WWW.
JANUARY 21, 2011
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*a roots
.ORG
Under their
thumbs
BY JOANNE ZUHL
STAFF WRITER
How
Immigration
and Customs
Enforcement
has co-opted
local law
enforcement
to fin d their
targets for
t was the unusual number of calls that
led the Portland Human Rights
Commission to check out Secure
Communities. The calls were coming
from members of the immigrant
community who were concerned about
the increase in deportations, and asking
for help for family members who had
been stopped by police and ended up
being deported, said Maria Lisa Johnson,
director of the Portland Human Rights
Commission.
Thé calls initiated research by the
Human Rights Commission on the local
police involvement with Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, o r ICE. This past
I
spf-ntg. Hig gfifnnVigsion began a p ro cess
involving t h e P o rtlan d Police B u reau , the
Multnomah County Sheriff s Office, the
Americàn Civil Liberties Union, and an
array of immigrant and cultural
organizations, all to determine
how local police interact
with the federal
immigration agents. The
commission released
its report in
December.
Secure
Communities, or
S-Comm, as its critics
call it, is an
information-sharing
program of ICE that
collects fingerprint
information from immigrants
arrested and held in local jails,
regardless of charges or convictions.
The fingerprints are then entered into
the Department of Homeland Security
databases. If there is a match and the
person is identified as illegally in the
United States, ICE can request that the
local jailer detain that person for up to 48
hours while it considers enforcement
action, including deportation.
In th e mere 10 months it’s been
enforced in the Portland metro area, the
program has drummed up a host of
human rights concerns, including
fostering a bias against immigrants,
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undermining community policing, and
turning local jails into immigration
extension offices. The program and ICE
are also criticized nationally for claiming
that Secure Communities is about
deporting serious criminals, when many
of those deported had only minor criminal
records, such as traffic violations, or
none at all.
“There is an absolute fear,” Johnson
said. “As an undocumented individual
whose family relies on your income to be
able to succeed, then you’re pulled out of
that community. That’s a huge fear and
risk.”
“Our biggest concern is that when
someone is arrested and booked, they
have not yet been convicted but they’re
be in g cau g h t up in the immigraiiop.
system immediately, and ofteii they
disappear, in most cases up to Tacoma,”
says Andrea Meyer, Legislative Director
of the ACLU Oregon, referring to ICE’s
detention and removal center in
Washington. “We are talking about people
who may have extremely low-level crimes,
or are not guilty of anything. The result is
to create significant fear in the
community about safe interaction with
the police in general.”
Meanwhile, the South Portland
Neighborhood Association is appealing
the city process that has allowed ICE to
relocate its detention facilities to a
65,000-square-foot project among the
South Waterfront high-rises on Macadam
Avenue.
Business is booming. In fiscal year
2010, which ended in October, ICE set a
record for overall removals of illegal
immigrants — more than 392,000
nationwide. Half of those removed, more
than 195,000, were convicted criminals,
according to ICE. The fiscal year 2010
statistics represent increases of more
than 23,000 removals overall and 81,000
criminal removals compared with fiscal
year 2008, due in part because of Secure
Communities.
This month, Oregon State Rep. Kim
Thatcher (R-Keizer), introduced a package
of bills to further overlap local police
responsibilities with enforcement of
federal
immigration
laws, and to restrict
government services to
only those citizens who can prove
legal status. The package includes limiting
driver’s licenses and voting rights to only
legal citizens, measures that failed to pass
in 2009.
ecure Communities is active in 969 .
jurisdictions in 37 states including
California and Idaho, where state, police
signed agreements to deliver fingerprints
to ICE. In Oregon, four counties are
“activated,” on the system through the
agreement between ICE and the Oregon
State Police. Clackamas County was the
first to be activated in April 2010,
followed by Marion, Multnomah and
Washington counties. Since April, ICE
reports 381 convicted “criminal aliens”
arrested or booked into ICE custody
through those four counties in the
program. Nearly 40 percent of them, or
142 people, were deported.
The Department of Homeland Security
says it intends to have the program
activated in all states and jurisdictions by
2013.
In fact, when it comes to signing
on to the program, there is some
confusion as to whether local
agencies really have any choice in
the matter. Early in the program,
ICE said local jurisdictions could
opt out, but more recently it said
they could n o t
“We’ve heard mixed signals from
DHS: First ‘yes, you could’ and then
‘no, you can’t ’” said Andrea Meyer. “We
S
ft '
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