Texas Immigration Lawyer Blog

Secure Communities Travis County, Texas from Law Enforcement Perspective

Deportation Nation

As an Activist Anthropology student at the University of Texas Cato studies the Travis County Sheriff’s Department. His research includes ride alongs and jail visits, focus groups with officers and immigrants, and individual interviews. He shared some unanticipated findings and moving stories with Deportation Nation.

Excellent interviews with some surprising findings:

--Travis County Sheriff's Deputies don't understand how Secure Communities works and the consequences that an arrest can have for an undocumented person.

--The poignant story of a young person who worked as a volunteer with the Sheriff's Dept. who was deported because of Secure Communities.

San Antonio attempts to stall ICE's growing presence at Detention Center

San Antonio Express News by Veronica Flores-Paniagua

Immigration lawyers have been aware for some time that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are allowed into the city-run Detention Center at Magistrate Court to sweep for illegal immigrants. But beyond that small group, most in San Antonio are unaware of the practice.

Presumably, ICE is targeting detainees with its Criminal Alien Program, especially those who've committed violent or drug crimes.

You won't find me quibbling with the effort to root out the criminal element, even as questions persist about the effectiveness of this approach. Where things get sticky for me, as they apparently have for city officials, according to e-mails obtained by the Express-News, is how the sweeps also have picked up illegal immigrants whose offenses might be as minor as municipal warrants for unpaid traffic tickets.

The ripple effects on the community are profound: a workplace may suddenly be without its employee and a family without its principal breadwinner. These aren't ICE's concerns. But they are for a city whose mayor and chambers of commerce regard the contributions of illegal immigrants as economic assets.

The Express-News obtained more than 100 pages of documents — mostly e-mails — in an open records request for correspondence since 2009 between city staff, and between city staff and ICE regarding the federal agency's activities in city facilities.

The documents reveal a deliberate effort to stall ICE's attempts to grow its presence at the Detention Center. And they seem to show city staff walking a political tightrope, outwardly appearing to be cooperating with federal immigration enforcement efforts while simultaneously trying to keep ICE at arm's length.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/Emails-show-ICE-s-presence-considered-threat-1332873.php#ixzz1JKNQryjd

Federal immigration enforcement strategies increasingly criminalize immigrants

The Seattle Times Ann Benson, directing attorney for the Washington Defender Association's Immigration Project, writes a Guest Column on the Secure Communities and Criminal Alien programs.

ICE’S ENFORCEMENT PRIORITIES and the factors that undermine them

Immigration Policy Center Michele Waslin, Ph.D. reviews the steps that ICE has taken in recent months to clarify its enforcement priorities and how those priorities are playing out nationally and in local communities.

"As part of its strategy to gain support for comprehensive immigration reform, the administration has continually touted its enforcement accomplishments. In fact, over the last two years, the Obama administration has committed itself to a full-court press to demonstrate how committed the administration is to removing criminals and others who remain in the country without proper documentation.They have continued to use the enforcement programs of the previous administration, including partnering with state and local law enforcement agencies to identify, detain, and deport immigrants. However, in doing so, they have lost the ability to fully control their own enforcement priorities and enforcement outcomes, and the results have demonstrated that the state and local partners are not necessarily committed to the same priorities."
 

ICE in your neighborhood and what to do about it

CLINIC -- A Tool Kit for Communities on Challenging ICE Partnerships with Local Law Enforcement

Describes the ICE programs that partner with local law enforcement with suggestions for taking action.

 

Immigrant rights advocates request that OIG audit Secure Communities and CAP

Immigrant rights advocates on October 7, 2010, sent a Letter to Inspector General Richard Skinner, Requesting for Audits of Department of Homeland Security programs, Secure Communities and the Criminal Alien Program

"The specific grounds for audits of these programs [include]:

"I. Concerns with program’s vulnerability to abuse and lack of oversight
Secure Communities and CAP overwhelmingly result in identification and referral to ICE of persons arrested on minor or less serious charges. Both programs are susceptible to abuse because there are no safeguards to ensure that racial profiling or related abuses do not result or are not implicitly encouraged. An individual’s immigration history can be checked regardless of the severity of the arresting crime or whether the arrest ever results in a conviction or even a formal charge. Thus, mere arrest is sufficient to lead to detention and deportation in many cases. As a result, these programs provide perverse incentives to state and local police to arrest individuals who look or sound “foreign” so that their immigration status can be checked.

"Indeed, studies have shown that jail screening programs for immigration violations lead to increased rates of arrests of Latinos for petty offenses. For example, a report on the CAP program by the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity at Berkeley School of Law found that implementation of the CAP program in Irving, Texas coincided with a spike in the arrests of Latinos for petty crimes.5 The report concluded that there is compelling evidence that the CAP program “tacitly encourages local police to arrest Hispanics for petty offenses.”6 It further noted that ICE is not following the program’s congressional mandate to focus resources on the deportation of immigrants with serious criminal histories.

* * *

"ICE maintains a hands-off policy regarding the nature and circumstances of arrests, a kind of willful blindness that precludes systematic examination of the program’s operation. To our knowledge, ICE has not put into place any mechanisms to ensure that the program’s purported focus on noncitizens convicted of serious offenses is achieved. If such mechanisms do exist, they are not functioning to keep the program on course for alignment with its stated goals and priorities. ICE also does not monitor or supervise the local agencies partnering in these programs to ensure that civil rights and programmatic violations do not occur. Moreover, the way these programs are currently deployed does not ensure that local agencies with proven problematic civil rights records don’t operate the program, or at minimum are specifically monitored.
Lack of agency transparency and information accessible to the public."

Touting the Record

AILA Leadership Blog by Victor Nieblas Pradis, AILA Secretary

"ICE programs like Secure Communities and the Criminal Alien Program (CAP), aimed at detaining noncitizen criminals, might look good on paper but don’t necessarily stand up to close scrutiny.  Both programs have drawn criticism because they are susceptible to abuse.  Critics argue they lack safeguards against racial profiling or related abuses..  The Administration stated Wednesday that no racial profiling will occur because the Secure Communities program screens everybody who gets fingerprinted regardless of race.  Yet, this claim does not account for the fact that an individual’s immigration history can be checked regardless of whether he or she is ever charged with an offense.  The obvious danger is that an arrest may easily become a pretext for a quick check on a person’s immigration status creating a very real danger that people who look or sound “foreign”– including US citizens – will be subjected to racial profiling.

"The CAP program has resulted in Latinos suffering increased rates of arrests for petty offenses.  A report on the CAP program discovered that implementation of the CAP program in Irving, Texas coincided with a spike in the arrests of Latinos for petty crimes.  See Trevor Gardner II and Aarti Kohli, The C.A.P. Effect: Racial Profiling in the ICE Criminal Alien Program (The Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity, Sept. 2009). The report concluded that there is compelling evidence that the CAP program “tacitly encourages local police to arrest Hispanics for petty offenses.”  The report also noted that ICE is not following the program’s congressional mandate to focus resources on the deportation of immigrants with serious criminal histories.

* * *

"The bottom line is that Secure Communities has created “insecure communities” where people live in fear and families have been separated due to minor driving violations.  Addressing this concern, the Administration stated in yesterday’s announcement, “unfortunately families do get separated in the immigration process.”  What about America’s commitment to “family values”?  Where is the humanity in this process? Numbers and statistics do not tell the whole story."