So here I am at the Reform Immigration for America Summit in DC and the opening luncheon inside the Victory Tent was filled with people chanting Si Se Puede/Yes we Can! The message from all the speakers was clear, yes there is alot of work to do but that ultimately victory will be ours. Pero what does victory look like?

Maria Socorro Pesqueira, from Mujeres Latinas in Accion de Chicago spoke of her own personal experiences coming from an immigrant family and looked at the immigrant woman’s experience specifically. She gave examples of immigrant women whose families were fragmented by an enforcement first immigration agenda, an agenda that according to Socorro Pesqueira, left one child in the streets calling our for her detained and eventually deported father. As a mother, who is here with my youngest, this brought me to tears and even writing about it now makes my eyes well up.

The underlying assumption though, or my perception of it from the RI4A Summit and from the immigrant reform movement in general is that things are different now with Obama in the White House. Are they really?

Manuel, mi pana from the The Sanctuary, points to a piece from the American Prospect that looks at migrant detention under Obama, specifically the Secure Communities ::cough cough:: initiative.

Secure Communities relies on police in jails like the one where Martinez was processed to enter fingerprints into a joint Department of Homeland Security and FBI database monitored by ICE. Federal officials then decide whether to take “appropriate action” and issue a detainer on an immigrant before he or she is released. The program began in Texas in late 2008, is now in place in 48 counties in seven states, and is set to reach full implementation nationwide by 2012. It receives a 30 percent funding boost in Obama’s proposed 2010 budget and has support from key Democrats such as Rep. David Price of North Carolina, who chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security and pushed for much of the new funding. “One thing liberals and conservatives and everyone in between can agree on is that truly dangerous people should be at the top of the list for deportation,” Price says.

Every community wants to be secure, pero does security mean, as Manuel accurately points out: “…those of us who happen to be brown know that we are in for unequal application of these types of laws. “.

Acting like this initiatives somehow won’t involved racial profiling because we have an African American President is starry eyed at best.

Representative Luis Gutirerrez (IL, 4th District), who gave the Keynote at today’s luncheon made a point of saying that Obama needed to be called to task and keep his commitment to make immigration reform a reality. He said that Obama is an ally in the struggle pero Gutirerrez also pointed out that allies and friends call out allies and friends when they don’t do what they say they are going to do.

El es nuestro amigo, el es nuestro aliado. Pero es que tenga clara una cosa, si no cumple con su promesa, va a ver consequencias con nuestra comunidad.

The promise is immigration reform, but what are we as communities willing to sacrifice to get to that point? Is it ok to have a continuation of 287(g) programs, for example? Privately run immigrant detention centers whose focus is on the bottom line instead of human lives?