Vol. 74/No. 34      September 6, 2010

The Secure Communities program, was launched in March 2008 to check prisoners’ fingerprints against FBI and Department of Homeland Security databases. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said they would target for deportation the “worst of the worst” undocumented immigrants who have allegedly committed serious crimes.

A look at government figures, however, shows that close to 80 percent of immigrants deported as a result of the program have been accused mostly of low level offenses. More than one-quarter are charged and deported solely on immigration violations.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, one of three groups that sued ICE to obtain the information, said the figures “reveal a pattern of dishonesty” about the operations of Secure Communities.

Under the Barack Obama administration, the program has been expanded to 552 cities and counties in 29 states. The goal is to check the fingerprints of every prisoner in federal, state, and local jails in the United States by 2013.

According to ICE, only 21 percent of the 50,972 people who were deported under the program from Oct. 27, 2008, through July 2010 were accused or convicted of the most serious charges, defined as “level 1” crimes. These offenses range from resisting an officer and hit-and-run traffic accidents, to homicide and sexual assault.

Nearly 53 percent faced less serious “level 2” or “level 3” charges that include offenses such as burglary, violating open container laws, and nonpayment of alimony.

Brittney Nystrom, a spokesperson for the National Immigration Forum, pointed out cops can make arrests just so immigrants can be “hauled into the police station in the first place” to see if they lack papers and can be deported.

Since Obama took office ICE has shifted the way it enforces anti-immigrant laws. In the first nine months of this year, 765 undocumented workers were arrested in raids on the job, compared to 5,100 in all of 2008. The raids are unpopular among many working people who frequently help their undocumented coworkers hide during the operations. Many raids were met by angry public protests.

Instead of factory raids ICE now emphasizes “sweeps” directed at working-class neighborhoods to go after so-called criminal aliens and gang members, part of government efforts to scapegoat immigrants for crime and undercut solidarity among working people for those without papers. ICE, along with other cop agencies, carried out three such sweeps: in Madison, Wisconsin; Las Vegas; and Arizona since August 9.

In addition, government programs like E-verify make it harder for workers without papers to get jobs; a six-fold increase in immigration audits under the Obama administration has forced mass firings.

In an interview and call-in program on C-Span August 8, ICE director John Morton responded to a question from an undocumented worker who said he has lived in the United States since 1995 when he was four years old.

“We aren’t going to ignore the law,” Morton said. “We don’t turn a blind eye.”
 
 
Related articles:
London deports hundreds to eastern Europe
Seattle SWP candidate: Stop deportations  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home