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National Outcry Builds Against Obama's Deportations
Over one million immigrants have been deported since President Obama took office, making his deportation track record the worst in the history of the United States.
WASHINGTON -- When 20-year-old Isaura Garcia called the 911 emergency hotline while being physically abused by her partner, she never imagined that her plea to U.S. legal authorities would lead to imprisonment and possible deportation.
A federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer arrests an immigrant during an enforcement surge in Arizona. The Secure Communities program allows local officers to quickly and easily check a person's immigration status in the federal database. (Photo Courtesy of ICE) Though Garcia's face was "black and blue" from repeated beatings by her boyfriend, the police – who insisted that she speak in English while explaining her plight – arrested her, held her in prison for over a week on a "felony domestic violence" charge, transferred her to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), placed her in deportation proceedings, and finally released her on an electronic ankle bracelet.
Garcia's story is just one of thousands of similar tales whose inception can be traced to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) operation known as Secure Communities (S-Comm), a program that is now being challenged at the national level.
On Tuesday, a coalition of human rights defenders, including the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) and the Center for Constitutional Rights, teamed up with over 18 other national and community-based organizations to make public a comprehensive report detailing the often devastating impacts of S-Comm on immigrant communities in the U.S.
Alongside testimony from victims of the program, including horror stories like Garcia's, the report calls for immediate termination of the program, which huge swathes of civil society have long deemed to be a failure.
"There is an overall sense within the movement for immigrant justice that S-Comm is too broken to be fixed," Chris Newman, the legal director at NDLON, told IPS.
"It has now become obvious even to people outside the immigrant rights community – such as former District Attorney of New York Robert Morgenthau and San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey – that DHS is more interested in the politics of [these failed] programs than they are in genuine reform of immigration policy," he added.
Launched by ICE in 2008, S-Comm was initially marketed to the U.S. public as a voluntary program designed to "improve and modernize the identification and removal of criminal aliens from the United States" by sending fingerprints submitted by local law enforcement agencies to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for criminal background checks, and then automatically searching those fingerprints against immigration databases.
According to the new report, "If ICE determines that an individual may be deportable, it requests that the local law enforcement agency detain him or her for transfer to ICE and possible deportation."
Critics of the operation have blasted it as an open attack on immigrants' basic civil and human rights by trapping millions of undocumented residents – most of them innocent, or guilty only of very minor offenses such as traffic violations – in a dragnet that has so far expelled 115,000 immigrants from the country.
"This policy is creating an 'Arizonafication' of our country," Newman told IPS, parroting a phrase that has been used to describe the effects of Senate Bill 1070 in Arizona, which essentially legalized racial profiling and is widely believed to be the harshest piece of anti-immigration legislature implemented in the country.
"The program piloted in Arizona and initiated as merely an experiment [foreshadowed] the Frankenstein that S-Comm has created," he added.
"There is a sense within the immigrant justice community – and beyond it to academics, scholars and law enforcers – that DHS simply cannot be trusted," Newman said.
"Calling the program 'Secure Communities' is misleading, since it actually achieves the opposite result. In fact, the whole operation has been a lie from its very inception," he insisted.
Newman is by no means alone in his denunciation. Tuesday's report joined increasingly loud calls for an end to the program.
Alarmed by the mandate of S-Comm to conflate local police authority with ICE's function as an immigration-regulation body, the governors of Illinois, New York and Massachusetts scrapped the program, relying on the extensive Memoranda of Agreement (MOA) that were drafted in the initial stages of S-Comm granting states the green light to suspend their participation in the program whenever they chose.
But last week, the Barack Obama administration "disregarded the concerns of the [immigrant community and law enforcement officials] by announcing that DHS will continue its rapid rollout of the program - without state authorization," according to a press release by the New York Immigration Coalition.
The statement added that over one million immigrants have been deported since President Obama took office, making his deportation track record the worst in the history of the United States.
Laura Rotolo, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), responded to the rescinding of the MOA in a blog post, which stated, "overnight [S-Comm] has become a federal mandate that will turn every city and every town into a feeder into the broken immigration system, not to mention part of the burgeoning bio-metric surveillance system that targets all Americans," adding that the DHS must be held to account for its policies.
The recent report highlights all these problems and more, such as the already frayed relationship between immigrants and law enforcement authorities made worse by a reluctance to report crimes for fear of being deported; and the impact of S-Comm on the racially biased and highly lucrative prison industrial complex.
Last week, Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, executive director of Enlace, an alliance of low-wage worker centers and community organizations in the U.S. and Mexico, stated, "DHS continues to demonstrate who it listens to – not to the millions calling for legalization and not to taxpayers, but to the private prison companies and their investors who are bent on profiting from taxpayers by jailing immigrants."
He added, "Over a million immigrants have been imprisoned in the last three years, costing taxpayers billions of dollars that should have been allocated for education, healthcare and other legitimate public needs instead of being spent on expensive cages for men, women and children."
Enlace is currently partnered with unions and community groups across the country in a nationwide Prison Industry Divestment Campaign, an effort to push all public and private institutions to "divest their holdings in Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, [the U.S.'s] largest private prison corporations which profit annually from billions in taxpayer money."
60 Comments so far
Show All" making his deportation track record the worst in the history of the United States"
Worst? Depends on how you're looking at it.
Yep, he should have started with himself.
Oh, man you are bad... :-)
I'm sure he has no idea whats going on.... like everything else :( >^^<
If you are LOOKING for a way to play divide and conquer with your population, this is a GREAT way to do it. It turns everyone against everyone else. It turns cops into even BIGGER jerks than they already are. It makes EVERY stop a reason to be afraid for many people who ARE citizens. This is a completely paranoid, FOOLISH plan that doesn't help anything, it just turns everyone against each other. This is NOT how you have a COUNTRY OR a society.
The real numbers, BTW, say that there is almost NO immigration from Mexico coming into this country anymore. We have essentially shut off the flow. The folks from down there have figured out that starvation in their own country is far better than the SHIT they have to put up with here. But you won't hear a SINGLE word about this. To them, we are STILL being inundated with illegal workers, purely so they can play political GAMES with OUR lives (as well as those of the migrants).
You want to know WHY the country has gone to hell? Don't look downward, no one down there IS the problem. They haven't influenced policies or made laws that turned ALL our lives into crap. No, folks, it's NOT those lower on the totem than you, it's those WAY the hell up there, way higher UP than you. THOSE are your problem people. THEY are the ones who have stolen everything, hired all those migrants ILLEGALLY instead of you, passed laws to keep YOU from working, and are playing divide and conquer games on us DAILY. THIS is where your problem lies. Stop looking downward for your scapegoats. It's the scum that rises to the top that is making life impossible. Not just here, but in Mexico and the rest of the world, as well. THEY are who we need to start dealing with.
The inflow of migrants from Mexico slowed several years back . I posted numbers that showed that the number of undocumented workers in the US as per the Governments own website had dropped by several million yet unemployment levels remained high or were climbing and budgetary deficits of the States with the highest percentage of such workers continued to climb with revenues from taxes dropping.
It being the contention of some of the people here that it was "Illegal Immigrants" that were causing Job losses and the budget deficits , I asked how could their assertions be supported by the evidence.
No answer. But then this typical of those that are not bothered by the facts.
One wonders today. With some millions deported in the past few years wages in theory should be climbing if one subscribes to the point of view that undocumented workers depress wages. Has this been the case?
It interesting to note (and given I detail this under the presumption we keep our consumption based "Capitalist" economies) that the Government of Canada has determined that we need an inflow of an extra 1 million workers per year over and above what entering the country today in order to maintain a growing tax base and to support people entering retirement.
So ignoring the labels of "legal" and "illegal" worker how can both "we need less workers" and "we need more workers" be true at the same time?
As Franklin D Roosevelt once aptly said the only "real Americans are the Indians, the rest of us are foreigners." But then ask this question. Don't we now have "from sea to shining sea" a despotism which would make any founding father sick? Don't we have "the fruit cake plains" to go with alabaster fascism? Have we not "crowned this 'good" with knownothingnes that is far behond even George Orwell's wildest dreams?
They were still considerably less insidious than the vicious, thieving, fascist ruling class the US has today. There are no absolutes. Everything is measured against everything else.
Don't you ever get tired of posting your propaganda from the comfort of the Great White North. Come down here on the border GW and see what is in store for you. Why don't you list the virtues of the mestizo culture instead of giving them a pass all the time. The "family values", "hard working" "honest" values is horse$hit they like to feed to naive liberals who they assume know nothing about their culture. We get a daily dose of child beatings, stabbings, hit and run DWI, spousal abuse, murder-suicide, burglary, robbery, pedophilia and all other forms of stupidity from this culture. At least 80% of the perpetrators are of hispanic descent .Oh, and don't let our local hero who saved a little mexican girl from being abducted by another mexican in one of our many illegal immigrant neighborhoods fool you. Come to find out he's here illegally but fortunately has two "anchor babies" by his also illegal chica. The kids get medicaid and welfare assistance. Get a clue GW, the anchor baby scam is well known and documented. Why do you think AZ is struggling, soCal is just about lost and other states are starting to take notice. No one I know wants to live in Mexico not even Mexicans; but they insist on bringing their so-called culture here.
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless,
Tempest-tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
They'd better chisel that poem off the Statue of Liberty, or even easier, just plaster it over with government shit. That sticks to everything!
Thank you for this contrast between our words and our hypocritical actions. I think that these days the statue would be more appropriate plated in gold, with her torch replaced by a raised middle finger.
The original intent of the monument that was to be named "Liberty Lighting the World" had nothing to do with "the poor, the huddled" and immigration but with the ideal of republican government as opposed to government by dictators, kings or emperors. As far as I understand the famous inscription was not the idea of the French sculptor of the Statue of Liberty Auguste Bertholdi nor of Gustave Eiffel who designed the interior supports but of the American designer of the pedestal Richard Morris Hunt.
About 1 million legal immigrants come to the US every year. The ones he is deporting are here illegally.
"What, YOU are still in the US?! "
Yeah, are you?
Welcome back. Here's some news for you: I ain't going nowhere... You lost. Deal with it.
Hey Princess Zelda. Still fighting your imaginary battles with the white devils? I think you lost a long time ago. I mean, who in the hell moves to Mexico?
Crap! they have kids faster than that!!! Maybe he couild deport them to Afganistan! let'em fight over the opium fields! What a worn out discussion!. so one million gone means only 17million to go! then we can play seal the border! >^^<
So now math is racist????? Guess that explains the kids test scores!!?!?!? >^^<
Minitrue,
The Statue of Liberty is going through major renovations right now. I think they intend to take those words off per Obama's orders.
They've mounted an electronic sign over it:
☠ Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted! ☠
How about the white/european trespassers on Indian soil, don't be a hypocrite.
It's over, They lost! you'll never get ahead living in the past! >^^<
Are we sure that they have actually been deported, as in no longer in the country? Or, are they still sitting in those specially built immigration prisons to increase the prison industry's bottom line?
No resolution of immigration policies and laws will ever occur if the extremes on both sides continue to insist that it must be "my way or no way" which means that pressures for bringing into the USA and deportation of "illegals" will continue no matter who is in the White House in the fake-name of "making our borders secure". If there has ever been an issue for which compromise is the only "way" this is it. The "get them out crowd" must get the "no naturalization" demand while the "make them legal" crowd must get the "no extradition" demand. Our constitution is clear on one aspect: "all children born in the USA are citizens of the USA". With regards to those who came here as adults ( which I would define as 21 or older at time of entry) the compromise I favor is a status of: "you become a legal resident of the USA which means you can live and work legally in the USA forever but if you want to become a citizen with the right to vote you must leave the USA and apply for a regular "green card" immigration". After all that is the rule for most foreigners who are here legally on a temporary work visa. Our constitution which covers all persons that are within the USA regardless of their status does not allow both groups to be treated differently. Juveniles who were 20 or younger at the time of entry I would treat in the law as if they were "born in the USA"*. Such a policy will avoid the terrible disruption of families in which some are legal and others are illegal residents of the USA. Such a law on the day it is signed by the president will immediately stop all deportations except perhaps for individuals who have committed crimes in the past (I believe there will be very few). Had this policy been in place Laura would not be deported but her boyfriend might be deported. Of course even today the U.S. Attorney General has the power to waive the demand that Laura must be deported and allow her to stay legally. My suggested resolution must not be assumed to be "unchangeable". At any time in the future when tempers have cooled the status of "no naturalization" can of course be changed. *A little known article of a law that clarifies who is an American citizen states that a "found" toddler of age five or younger (the law does nor say how that is to be verified) who does not know who and where its parents are will automatically become a U.S. citizen at age 21 if it cannot be proven that he/she was not born in the USA.
As have many, if not most, of us, I have watched the scene where the Nazi hakenkreuz was detonated atop the Reichstag Building.
I dreamed the other night that I was standing somewhere in New York, listening to the radio as the government declared the start of a "New World Order," celebrating it by the destruction of an old, obsolete, symbol of the times that failed.
Then, I saw the Statue of Liberty blown into a thousand fragments by a titanic explosion. This was followed by ships whistles and sirens, artillery salutes, ringing of bells, flyovers, etc. I woke up in a cold sweat.
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
You are hilariously wrong. The Nazi hakenkreuz that you saw detonated was not atop the Reichstag Building in Berlin but in the huge Nazi stadium in Nuremberg. My, oh my are you showing your IGNORANCE. You had better visit New York harbor to make sure that Lady Liberty is really there. Perhaps she is in Boston harbor?
Apparently the Obama administration announced a change in deportation policy in the direction of what I have suggested here while I was writing. In essence the Attorney General is now empowered to grant the status of "legal resident" to individuals but not yet to an entire class of persons. As I expected a storm of protest (sew Huffington Post) has already begun accusing the president of breaking U.S. laws. He does not because the AG has always had the authority to rule on the status of individual foreigners residing within the USA except the granting of citizenship.
And all this just because Rick Perry entered the presidential race....
Doesn't it look like it's all over for the current Tea Party president? I'd have to think so. It looks like we'll be electing somebody well to his left.
In 1968 which some have compared, and in some ways falsely, many of us including myself opted for the failed strategy of opposing Lyndon B Johnson within his own party. It wss a big loser even with Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy winning every contested state in that party contest. It was a stacked deck just as it will be even more so with a vengeance this time. What could have worked? James Gaven, an anti war retired paratroop general advised getting into the GOP fight to determine its presidential candidate, and with George Romney as the only anti war candidate jumping into the race, that could have been a winner. Romney would easily have beaten the LBJ stand in in that race so overwhelmed and weighed down by backing the war. But we let our sentiments for the Democrats and old party loyalties get the best of us when we should have seen we would never be able to challenge a sitting president within his own party but could have had a huge impact on the GOP contest. With Romney we could have got an end to the Vietnam War, a peace dividend, and a rebuilding of the USA. Let's not make that same mistake a second time. We have it within our power to change the course of events, to put a decent person in the White House, as the hard core Tea Party only has about 25% of the country. That won't elect the president, and the GOP big wigs know this. They want the presidency back no matter what. The country needs a breather from the insanity of this president. We can make it happen. just as we could in 1968.
Regardless this contest likely is going to be more like 1952. We then have it made as the official GOP candidate is going to sweep to victory and the fake Democrat is out by a knock out. Unlike 1952 we have nothing to lose as no Republican can be to this president's right. Let the fear mongering cease. It's time to get to work electing a GOP president and as many real Democrats to congress as we can. That's the only realistic way to get anything done. CounterPunch has already explained how this president has destroyed progressive movements including the peace moverment. That says it's time to move on. Let's do it. Iowa is the start. Then if we take New Hamphire which is further right, we can have a virtual lock on the GOP contest with no money coming in for the loony right. Ron Paul can be the Dwight D Eisenhower of 2012. We can break the embargo against Cuba which never should have been, as Paul really does believe in the free market. As he does we can also get more anti trust action than we've had before as monopoly isn't at all the free market. The Fed also isn't anything to do with a free market with its welfare program for Wall Street. That can be brought to screeching halt-- same for the Pentagon. Again Paul wants actually to put a tightening on the budget and is perfectly willing to cut the Pentagon down to size. With Ventura or someone like that at his side, it shouldn't be that much of problem. He will also get much support from progressives and even just plain budget balancing types as well. The old left/right breakdown doesn't hold now. We have to have at least for now a complete realignment in presidential politics. For congress if depends on the individual. Different races will require different strategies and or tactics. Voting Democratic in some will be good, in others not.
I sincerely believe that a person who is told that he/she will not be deported will not care a hoot what the reason is. Perry Schmerry!
Is there any country outside the United States of America that deserves him MORE then The United States of America.?
Instead of trying to deport undocumented latinos, they should deport WALLSTREETOS.
At least the undocumented people work for a living.
Save the economy. Deport Wallstreetos to Panama!
I deported myself 40 years ago.
good move.
Perhaps we should consider deporting Oblahblah, to a black site, somewhere in East Bumfuck! Which is just south of Bumfuck Heights!
There's a lot missing from this report. Like the fact this dometic incident took place on February 06th, her boyfriend Ricardo Leos, who is also an undocumented immigrant was not arrested at that time, but is now in jail on vehiclular manslaughter from a DUI which happenned in March.
Reported in the corporate media on Thursday, August 18:
(1) Thousands of black Americans put on their best suits and office clothes and stood in line ALL NIGHT in Atlanta to get into a job fair sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus, just for a CHANCE to get a job.
(2) Obama announced the federal government would no longer be deporting illegal aliens.
(3) Obama went on vacation to Martha's Vineyard for 11 days, staying at a $50,000/week beach house.
This is Obama's real "jobs plan." Keep wages low and unemployment high, by encouraging as many illegal aliens as possible to breach our border. Give African-Americans an in-your-face FU, saying in effect, "I'm black, who else are you going to vote for?" And, keep his campaign cash flowing by giving Wall St. the low-wage and Social Security/Medicare privatization policies they want.
Obama thinks he's got us snookered. I won't vote for him. Period. I'm sending him a one penny campaign contribution with a note: "this is what I think you are worth."
As I've said before, we had an amnesty in the 80's -didn't work. It destroyed the wages in the construction industry among others. lt created a permanent insular underclass of latinos (mestizos). So why are we considering another invading horde?
Amnesty is a corporate concept as you have explained.
It is perhaps sad that I feel compelled to begin my posting with the statement that I do not support president Obama, that I did not vote for him in 2008 and will not vote for him in 2012. logitech, it is easy to sit at your computer an rant at president Obama, but what is your policy with regards to the estimated 11 million illegal trespassers now in the USA. Keep them in that state? Pick them all up and deport them all (who will pay for that?)? And amnesty/pardon by the president is not a corporate concept but a constitutional power. It may not be wise what president Obama is doing but, at least in my opinion, it is absolutely legal as long as it is done on a one-by-one basis.
you folks need to put the shoe on your other foot. What if we were sending millions of Americans to Mexico, to buy up theirr land, take their jobs bring all our relatives into their systems that they created to take care their relatives, Pushing their relatives out of their social security and medical programs put in place years ago Paid into for 40 t0 50 years .Isn't It a G D shame that we would do all that to Poor Sorry Mexico? These are the folks that waved mexican flags at 'poor mexico' rallys all over california,while saying saying that this was their
country. Maybe it's time to get real. If these were the fine upstanding, hard-working people they porport to be , why are they not fighting and working for their country. Because fools of america hand over their hard earned taxpayer money to them.
There is something more serious you never think about. Think about the cultures all over the world, that are being blended into one big shity mix. Not folks that want to come here, But people who are living quite well and have beautiful cultures, work for their villages and enjoy their children. THE NEW WORLD ORDER IS NOT WHAT IT IS CRACKED UP TO BE......
"Malevolent lunatics posting rants"
Yes, and we all know jpheran/readbetween/bloodmeridian would never stoop to such behavior.
Hopefully jpheran/readbetween/bloodmeridian will also become superfluous.
Sorry, but when someone says that an illegal immigrant is NOT a criminal, I lose all respect. There is a law on the immigration into the USA. A violation of that law is a crime. If it were not a crime, then anyone could immigrate at any time.
With that semantic issue out of the way, the question then becomes whether or not it is in the best interest for a certain illegal alien to be deported. Obviously, if this person has committed any regular crime, then he should be deported. Case closed. Even a traffic violation is a bad thing - or else it too would not be a crime.
A case could be made that otherwise law abiding illegal aliens should not be deported since automatic deportation upon being discovered would cause illegals to not go the hospital or report a crime. That's a judgement call, and the way to get the judgement tweaked is by voting for a Congress and POTUS that will tweak it properly. And I assure you that a Democratic Congress and POTUS will be much nicer to illegal immigrants than Republican ones (the next Republican POTUS will not dare be nice to illegal aliens, like W.)
Now as for Obama being called the worst POTUS in history for deporting so many illegal aliens, shouldn't he be called called the most effective top immigration law enforcer instead? When he took his oath of office, was there a sentence that said not to uphold the Constitution when Congressional laws dealing with illegal aliens are considered?
I may sound like a Nazi with this posting, but I assure you I am redistributionist neo-Marxist (at least within the bounds of the USA.)
The law that you refer to, 8USC1325, lists only jail time as punishment for illegally crossing the U.S. border or illegally remaining in the USA after time has expired. Mandatory deportation is not mentioned anywhere in law as far as I know. You used the expression "case closed". No, the case is not closed. For one thing the president has the power of pardoning the crime of trespass or any other crime, except I believe of treason. I believe that the way it was used by president Reagan was unconstitutional. When it is done on a one-by-one basis it is constitutional at least in my opinion. For another, once a person that has illegally trespassed is pardoned the Attorney General has the power to make that person a "permanent resident" but does not have the power to grant citizenship now or in the future. Only congress can and did so once. Your conclusion that Mr. Obama, and I am not among his supporters, does not uphold the constitution in this case is, I believe, totally erroneous. And the correct acronym for a president is POTUSA. If that suggests that the president is a woman try POTUSO.