Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Counties Defy Feds, Vow Not to Detain Immigrants on ICE’s Behalf - COLORLINES

Counties Defy Feds, Vow Not to Detain Immigrants on ICE’s Behalf

Tuesday, October 25 2011, 10:00 AM EST Tags: deportation dragnet, Secure Communities

Cooperating with the federal government’s immigration enforcement agenda may be mandatory for local law enforcement, but localities are finding ways around the federal government’s programs.

Last week northern California’s Santa Clara County became the latest locality to pass an ordinance that will likely curb the number of its residents who get handed over to federal immigration authorities through the immigration enforcement program Secure Communities. That same week, Washington, D.C. mayor Vincent Gray signed an executive order reaffirming the rights of D.C. residents not to get harassed by law enforcement officers about their immigration status.

These announcements are the latest in a string of similar moves from other counties which have attempted to push back on the federal government’s interpretation of its Secure Communities program. S-Comm, as the initiative is often called, allows immigration officials to check the fingerprints of everyone booked into a local or county jail against federal immigration records. Even if the person is wrongfully arrested or never charged with any crime, they become subject to deportation if they’re found to be undocumented. If a match is found, Immigration and Customs Enforcement — if it doesn’t already have an agent posted inside the local jail — will call local law enforcement and ask them to detain a person while ICE agents come down to the jail to take them away for detention proceedings.

Santa Clara County has now determined that enforcing such detainers for ICE are “requests” from the federal government which it’s under no obligation to carry out. It’s further argued that holding onto people in county jails for ICE is a costly financial burden that localities, which are not reimbursed by the federal government, should not to have enforce.

“Today is historic,” said Santa Clara County Supervisor George Shirakawa on the day of the vote, New America Media reported. “We now have the most progressive policy in this field, and the whole nation will be looking at us as Santa Clara County makes it official: we don’t do ICE’s job.”

Washington, D.C. Mayor Gray signed an executive order that also promised to stop the practice of holding onto people for ICE longer than the legally mandated 48-hour period, which localities have done as a courtesy to the federal agency.

“We’re not going to be instruments of federal law when it comes to immigration status,” Gray said last week, Washington D.C.’s WTOP reported.

Such resistance comes as the federal government is pushing harder and harder to limit states’ attempts to opt out of the once-optional program. This past summer, after the governors of Illinois, New York and Massachusetts all attempted to opt out or distance their states from the program, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) responded by canceling every contract it had drawn up with participating states. DHS argued that the program was not optional after all.

The program has been a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s deportation agenda, and been a primary driver of the administration’s record-breaking deportation rates.

While the loudest resistance to the program has come from immigrant rights advocates, local law enforcement officers have also been vocal in their criticisms. Traditionally, immigration violations are civil offenses that are not enforced by local law enforcement.

But that’s no longer the case.

The school of thinking among a growing number of law enforcement experts, and not just immigrant advocates, is that forcing police to help the federal government enforce immigration law breaks down trust in a community, and hampers police officers’ ability to do their primary job of ensuring public safety.

Partnerships between local law enforcement and immigration officials “creates the very distinct impression that police are agents of ICE,” said Stephen Smith, the organizing director of the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “And if you think the police are agents and you are part of a mixed status family, you don’t call the police and you don’t report crimes on your own.”

Earlier this summer San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessy, citing exactly this reasoning, announced that he’d no longer honor ICE detainer requests for people who were arrested by not charged with a crime; those who were victims of domestic violence and those with no prior criminal record. Last month Illinois’ Cook County, where the cost of detaining people on behalf of ICE amounts to $15.7 million dollars a year, passed a local ordinance similar to Santa Clara County’s. Smith credited local law enforcement officials in Illinois and around the country for providing leadership on the issue to get these ordinances passed.

“The unsung heroes in this are the law enforcement officials who are providing legitimacy to claims that if anything, these programs make us less safe, not more safe,” Smith said.

While other attempts to end participation in Secure Communities have not been successful, localities have been able to assert this kind of resistance so far.

“I think what sheriffs and what localities are doing in setting this trend is totally within their right and within their scope of local jurisdiction,” said B. Loewe, a spokesperson with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which is organizing to dismantle Secure Communities. “How their agencies respond to [detainer] requests is within their purview.”

“Jurisdictions who ignore detainers bear the risk of possible dangers to public safety,” ICE spokesperson Gillian Christensen said this summer, US News reported.

According to Smith, such framing is a disingenuous ploy, since local ordinances that limit localities’ cooperation with detainer requests do not bar the federal government from picking up the tab for these costs.

Secure Communities is slated to be operational across the entire country by 2013.

Monday, October 24, 2011

S-Comm Silences Domestic Violence Victims

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Marco

Posted by Amy Woo, October 21, 2011 | Source: Bilingual Weekly News

Ed. Note: In commemoration of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the following piece explores the ramifications of Pres. Obama’s federal immigration enforcement program known as Secure Communities, or S-Comm, on immigrant victims of domestic violence.

USA – For years, Yan endured brutal beatings and repeated rapes at the hands of her husband. An undocumented immigrant from Asia, she never called the police out of fear that she would be deported and forever separated from their child, who was born in the United States.

Her husband constantly told her as much, so she never sought help and felt trapped in her nightmare marriage. Ultimately, thinking she had nowhere to go and no one to turn to, Yan and her child returned to her country of origin, where at least she had her family to support her.

Undocumented immigrant victims of domestic violence are conditioned by their abusers to fear the police. An abuser will tell a victim that if she were to call the police, when the police arrive, he will tell them that she hit him, she’ll be arrested, deported and ultimately never see her children again.

With the enormous progress that the domestic violence movement has made in empowering victims to seek help such threats should be empty. However, Secure Communities – a controversial immigration enforcement program that allows federal authorities to screen fingerprints of those arrested by local police to identify undocumented immigrants — lends credibility to abusers’ threats by making deportation a very real possibility.

The projected expansion of Secure Communities to every jurisdiction in the U.S. severely undercuts the advances made by advocates to empower battered immigrant women to seek help.

Heightened distrust of police

Only about 19 percent of undocumented domestic violence victims come forward to report their abuse to the police. Some fear deportation, while others have had negative experiences with police in their countries of origin.

For such women, it is not unusual to have previously called the police in their country of origin, only to be told that the abuse was a family matter, not requiring police involvement. Furthermore, such calls often enrage the abuser, putting the victim in even greater danger.

Often times, if abuse victims don’t already fear the police, abusers will convince victims they should be afraid of police. Part of the fear involves police procedures when officers respond to a domestic violence incident.

If both the victim and batterer have wounds (including defensive wounds on the batterer, such as scratches), the police must determine the primary aggressor. If the victim does not understand or speak enough English to explain the truth of the situation, the police may determine that there was mutual combat and arrest both parties. Even worse, the victim may be the only one taken into custody.

Consider what happened to Lin, a battered woman who emigrated to the U.S. with the help of her husband, a U.S. citizen. Upon her arrival, her once-loving husband became extremely abusive, beating her regularly and forcing her to perform unwanted sexual acts. There were threats to kill her, and at one point he pointed a gun to her head.

One day, after a sever beating, he called the police himself. Since he was over a foot taller than her and much stronger, he grabbed her hands and used them to hit himself. When the police arrived, because both Lin and her husband had red marks on them and Lin could not clearly explain what happened in her broken English, they were both arrested. She was later released without being charged, but not before being detained in a holding cell over an entire weekend.

The hope is that in situations like this, justice will prevail and the victim will be exonerated. However, the reality is that some victims are not able to resolve matters quickly at all.

Agatha, an undocumented immigrant originally from Latin America, was wrongfully arrested for domestic violence and had to go through an entire jury trial before being exonerated.

With her bail amount beyond what her family could afford, Agatha describes her incarceration as “the most horrifying” time of her life. She could not eat or sleep for fear of being deported and never seeing her children again. Had she been arrested when Secure Communities was in effect, her greatest fear might have become a reality, even had she been acquitted.

In situations like Agatha’s, the victim finds that in reaching out for help she risks being ripped away from her children and possibly returned to a country where she will be marginalized and persecuted for being a divorced woman, a single mother, or for being perceived as “rejected” by her spouse.

Domestic violence victims should not have to choose between their own and their children’s safety, or being forever separated from their children and sent back to their home countries.

Secure Communities is a significant setback that not only dis-empowers domestic violence victims, but reinforces the structures and beliefs that allow for the perpetuation of domestic violence.

Amy Woo is a staff attorney with the Los Angeles-based Asian Pacific American Legal Center.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

"Lost in Detention": As Obama Deports Record 400,000, Film Explores Immi...

Maria Hinojosa on DemocracyNow! is an absolute must-see interview!

You need to watch the documentary on PBS' website if you haven't done so already....

'We Don't Need Warrants, We're ICE' | Crooks and Liars

October 23, 2011 07:00 AM

'We Don't Need Warrants, We're ICE'

15 comments

By Susie Madrak

Wingnuts are so fixated on the Second Amendment, they completely miss the Fourth. With the increasing militarization of police departments and federal agencies, such legal formalities as warrants go right out the window:

On the night of October 20, 2010, Angel Enrique and Jesus Antonio were in bed in their small, two-bedroom apartment in the Clairmont complex in Nashville. The doors and windows were all shut and locked.
Suddenly there was a loud banging at the door and voices shouting "Police!" and "Policia!" When no one answered, the agents tried to force the door open. Scared, Jesus hid in a closet. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began hitting objects against the bedroom windows, trying to break in. Without a search warrant and without consent, the ICE agents eventually knocked in the front door and shattered a window, shouting racial slurs and storming into the bedrooms, holding guns to their heads. When asked if they had a warrant, one agent reportedly said, "We don't need a warrant, we're ICE," and, gesturing to his genitals, "the warrant is coming out of my balls."
The Fourth Amendment strictly prohibits warrantless intrusions into private homes and the Constitution's protections apply to both citizens and non-citizens alike. In the absence of a judicially authorized warrant, there must be voluntary and knowing consent; ICE officers forcing themselves into someone's home does not constitute consent.
The ACLU and ACLU of Tennessee this week filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of fifteen residents of the apartment complex who were subjected to this large-scale, warrantless raid by ICE agents and Metro Nashville police officers.

Tags: aclu, Immigration and Customs Enforcement

FBI Criticized for Collecting Racial and Ethnic Data | Are We Safer? | FRONTLINE | PBS

October 21, 2011, 2:03 pm ET by Azmat Khan

Arab-Americans in Michigan, African-Americans in Georgia and “broad swaths” of Latino-Americans communities across multiple states are some of the groups the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says the FBI is “unconstitutionally” racially profiling.

Based on internal FBI documents [PDF] obtained under Freedom of Information Act requests, the ACLU accuses the bureau of targeting Americans “based on false stereotypes ascribing criminal propensity to minority communities.”

The group cites a 2009 Detroit FBI field office memo [PDF] as an example. The memo states that many of the 40 groups the State Department has designated as terrorist organizations originate in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and says that “because Michigan has a large Middle-Eastern and Muslim population, it is prime territory for attempted radicalizationand recruitment by these terrorist groups.” The ACLU asserts that the Detroit FBI sought to collect information about these communities without any evidence of wrongdoing.

“It’s counterproductive because it alienates local communities from their government, and it also sends the message that the government views prejudice as acceptable,” said Hina Shamsi, the director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, in a conference call.

In a letter [PDF] to U.S. Attorney Gen. Eric Holder, the ACLU argued that the documents show that the FBI is targeting Americans ”based upon their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion and political activities protected under the First Amendment,” and called for the Justice Department to tighten FBI restrictions.

Current FBI guidelines prohibit the use of race or ethnicity unless describing a specific suspect, but there is a broad exemption for issues of national security and border integrity operations. The ACLU’s letter calls for the attorney general to rescind that exemption, and to add religion and national origin to barred profiling criteria.

ACLU policy counsel Michael German – a former undercover FBI agent — told The New York Times that these documents, along with recently released anti-Arab and anti-Muslim FBI training materials [PDF], showed a “theme of mass suspicion of an entire group based on racial characeristics or religion.” As a result, he says, trained agents might be “predisposed to treating everyone from a particular group as suspect.”

The FBI says it does not investigate “solely” based on religion, race or ethnicity. ”Certain terrorist and criminal groups are comprised of persons primarily from a particular ethnic or geographic community, which must be taken into account when trying to determine if there are threats to the United States,” Michael P. Kortan, an FBI spokesman, told the Times.

As a part of its “Mapping the FBI” project, the ACLU filed a lawsuit this summer challenging the FBI’s refusal to release documents about eGuardian, the bureau’s nationwide database that collects Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to help detect and prevent terrorism-related activity. As we reported earlier this year in Are We Safer?, SARs have become one of the primary weapons in the war on terror, and the files of tens of thousands of Americans have been put in national databases.

Friday, October 21, 2011

National Symposium/Call To Action on Incarceration 9/24/11 : Michelle Al...

This session explores creative ideas and bold initiatives to improve the lives of those who've been incarcerated and their families, and to move this nation away from the failed policies that have made it the world's leading jailer.

Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

Joe Robinson, author of Think Outside the Cell, leader of Second Look Policy Think Tank at Sullivan Correctional Facility, New York State

Tom Burrell, author of Brainwashed, expert on the image of African-Americans

Jeremy Travis, President, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Eddie Ellis, executive director, Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions

THINK OUTSIDE THE CELL: A NEW DAY, A NEW WAY : A National Symposium And CALL TO ACTION On Issues Affecting The Incarcerated, The Formerly Incarcerated And Their Families

CONFIRMED PARTICIPANTS: Honorable Cory Booker, Mayor, Newark, NJ; Honorable Scott M. Stringer, Manhattan Borough President; Rev. Al Sharpton, Founder, National Action Network; Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow; CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien; "Chef Jeff" Henderson; Randall Robinson; CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Byron Pitts; Terrie Williams, youth advocate and author of Black Pain: It Just Looks Like We're Not Hurting; Jeremy Travis, President of John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; El Diario La Prensa publisher Rossana Rosado; Marc Lamont Hill, Black Enterprise TV; Alan Rosenthal, Center for Community Alternatives; Julio Medina, Exodus Transitional Community, Inc.

The symposium is funded by the Ford Foundation and presented in full partnership with the Office of the Manhattan Borough President, the Fortune Society's David Rothenberg Center for Public Policy, the College and Community Fellowship and the Riverside Church Prison Ministry.

The event is FREE & open to the public, but you do need to RSVP formally/separately here:

https://chartingmaps.wufoo.com/forms/symposium-registration/

You can find out more about the event here:

http://www.thinkoutsidethecell.org/

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=266306573390685

Round-up: Immigration and Enforcement Systems Under Fire Amidst Record-Number Deportations | Deportation Nation

Posted by Deport Nation on Thursday, October 20, 2011 ·

On the heels of the Obama administration’s announcement of its latest record-high number of deportations, two television documentaries and a study revealed persistent problems with the nation’s immigration detention and enforcement systems. Meanwhile, Santa Clara passed new guidelines for civil immigration detainers and a Washington D.C. Mayor signed an executive order Wednesday that would prohibit local police from inquiring about a person’s immigrant status. Then on Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union released documents containing nearly 200 allegations of sexual abuse against female immigration detainees in federal detention centers since 2007.

Nearly 400,000 Deported from the U.S. in 2011

The Administration reported this week that it had deported a record number of undocumented immigrants for the third year in a row, removing 396,906 individuals in FY2011.

“These year-end totals indicate that we are making progress, with more convicted criminals, recent border crossers, egregious immigration law violators and immigration fugitives being removed from the country than ever before,” said Immigration Customs and Enforcement Director John Morton.

According to the enforcement agency, nearly 55 percent or 216,698 of the people removed were convicted of felonies or misdemeanors — an 89 percent increase in the removal of criminals since FY 2008. This included 1,119 immigrants convicted of homicide; 5,848 immigrants convicted of sexual offenses; 44,653 immigrants convicted of drug related crimes; and 35,927 immigrants convicted of driving under the influence. Meanwhile, it reported that ninety percent of all ICE’s removals fell into a priority category and more than two-thirds of the other removals in 2011 were either recent border crossers or repeat immigration violators.

Critics of the administration’s failure to address systemic reform expressed disappointment with the enforcement tally. “President Obama has continued his aggressive persecution, jailing, and deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who he has labeled ‘criminals’ and whose lives are being destroyed through traffic violations and similar minor infractions,” said Roberto Lovato of Presente.org.

The agency has continued to aggressively defend the increasingly unpopular program despite the program’s shortcomings. Critics have argued that the program has veered off its mandate of targeting priority offenders and deteriorated relationships between local police and the communities they work in.

In August, ICE announced it would launch a case-by-case review of approximately 300,000 cases of undocumented immigrants in removal proceedings, allowing those who pose no threat to society to remain in the country and apply for a work permit. It also laid out new guidelines to address enforcement activity, detention decisions, budget requests and prosecutorial discretion.

Frontline and CNBC Document On-Going Problems with Immigration Enforcement and Detention

Watch Lost in Detention on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

PBS’s Frontline, in partnership with The Investigative Reporting Workshop, produced “Lost in Detention,” adocumentary based on a year-long investigation into America’s vast immigrant detention system and documented the far-rearching impact of the Obama administration’s controversial immigration enforcement policies. It examines the abuses at the Willacy Detention Center, also known as Tent City, which was given a “good” grade even after 900 complaints were filed by detainees and featured the story of “Mary,” a Canadian immigrant who was held there and sexually abused by a guard.

“Lost in Detention” is based on the work thatDeportation Nation‘s Stokely Baksh began as a post-graduate fellow at the Investigative Reporting Workshop:

The Workshop requested data going back a decade about people held by the U.S. government for deportation, including detainee names, when and where individuals were booked in and booked out of detention, and what prompted their arrest. We asked for this information in several Freedom of Information Act requests to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, part of the Department of Homeland Security, one of the nation’s largest, federal, law-enforcement agencies.

What arrived at our doorstep in 2009 was a mess of confusing and incomplete information that didn’t help us answer our original questions. After months of trying to pry data from the agency about those being detained, it was clear that the government didn’t always know where the detainees were held, how long they were detained, or how much they paid to house and feed them. In fact, our records showed that in some cases officials might not have known whether detainees were actually in custody or even if they were dead or alive.

Meanwhile, CNBC produced a documentary that explored the the profits and inner-workings of the multi-billion dollar corrections industry, which costs states and the federal government some $74 billion a year and employs nearly 800,000 employees, including the profitable business of immigration detention.

Warren Institute Study Highlights Problems with Secure Communities Program

Courtesy: Secure Communities by the Numbers Study

The Warren Institute at UC Berkeley School of Law released a study Wednesday that analyzed Secure Communities data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

“Programs like Secure Communities are understudied, largely because of their rapid implementation and expansion and because the data has been kept, in large part, confidential,” wrote the study’s authors. “Given that its expansion does not appear to be slowing down, it is all the more imperative that research on the impact of Secure Communities continues.”

According to the study, the findings in “Secure Communities by the Numbers: An Analysis of Demographics and Due Process” are based on a random national sample of 375 individuals who were identified as “IDENTMatches” by the Secure Communities Program and were apprehended by ICE after October 1, 2008. The Institute also analyzed data on removal proceedings.

Main findings:

Approximately 3,600 United States citizens have been arrested by ICE through the Secure Communities program
More than one-third (39%) of those arrested through Secure Communities report that they have a U.S. citizen spouse or child, meaning that approximately 88,000 families with U.S. citizen members have been impacted by Secure Communities
Latinos comprise 93% of individuals arrested through Secure Communities though they only comprise 77% of the undocumented population in the United States
Only 52% of individuals arrested through Secure Communities are slated to have a hearing before an immigration judge
Only 24% of individuals arrested through Secure Communities and who had immigration hearings had an attorney compared to 40% of all immigration court respondents who have counsel
Only 2% of non-citizens arrested through Secure Communities are granted relief from deportation by an immigration judge as compared to 14% of all immigration court respondents who are granted relief
A large majority (83%) of people arrested through Secure Communities is placed in ICE detention as compared with an overall DHS immigration detention rate of 62%, and ICE does not appear to be exercising discretion based on its own prioritization system when deciding whether or not to detain an individual.

“The Warren Institute study demonstrates how deeply U.S. citizens’ own rights have been eroded in the name of immigration enforcement. The Obama administration should treat this study as the final nail in the coffin of a program that should have been buried long ago,” said Sarahi Uribe, Organizer for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

Jurisdictions Set New Guidelines to Limit Police Collaboration in Immigration Enforcement

In a 3-1 vote, Santa Clara County officials approved a new set of guidelines for civil immigration detainers, which would limit the county’s collaboration with ICE officials. The guidelines would require the county to only honor those detainers convicted of “serious” or “violent” felonies and it would not apply a detainer hold on juveniles. The guidelines would also require a written agreement from ICE to reimburse all costs incurred by the County for holding a detainer for an extended time.

According to the New America Media, Supervisor George Shirakawa told an audience of supporters, “Today is historic. We now have the most progressive policy in this field, and the whole nation will be looking at us as Santa Clara County makes it official: we don’t do ICE’s job.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that Washington D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) signed an executive order that would prohibit police, fire fighters, the attorney general’s office and other public safety agencies from inquiring about a person’s immigrant status or contacting ICE. However, the order does not apply in criminal investigations.

ACLU Releases Documents on Sexual Abuse Complaints in Immigration Detention Centers

Click to go to interactive map of sexual abuse complaints by state and facility

The ACLU released documents obtained through a FOIA request that shows the nearly 200 allegations of sexual abuse in today’s immigration detention centers. It coincided with a federal class action suitfiled by the ACLU of Texas on behalf of three immigrant women who were sexually assaulted, while they here held at the controversial T. Don Hutto facility.

According to the ACLU, 185 complaints had been made to DHS since 2007, 56 of which were from facilities in Texas. The defendants in the lawsuit include three ICE officials; Williamson County, Texas; Corrections Corporation of America (CCA); the former facility administrator for Hutto; and Donald Dunn, a guard who pleaded guilty in state court to three counts of official oppression and two counts of unlawful restraint based on his assaults of five women, reported the ACLU. Dunn was also charged with four additional federal counts of criminal violation of civil rights.

The ACLU also reported:

The assaults occurred when Dunn alone was transporting women from the Hutto facility to the airport or bus station in nearby Austin. Log books and other documents obtained by the ACLU of Texas indicate that in addition to the seven known occasions on which Dunn is believed to have assaulted a total of nine women, at least 20 different male guards transported at least 44 female detainees alone between December 2008 and May 2010. The lawsuit alleges that ICE, Williamson County and CCA were deliberately indifferent and willfully blind to the fact that Dunn and other employees regularly violated the rule that detainees not be transported without another escort officer of the same gender present.

“Unfortunately, we believe these complaints are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Mark Whitburn, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas. “Immigrants in detention are uniquely vulnerable to abuse, and those holding them in custody know it. Many do not speak English, many – like our plaintiffs – have fled violence in their home countries and are terrified of being returned. They may not be aware of their rights or they may be afraid to exercise them.”

The ACLU also launched a new page on its website devoted to the issue of sexual abuse of immigration detainees and a special blog series examining the consequences of detention. The ACLU’s Blog of Rights will host the series, which will run from Oct. 19 through Nov. 1, and examine ramped up enforcement efforts, deaths in detention, mental disabilities, sexual abuse, prolonged detention and privatization of detention facilities.