants to keep immigrant labor cheap, and so aligns with the Mexican business elite and its government.
http://www.alternet.org/books/149489/what_are_the_u.s.%27s_real_motives_for_launching_a_drug_war_in_mexico?page=entire
These are friends, family members, co workers of citizens just like you.They are not"invaders" to lots of U.S. citizens.
Complains about racial profiling do not address the heart of the issue. They have the feel of out-of-date ideas being applied. The racial aspect of the issue is contingent, not fundamental.
It's the War on terror which leads back to Iraq and Afghanistan, to Israel and Christian and Jewish groups. It's a leaky border and drug-running. It's the decline of America into a right-wing paranoid oligarchy.
Racial profiling is a symptom of a very deep malaise. Treating symptoms does not cure.
You have to treat causes.
more benefits accrue from illegal immigration than costs, most studies indicate that illegal immigrants act as a substitute for low wage/near min wage earning native born workers, and act as a net complement to the rest.
They are easily exploited by criminal gangs. When workless, they are easily criminalized.
The belief that illegal immigrants depress wages (they took our jawbs) is politically significant regardless of how true it is - or not.
Calculations based on contribution to economy ignores human suffering of immigrants and dilution of labor in host economy. Maybe low wages should be higher - but will not rise because of dilution of labor pool by illegals. Benefit is to employers but working-class Americans of low skill are left without work.
Then show me WHO benefits.
1. The illegals do.
2. The illegal employers.
3. The advocates for illegals - Laraza, etal.
4. The wealthy - cheap labor.
5. Immigration attorneys.
Then show who gets harmed.
1. The poor citizens.
2. Any school aged children in areas with illegals.
3. Our natural resources and environment.
4. Most middle income taxpayers.
5. Anyone who needs to use a ER where illegals are common.
Pick your side to support.
There are many shades of gray where one does not have to stand with either end of the scale.
Hardliners Try to White-Wash Their Own Immigrant Pasts by Redefining 'Immigration'
Redefining the word "immigrant" is an attempt to differentiate between those they hate and their own grandparents.
http://www.alternet.org/immigration/85551/?page=entire#comments
Aretia's duncical opinion of corporations is typical of the majority of the posters on this site. I wish Aretia, or someone else here, would explain to me, in what interest is it of a company or corporation to keep the people who they depend on for their very existence; poor. It is beyond my comprehension why people like Aretia see a corporation as some alien entity, or a building on the hill. Mitt Romney is right in saying corporations are people. People who have jobs with the company, provide services for the company, manage the company, and people who use their goods or services. The people who ARE the corporatons pay taxes on the money they earn from employment, the stockholders pay taxes on the earnings of the stock, and.the company pays state, local, and federal taxes on goods and services that it purchases.
I do not understand the lumpish liberals who constantly berate the very entities that produce the goods and services that keep this country going. That type of baroque mindset seems predominant among progressives.
In other words the situation in Mexico is really really bad and many of these actors have shipped many of their co-criminals to the U.S. to set up shop. It's allot worse than you realize. They have to be sent back.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/07/341919.shtml
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/07/342179.shtml
Why is the U.S. all over Mexico's up coming presidential elections like a wet suit? Why has the U.S. already decided who Mexico's next President will be?
http://reflexioneslibertarias.blogspot.com/2010/08/nntv-al-gores-mexican-adventure.html
If it’s legal for U.S. corporations to flood Mexico’s markets with cheap imports,(NAFTA) only a hypocrite would say it’s illegal for Mexico's impoverished workers to live and work in the U.S.
If it's legal for the U.S. government to pay Mexico's ruling elite to fight Americas war on drugs in Mexico at the expense of the lives of Mexican people, only a hypocrite would say it is illegal for Mexicans who fear for their lives to flee across the border seeking safety for themselves and the lives of their children.
It is important to remember that these people do not hate our country or it's citizens. To understand their view point one must suspend his or her reality about what a country is. To the open boarders crowd a country is a line on a map and nothing more. They do not believe in countries. They do not believe in individual societies. They believe only in an idealized one world society that does not and never will exist. They believe themselves to be further evolved than the common folk and therefore in a better position to help guide the world toward their aesthetic ideal.
...It makes no sense to abstain from rational thought but the open boarders folks are hard wired that way.
In fact, "If you want to find a safe city, first determine the size of the immigrant population," says Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Massachusetts. "If the immigrant community represents a large proportion of the population, you're likely in one of the country's safer cities. San Diego, Laredo, El Paso—these cities are teeming with immigrants, and they're some of the safest places in the country."
http://reason.com/archives/2009/07/06/the-el-paso-miracle
Ummm. I guess it depends on your definition of "criminals"... I consider that to be "someone who is BREAKING THE LAW." Period. Including the law about being here illegally.
So, yeah, that makes them CRIMINALS. Deport them. No questions, no talking about it. Just do it. Now!
Being in the U.S. without papers is a civil violation, not a crime.