Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it had entered into revised 287(g) pacts with 67 local and state law enforcement agencies. Despite the fact that many organizations, from this little Latino space in the blogmundo to the United Nations, have been critical of the program that empowers police to identify and remove undocumented immigrants, the “new and improved” 287(g) allegedly is “friendlier” (when have you known law enforcement to be friendly) and “race neutral” (is that like post-racial). The new Memorandums of Understanding (MOA’s), which haven’t been made public so they cannot be compared with the old MOA’s, allegedly include more oversight and state that the participating agencies have to focus on “serious” criminals and promise to follow civil rights and constitutional laws (no one checked if the signers had their fingers crossed behind their back).

Why the skepticism? In the mid to late 1990’s, under then Mayor Giuliani and Police Commissioner William Bratton, New York City’s people of color communities lived under the fear of “Broken Windows”, a theory that claimed that attacking smaller criminal issues would lead to a reduction of larger ones. There were a few problems with the NYC practice, including racial profiling that led to the deaths of many at the hands of aggressive police officers who seemed to think that all broken windows were tinted black or brown. The situation got so bad in NYC that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the United Nations held special hearings here and the streets were filled with thousands. This led to promises of no racial profiling and guess what? Now in 2009, more than 500,000 are stopped and frisked in NYC and most of them are people of color. Look at the amped up efforts against the Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian community in Flushing, Queens. And let us not forget that in this diverse city, where Mayor Bloomberg seeks a third term promising that NYC loves immigrants, a few weeks ago, Mario Vera, a Mexican laborer, was hospitalized with brain damage after being attacked in somewhere in Brooklyn by three men shouting “wetback.” Moving away from my city, after Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio had his 287(g) MOA partially revoked ( he still can check the status of those in jails), he launched a sweep of undocumented immigrants, giving Obama the finger knowing that he would not face repercussions.

Watching the Spanish language news coverage of the announcement of the 287(g) changes, it is clear that the Latino and immigrant community isn’t buying what the Obama administration is selling. Pro-immigrant organizations have been slow to get behind a dropping 287(g) movement because they would rather focus on the immigration “reform” agenda, not a wider human rights agenda. Just like people are targeting CNN for wanting Latino eyes while keeping Lou Dobbs on the payroll, orgs need to know that if they are just fighting for a bill for immigrants and not for immigrants’ lives, then they shouldn’t expect Latino support either.

Image Via/ ICE