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Secure Communities Update : Surveillance and Withholdings

10:22 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Secure Communities · Comments Off

12 Jul 2011

In the last week there have been some developments in the nationwide push against the Obama administration’s mass deportation program, Secure Communities.

Documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the Cardozo Law School Immigration Justice Clinic show that the controversial Secure Communities deportation program (S-Comm), designed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to target people for deportation, is also a key component of a little-known FBI project to accumulate a massive store of personal biometric information on citizens and non-citizens alike.

According to the documents, S-Comm is only the first of a number of biometric interoperability systems being brought online by the FBI’s ˜Next Generation Identification (NGI) project. NGI will expand the FBI’s existing fingerprint database to add iris scans, palm prints, and facial recognition information for a wide range of people.

Deportations While Leaving the U.S. Make the Case for No Sense and All Dollars

8:21 am By Maegan La Mala · arizona|Immigration · 1 Comment

4 Aug 2010

A favorite line of many anti-immigrant peeps : “if you don’t like it, just pack up and leave” may have to be revisited, because it seems like the U.S government isn’t even about to let immigrants return home easily.

Bonnie Arellano, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said that when illegal immigrants are detected trying to leave the country, they are not just ushered across the line. Instead, they are processed and formally removed.

The consequences of an arrest can be harsh: Those deported for unauthorized presence in the U.S. may be barred for 10 years from seeking legal immigrant papers. In addition, a later arrest for illegal entry may be prosecuted criminally.

Is the Immigration Reform Change We Were Told to Believe in Hidden in the Numbers?

7:52 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration · 8 Comments

4 Feb 2010

If it really is all about the economy (stupid) when it comes to legislative priorities, to get a sense of where Comprehensive Immigration Reform falls on that list we should look at the The Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 budget request for the Department of Homeland Security.

The two immigration-enforcement components of DHS—Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—consume 30% of the department’s total budget, while the immigration-services component, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is allotted a mere 5%.

Hmm doesn’t seem like DHS is prepping itself for a pathway to citizenship.

It is notable that there are significant increases in the budget for Asylum and Refugee Services/Military Naturalizations and Immigrant Integration and Citizenship. However, given how DHS has treated many Asylum seekers (by putting them in detention), it would be nice to know a little more specifically where this money is going. And Immigrant integration? Can I assume that means English classes?

Via / Immigration Impact : A Project of the Immigrant Policy Center

Immigrant Detention in the U.S.

1:50 pm By la Macha · Immigration|Media · Comments Off

14 Jan 2010

I’m sorry for linking so many times to Democracy Now! in just one day–but this section is incredibly important as well. It centers on the state of immigrant detention and how deaths of people in detention are being covered up and otherwise handled very poorly (aka without morals or any sense of humanity).

The Obama administration has promised to overhaul immigration detention. But a scathing report in the New York Times last weekend reveals that federal officials used their role as overseers to prevent media from reporting deaths and abuses inside the nation’s immigration prisons. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, now admits 107 immigrants died in ICE custody since October 2003, but for years the deaths went uncounted in the public record.

Department of Homeland Security to Monitor Immigrant Detainee Treatment

6:37 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Justice · 4 Comments

6 Aug 2009

06detain02-600 The Department of Homeland Security is known far and wide for their excellent human rights record, especially ICE. So it makes perfect sense that President Obama would put 23 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials inside large immigrant detention centers to monitor management in light of growing complaints of abuse in the privately run institutions.

ICE, which is part of Homeland Security, intends to hire a medical expert to review the health care protocols for the detention centers and give an independent review of medical complaints, according to the people briefed on the plan. They spoke only on condition of anonymity ahead of an announcement expected Thursday [today].

Immigration and Customs Enforcement gave details of its plan to immigration advocates in a conference call Wednesday evening. One person on the call, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because ICE had not made a formal announcement, said the plan includes turning a detention center in Texas for parents and their children into a women’s facility and no longer placing families there. However, a separate facility in Pennsylvania will continue housing families.

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