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Hunger strike at immigration detention center still going strong at 2 weeks

Time Code 8:22. Tune in and listen. Because it’s not the first time a hunger strike has hit the Port Isabel Detention Center in Southern Texas.

Within the growing momentum of inspiring actions across the country (culminating in a massive rally in Washington D.C. on March 21st) are a group of 70 detainees at Port Isabel who quietly began a hunger strike two weeks ago to ask for fairness and justice in the immigration system (incidentally the strike was timed on the same day as the National Day of Action Against Sherrif Arpaio.)

Acknowledging a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. day, they announced their action, demanding a suspension of immigration enforcement until the passage of comprehensive immigration reform.

The broken immigration system does not guarantee impartial hearings to immigrants, violates due process, and continues to terrorize immigrant communities by taking away civil liberties, human rights and exhausting the will of immigrants with psychological torture and deplorable conditions until deportation feels like the only way out of the detention nightmare, regardless of the theoretical probablity of winning their case.

One example – people feel that they are being “experimented on for medication for mental illness, complaining that drugs were given out “like candy” without any mental health evaluation.

The strike is worryingly reminiscent of what took place in April 2009, when detainees at Port Isabel undertook a similar mass hunger strike to protest the frequent use of solitary confinement, extended or prolonged detention, and abuse. This was followed by isolated strikes and protests by other detainees in May and August 2009, all of which fell on deaf ears.

Far from receiving anything by way of a positive response, the authorities have only retaliated with attempts to break up the strike, including isolation and quarantine of hunger strikers and reorganizing people amongst different “pods” in an attempt to break the strike. After Southwest Workers’ Union members were invited to tour the facility to do away with any “misconceptions” they have about the conditions there, they were shocked when not only them but families of detainees as well as press were turned away.

But nothing beats hearing from the voices of those in detention. Listen to this Free Speech Radio report with hunger striker Kelly Maharaj, Congressman Solomon Ortiz and Anayanse Garza at the Southwest Workers’ Union.

Despite the promise of detention reform and the positive changes that we are (hopefully) about to see in the system, actions like these will continue until we see  immigration reform that moves away from an enforcement-only approach to one that celebrates diversity.

Photo courtesy of www.dhs.gov

Posted by ishita on February 4th, 2010 in Blog, Deportation, Detention, Due Process, Enforcement, Fair Day in Court, Family, Human Rights, Immigration | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

Protest on the eve of State of the Union address to ask for immigration reform

4307309968_b3dcd2336aAt a protest outside the national headquarters of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) yesterday, hundreds participated in a protest to call attention to the suffering of immigrant families across the country.  Protesters including representatives of major immigrant organizations and faith leaders, underscored the growing disenchantment with the administration’s inaction on immigration reform.

The protest was held to call for an immediate suspension of deportations of immigrants with U.S. citizen family members and action on passage of comprehensive immigration reform.  Held on the eve of the President’s State of the Union address, it highlights the growing frustration of immigrants and their families regarding the administration’s failure to deliver on basic commitments made during the 2008 presidential race.

EunSook Lee, executive director of the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium, stated,

Last year on January 21st, we stood in front of DHS with faith leaders and 800 allies to urge a moratorium on the raids and press for immigration reform. We stand here again with our partners a year later to again make the case that in the absence of federal action to fix the broken immigration system, this nation will continue to see the devastation of thousands of families and neighborhoods.

Tuesday’s action was held to draw attention to a number of local actions receiving nationwide support – including The Trail of DREAMs, the 17-day Fast for Our Families in South Florida, and a march of tens of thousands in Phoenix, Arizona to protest local enforcement of immigration law.

Gustavo Torres, Executive Director of CASA de Maryland, expressed his sentiments.

We are here to mark one year of inaction and remind the administration that immigrants and people who love them are suffering every day that it refuses to take action.

Note: Restore Fairness mistakenly reported there were arrests at the protest. We apologize for the mistake. There were no arrests at the protest.

Posted by madhuri on January 27th, 2010 in 287G, Blog, Deportation, Detention, Due Process, Enforcement, Fair Day in Court, Family, Human Rights, Immigration, Racial Profiling | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

Law Enforcement Officer Says “Fire Arpaio!” who has taken the law into his own hands

Picture 1An effective and powerful resistance movement launched against Sheriff Arpaio’s of Arizona is finally yielding results. The Sheriff, notorious for his controversial anti-immigration stance directed against communities of color, has been under investigation by the Department of Justice for alleged civil rights abuses, and is now part of a federal grand jury investigation for possible use of his office to intimidate local officials and political opponent who disagreed with him. Meanwhile, a large scale protest expecting ten to twenty thousand people is being organized for this Saturday in Phoenix, Arziona, to bring national attention to the hatred and extremism that Arpaio breeds, along with a need to put pressure to end the agreement with the federal government that allows him to practice immigration law.

Here is a guest post by Detective Alix Olson of Madison Police Department, Wisconsin featured on the Imagine 2050 blog decrying Sheriff Arpaio’s policies

In my 29-year career as a police officer and detective with the Madison Police Department, in Madison, Wisconsin, I have witnessed and experienced many instances of hatred, violence and racism. In most cases, those negative things were not initiated by law enforcement; sometimes, unfortunately, they were. The 95% of us who sincerely strive to “serve and protect” are tarnished by the 5% of us who intentionally “disserve and destroy.” Nowhere is this more apparent in current American law enforcement than in Maricopa County, Arizona, where Sheriff Joe Arpaio has taken the law into his own hands, at the expense of the Constitution, professional ethics, and proper police conduct. Earlier this year, the mayor of Phoenix wrote a letter to the U.S. attorney general’s office, asking the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division to investigate Arpaio’s aggressive illegal immigration crackdowns. Mayor Phil Brown wrote that Arpaio’s sweeps show “a pattern and practice of conduct that includes discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches and arrests.”

Using local law enforcement to enforce Federal immigration laws, as Sheriff Arpaio is doing, weakens the very community links local police and sheriffs’ departments work so hard daily to maintain and build upon. Having community members who are afraid of local police should not be the goal of a department; instead, a far more wide-reaching and positive effect is gained by police-community trust, interaction and collaboration. This might sound too much like social work to Sheriff Arpaio, whose top-down, dictatorial methods favor humiliation, degradation, prisoner abuse, racial profiling, terrorizing Latino residents, and cavorting with local neo-Nazi groups. And according to a 2008 policy report on effective law enforcement by the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian-leaning watchdog group based in Phoenix, Sheriff Arpaio’s department “falls seriously short of fulfilling its mission.” The report found that Maricopa County has “diverted resources away from basic law-enforcement functions to highly publicized immigration sweeps, which are ineffective in policing illegal immigration.”

As we all know, police need the community’s trust to help solve crime and make our country stronger and safer for everyone living here, regardless of immigration status. I’m sure Sheriff Arpaio’s department is having a terrible time finding Latino witnesses and victims of crimes willing to report incidents or testify, but that supposes that he cares about them enough to take reports or help develop their cases for court in the first place. Dehumanizing is another strategy used by Sheriff Arpaio, parading inmates through the streets in funky clothes, “sheltering” them in sweltering desert tents, treating them like vermin, forgetting that he is as bound to them by a universal bond of humanity as much as he is bent on eradicating them.

When chief executives of local law enforcement agencies effectively target subgroups of persons who are not committing crimes, they not only alienate the community, they make it much harder for their agencies to recruit high caliber persons with integrity who reflect the faces of the community to take on the very hard job of policing. A sheriff like Joe Arpaio must have the hardest of times making those hires, and the more the world hears about him, the harder it is for more grounded, public spirited police agencies to hire the best of the best.

American law enforcement must demand the removal of Sheriff Arpaio from duty. He is truly a menace to the residents of Arizona, and our country. Simply stated, Sheriff Arpaio has marred the reputation of law enforcement for generations to come.

His warped sense of “justice” has no place in our society, unless we support Japanese internment camps, the ghetto-ization of African-Americans, and the deaths of countless Latinos attempting to survive their own countries’ destruction at the hands of US foreign and economic policies by struggling to come here to live, work and protect their families. I call upon the International Association of Chiefs of Police, as well as the US Department of Justice, to work diligently to remove him from the office he has squandered with racism and hate. Those of us in law enforcement working hard to build bridges of respect and trust with our communities don’t need another Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor erasing our progress.

Photo courtesy of www.puenteaz.org

Posted by madhuri on January 12th, 2010 in 287G, Blog, Due Process, Enforcement, Human Rights, Immigration | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Restrictionist groups immigration report gets it all wrong

Guest Blogger: Michele Waslin from Immigration Impact blog

Picture 2

In October, the restrictionist group Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released a report singing the praises of the 287(g) program, which arms state and local enforcement with immigration authority. In The 287(g) Program: Protecting Home Towns and Homeland, the authors ignore the evidence and arguments put forward by law enforcement experts – such as the Police Foundation, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police – dismissing them as “national advocacy organizations.”

Among the truth-defying assertions made by CIS:

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.

Posted by guest on November 5th, 2009 in 287G, Blog, Enforcement, Immigration | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

We should stay away from immigration enforcement – so says the police

In a startling expose on Sheriff Arpaio of Maricopa County, under investigation by the Justice Department over mounting complaints of discrimination in his enforcement of immigration laws, Phoenix’s KPHO-Channel 5 reveals a sinister pattern of how Arpaio has used his powers to intimidate and harass his critics ranging from the Board of Supervisors and presiding Judges to reporters and activists. It seems like immigrants aren’t his only target.

That’s what makes initiatives like those started by Arturo Venegas, a retired Chief of Police, essential. The Law Enforcement Engagement Initiative was created to to lift up the voices of law enforcement officials calling for common-sense immigration reform. Government programs that arm state and local enforcement with federal immigration responsibilities require knowledge of complicated immigration laws, are costly, but most importantly, lose the faith of communities. And who better to testify to this than policing professionals.

Watch Arturo Venegas testify to the growing importance of this movement.

At it’s most recent press conference, Chief Rick Braziel spoke of a recent incident in Sacramento, Texas, where a couple at a red light were hit by a drunk driver and witnesses caught the drunk driver but ran away in fear of the police. Describing the success of community policing in Arlington, Texas, Deputy Chief Kim Lemaux was emphatic that if a group of residents fears the police, they would not turn to officers making them viable victims instead. It seems that tasking the police with immigration enforcement sets them on a path that directly conflicts with community based policing. And Sheriff Bill McCarthy of Polk County, Iowa movingly described the impact of the Postville raid, that reduced the postville community of 3600 down to 2000, left a company in bankruptcy, with 200-400 people including broken families continuing to be fed in the churches.

Time to listen to the experts.

Posted by madhuri on November 3rd, 2009 in 287G, Blog, Deportation, Due Process, Enforcement, Immigration | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Rep. Jared Polis, ACLU and others stand up to Sheriff Arpaio’s brand of immigration enforcement

In a floor speech delivered today, U.S. Rep. Jared Polis had some harsh words for the 287(g) program which grants broad immigration enforcement powers to local law enforcement agencies, holding it responsible for a “sweep of terror” that “scares victims and witnesses of crimes to avoid contacting police for fear of being mistreated.”

Given Sheriff Arpaio’s so called crime and immigrations sweeps over the weekend in Maricopa County, Arizona, the speech is a well planned rebuff to the administrations renewal of 67 agreements with local law enforcement agencies to enforce immigration laws.

Arpaio, whose deputies had arrested 16 people last Friday on unspecified charges said, “I am the elected sheriff. I don’t take orders from the federal government.” And even though his agreement with the government extends only to immigration enforcement in the jails (and has been expressly removed from the streets), he continues to defy the law. To prove his point, he distributed a document that he claimed included language from Title 8 of the federal code authorizing him to conduct sweeps, which was eventually proven to come from an anti-immigrant Web site, and not from federal statute.

Notwithstanding Sheriff Arpaio’s notoriety, stories of racial profiling and violations are emerging across the country.

From Cobbs County, Georgia comes a damning ACLU report showing how the 287(g) program has led to an intense mistrust of local law enforcement within their community. Individual testimonies include Joanna who once put out a fire in her kitchen herself because she was too afraid to call 911 for fear of immigration consequences. Or Jonathan, a Latino man who was shopping for jewelry for his wife at Macy’s when a security guard began to follow him and called the police. Jonathan was then detained by the officer without being informed about the reason and was subsequently charged with loitering and deported, charges that were later dismissed by the district attorney. His family now lives in constant fear of the “seemingly unlimited power of the police to arrest a Latino person for any or no reason at all.”

The report indicates a marked pattern to the way that the Cobb police regularly use minor traffic violations to detain immigrants, stopping them based on the color of their skin, and then denying their basic rights. Sharon, an American citizen, tells the story about her husband Angel, who was pulled over for an incomplete stop at a stop sign. He was subsequently arrested and when Sharon tried to get him out on bond, the officer told her that there was an immigration detainer on him and he could not be released. He was then transferred to a detention center while Sharon who is disabled waits for the release of her husband, whom she depends on “for everything.”

It’s time we listen to Members of Congress like Rep. Polis who is willing to stand up to a system that is clearly not working. Or the Law Enforcement Engagement initiative, which has many state and local law enforcement officials speaking out for immigration reform that respects fairness and due process.

Posted by madhuri on October 21st, 2009 in 287G, Blog, Deportation, Due Process, Enforcement | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

Expanding immigration enforcement programs – more harm than good?

Picture 1Today as expected, the Department of Homeland Security has announced an expansion of programs that deputize state and local police to enforce immigration law. Even though immigration is a federal matter, in the post 9/11 world, many believe that immigration enforcement should spread to a local level as an effective tool against terrorism. But in actuality, the programs create an environment of fear that discourage immigrant communities from cooperating with the police for fear of deportation, risking community safety in the process.

To date, the performance of the 66 participating agencies in these programs has been controversial. While the programs are meant to catch violent offenders, the bulk of those who have been caught include undocumented immigrants caught for minor or no offenses, which for a citizen would mean a citation at most or being let off. What’s been even more disturbing is the documented cases of racial profiling. As a Washington Post article reports,

Critics cited cases in which police conducted roadside stops and neighborhood sweeps aimed at Latinos and other ethnic groups, often arresting minorities for traffic and other minor offenses in pursuit of illegal immigrants.

The most controversial of the programs is the 287(g) program – notorious for its serious civil rights abuses and public safety concerns – but which according to the same article accounts for only a small fraction of the 135,389 illegal immigrants apprehended. The Department of Homeland Security made pledges to fix the program , leading to a new Memorandum of Understanding with participating agencies, that would ensure a focus on only serious and criminal offenders. But it “expects” rather than “requires” such a provision, thereby making cosmetic changes that would do nothing to stop local law enforcement committing illegal profiling under the cloak of federal immigration authority.

For the vast majority of immigrants that have been swept up into the programs, a whopping  94 percent were found by checks at local and state jails. Yesterday, we posted on the Secure Communities programs, a program that lets the police arrest someone on a traffic or other offense – even if the arrest is based on racial profiling – and then have their fingerprints checked against immigration databases during booking.  When the fingerprint scan gets a “hit,” immigrants can end up getting carted off to an immigration detention center.  Again, nothing is being done to keep local police from using arrests on minor charges as an excuse to get immigrants into custody. And a new report from the Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity & Diversity proves just that – police in Irving, Texas began arresting Hispanics in far greater numbers for petty offenses once they had round the clock access to immigration agents to deport serious criminal offenders.

Judging from the poster child of these programs, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose department in Maricopa County, Arizona, accounts for 20% of the nationwide arrests, allegations of racial profiling are not just hearsay. In an interview with CNN, Arpaio admitted that he judges undocumented people by “their conduct, what type of clothes they’re wearing, their speech, they admit it”. And even though the administration has taken away his powers to enforce immigration laws on the streets, he is claiming he doesn’t need permission from the federal government and is planning an immigration raid to prove it.

It’s disappointing that the administration is not only pursuing programs that have proven to be unbeneficial, but is expanding these in a move that makes little sense for those who understand the underlying issues.

Posted by madhuri on October 16th, 2009 in 287G, Blog, Deportation, Due Process, Enforcement, Immigration | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Racial profiling and Sheriff Arpaio walk hand in hand

Although no final word from the Department of Homeland Security has emerged regarding Sheriff Arpaio’s authority to enforce immigration law, Arpaio himself has been all over the media circuit, insisting that he will continue to prosecute undocumented immigrants with or without an agreement. Immigration law is prosecuted at the federal level and local police have no authority to enforce it other than through special programs, the most notorious of which is the 287(g) agreement.

In this interview with Rick Sanchez from CNN, Sheriff Arpaio is caught red-handed, admitting that he uses tactics that could well be classified as racial profiling.

From the The Wonk Room blog:

SANCHEZ: You just said you detain people who haven’t committed a crime — how do you prove they they’re not illegal?

ARPAIO: It has to do with their conduct, what type of clothes they’re wearing, their speech, they admit it, they may have phony IDs. A lot of variables are involved.

SANCHEZ: You judge people and arrest them based on their speech and the clothes they’re wearing sir?

ARPAIO: No, when they’re in the vehicle with someone who has committed a crime. We have the right to talk to those people. When they admit that they are here illegally we take action…the federal law specifies the speech, the clothes, the environment, the erratic behavior. It’s right in the law.

Annoyed at being caught out, he then goes on to say that he is tired of the “race card” and that there have been barely any complaints against him – seeming to forget the 2,700 lawsuits that have been filed against him. One of the lawsuits filed by the ACLU on behalf of Velia Meraz and Manuel Nieto, siblings who are U.S. citizens is a shocking example of what’s really going on. This happened in Maricopa County under Sheriff Arpaio’s jurisdiction.

As the siblings drove into a gas they noticed an officer speaking with two Latino-looking men in handcuffs. Asked to leave the parking lot for disturbing the peace, they said they would but asked the deputy for his badge number.  As they pulled out, Sheriff’s vehicles descended on them, with officers jumping out of their vehicles and raising their weapons. When they finally proved they were U.S. citizens they were let go of, without any explanation, or apology.

Reports and testimonies have consistently shown the rampant allegations of discrimination and racial profiling that accompany programs that deputize state and local police with the power to enforce immigration law. And contrary to the objective of the program, a GAO report found that participating local police were removing immigrants for minor violations instead of curbing serious violent offenders. In Arpaio’s county, FBI statistics show that violent crime has increased by 69% since he shifted his focus to immigration.

Encouraged by various cancellations of 287(g) agreements, advocates were disappointed today to hear the news that Nashville would continue its agreement – although in a modified form. An investigation conducted by the Tennessean showed that of the roughly 3,000 people deported during the program’s first year, about 81 percent were charged with misdemeanors ad half were caught during traffic stops. But the proof didn’t seem enough.

With more and more evidence of the lack of benefits in the program, we wonder when the lesson will come through that immigration enforcement should remain in the hands of federal immigration authorities so our communities can be safer for all of us.

Posted by madhuri on October 9th, 2009 in 287G, Blog, Enforcement, Immigration | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Will Sheriff Arpaio’s clipped wings stop him from flying?

1903 Judge - Immigration a National Menace

The news is in that Sheriff Arpaio’s agreement under the controversial 287(g) program will be renewed, albeit in a limited manner, allowing him to enforce federal immigration law in county jails and not on the street. Today we learned that the County Board of Supervisors approved the agreement after hearing emotional appeals from residents on both sides of the issue. Yet no final word has come in from the Department of Homeland Security which has remained strangely silent on the issue.

For those not familiar with the Arizona sheriff, he is currently under investigation by the Justice Department for racial profiling, a figure both reviled and hailed, with his policies having led to budgets shortfall and an increase in unsolved violent crimes. Yet, he insists he will continue his “immigrant crime sweeps“, with or without authority.

Government programs that arm state and local police with immigration powers have been on the rise for a while now. According to the New York Times, a report on immigration detention released Tuesday by the Obama administration shows that 60 percent of the 380,000 people detained during 2009 had been turned over to by state and local police.

But is this effective strategy? Not if we take the stated goal into account which is for the police to identify serious criminal offenders and turn them over to immigration authorities, because well over half the immigrants taken into custody under the programs have no criminal convictions.

Where are the numbers coming from then if they are not serious offenders? Reports and testimonies have been documenting the racial profiling that accompanies giving police immigration powers. One example comes from Irving, Texas, that shows traffic arrests and petty misdemeanors rose substantially for Hispanics once immigration enforcement became part of the jails. Even a Government Accountability Office has found an increase in the arrest of minor offenders instead of serious offenders that were the original target. And a government task force has recommended that these programs be scaled back.

So the tide seems to be turning slowly. A 521 organization sign-on letter opposing 287(g) has had a large impact, and recently, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus took a bold position asking for a termination to the 287(g) program.  Two Massachusetts and Florida law enforcement agencies canceled their 287(g) agreements recently with one of them, Framingham Chief Steven Carl stating, “it doesn’t benefit the police department to engage in deportation and immigration enforcement”. And today, one more mayor from Houston has distanced himself from the program.

The Police Foundation, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Major Cities Chiefs Association have all expressed concerns that these programs only serve to divert scarce resources and undermine public trust. It makes sense because we all will be less safe when communities are afraid to cooperate with police because they are afraid of immigration consequences.

And if these facts and figures aren’t enough, here are some compelling stories. Pedro Guzman, a Latino U.S. citizen was deported to Mexico because an employee of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office, a 287(g) participant determined that Mr. Guzman was a Mexican national.  Cognitively impaired and living with his mother prior to being deported, he ended up being dumped in Mexico, forced to eat out of trash cans and bathe in rivers for several months. Luckily, his mother found him several months later. Or Juana Villegas, who was driving in Nashville  (within Davidson County’s 287(g) jurisdiction) when she was pulled over by a Berry Hill police officer for “careless driving.”  Nine months pregnant, Juana was held in county jail for six days, enduring labor with a sheriff’s officer standing guard in her hospital room, where one of  her feet was cuffed to the bed most of the time.

These are not unusual examples but demonstrate policies that have gone wrong and are absolutely counterproductive to increasing public safety. But we still wait to see a complete cessation of these policies. Meanwhile, Sheriff Arpaio continues his rampage saying “I can do it without federal authority, and I’m going to continue to do it. It makes no difference.” Its a classic example of what can happen if we allow people to take the law into their own hands.

Image courtesy www.printsofpropoganda.com

Posted by madhuri on October 7th, 2009 in 287G, Blog, Due Process, Enforcement, Immigration | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »