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Protests Mount Against Immigrant Crackdown
The National Day Labourer Organising Network (NDLON), the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law filed the lawsuit. It came as the groups launched "Uncovering the Truth", a weeklong national campaign of coordinated actions in more than 10 cities to end police collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Immigrants, activists and supporters of illegal immigrants rally against a new Arizona law on April 27, 2010 outside of Federal Plaza in New York City. Pushback continues today against the controversial immigration bill signed into law in Arizona last week. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) "The passage of S.B. 1070 in Arizona should be proof enough of the dangerous and disastrous nature of ICE-police collaboration programmes like the so-called Secure Communities programme," said Pablo Alvarado, NDLON executive director, referring to the new law in that state.
"The president should heed his own advice and act responsibly by reclaiming the federal government's exclusive authority over the nation's immigration laws," he said.
"At a time when police and ICE partnerships have clearly failed, ICE is moving swiftly to implement the Secure Communities programme in every U.S. jail by 2013," said CCR attorney Sunita Patel. "Contrary to its name, this latest ICE programme makes the public less safe. There is no doubt that the programme has and will continue to deepen fear and mistrust of the police in our communities."
Relatively little is known about the Secure Communities programme. Critics say it requires local and state police to run individuals' fingerprints through multiple databases upon arrest, even if no charges are brought and regardless of how minor the charges are.
Advocates and attorneys say that, in addition to concerns presented by relying on potentially inaccurate and erroneous information in those databases, the programme functions as little more than a racial profiling dragnet to funnel even more people into the overburdened and mismanaged ICE detention and removal system.
Secure Communities is currently operating in 168 jurisdictions in 20 states with more agreements anticipated in the next few days.
"This is a massive, invasive and untested federal immigration enforcement programme that ICE has been deceptive and secretive about from the start," said Bridget Kessler, clinical teaching fellow at the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. "Without more information, we cannot allow for the spread of this dangerous ICE programme."
The plaintiffs seek the materials necessary to provide the public with comprehensive information on the Secure Communities programme, including policies, procedures and objectives; fiscal impact; data and statistical information; individual records; communications; and assessment records.
They filed a Freedom of Information Act request in February seeking these materials. Despite ICE's rapid expansion of the programme, government agencies have not yet released the requested records.
In a related development, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano told the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday that the Justice Department will review the recently passed Arizona anti-immigrant law to determine its constitutionality.
She said she was unsure of the law's legality, but suggested that it might be made acceptable if a federal law enforcement officer was always present when local police were arresting someone for immigration violations. The problem with that solution, she added, is that there are not enough federal officers.
Napolitano said that ICE has deep concerns with the law's effects and that such broad immigration enforcement may siphon resources away from ICE's priority of focusing on the most serious criminals.
President Barack Obama has characterised the new law as "misguided" and threatening to "undermine basic notions of fairness".
Under criticism by civil liberties advocates, Napolitano defended her department's 287(g) programme, which authorises local law police and sheriff's departments to enforce federal immigration laws.
"The 287(g) programme can be useful," she asserted, in "focusing on serious crimes." Her remarks drew enthusiastic support from the senior Republican on the committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions, a conservative from Alabama.
Sessions said (287(g) "represents a great opportunity to send a message to would-be immigrants that the door is no longer open. If you enter this country illegally, you won't get a job. Instead you'll get deported."
The 287(g) programme has been heavily criticised by civil rights groups and, recently, by the Homeland Security department's own Inspector General. Those who oppose the programme say that local law enforcement officials are not properly trained to interpret complex immigration laws.
They also contend that the programme has failed to focus on serious crimes, citing the large number of immigrants in detention for minor infractions. Many law enforcement organisations have also agreed with the contention that 287(g) siphons off scarce resources away from protecting local communities.
Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was previously a major advocate of comprehensive immigration reform, defended Arizona's action. He told the committee that his state was "frustrated waiting for the federal government to do something to secure our borders".
Another committee member, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a conservative Republican from South Carolina, told the committee that "in the current environment, comprehensive immigration reform could not pass the Congress".
Meanwhile, the act recently signed into law by the governor of Arizona continued to draw the ire of lawmakers and civil libertarians across the country.
In Washington, members of Congress will host a press conference at the U.S. Capitol to denounce what they call "the harshest immigration enforcement state law in the country". Many say the Arizona immigration law creates a "moral and political imperative for the federal government to act swiftly on comprehensive immigration reform".
Rinku Sen, executive director of the Applied Research Centre, a not-for-profit advocacy group, says the new law "exchanges the security of Arizona's communities of colour to buy false comfort for a state on the brink of economic collapse. What about the right of communities of colour to live without fear of random detention or their ability to report crimes without reprisal?"
10 Comments so far
Show AllI should have known, John '_ss licker' McCain was behind this.
I have absolutely no sympathy for these protesters. Where were they when President Obama decided that is was legal to kill without due process an American citizen walking the street on the suspicion that this citizen is a terrorist?
Gee, if person A has not had the prescience to complain about every stupid or vicious thing the government has done, does that mean that person A henceforth has no right to protest any of them?
If so, that sure shoots my freedom of speech. I made errors before I even had the time to grow up and inform myself.
Somewhere someone is likely saying, "Gee, look at those Yanquis! They come here (to you name the country) any time they like. They feel entitled to do anything they want, but if a poor person goes up to work work and sweat for a dollar, they think they have a right to do anything to that person."
Why would that person not be perfectly glad that 0bama decides to assassinate Americans?
I do not happen to agree with this opinion--one I have heard more once or twice. I bring it up now because it strikes me as more or less equal to the one you have expressed.
If it isn't, I would love to read just what the difference is.
Bardamu
You obviously did not grasp my view. First of all, where did I state that person A does not have the right to protest "Arizona" if he/she failed to protest "killing"? That you have made up of whole cloth and it characterizes the style of your discussion: accuse a writer of statements/sentiments he has not made. Your second unsupported and vile accusation occurs in the section beginning with "Somewhere". Indeed, your fantasy is boundless. As far as I am concerned you have the absolute right to spout your unsupported bile and whining ("If so, that sure shoots my freedom of speech"). Because of this alone I should stop here but I will make one more comment. There is something fundamentally wrong if (notice the word "if" because I give you the benefit of my being wrong; something you did not give me) you do not grasp the huge difference between stopping an American citizen for interrogation and killing of the same by a government in a non-war or self-defense situation without due process which according to the 14th amendment ("shall not take life...")is undeniably unconstitutional.
I don't get the big deal. Legal immigration is legal. Illegal entry is illegal. Seems pretty clearcut. Quizzing those who are among the most common "illegals" seems sensible to me.
For example, if you knew that a black man had raped a woman, would you also quiz white, yellow, red, or green men on their whereabouts at the time of the act? Of course not. You would quiz black men who might have been near the scene at the time.
Same thing here. The overwhelming majority - let's not be in denial about this - of people who enter this country illegally are from Mexico and places south - or Jamaica, Haiti, and so on. The poor places from whence come desperate people looking for work to survive.
Rather than have them come here, why not help them where they live? Help them re-establish crops that grow well in their climates and that have been grown there for thousands of years - help local farmers in Mexico, et al, get set up again so they won't feel they must try to get in USA illegally.
As an environmentalist, I object strongly to encouraging population increases anywhere. There are already too many people for Earth to carry.
For the past 10 years, more food has been eaten than has been produced on Earth - how sustainable is that?
I don't like to admit agreeing with the idiot from S.C., but he was basically right when he said that the more you feed and give people, the more they're going to reproduce.
This is true of animals and it's true of human beings. When times are poor and there's barely enough food, people and animals will not produce as many offspring.
When we farmers want our critters to produce more offspring, we feed them especially well during the time they're in heat, or rut, so they'll drop more eggs and produce more offspring. Does anyone think we're any different in that respect?
We CANNOT bring here and feed all the hungry people in the world, even if that were desirable, which it is not.
Does this sound "conservative?" Don't care, it's common sense. Wasn't anmesty for 12 million people who've entered this country illegally enough? I should say so!
We have few illegal entry problems here on the Northern border, and those we do have are from Mexico or other South American countries or Jamaica, et al. Same people, same problem.
Recently local police discovered a Mexican Cartel drug operation where hundreds of mari. plants were found growing up here in the Maine woods. No one local was involved (my knowledgable sources say, and I concur because we all would have heard); the Cartel people saw one helicopter and burned everything - they had been living up there tending the crop. Just as they do in California. Same thing.
Even the people(coyotes) who brought in workers from Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, etc., were found to be bringing in people illegally, and these coyotes had lived here for years and been accepted in the community.
These people brought in are CHEAP LABOR, which is all corporations care about. Wait a couple of years and see what American workers are willing to accept because there are is all this CHEAP LABOR sitting around waiting to take their places.
Nothing to do with racism - just the usual corporate bottom line. CHEAP LABOR does it for them.
Blaming poor U.S. citizens for the policies of U.S. elites, is like blaming poor Mexicans for the policies of Mexican elites. It's nonsense.
One's own opinions will always feel like "common sense" if one does not fact-check their basis.
In practice, immigration laws provide cheap labor. They do not prevent it. They contribute to conditions abroad wherein workers cannot strike for wages, so manufacturing jobs can be exported. They create conditions wherein local workers are "illegal" or of a subclass, so they may be exploited.
The AZ law just makes that worse. When Juarez buries 5,000 people to murder within a year, a few racist pigs in Arizona will have to do worse than this to eliminate the Hispanic and indigenous populations.
Of course, if you really imagine you do not want these people to compete for part of the world's resources, that's pretty directly what that takes.
Check and you will find that, in general, it is not labor that primarily objects to decent treatment for immigrants and for various races, but management. Capital wants goods to cross legally and workers to be marginalized.
That is what this law and this kind of law accomplishes.
The person from SC, idiot or no, was incorrect about population expansion. Since you have a legitimate concern with this, the data might interest you. Well fed and well educated urban populations have less than 2.0 kids/couple. Poor and under-educated populations have more.
Really, this should not be surprising. Kids cost urban people money and time. Kids are wealth and potential retirement for the rural poor -- and of course the children of the poor are prone to untimely death. And further, there is this tendency that elites dislike being direct and straightforward about reproductive science.
I think helping people where they live is a great idea though. But I would say it is extremely ambitious, given the government and the state of awareness that we are working with in general.
A very large number of people where I have been would be very happy to stay home were the Americans to simply stay home as well, and stay reliably home, and stop supporting their oppressors, and simply help by doing no damage.
Until the US manages that, I have to say I see laws like the new AZ profiling and harassment mandate as extensions of the worst of American foreign policy. The American government acts like it owns their lands and its own, and it hunts these people down and forces them to labor similarly regardless of where they might be.
Moreover, Americans who think that the small wealth they retain from all they burn comes to them because of these practices should think again. American labor pays, albeit mostly unwittingly, to have American kids die to stop land and labor reform in other countries so that American labor can be undercut by cheap foreign markets.
I doubt you favor this. But if not, to favor or condone this law just to accomplish racial profiling makes no sense.
Cleanearth,
"Wasn't amnesty for 12 million people who've entered this country illegally enough?"
If you are referring to the 1986 amnesty (comprehensive immigration reform) law, it granted amnesty to the estimated 1 million illegals here at that time. In the end, with family members allowed to join their relatives, etc., that number jumped to 3 million.
The bill was a "compromise" that also provided for fines and penalties for illegal employers. It was supposed to end the illegal migrant problem once and for all, by temporarily granting humane exception for the crime of illegal entry, and by turning off the jobs magnet by strictly forbidding employers from hiring illegals in the future.
Of course, while 3 million got amnesty, the penalties for illegal employers have rarely been enforced. (Corporate slavers' money and influence.) That 1986 compromise bill and lax enforcement has resulted in the 12-20 million illegals we have now.
Fourteen years later, the corporatists want to do it again. "Amnesty" has such a negative connotation that they now speak of "normalization"—in other words, ending all investigations, detentions, deportations and enforcement of penalties for employers, and retroactively forgiving all fines and penalties. If history is any guide, such a policy could easily result in tripling the number of low-wage replacement workers (and family members) currently in the country. 12-20 million could become 36-60 million, if not more.
It would be a disaster of enormous proportion. Sadly, with the permanent war and military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the planned expansion of insanely risky nuclear power in the U.S. (we now know Chernobyl caused a million deaths), adulterated food and subsidies for factory/chemical agriculture, etc., it would be just one more disaster foisted upon the people by the corporatists.
As you suggest, the alternatives are clear. We should be addressing NAFTA, WTO, corporate outsourcing, off-shoring of profits and other corporate tax-evasion schemes, campaign finance, political corruption and so on, instead of trying to normalize wage slavery.
"If the sun comes up tomorrow, it is only because of men of good will. That is all there is between us and the devil." —Thirteen Days
Keep fighting the good fight.
Some of what you post is obvious, clean. But humans do not seem to have as much sense as animals in some cases; they keep reproducing even when there's no food!
What we have now is a kind of 'entitlement expectation' from those who have said we displaced them, and now owe them. Perhaps it is true that the elites of the world who have just about everything should pay; after all, they are the ones who have been and are benefiting at the expense of everyone else. And, sure, we were ignorantly complicit in their demise as well as our own. MSM and laziness is largely to blame for that.
Also, there are real common sense difficulties of trying to accommodate millions of new people that many here would rather ignore--yet pummel you when you bring it up.
One thing a lot of people do not understand is that human nature has a dark element. I like to call it the 'greedy grabber,' or 'give me an inch, take a mile' element. Once people start receiving a benefit, they feel entitled to it henceforth. This is true of both the rich and poor. This, and the human 'want machine' is a bottomless pit. The objects of desire in some cases may be different, but the principle is the same. Illegal immigrants are not different than anyone else in this regard. The enablers who are fanning the flames best be careful (this includes, but is not limited to, the illegal employers who are presently exploiting their labor).
Even so, people must have their basic needs provided for. Those who presently control the resources and wealth of the world are making this increasingly difficult--the outcome, of which, cannot be other than the destabilization of societies everywhere. Additionally, those who make the laws serve these interests, and are almost completely corrupted by them.
The world elites are playing with fire. It reminds me of the child that starts a fire believing he can contain it, but a gust of wind quickly negates this illusion. By pitting us against one another and hoarding all the wealth, they are playing with a fire that can quickly get out of control and burn them as well.
Getting back to the common sense aspect. A sudden large population surge, such as millions crossing the border--especially in a depressed economy--cannot help but cause difficulties. In the border states these difficulties are more pronounced, as would be expected. Without raising taxes on the rich--who benefit the most from the cheap labor, domestic and otherwise--there is no practical way to meet such a need. Infrastructure and community services are taxed to the limit. Thus, to condemn Arizona, and other border states, without providing assistance and/or viable solutions, is not only promoting ignorance, but fanning the flames of discord. A side note: to have a law or policy (as in immigration) and to make some abide while letting others slide is inviting conflict, not to mention being unfair.
Likewise, some want to condemn others for their stand on 'human rights,' while are in complete denial of the difficulties they face. Clearly, there are moneyed interests obfuscating the issue, and causing us to take sides against one another. It's the old divide and conquer principle at work all over again.
And ultimately it would benefit no one to dissolve the borders because it would negate the very benefit that those who would immigrate are seeking. At some point we'd all be competing for the basic necessities of life. If it comes to this, it will certainly not be pretty. And for many, it already has.