In the midst of the Fall election season and its aftermath, the Obama administration's Department of Homeland Security is quietly moving to extend a version of the infamous Arizona SB-1070 anti-immigrant statute nationwide. Since its establishment nine years ago, the Department of Homeland Security has launched a number of initiatives designed to increase public safety by sharing data with local police, to which few would object. But in July, 2009 DHS launched something entitled"Secure Communities: A Comprehensive Plan to Identify and Remove Criminal Aliens" which was to make the DHS database available to all local police by 2012
If the program were only to provide local police with more effective sources of information on criminals, who would object? However, Secure Communities (Comunidads Seguras) was transformed in recent weeks into a mandatory program for police, arousing alarm among both immigrant rights groups and law enforcement people - the same communities who opposed the Arizona law.
For the first few months, local authorities were encouraged by DHS and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials to see "Secure Communities" as one more tool for good police work, and not as a federal takeover of local police and judicial activities. Some cities looked over the new initiative and decided not to sign on. Their decision not to participate was based on many of the same objections heard regarding Arizona’s 1070-B: too many quiet, law-abiding undocumented people would be swept up; localities would have to bear the cost of incarcerations; important relationships with immigrant communities would be disrupted; undocumented people would fear to report crimes or even to call for emergency medical or fire department assistance.
But in October, cities such as Washington and San Francisco which had voted to opt out of the program, learned that was no longer an option.
Only a month earlier, specific instructions for local opt-outs was posted on the Immigrant and Customs Enforcement office website, but it has since been deleted.
Events moved quickly as DHS/ICE officials demanded that states and localities capitulate to the new demand for increased governmental surveillance and deportation.
Here in New York State, Governor David Patterson was ahead of the curve and signed a Memorandum of Understanding without fanfare back in May, which has only recently attracted a public outcry in the English-speaking community. Albor Ruiz, writing in the New York Daily News on November 14, describes a City Council meeting where fears were voiced that hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people would be caught up in the new dragnet and deported. ICE , it was predicted, would become a decisive presence in the jails, courts and police stations, closely monitoring police activity and enforcing the crackdown, to the exclusion of effective and humane police work. While some of this may be overstated as regards our generally rational NY police, there is clear evidence that the lives of innocent people will be disrupted and even endangered.
The Police Foundation issued a comprehensive report making a strong case that Secure Communities is disruptive to effective police work.
As cited in a New York Times editorial in August, the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, the Center for Constitutional Rights, a public-interest legal organization, and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network analyzed arrest and deportation statistics and reported:
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement records show that a vast majority, 79 percent, of people deported under Secure Communities had no criminal records or had been picked up for low-level offenses, like traffic violations and juvenile mischief. Of the approximately 47,000 people deported in that period only about 20 percent had been charged with or convicted of serious "Level 1" crimes, like assault and drug dealing.
The national average of Secure Communities deportees with no criminal records was about 26 percent, but that figure also varied wildly around the country. It was 54 percent in Maricopa County, Ariz., whose sheriff is notorious for staging indiscriminate immigration raids. In Travis County, Tex., it was 82 percent.
The New York Times editorialized, and this was before the recent imposition of mandatory participation:
The program now appears to be quite different from (its original description by DHS): an effort to yoke local police into a broad campaign of civil immigration enforcement, maximizing the detention and deportation of the people whom Mr. Obama says he wants to give a chance to pay their debt to society and earn their right to become Americans.
Secure Communities won’t make the country more secure, not the way it is working. Police departments that don’t want to participate should be able to opt out. The Obama administration needs to fix it or jettison it.
The Obama administration's response was, in the midst of an election where Hispanic votes were eagerly courted, was to make the program even more draconian.
Needless to say, no tea-partier or rightwinger saw any of this as creeping socialism, Big Government totalitarianism, or an infringement of cherished individual rights. Why would they? Such rights apply only to native-born whites in their world. But the complicity of Democratic elected officials is harder to explain.
The great irony is that Homeland Security, ostensibly created to save us from terrorists of the 9-11 variety, prefers to dedicate vast resources to the harassment of undocumented people. Despite a recent drumbeat from Rightwing and militia sites to the contrary, there is zero evidence that terrorists have ever entered the US across our border with Mexico or are hiding within Spanish-speaking neighborhoods.
Our southern frontier is, in fact, guarded by a military force far more effective than DHS or ICE. The well-armed armies of the Narco Cartels hold an almost undisputed control over all illegal access across our southern border, and have no interest in permitting or facilitating an Al Queda cell to cross over, since that would draw the wrath of the US in ways that their 32,000 murders since 2006 have not.
And, if you want to be cynical, you might even think that the USG chooses to ignore the ongoing Narco Wars for this very reason. And if you're still feeling cynical, you might even observe that it's a lot easier and safer for DHS/ICE agents to go after vulnerable people already demonized by Lou Dobbs than to take on heavily armed Cartel gunmen.
Forces guarding our southern frontier from terrorists
(Note: none are DHS units)