Texas Immigration Lawyer Blog

Statewide immigration program raising local questions

KXXV.COM 

by John Cuoco

CENTRAL TEXAS - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Wednesday that it's "Secure Communities" program will be enforced across Texas.

The program is set up so illegal aliens with criminal backgrounds don't slip through the cracks of the justice system.

With the secure communities program, when an arrest is made, after fingerprints are taken and they are checked for criminal history through the FBI, I.C.E. simultaneously sends finger prints to the Department of Homeland Security to also check for immigration records.

"In order to remove criminal aliens from the streets and ultimately, with our immigration authorities, remove them from our country," ICE spokesperson Carl Rusnok said.

For immigration attorney Susan Nelson, removing criminal aliens is a smart move, but she fears the net is cast to largely and will affect the wrong people.

"I think that what we are doing is deporting a lot of people that have families here, who have lived here for a long time and couldn't get citizenship so they are getting caught up in traffic violations, we would get a ticket for, taken to jail then deported," she said.

And she also told News Channel 25 this could create a disconnect between the community and police."

"It's very difficult for them to trust police in the first place, now if this person is taken to jail and immigration is called, it makes it worse," Nelson added.

In less then two years, counties already involved in the program, like McLennan County, have seen about 12,000 level one criminals like murders or rapists deported and 29, 500 level two and three criminals deported.

Nelson said she's already getting a flood of calls from people in outlying counties she normally didn't hear from, like Limestone and Falls, that are now involved in "Secure Communities."

Who Should Be Faulted for the Lack of Immigration Reform?

Washington Independent Elise Foley reports:

"Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) criticized President Obama and the Democrats this afternoon for failing to pass immigration reform, which Obama said he would take up in his first year. He’s right about that –  but it’s an odd statement, considering Cornyn’s own party was the one to block it.

"Cornyn argued immigration “hasn’t been a priority” for Obama and said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) was wrong to wait until yesterday to introduce his comprehensive immigration reform bill:

“I think this kind of serious subject matter bears much more consideration than simply to be filed the day we adjourn or to be taken up in a lame duck session…"

"Plenty of immigrants rights advocates make the same argument, arguing Obama and Democrats in Congress put immigration reform on the back burner while pushing for other legislation.

"But Cornyn is part of the reason for these failures, making his statements fairly disingenuous. Congress could not pass reform efforts without Republican backers, and Obama cannot sign laws without Congress. Once Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) removed his support from Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) comprehensive immigration reform effort this spring, finding Republican backers for immigration bills became next to impossible.

"Even the DREAM Act, which had bipartisan support at other periods since its 2001 introduction, was pushed out when Republicans voted to filibuster the defense authorization bill set to host it as an amendment.

"Adam Serwer sums it up best in a post titled “Republican Strategy on Immigration”:

Step one: Obstruct all efforts at immigration reform, accuse the president of holding the border “hostage” even as he deports a record number of illegal immigrants.

Step two: Remind everyone how the president broke his promise to pass immigration reform."

Immigration Solutions that Work from AILA

 

Border Wars - No End in Sight

 

National Geographic documentary Border Wars "No End in Sight" episode looks at people who are coming to the U.S. to work. Very moving.

Enough! Let’s Drop the I-Word—It’s Hate Speech

 

Color Lines

You wouldn’t call someone a w*tback, or the n-word. Saying “illegals” is just as bad. The i-word creates an environment of hate by exploiting racial fear and economic anxiety, creating an easy scapegoat for complex issues, and OK-ing violence against those labeled with the word. Today, ColorLines and our publisher, the Applied Research Center, launch a campaign to get rid of this nasty language once and for all.

Check out the video above explaining how the word feeds hate and shapes policy, forward it around to your friends and colleagues and then sign the pledge to Drop the I-Word. To learn more about the campaign and download a toolkit for local offline activism, dig into the Drop the I-Word campaign site.

Immigrants’ Rights and Criminal Justice Groups Join Together to Condemn Merger of Criminal Justice & Immigration Systems

Dignity Not Detention

578 National & Local Organizations Sign Letter to the President Demanding an End to Practices that Harm their Communities

(WASHINGTON, DC) – Citing systemic problems within both the immigration and criminal justice systems, 578 groups from across the country including Detention Watch Network today delivered a letter to President Obama calling for an end to the merger of immigration enforcement with criminal justice. The three-page letter expressed concerns and presented proof that the Obama administration’s increased reliance on local law enforcement to arrest, detain, and deport immigrants has exacerbated existing problems in the criminal justice system.

According to the groups, “The merger of immigration enforcement and local criminal justice agencies is not only bad public policy, it also sabotages local law enforcement agencies’ core mission of protecting public safety by undermining the trust of the communities they serve. It discourages people from turning to the police when they need to, even to report crimes. It undermines public safety by diverting scarce resources away from local policing and focuses them on false threats from people who look or sound foreign.”

Read the letter to President Obama.

Secure Communities costs local goverments to house those on "immigration holds"

 

The Texas Tribune has reported that the I.C.E. Secure Communities program has been expanded to all Texas counties.

ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton said, "participation in the [Secure Communities] program comes at “little or no cost” to law enforcement partners."

It may not cost law enforcement partners to have the fingerprints of all arrestees run through the database, but what about the cost to house those arrested for low level offenses who cannot bond out because of "immigration holds?" People who would otherwise bond out must be housed until their criminal charges are resolved and they are taken into I.C.E. custody.

 

I.C.E. Secure Communities Now Includes All Texas Counties

Texas Tribune Juan Aguillar reports

"A controversial Department of Homeland Security program that identifies immigrants in local jails now operates in every Texas county.

"Through the Secure Communities program, administered Immigration and Customs Enforcement, local law enforcement compares the fingerprints of anyone arrested against those in a DHS database to determine if the individual can be removed under immigration laws. Statewide participation in Secure Communities means the program has more than tripled since June, when 66 Texas counties used the system. The agency’s ultimate goal is to have nationwide participation by 2013.

* * *

"Data obtained by the Texas Tribune showed that since Texas joined the program in October 2008, through June of this year, it had submitted 494,445 sets of fingerprints to DHS for tracing, leading to 10,837 aliens being arrested or booked into ICE custody. According to ICE statistics at that time, 8,596 had been deported. Of those, just 2,113 — fewer than 25 percent — were convicted of level 1 offenses, compared to 5,147, or 60 percent, who were convicted or charged with level 2 offenses."

ICE announces new North Texas Trafficking Task Force

#ICE  DALLAS - The local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) - and leaders from 16 other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies - announced on Tuesday the new North Texas Trafficking Task Force (NTTTF).

The new collocated Task Force is designed to bring together the expertise, training, experience and law enforcement authorities of the partnered agencies to help identify human traffickers, and prosecute them while also protecting and aiding their victims.

Illegal immigrants taking Americans' jobs?

 

Immigration Chronicles 

"It's such a common refrain in the illegal immigration debate that it's become a punch line in jokes: Illegal immigrants do the work most Americans won't do.

"Many of you don't buy it. In fact, you wonder aloud how in the world can we legalize illegal immigrants when so many American citizens are out of work?

* * *

"It's just not something that most Americans are going to pack up their bags and move here to do," said farmer Steve Fortin, who pays $10.25 an hour to foreign workers to trim strawberry plants for six weeks each summer at his nursery near the [California-]Nevada border. He has spent $3,000 this year ensuring domestic workers have first dibs on his jobs in the sparsely populated stretch of the state, advertising in newspapers and on an electronic job registry."

Photo: Benjamin Reynosa, 49, of Orange Cove, picks table grapes near Fowler, Calif. As the economy tanked over the past two years, the immigration debate has focused on whether immigrants are taking jobs Americans want. Here, amid the sweltering melon fields and vineyards of the nation's top farm state, where one of every eight people is still out of a job, the answer is no.