Hi all, I wanted to share a piece I posted today on Huffington Post’s Latino Voices. Would love to get your thoughts. And for those of you who want to read it in Spanish, click here. — Joe
Ignoring the demands of the American public, House Republicans have spent years standing squarely in the way of comprehensive immigration reform. After countless attempts to negotiate and find a way forward, the president appears poised to use his executive authority to fix our backwards, broken system.
Proposals emerging from the White House so far are heartening; from overhauling a deportation system that has torn thousands of families apart to expanding essential visas for businesses and innovators.
As the president continues to determine what shape any final executive action will take, the impact of his decision on local neighborhoods, cities, towns and law enforcement officials should be front and center. To that end, I believe our country must finally do away with Secure Communities, a deeply flawed immigration enforcement program.
My experience as an Assistant District Attorney originally encouraged me to keep an open mind about Secure Communities. There was no question the program needed improvement. But as a former prosecutor, I believe information sharing amongst law enforcement is critical to reducing crime, allowing us to get a holistic picture of any defendant and ensure we keep dangerous offenders off the streets.
After two years in Congress, it’s clear to me that when it comes to federal immigration policy, “information-sharing” is a good phrase being used to mask bad policy. In the face of a broken immigration system and a Republican Party that has stood in the way of meaningful reform, Secure Communities has become cover for a deportation approach that fails to target real threats, tears families apart, degrades trust in local officials and places the burden of immigration enforcement on the shoulders of our cities and towns.
Serious criminals who are in this country illegally must be tracked down and sent home. Often, that requires cooperation between local and federal officials. But rather than serve as a dependable channel of communication to help law enforcement target real threats, Secure Communities has become an indiscriminate dragnet.
By the end of 2013 only half of the 1,400 deportees via Secure Communities in Massachusetts had criminal records and only one-third had been convicted of a serious crime. Nationally, at least a quarter of those deported under Secure Communities had no criminal record at all.
As a result, the program has systemically eroded community trust in local law enforcement – a concern I hear across Massachusetts, where mayors in Boston, Somerville and Northampton have said their cities will no longer comply with the program. These local leaders have seen the fear of being fingerprinted drive issues like domestic violence and gang activity into the dark, undermining the community policing high-risk neighborhoods depend on to keep their streets safe. On top of that, fingerprints are shared with ICE at the point of an arrest – not a conviction – meaning that innocent people get caught up in the system with no avenue to appeal or challenge the outcome.
Across the country, Secure Communities has diverted critical law enforcement resources that could and should be used elsewhere. In 2012, California estimated its taxpayers paid over $65 million a year to comply with ICE detainers, or the equivalent of over 700 state trooper salaries. In Cook County, Illinois, that price tag was around $15 million a year, or the cost of nearly 200 public school teachers in Chicago.
From California to Connecticut, states have been forced to take the matter in to their own hands, passing versions of the TRUST Act, a commendable piece of legislation that actually limits ICE detainers to the serious criminals they are supposed to target. After passing the TRUST Act, monthly detainers in Connecticut went down by nearly 75 percent – and of those, 90 percent had either a felony conviction or prior deportation order.
Towns, cities and states have taken action because our country has left them on the front lines of this fight. Local cops and municipal budgets have been forced to pick up the slack of our federal government’s failure to set consistent and coherent immigration policy.
Now let me be clear: this failure lies at the feet of House Republicans, who have refused to let us cast a vote on bipartisan legislation that the majority of Americans say they want and our country urgently needs.
In the face of Congressional inaction, President Obama has rightly shown a willingness to assert his executive authority to fix a badly broken system. Secure Communities demands a piece of that attention. Over the past few years, the Administration has undertaken review after review of the program. They have examined, they have analyzed, and they have studied.
Now it’s time to act. For all of that research and review, the story of Secure Communities is pretty simple at this point. The program isn’t doing what it promised. By crippling community policing, strapping local law enforcement and diverting resources away from real threats, it’s making us less secure.
So whatever action the president takes in the weeks ahead, Secure Communities in its current form must be scrapped and replaced with an immigration enforcement policy that targets those who truly pose a threat.
He’s been President since 2009, and has had the power to use executive action the ENTIRE TIME and now that there’s a Republican-controlled Congress, it’s the time to act.
Please. Secure Communities came out of the tail end of GWB and grew immensely under Obama’s Administration. Instead of this YOU YOU YOU blame game that both parties play, why not say US US US. You want bipartisanship? How about some bipartisan blaming to get started. Then I’ll start to take it seriously instead of just assuming this entire post is long-winded politics playing.
Secure Communities is garbage. My issue is with the absurd laying of blame over who knocked over this particular trashcan.
Since we agree that it’s “garbage”, the first step is to throw out the garbage.
Surely you don’t want to be obstructionist by raising a partisan obstacle to a proposed action that you agree with.
While Obama waited til this time, “the right time” to use an option he had available all along? Dump the garbage, and blast the president for not acting, blast the Republicans for obstructing, and blast the Democrats for not acting when they had complete control over Congress and could have done this earlier.
But for the love of God, please don’t go pull a Treaty of Versailles and act like this is all the Republicans fault. There’s plenty of blame to go around is my point.
Obama gave Republicans all the opportunities they needed to make improvements to our immigration policy, and the Republicans never acted, not even close. Had Obama acted sooner, all that would result would have been a bigger loss in 2014 because of the demographics and races at the time. So there was NO political advantage, none, to act sooner. Now the chess board has changed that Obama can use immigration reform to help Democrats win votes in 2016. That’s how it works.
Explain what that replacement would be.
…so I am disposed to think well of you.
But we are having a similar argument on the Probation thread. 700 of the 2013 deportees had a criminal record. For that they should be gone, setting aside if the crimes were ‘serious’. Who would make such a distinction – murder, no; arson, maybe; wire fraud..OK, you can stay.
I will set aside the lack of action while the entire Congress and Presidency was under single party control. I will also set aside the argument that if you are here illegally, that in itself is a crime. And also, the House versions of a remedy that the Senate did not allow any vote on (I mean, really, be it budgets or bills – if you are so sure they will fail, Harry, allow a vote and get them off the table to work on another solution…or are you afraid they would pass?)
The MA resistance to existing law, however, means that our driver’s licenses will no longer be honored on air flights and a passport will be required instead. In fact, MA governmental documents of many sorts will not be honored as valid.
In the recent election, the electorate stated that they did not agree with many progressive solutions. Implementing them via executive action is contrary to the rule of law – I can imaging the screams when President Cheney does something like this.
You are right the the Representatives will not vote for the progressive legislation, because their constituents do not want it and have have elected them to stop it. I’m not sure how obstructionist it is to vote as your electorate wants. Sort of like the Keystone pipeline for Democrats.
Because it’s not like we vote for a person because we agree with ALL their positions. That’s the inherent pitfall to representational democracy. For example, there may be Republicans I vote for because I agree with them economically, but don’t agree with their social stances. I have to balance where I see value.
Electing a Republican congress isn’t validation of a platform and it wasn’t a mandate. Taking a bunch of close wins in an election where “economy” is the driving motivator and saying the elections shows the people want to stop legislation to eliminate secure communities is an overreach.
You know better than to make such a statement.