ICE announces reforms to controversial Secure Commnities program

John Morton, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (aka ICE), announced Friday changes to the embattled immigration-enforcement program Secure Communities, which allows local law enforcement agencies to check the fingerprints of people they arrest with FBI and Department of Homeland Security databases to make sure they are not undocumented criminals.

ICE misses deadline for report on allegations of racial profiling and abuse by agents

In April U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton met with community groups in Detroit, promising to investigate reports of racial profiling and abuse by agents in the Detroit field office and issue a report within 30 days. This deadline has now passed with no indication as to when or how the agency will formally respond to concerns about unjust and violent immigration enforcement practices.

Report finds immigration detainee legal rights widely neglected

The rights of detainees held on immigration charges are neglected, including fundamental rights like the right to legal counsel. Although a network of organizations has formed to try to provide detainees with lawyers, the detention system often fails to provide…

Vital undocumented workers victims of wage theft, shifting laws

Jacinta Gonzalez, an organizer with the Congress of Day Laborers in New Orleans, tells a story about the abuse of workers rebuilding the city after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. She once met a man who went to his employer’s house to demand payment for his labor on a construction site after the employer stiffed him of his dues. The man’s boss came at him, swinging a hammer. The worker immediately called the police.

Detainee details time in ICE subfield office ‘black site’

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokespeople balked at questions posed by the Colorado Independent in January about the roughly nine ICE “substation” holding facilities located throughout the state. They downplayed concerns about rights violations and about detainees disappearing for hours and days unable to be located by loved ones and advocates. Basalt-resident Edgar Niebla was held in one of the substations. He told the Colorado Independent the concerns are justified.

Apparent immigration detention abuses spark calls in Colorado for reform

The detention policies of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in Colorado and the network of facilities that has grown here in the last few years are drawing increasing attention among local lawmakers and human rights organizations.

Critics of the system say men and women held on suspicion of immigration violations in the state are housed in conditions that rival those established for violent criminal offenders, that the immigrants are becoming fodder for a booming detention industry, and that detainees are often difficult to locate in the tangle of state facilities, which include unlisted so-called subfield offices.

Report of ‘secret’ immigration detention centers raises rights concerns

According to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of Detention and Removal website, the federal agency has only one center for detention in Colorado, a privately owned facility located in Aurora. The website doesn’t mention that the agency may also be holding people at unlisted sub-field offices around Colorado.

The Nation, which broke the story last week of such sub-field offices, called them “secret” and suggested that they are “black sites” into which detainees might effectively disappear. ICE disputes the terminology.

Homeland Security hearing lays out immigration battle ahead

A House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday morning highlighted the sharp divide in Congress over illegal immigration and what should be done about it, presaging the difficult fight ahead when Congress eventually begins to tackle proposals for comprehensive immigration reform.

287(g) immigration enforcement programs costing local communities

A new report from the conservative Center for Immigration Studies makes a point of praising the so-called 287(g) program, calling it very “cost-effective.” The program, which was just renewed by the Obama administration, grants broad immigration enforcement…

Polis: ‘287(g)’ immigration crackdown laws create ‘sweep of terror’

A federal program known as 287(g), which grants broad immigration enforcement powers to local law enforcement agencies, has resulted in a “sweep of terror,” said 2nd District U.S. Rep. Jared Polis. In a floor speech today, the Boulder Democrat–who…