Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Immigrants-as-Trespassers Law Closer to Passing

Seriously, this could be the most f-ed up thing that happens this year, as far as state legislation goes. A bill that Arizona Senator Russell Pearce wrote (SB1175) would make it so undocumented immigrants' existence in this state would be considered trespassing, and would also prevent any policy that restricts the police or other state agencies from enforcing federal immigration law. This bill just passed in the senate this week.

This means that undocumented immigrants' presence in the state would cause them to be breaking a state law. Although i think it's a stretch and might be unconstitutional, the idea is to override the federal immigration law, as far as enforcement goes. As long as police attempt to enforce federal law, they are on shaky ground, but they can much more easily enforce state law. This is what arpaio has been doing by enforcing the smuggling law, the employer sanctions law, and other such laws to go after undocumented immigrants). Although his actions are controversial and he does say that he is enforcing federal immigration law, his primary means of attacking the immigrant community is by enforcing (though many would say inappropriately) the state laws.

Pearce's bills aim to create more crimes out of the actions (or mere existence) of undocumented immigrants so they can more easily be arrested and removed. He wrote a bill (SB1337) that would make a class I misdemeanor out of not having a state-issued drivers' license (you have to be legal to get a legal one), which is in the legislature at the same time as various state police departments are discussing not recognizing the Matricula Consular, the ID issued by the Mexican government. Additionally, another bill (SB1177) would make it a crime to solicit for work.

The wider picture involves a new ICE program called "Secure Communities" which will target "criminal aliens" by linking up various law enforcement and immigration databases to be accessed when a person is in police custody. The new and existing laws and policies would give the police cause to arrest, detain, and check the databases on the suspect, and since undocumented immigrants would then have charges against them that they wouldn't otherwise have had, they will more likely be face the consequences of being labeled "criminal aliens".

Clearly "criminal alien" will mean nothing different from "illegal alien", or to us, "undocumented immigrant" because anyone without papers could be categorized as a "criminal alien". The criminal alien term will be used to make the general public feel that the right people are being deported. However, just as previous ICE raids have been purported to target dangerous criminals, they have in fact caught in their nets mostly people without criminal records. Now, creating more people with criminal records will justify various actions against the undocumented community.


*This article contains some text from a previous posted blog post. Apologies to anyone who were thinking, "haven't i already read this?".

Another workplace raid targets workers not bosses

How many times do we have to see the sheriff patting himself on the back for enforcing the employer sanctions law, but not pressing charges against the employers? Consistently, the law that went into effect in January of 2008 has been used to raid workplaces and handcuff, detain, and often arrest the workers at the location. As far as i know, the only employer that has been effected by the employer sanctions law was one in a different county.
Yet, even arpaio isn't quite pretending that his goal is to go after employers. He's telling the press that he's enforcing immigration laws.
Arpaio said this is the seventh business his office has investigated for breaking the state's employer-sanctions law. The Sheriff's Office has arrested 248 people for employer sanctions violations, he said.

Arpaio said his office will continue to enforce illegal immigration laws, regardless of what politicians, the Justice Department or Congress say about him. (Source).
I have discussed in previous blog posts: Employer Sanctions or Employee Sanctions? and Employer Sanctions Law Applies to New Hires Only, that the law was not really intended to go after businesses in the first place, and confusion and unnecessary firings due to the law were not prevented.

US Citizen was in immigration detention for almost a year

While i think it is wrong to place value on someone based on their citizenship like most people do, i also think that the example of Brad Zazueta shows the ways in which targeting a group of people can catch unintended victims up in it. Zazueta was adopted at 11 weeks old after he arrived from Mexico into the hands of his adoptive parents.

During a traffic stop, he said he was from Mexico, despite having a California Birth Certificate (gee, he wasn't carrying his birth certificate with him? doesn't everyone do that?). There are apparently errors in his adoption paperwork, which means he's been sitting in detention for several months.

Clearly this incident, and people's attitudes as exemplified in many of the comments to the article, implies that what happened to Brad was okay because he actually is from Mexico. What happened to "i don't have a problem with immigration, just 'illegal' immigration"?
More info here.

Minuteman Group Members Murder Young Girl and Father

A couple minuteman group members took it upon themselves to murder a man and his nine year old daughter in their home in Arivaca, a border town in Arizona.
The trio are alleged to have dressed as law enforcement officers and forced their way into a home about 10 miles north of the Mexican border in rural Arivaca on May 30, wounding a woman and fatally shooting her husband and their 9-year-old daughter. Their motive was financial, Dupnik said. (Source).
There was some interesting analysis on Imagine 2050 here and here. In particular, "Child Killer Represented National Anti-Immigrant Group" discusses what other media have not touched, which is that Shawna Forde, said to be the mastermind of the murder/robbery, was a representative of FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), a group that pretends to have no associations with white supremacists and other extremists. The two articles discuss the fact that these kinds of incidents are not aberrations: that what happened here and in other cases of violence is very closely tied to the ideologies of the anti-immigrant movement.

Despite Forde having been heavily involved in the anti-immigrant movement, including sharing a state with Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist, the media is falling over itself to make sure we know that the folks involved in this crime do not represent the minutemen in general or the minuteman civil defense corps (although some articles include "minuteman" in their titles). But notice that the reasons given for the distance other minutemen are putting between themselves and Forde are not about what she has advocated, but that she has a problem following orders.
Hal Washburn, vetting officer for Washington state chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, said Forde was encouraged to leave the group over questions about honesty and her inability to follow orders, according to the story. (Source).

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Secure Communities Plus New Laws Mean More Problems for AZ

Just in time for ICE's newest program, "Secure Communities" to be headed Arizona's way, the police in Arizona are talking about how they might not recognize the Matricula Consular, the ID that Mexicans use in place of a driver's license, whether they are legal or not. The article, Police in Ariz. may stop accepting Mexican ID card, discusses how people who show this identification are likely to be, as one presumes, charged with a crime, and brought to jail.

The new program called "Secure Communities" that ICE is implementing will come with a new set of problems. Basically, the program will target "criminal aliens" by linking up various law enforcement and immigration databases to be accessed when a person is in police custody. The new and existing laws and policies would give the police cause to arrest, detain, and check the databases on the suspect, and since undocumented immigrants would then have charges against them that they wouldn't otherwise have had, they will more likely be face the consequences of being labeled "criminal aliens".

With a focus on "criminal aliens," any sort of crime might cause one to be held in a detention center and perhaps deported. This problem is described in The Criminal Alien Problem of Secure Communities:
Secure Communities follows ICE’s broad definition of criminal alien to include any noncitizen convicted of an offense. Falling within Secure Communities’ priorities are “individuals who have been convicted of other offenses,” so broad to presumably include all misdemeanor violations or immigration violations. While this broad sweep approach to securing communities will certainly capture immigrants who do represent a threat to public safety, it extends the immigrant crackdown deeper far deeper into the immigrant community, legal and illegal, and will likely result in widespread personal, family, and community insecurity.

AZ Senator Russell Pearce has submitted a revision to the statute on drivers' licenses (SB1337) that would make it a class I misdemeanor to not have a license, which would allow the police to arrest the suspect. He's doing this obviously to further criminalize undocumented immigrants and to make it so the police can arrest them simply for not having a license. It would be interesting to find out if Pearce has had any influence on the recent discussion by the police on the Matricula Consular question.

There are various laws that are created and/or mis-interpreted to further criminalize undocumented immigrants. For instance, Pearce is also trying to push a bill that would make undocumented immigrants law-breakers just by being in Arizona- they're calling it trespassing. There have also been laws passed or attempted that make job soliciting a crime. In addition, the MCSO has continued to arrest undocumented immigrants and charged them with conspiracy to smuggle themselves across the border.

Wouldn't this Secure Communities be perfect for Arpaio to abuse even if 287(g) is taken away from him? After all, during MCSO's sweeps, they are specifically stopping people for traffic stops (real or imagined, including "improper use of horn"). It is clear that no matter what their tools, they have a clear goal of going after undocumented immigrants, as exemplified in these two quotes:

"The hotline is part of an expanded immigration enforcement plan Arpaio unveiled. In another part, about 160 sheriff's deputies, cross-trained to enforce immigration law, will saturate Valley cities and roadways to find and arrest those who are here illegally, the sheriff said. The deputies now have broad powers not only to question people about their immigration status during traffic stops, but also if they commit even a minor infraction, such as littering." (Source).


"Although the details are still being worked out, Arpaio did not rule out the possibility that deputies could use their expanded authority to question people about their immigration status during traffic stops and infractions as minor as 'spitting on the sidewalk.'

'Any time we come across an enforcement action and we find there are illegals present, then we will put our federal authority hat on and we will arrest them,' Arpaio said. 'I will do anything I can to fight this illegal-immigration problem, and this is one more step." (Source).


Clearly "criminal alien" will mean nothing different from "illegal alien", or to us, "undocumented immigrant" because anyone without papers could be categorized as a "criminal alien". The criminal alien term will be used to make the general public feel that the right people are being deported. However, just as previous ICE raids have been purported to target dangerous criminals, they have in fact caught in their nets mostly people without criminal records. Now, creating more people with criminal records will justify various actions against the undocumented community.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

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...