Posts Tagged ‘immigration enforcement’
Secure Communities Deported Almost 50,000 People
8:11 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Secure Communities · 12 Comments
10 Aug 2010VivirLatino has often written about the enforcement first immigration policy that the Obama administration has chosen to take instead of passing comprehensive immigration reform and the DREAM Act. One of the programs that Department of Homeland Security has expanded on and is planning to spread throughout the country is Secure Communities, a program that has local jails sharing with ICE the fingerprints of anyone suspected of being undocumented so that ICE can take further action.
This morning we have some of the first stats on the impact that the fingerprint sharing program has had and who are the immigrants getting caught up in this unholy alliance between the criminal (in)justice system and the civil immigration system.
– Records show that about 47,000 people have been removed or deported from the U.S. after the Homeland Security Department sifted through 3 million sets of fingerprints taken from bookings at local jails.
About one-quarter of those kicked out of the country did not have criminal records, according to government data obtained by immigration advocacy groups that have filed a lawsuit.
I.C.E Needs to Learn a Lesson from the NYPD When It Comes to Rebranding
8:56 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration · 1 Comment
22 Jun 2010That lesson is that rebranding won’t change the perceptions of the communities that continue to be brutalized.
According to an article in today’s Washington Post, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is “streamlining and realigning” meant to highlight the agencies efforts against terrorism and other anti-criminal activities and take attention away from their immigration enforcement efforts including increased workplace raids and the use of local law enforcement agencies as deputized immigration agents through programs like Secure Communities and 287(g).
“Public perception is dominated by civil immigration enforcement responsibilities, even though half of the agency is devoted to something else,” Morton said recently after announcing the changes to ICE employees. “We’re not going to get away from immigration. It’s very important from a national security perspective.”
Enforcement policy will not change and since there is no immigration reform happening nationally, this means that all the posters of I.C.E. agents hugging undocumented immigrants can be hung along the border wall and handed out as souvenirs to children separated from their parents.
Ok so maybe I’m being a little dramatic but thinking about the New York City Police Department rebranding efforts after a series of police brutality incidents in the late 1990′s, I’m not to far off.
Arizona : The Testing Ground for National Immigration Policy
11:27 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · arizona|Immigration · 6 Comments
16 Apr 2010If a lack of an immigration reform bill and perceived back-tracking on the part of lawmakers makes you feel like there is no movement happening when it comes to immigration, I would like to invite you to look at Arizona, which seems to be the lab for a growing enforcement first agenda.
If we want to look at this historically speaking with the state borders of Arizona, this is an expansion of the practices of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the next step from 287(g), nationally.
SB 1070 makes it a crime to lack proper immigration paperwork and requires police, if they suspect someone is in the country illegally, to determine his or her immigration status. Meaning if you are brown and/or have a Spanish sounding last name be prepared to show your papers, kind of like what Schumer/Graham are proposing with a biometric national id.
The New Way to Make Money Off of Immigrants : Car Checkpoints
3:01 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · California|Immigration · 11 Comments
25 Feb 2010NYC isn’t a huge driving city, at least not for too many locals with access to public transportation but in other parts of the country, especially in California where driving is not just a way of life, but a way to access opportunities for work, sobriety checkpoints may be used less to protect people from drunk drivers and more as a way to generate revenue, especially when the check points are set up in immigrant communities where driving without a license is a necessity in order to survive.
The Investigative Reporting Program reviewed hundreds of pages of city financial records and police reports, and analyzed data from sobriety checkpoints during the past two years. The data revealed that police departments across the state are seizing a growing number of vehicles from unlicensed drivers. In the last fiscal year, the police seized approximately 24,000 such cars at sobriety checkpoints, up from 17,900 in 2008 and 15,700 in 2007.
Law enforcement officials say demographics play no role in determining where the police establish checkpoints. But records show that cities where Hispanics make up a majority of the population are seizing cars at three times the rate of cities with small minority populations.
New 287(g) is Alot Like Old 287(g) Just Don’t Call it Racial Profiling.
4:53 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration|Justice|Politics · Comments Off
17 Oct 2009
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).
Read more…
What is 287(g)? : A Short Film
7:45 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration|Linking Latinos|Media|media justice|Movies|Politics|U.S.-Mexico Border · Comments Off
8 Sep 2009I’ve written extensively on 287(g) and it’s recent expansion and how it is essentially presented as separate from the immigration reform debate, even by DC orgs and insiders, while clearly laying the groundwork for a Comprehensive Immigration Reform policy that criminalizes Latinos. Amigo Nezua from The Unapologetic Mexican made an amazing little film that breaks down the program and the problems with it. This film is part of a weekly series of videos featured over at la Frontera Times.
News With Nezua | Sept. 07, 2009 | 287g from nezua on Vimeo.
You can also see the video here (UMX), over the Xolagrafik Theater, or at la Frontera Times.
I.C.E. Breaking
9:45 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Cities|Immigration|Violence · 4 Comments
24 Jul 2009
Earlier this week a report was released by the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law stating that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E) violated their own standards and rules, as well as the U.S. Constitution when it came to raids on houses.
The raids were supposed to focus on dangerous criminals, but overwhelmingly netted Latinos with civil immigration violations who happened to be present, the study said. Raiders mistakenly held legal residents and citizens by force in their own homes while agents rummaged through drawers seeking incriminating documents, the report said.
What is most disturbing isn’t so much what has already been done by I.C.E, which has been well documented, even if ignored by the mainstream media and political parties, but rather how the communities are being asked to trust I.C.E in enforcing new, expanded 287(g) programs because they will go after the “bad” immigrants like children.
The report said a similar “cowboy mentality” emerged in many other raids. In Paterson, N.J., last year, legal residents from Guatemala and their 9-year-old son, a United States citizen, were threatened with guns by immigration agents who had entered their home while the boy’s mother was in the shower.
Obama Expanding Bush Immigration Enforcement Policy of Checking Local Jails
10:41 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Controversia|Immigration|Justice|Obama|Politics|TV · 8 Comments
19 May 2009
President Obama has promised over and over again how immigration reform is a priority for his administration. Pero there have also been signs that Obama, who out of political necessity is playing cautious, is willing to follow in the enforcement first policy footsteps of his predecessors.
According to the Washington Post:
The Obama administration is expanding a program initiated by President George W. Bush aimed at checking the immigration status of virtually every person booked into local jails. In four years, the measure could result in a tenfold increase in illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes and identified for deportation, current and former U.S. officials said.
The fact that President Obama has moved forward on this first and not a moratorium on ICE raids that break up families, is very telling.
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