Tomorrow, December 15th, at 12:30 pm, Congressman Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL) will officially unveil his immigration reform bill to the U.S. House of Representatives–”Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009.” Details of the bill are yet unknown. However, in October and November, he spoke persuasively about protecting American and immigrant workers, providing enough visas to diminish undocumented immigration, strengthening border security, keeping families together as well as the DREAM Act and agJobs. In his own words:
“We have waited patiently for a workable solution to our immigration crisis to be taken up by this Congress and our President. The time for waiting is over. This bill will be presented before Congress recesses for the holidays so that there is no excuse for inaction in the New Year. It is the product of months of collaboration with civil rights advocates, labor organizations, and members of Congress. It is an answer to too many years of pain –mothers separated from their children, workers exploited and undermined security at the border– all caused at the hands of a broken immigration system. This bill says ‘enough,’ and presents a solution to our broken system that we as a nation of immigrants can be proud of.”
Rep. Gutiérrez will be joined by members of many different faiths and backgrounds, including Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Black Caucus, Asian Pacific American Caucus and Progressive Caucus.
Meanwhile, enforcement measures continue to be ramped up. Last week, 286 foreign nationals representing more than 30 different nations were arrested in a 3 day California operation coordinated by ICE Fugitive Operations Program, involving over 400 agents and officers from ICE, the U.S. Marshals Service, as well as several other state and local agencies. The largest enforcement surge targeting criminal aliens yet. Assistant Secretary John Morton, who oversees ICE, called the operation another example of the vital role multi-agency cooperation and targeted immigration enforcement play in protecting our communities. Morton also suggested that:
“Enhancing public safety is at the core of ICE’s mission. Legal immigration is an important part of our country’s history and the American dream exists for many immigrants. However, that dream involves playing by the rules and those who break our criminal laws will be removed from the country. Sadly, many of the people victimized by aliens who commit crimes are other members of the immigrant community, who are following the rules.”
Although ICE claims that nearly 80% of the criminal aliens taken into custody had prior criminal records, the arrests were conducted as part of a controversial program also designed to arrest and deport immigrants without a criminal record, who may have ignored deportation orders or who have been deported and illegally reentered the United States, to fill quotas, according to a report by the Migration Policy Institute earlier this year, which states that 73% of the nearly 97,000 people arrested by ICE fugitive operations teams between the program’s inception in 2003 and early 2008 were unauthorized immigrants without criminal records.
Additionally, the report notes that the National Fugitive Operations Program (FOT) has dramatically expanded; its budget increased from $9 million in 2003 to $218 million last year. In its first five years, the program has received more than $625 million, more than any other ICE program. Yet ICE estimated last October that 557,762 fugitive aliens remain in the United States. Michael Wishnie, a Clinical Professor at Yale Law School reinforces this finding:
“The National Fugitive Operations Program has not delivered on its promise to find and remove dangerous fugitives. The evidence suggests that this is a case of ‘mission drift,’ in which the program has used public funding intended for one purpose for something entirely different: Apprehending non-violent non-fugitives – who constitute the easiest targets.”
Other critics focus on the fear that the FOT program, and similar initiatives, like the Criminal Alien Program, Secure Communities and the agency’s partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies under 287(g) induce in immigrant communities by sending armed agents into neighborhoods and pulling parents away from their children.
On September 30th 2009, President Obama signed a Presidential Determination authorizing the admission of 80,000 refugees into the U.S. in the year 2010. This commitment to ensuring the protection and re-settlement of refugees has been an integral part of U.S. policy since the Refugee Act of 1980 that sought to:
Provide a permanent and systematic procedure for the admission of refugees of special humanitarian concern to the United States and to provide comprehensive and uniform provisions for the effective resettlement and absorption of those refugees who are admitted.
Outside his country of nationality (or in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which he last habitually resided), and who is unable or unwilling to return to such country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.
The White House release said that while the economic recession had presented new challenges to maintaining this and other humanitarian programs, the administration had “undertaken an in-depth review of the program with the goal of strengthening support to both the refugees and the communities in which they are being resettled.” In light of this declaration of strengthening support to refugees, it is shocking that the Department of Homeland Security has taken to detaining refugees who have not adjusted to Lawful Permanent Resident (LPR) status after having been in the country for one year (also known as “unadjusted refugees”). While some of these refugees are apprehended by ICE after encounters with local law enforcement for minor offenses, some are taken in without any criminal charges at all. These refugees are then held in detention facilities for the entire duration of time that it takes for the application to be received and processed by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
As per section 209 (a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), those refugees who have not acquired Permanent Residency within one year of residing in the U.S., “…shall, at the end of such year period, return or be returned to the custody of the Department of Homeland Security for inspection and examination for admission…” According to an article by Emily Creighton on Immigration Impact, ICE is misinterpreting “return to custody” too literally to allow for those refugees to be detained while USCIS processes their application.
This interpretation is particularly unfair since the law prohibits refugees from applying for permanent residence until one year after they have been admitted to the U.S. as refugees. In essence, ICE detains refugees for not doing what the law bars them from doing…DHS’ policy of detaining unadjusted refugees is extremely problematic—it is not required by the language of the statute and is unsupported by the policies that drove lawmakers to pass laws protecting refugees. The word “custody” in the statute does not require ICE to take physical custody of unadjusted refugees, something ICE’s predecessor organization recognized. The former Immigration and Nationality Service reasoned that “custody” in INA 209(a) could be satisfied by simply requiring refugees to apply for adjustment of status and compelling them to appear at the agency.
Not only do some of these application review processes take up to a year, but pursuing this application while in ICE custody can lead to further legal complications for the refugees. A number of human rights, refugee assistance and other advocacy groups have been urging DHS to change this policy of detention and have written numerous letters over the years to ensure that DHS and ICE adopt a more humane policy towards refugees that respects the long-standing national policy of protecting and rehabilitating refugees rather than further incarcerating them.
While the ISAP II program which is designed to allow individuals who present a low flight risk to avoid incarceration by agreeing to regular monitoring offers an alternative, the Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Erika Feller, believes that it’s still too early to know whether or not this offers the best alternative for asylum seekers; “the objectives of many alternatives to detention systems are enforcement objectives. UNHRC believes that humanitarian considerations should take on a higher profile.”
Still many asylum-seekers in the United States are held in detention centers, alongside those facing immigration and criminal charges, while their cases are being processed. The most recent figures from DHS indicate that approximately 10,000 of the more than 300,000 individuals detained were asylum seekers. According to a 2003 report published by the Physicians For Human Rights and entitled ‘From Persecution to Prison: The Health Consequences of Detention for Asylum Seekers‘, being detained further can be severely traumatic and detrimental for people who are fleeing persecution, threat and torture in their own countries.
Detention can induce fear, isolation and hopelessness, and exacerbate the severe psychological distress frequently exhibited by asylum seekers who are already traumatized…Physicians, experienced in evaluating and caring for asylum seekers, found extremely high symptom levels of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among the detained.
In our video, Restore Fairness, Jean-Pierre Kamwa, an asylum seeker from Cameroon, provides a powerful testimony on the psychological ramifications of seeking protection only to be incarcerated when he landed in JFK airport.
Photo courtesy of www.physiciansforhumanrights.org
The past fortnight witnessed numerous developments on the immigration front, and almost all roads seem to be pointing to the pressing need for immigration reform that ensures fair and just enforcement.
The November 18th Families, Freedom and Faith telephonic town hall featuring Members of Congress Luis Gutierrez, Raul Grijalva, and Nydia Velazquez, was a huge success with more than 60,000 reform supporters calling in from 1,009 house parties in 45 states. During the event, which took the form of a massive conference call with more than 16,000 active telephone lines, organizers urged listeners to demand immigration reform by texting and calling Members of Congress. Congressman Gutierrez laid out a comprehensive vision for immigration reform and called on supporters to hold their leaders accountable. In his words,
We need everyone on this call to take action with your churches, your families and your organizations so that we can deliver a strong message to President Obama and Congress that, hey, it has been a year…We want you to keep your promise to our families. We’ll be watching on the State of the Union to make sure you keep your promise.
The huge turnout for the telephonic town hall came hot on the heels of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano’sspeech at the Center for American Progress in which she made a strong case for the need for immigration reform, positing that now is the time to take significant strides towards a “three-legged stool” approach – regulating the flow of immigrants, dealing with those who are already here, and beginning with “fair, reliable enforcement.” She said:
Let me emphasize this. We will never have fully effective law enforcement or national security as long as so many millions remain in the shadows…Making sure these people become full taxpayers and pay their fair share will both benefit our economy and make it easier to enforce the laws against unscrupulous or exploitative employers.
But with the talk of reform must also be the talk of fair and just enforcement policies. In mid-October Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced new 287(g) memoranda of agreements (MOAs) with 67 state and local law enforcement agencies – an expansion of the already existing program that arms state and local enforcement with immigration enforcement powers. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office headed by Sheriff Joe Arpaio was one among several agencies accused of racial profiling to be granted a new MOA despite various complaints and an ongoing Department of Justice investigation. Even the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has expressed its concerns in a letter to the Obama administration in which they outline the clear lack of progress towards ending racial discrimination in the United States, calling upon the Administration to “reconsider its policy under 287 (g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.”
Problems with the new program are already emerging. Although the federal government has said that it was reformulating its agreements with local law enforcement to ensure that the 287(g) program was being used to detain only serious felons rather than those with misdemeanors to save precious resources, programs in places like the Sheriff’s department of Wake County, North Carolina are still operating unchanged and unchecked. Wake County Sheriff, Donnie Harrison confirmed that his department has not altered the way it implements the program. “We do the same thing if you’re charged for murder or if you’re charged with no operator’s license,” said Harrison, one of seven North Carolina sheriffs who have the program. “Nothing has changed for us.”
In Maricopa county, Alma Minerva Chacon was detained by Sheriff Arpaio’s officials while she was nine months pregnant. On the night of her arrest, Chacon went into labor and was rushed to a local hospital with her hands and legs shackled, and despite the nurses’ requests, was forced to give birth while shackled to the bed. Arpaio’s police staff did not allow Chacon to hold her baby girl and warned her that if no one came to claim the child within 72 hours, the child would be turned over to state custody. Watch Alma Minerva Chacon talking about her ordeal.
These shocking incidents only reinforce the need for the hour – immigration reform that respects fairness and due process and does not bargain one for the other.
Photo courtesy of www.reformimmigrationforamerica.org
This month the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) celebrated one year of Secure Communities. The program, which checks the immigration status of detainees in jails by comparing their booking information to DHS’ databases, is dangerously misnamed since it actually endangers rather than improves community security.
In its press release, DHS gloated that it “identified more than 111,000 criminal aliens in local custody during its first year.” The department hailed the program as an effective way of deporting “dangerous criminals that pose a threat to public security.” So who are these alleged criminals?
A closer look reveals the program’s first fallacy: DHS includes people simply “charged” with a crime in its definition of “criminal aliens.” People are labeled criminals before they are given a chance to defend themselves in court. A cornerstone of our criminal system is that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Yet under Secure Communities, people are put into deportation proceedings even if they are innocent of criminal charges or if the arrest was simply a pretext to check a person’s immigration status.
The lack of due process sets the stage for racial profiling without any real consequences for abusive police agents. DHS maintains that since immigration checks happen electronically, the program is virtually immune to racial profiling. Consequently, DHS does not collect data that would reveal whether racial profiling is happening. The attempt to divorce police officers’ motivations for arresting individuals and DHS’ subsequent actions after the booking phase makes no sense. As the program is currently designed, a police officer can make a pre-textual arrest and later drop the charges, but an individual can still be placed into deportation proceedings.
The second misrepresentation of the program is found in DHS’s definition of “serious crimes.” The Department highlights that 100,000 of those identifies were convicted of level 2 and 3 crimes, “including burglary and serious property crimes.” What DHS omits is that while “arson” is a level 2 offense, so are “traffic offenses.” If the controversial 287(g) program which fervently targeted people with “broken tail-lights,” is any indicator, Secure Communities is a strategy for deporting anyone DHS can get its hands on—even law-abiding people who could be months away from adjusting their immigration status.
Essentially, DHS’ message is this: Being an immigrant makes you a criminal. This dangerous conflation not only promotes abusive policing practices, such as racial profiling, but also creates divisions and distrust in communities. It hurts public safety because immigrant communities are less likely to report crimes or cooperate with police for fear of deportation. It also disturbingly dehumanizes people who are an integral part of our communities and our national identity.
Last week Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano spoke about the need for immigration reform while trumpeting the successes of Secure Communities and other enforcement programs. But if the word “criminal” can replace “immigrant,” then her declaration that “We are a nation of immigrants” rings hollow.
CIS Assertion: 287(g) agreements result in cost savings for localities.
FACT: While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) covers the cost of training deputized local officers and some detention costs, ICE does not pay for implementation of the program or any lawsuits that may arise due to civil rights violations. Local communities are responsible for the high costs related to the immigration enforcement activities. A report by the Brookings Institute found that Prince William County, Virginia, had to raise property taxes and take from its “rainy day” fund to help fund their 287(g) program. Their local law enforcement of immigration, which cost $6.4 million in its first year, is projected to cost $26 million over five years. They eventually slashed $3.1 million from the budget that was intended to buy video cameras for police cars to protect themselves against allegations of racial profiling. Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio created a $1.3 million deficit in just three months, much of it due to overtime for immigration enforcement.
CIS Assertion: There have been no documented instances of 287(g) jurisdictions rounding up people on the basis of appearance or ethnicity.
FACT: Multiple credible news sources have reported that Sheriff Joe Arpaio has conducted large-scale operations without any evidence of criminal activity, often in Hispanic neighborhoods or sites where day laborers convene, and has vowed to continue his sweeps, regardless of what ICE says. Arpaio has also created a citizen posse to hunt undocumented immigrants. Beyond Arpaio, a report from North Carolina found that 287(g)’s are being used to “purge towns and cities of ‘unwelcome’ immigrants.”
CIS Assertion: There have been no complaints filed or documented cases of racial profiling.
FACT: Again, Sheriff Arpaio is example #1. Nearly 3,000 lawsuits have been filed against Arpaio, and the Department of Justice is currently investigating accusations of rampant racial profiling and civil rights abuses by his deputies. The Department of Justice is also investigating Arpaio. There have been other mistakes and lawsuits as well. A lawsuit was filed on behalf of a disabled U.S. citizen who was mistakenly identified as a Mexican national and transferred to an ICE detention center and later deported. Another lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Juana Villegas after she was detained and shackled to a bed while giving birth.
CIS Assertion: The chilling effect is a myth. Immigrants are not fearful of cooperating with police and reporting crimes.
FACT: Law enforcement officials and community leaders have stated time and time again that trust with immigrant communities is crucial to preventing and investigating crimes and maintaining safe communities, but when police are viewed as immigration agents, immigrant communities fear cooperating. A North Carolina report found that 287(g)’s have “created a climate of racial profiling and community insecurity” in communities across North Carolina. In 2003, the Tampa Tribune reported that local police believed that some members of the community had information on a murder, but declined to come forward for fear of immigration-related repercussions. Clearwater Police Department’s Hispanic Outreach Officer William Farias said he “wasn’t surprised people were hesitant to talk… cultural differences and fear of deportation often keep undocumented immigrants from coming forward.”
CIS Assertion: 287(g) is a powerful tool for reducing crime.
FACT: While some local politicians have touted 287(g) as a solution to their crime problems, a Justice Strategies report found that 61% of jurisdictions with 287(g)’s had a violent crime index lower than the national average, and 55% witnessed an overall decrease in violent crimes from 2000 to 2006. Furthermore, 61% had a property crime index lower than the national average, and 65% saw an overall decrease in property crimes from 2000 to 2006. The conservative Goldwater Institute published a report documenting the Maricopa County, Arizona 287(g) has failed to protect the community. They found that, though the MCSO budget has increased at four times the rate of the county’s population, violent crimes increased nearly 70%, and homicides increased 166% between 2004 and 2007. Response times to 911 calls have increased, arrest rates have dropped, and thousands of felony warrants have not been served.
Apparently, the fact that 287(g) programs are costing localities millions to implement isn’t relevant to CIS’s myopic report, nor is the fact that crime-solving activities are being compromised or that trust between police and community is being eroded. What is important to CIS, however, is the propagation of the same old restrictionist myths that support a “deport them all” immigration enforcement strategy.
Juana Villegas’s story is a shocking example of what happens when local law enforcement is endowed with the authority to enforce immigration law.
One of the fastest growing programs under this scheme is the 287(g) program. With its growth, we are also seeing an increase in reports highlighting its failures, including an almost complete lack of oversight and as we have seen in Juana’s story, numerous instances of unlawful racial profiling and human rights violations.
On a more important note, the program hinders the ability of law enforcement to accomplish their primary goal – to protect the safety and security of the communities they police. Communities become less safe when crime victims are afraid to cooperate with police, especially victims of violent crimes, because they are afraid of deportation. And we all become at risk when people are afraid of police.
While the Department of Homeland Security has even acknowledged some of its failures, and made some changes, none of this has actually improved the program. This is why a coalition of 500 advocacy groups sent a letter to President Obama last week demanding an end to the 287(g) programs that violate human rights and lead to racial profiling.
Welcome to the Restore Fairness campaign. We are calling upon Congress and the Administration to bring back fairness and due process to our immigration system. We believe that together, we can put pressure on our government to alter the landscape of U.S. immigration to one that respects human rights and due process for all.
When President Obama was elected, approximately 1200 organizations, including Breakthrough, signed onto a national letter to urge for the reform of our immigration system. The letter states:
Indiscriminate immigration raids have caused trauma and hardship for thousands of individuals. A new and vast detention system has resulted in violations of basic due process rights, the deaths of immigrants – including legal permanent residents. A patchwork of state and local immigration enforcement initiatives has only served to damage trust among immigrant communities and law enforcement officials and undermine public safety. … The suffering caused by these practices and experiences underscores the problems with current U.S. immigration policies and the pressing need for reform.
Add to this the fact that many immigrants do not get a fair day in court and you have an explosive situation.
You can stop the erosion of our fundamental human rights. Get started by writing to Congress today.
And don’t forget to sign up for updates so we can work together to put pressure on our government to stick by what is fair and just.
Tomorrow, December 15th, at 12:30 pm, Congressman Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL) will officially unveil his immigration reform bill to the U.S. House of Representatives–”Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009.” Details of the bill are yet unknown. However, in October and November, he spoke persuasively about protecting American and immigrant workers, providing enough visas to diminish undocumented immigration, strengthening border security, keeping families together as well as the DREAM Act and agJobs. In his own words:
On September 30th 2009, President Obama signed a 
The past fortnight witnessed numerous developments on the immigration front, and almost all roads seem to be pointing to the pressing need for immigration reform that ensures fair and just enforcement.
Guest Blogger: Sarahi Uribe from 
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