More on Secure Communities

The two articles excerpted below were just published in the last day or two. I think this is a very important topic regarding immigration right now. The "Detention Retention" article relates the Secure Communities program to the 287(g) program and how it functions here in Maricopa County. I've said in the past that i believe that the federal government is likely to implement this program as a nicer alternative to 287(g) and to appear to save us from Arpaio's antics. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. The Secure Communities program, as described in the articles, will not be much better. I recommend reading other articles on the borderlines blog regarding "criminal aliens" and how the shift to focusing on the immigrants with criminal records will have an effect. I am interested in following this issue as well.


Detention Retention
President Obama has tried to split the difference between comprehensive immigration-reform advocates and law-and-order types. But for immigrants in detention, not much has changed since the Bush era.
Renee Feltz and Stokely Baksh | June 2, 2009

Maria del Carmen Garcia-Martinez recently emerged from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) holding cell in Maricopa County, Arizona, with her arm broken and her hand covered in blue ink. She had been booked for forgery at a Phoenix jail, where six officers twisted her arm after she resisted putting her fingerprint on what she thought was a form that would deport her to Mexico.

Garcia-Martinez spoke only Spanish, the form was in English, and she believed that after 19 years in the United States, she had a good case for staying in the country, despite her lack of documentation. Her forgery charge stemmed from a California driver's license she showed to an officer who asked for identification while telling her not to post yard-sale signs on city property. But the license wasn't a forgery; it was just expired. The charges were dropped.

Garcia-Martinez's treatment while in custody was unusually harsh, but her experience of being harassed and detained on a flimsy pretext has been common under ICE's 287(g) program. In 2006, the Bush administration began to encourage local law enforcement to help federal immigration authorities apprehend "criminal aliens." The Obama administration has responded to criticism of the program by touting Secure Communities, a new initiative that supporters say will be more focused in its pursuit of undocumented immigrants with felony records. However, there is growing concern among immigrants' rights activists that this new program has begun to veer off course as well.

More...

Wednesday, June 3, 2009
The Three Pillars of Securing Communities

As part of its new campaign to increase congressional funding for Secure Communities and to extend the program nationally, ICE has overhauled the program’s webpages and tweaked its description of the project.

ICE says that Secure Communities has “three pillars.” The first pillar is to “identify criminal aliens through modernized information sharing.” A second program pillar aims to “prioritize enforcement actions to ensure apprehension and removal of dangerous criminal aliens.” The third pillar is to “transform criminal alien enforcement processes and systems to achieve lasting results.”

One of the most persuasive arguments against comprehensive immigration reform is that reform is not viable without guarantees that the border is secure and immigration laws are being enforced. Even supporters of comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) have adopted the logic of this argument and as part of their strategy to advance CIR have backed tougher border control and immigration enforcement programs. Rep. David Price (D-NC), the leading congressional proponent of Secure Communities, is one of those who have advanced this nuanced argument as a way of advancing CIR.

More...