Badges - Re: Immigrants plead for end to fingerprint sharing
- From: CHK8093@xxxxxxx
- To: badges@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2011 17:46:41 -0400 (EDT)
If you aren't here ILLEGALLY, then you don't have a problem. Blanca was
arrrested for being illegal, not for selling ice cream.....of course,,,our
asshole President wants to change all that.
In a message dated 8/20/2011 4:29:16 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
CarlGlas@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Immigrants who say they were hauled into jail for selling ice cream
without a permit and for reporting being the victim of domestic violence had
one
message for a federal government task force assigned to review an
information-sharing effort that gives immigration authorities access to the
fingerprints of arrestees: End the program.
Immigrant rights groups and community members call in Los Angeles
Monday, Aug. 15, 2011, for an end to the Department of Homeland Security's
(DHS) Secure Communities program, which was created in 2008
and calls for police to submit suspects' fingerprints to DHS so they can
be cross-checked with federal deportation orders.
More than 200 people, many wearing signs reading "Terminate Secure
Communities" and carrying flags from countries including Mexico and Brazil,
packed
a conference room in Los Angeles Monday night to recount their experiences
with a program they say is making immigrants reluctant to report crime to
police out of fear of getting deported.
"Every day I live the nightmare of this program," said Blanca Perez, 38,
who said she was arrested in February for street vending without a permit.
"Now I am facing deportation for the simple act of selling ice cream in the
street."
The meeting was one of the first public discussions of the so-called
Secure Communities program since Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Aug. 5
terminated agreements signed with states to jumpstart the effort and said
that state approval isn't required to share fingerprints.
The program touted by immigration authorities as an information-sharing
effort has become a headache for the _Obama administration_
(http://topics.nola.com/tag/barack-obama/index.html) , which has plowed ahead
with it despite
vocal opposition from Latino and immigrant rights groups the president
counts on for support.
Immigrant advocates say the program lands immigrants arrested for
investigation of minor violations in detention and erodes their trust in
police.
They have also criticized the administration for giving the impression that
local governments could choose whether to participate when it is in fact
mandatory.
States including Illinois and Massachusetts had decided to opt out of the
program, only to be told that they couldn't.
At the at-times boisterous meeting in Los Angeles, several dozen people
spoke out against Secure Communities -- and the bulk of the crowd walked out
halfway in protest after a speaker challenged the two task force members
leading the session to resign. But a handful of people gave the program
praise, saying more, not less, immigration enforcement is needed.
"Contrary to what you have heard, Secure Communities does not seek out
hardworking, law abiding immigrants for removal," said Anna Pembedjian, public
safety deputy for Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich.
"Rather, it seeks out those who prey on them and others in our community,"
On Monday, immigrant rights groups urged members of the task force to call
on ICE to end the program and questioned whether any real change would
come from the meetings held last week in Dallas and scheduled this week in Los
Angeles and Chicago.
Immigrant advocates are planning to hold protests Tuesday against Secure
Communities in cities across the country.
Retired Sacramento police chief Arturo Venegas Jr., one of the two task
force members overseeing the Los Angeles meeting, said he isn't going to quit.
"We have the opportunity to give voice to you in those halls of government
where in the past, in reality we haven't had it," he told the smaller
crowd that remained after the walkout in Spanish. "If we leave now, the work
will continue, and they will make recommendations without our voice."
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it has
recently developed additional training for local law enforcement along with a
new
policy to protect domestic violence victims. It also said it created the
task force to make recommendations for other changes, recognizing "that
there is room for improvement in the operation of the program."
ICE is currently running the program in 44 states and plans to achieve
nationwide coverage in 2013.
Local law enforcement agencies routinely send fingerprints to the FBI for
criminal background checks when an individual is arrested. Under Secure
Communities, the FBI shares the fingerprints with Homeland Security to look
for potentially deportable immigrants.
An ongoing source of debate is who is getting identified through this
fingerprint sharing. Since 2008, about 121,000 immigrants have been deported
after being flagged under Secure Communities, ICE statistics show.
About 6 percent had no prior record with immigration officials or law
enforcement; roughly 28 percent had no criminal history, the statistics show.
That has led some immigrant advocates to clamor for changes, such as
screening people after they are convicted of a crime instead of when they are
arrested. Groups in favor of stricter limits on immigration counter that it's
not feasible to wait for a conviction and the sole opportunity for
consistent screening is during the booking process.
Source:
_http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2011/08/immigrants_plead_for_end_to_fi.html#incart_mce_
(http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2011/08/immigrants_plead_for_end_to_fi.html#incart_mce)
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