The Latino community came through strongly in favor of Barack Obama and helped turned previously Red States into nascent Blue States. In no small measure, Latinos have felt under siege by federal authorities, Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") as well as by local law enforcement authorities, under mandate from ICE. The widespread use of profiling at all levels of law enforcement has created fear and despair in the Latino community. President Barack Obama can end the harassment with a simple executive order, since the current climate of fear is the result of a Bush executive order. Simple decency cries out for such a measure.
In the wake of the failure of comprehensive immigration reform in 2007, the Bush administration launched an all-out assault of enforcement-related policies. These enforcement measures were nominally aimed at the undocumented workers but had profound impacts in the Latino community. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanics feel that they are being singled out
Nearly two-thirds say the failure of Congress to enact an immigration reform bill has made life more difficult for all Latinos. Smaller numbers (ranging from about one-in-eight to one-in-four) say the heightened attention to immigration issues has had a specific negative effect on them personally. These effects include more difficulty finding work or housing; less likelihood of using government services or traveling abroad; and more likelihood of being asked to produce documents to prove their immigration status.
While the Latino community has suffered negative consequences from ICE, the fate of undocumented workers and their families has been even more profound. The measures taken by ICE against undocumented immgrants can only be described as inhumane and extreme. Whole families have been imprisoned with few if any legal rights. Conditions of enforcement often include poor or nonexistent medical care. Without access to attorneys or the right of habeas corpus (which citizens take for granted) immigrants are often locked up in a Kafkaesque system without legal recourse. Most of the incarcerated are not criminal threats and were productive members of the community prior to incarceration. But the Bush-Cheney administration, never ones to pass up a state of misery in order to make money, have channeled millions of dollars to private sector cronies who run private prisons without a hint of oversight.
Like Guantanamo, the ICE prisons and hammers of enforcement are a stain on our international standing. The incoming administration can and should dispense with this issue forthrightly.