Former members of a task force on Secure Communities sent a letter this week to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano calling on her to suspend the immigration enforcement program.
Immigrant rights organizations will join today in a national day of action in six U.S. cities to deliver a report that documents what they see as Secure Communities abuses, demanding that the Obama administration terminate the immigration enforcement program immediately.
The Department of Homeland Security announced Friday that it was canceling agreements with 40 states, including Colorado, to operate the Secure Communities program in those states. The program, though, lives on as the federal government simply decided it did not need states’ permission to run the program in those states.
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.
The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday passed a resolution to ensure voluntary participation in Secure Communities, a federal immigration enforcement program that has been seriously questioned because it has jailed and deported undocumented immigrants who have committed no crime.
Even as federal immigration officials insist that Secure Communities is a mandatory program that all states must participate in, another has opted out. Massachusetts Monday announced it will not participate.
Saying that it just isn’t working, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday that New York State will no long participate in Secure Communities.
The U.S. House of Representatives could vote this week on a 2012 Homeland Security Appropriations bill passed last Thursday by the Appropriations Committee that includes expanded spending on immigration enforcement.
The feds say states and counties have no choice in whether to participate in Secure Communities, but increasingly states and counties are saying otherwise.
As Denver’s mayoral candidates address the contentious issue of how fully Denver should participate in Secure Communities, a federal agency announces a major study of the program–to determine its effectiveness, fairness and cost.
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