Thread: Georgia groups want end to program allowing local police to enforce US immigration la

Georgia groups want end to program allowing local police to enforce US immigration lawsAssociated Press
Saturday, Sept. 15, 2012

GAINESVILLE, Ga. — The federal government should stop allowing police in Georgia to enforce U.S. immigration laws because it leads to racial profiling and erodes public trust, according to a letter from a coalition of 25 groups.

The groups sent a letter Thursday to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano asking her to end the so-called 287(g) program, which authorizes local police officers to enforce federal immigration law.

“Today in Georgia, as in many states with 287(g) agreements, the color of a person’s skin and the accent of his or her voice create a target for harassment, pretextual arrest, and humiliating detention,” the letter said. “Hard experience has taught us that local police too often fail to implement federal immigration law in a manner that is racially neutral or that conforms to the standards of your agency.”

Attorney Arturo Corso, whose law firm signed the letter, said the program was not being used to target criminals and drug offenders as originally intended. Corso said the majority of those deported are nonviolent traffic offenders.

The Hall County Sheriff’s Office, which has reached an enforcement agreement with the federal government, defended the program. Sgt. Stephen Wilbanks, an agency spokesman, said that the United States is a “nation of laws.”

“As such, it’s imperative that we uphold and enforce our laws, including our immigration laws,” he said. “We feel that we’ve done our best to do that in a consistent and fair manner.”

Wilbanks said the enforcement agreement is not intended as a tool for patrol officers to target suspected illegal immigrants.

Georgia groups want end to program allowing local police to enforce US immigration laws | The Augusta Chronicle

"GAINESVILLE, Ga. — The federal government should stop allowing police in Georgia to enforce U.S. immigration laws because it leads to racial profiling and erodes public trust, according to a letter from a coalition of 25 groups."

At 54, I never thought I would see the day where people would actually want the federal government to stop enforcing US immigration laws. They keep harping on racial profiling when most of our illegal invaders are hispanics/latinos. If we have a problem with mosquitos, we don't target bees. Ya know?

With millions of illegals we need to take a tough stance and do everything possible to stop them. They have done too much damage being here and it has to stop.

Group wants immigration program gone
287(g) leads to profiling, some say; sheriff’s office calls its use ‘consistent, fair’

By Lee Johnson ljohnson@gainesvilletimes.com
POSTED: September 15, 2012 12:20 a.m.

A group of private organizations in Georgia, including one in Gainesville, is pushing for the termination of a program that gives state and local law enforcement the power to enforce federal immigration laws.

In a letter sent to the Department of Homeland Security, 25 state organizations expressed their concern over 287(g), which allows state and local law enforcement to question the legality of a person, as well as detaining and transporting criminals for immigration violations.
(Read the letter here: http://media.morristechnology.com/me...IGRANT.Doc.pdf )

They asked that the program be ended in Georgia, as it was in Arizona.

“We feel like, and continue to feel like, the program is not being used in Georgia the way it was designed,” said attorney Arturo Corso, partner in the Gainesville-based law firm Corso, Kennedy & Campbell, LLP.

“The program was supposed to target violent criminals and drug offenders who were in the United States unlawfully and expedite their deportation. But instead, what we actually saw happening in practice with the 287(g) program was 95 percent of the people being deported were nonviolent traffic offenders.”

Corso’s firm deals with immigration litigation and was one of 25 organizations, including law firms and activist groups, to sign the letter.

He and the others in the group wrote that the program has “led to racial profiling and due process violations, eroded trust between police and the community and undermined public safety.”

Hall County was specifically mentioned in the letter, which stated the continuation of 287(g) coupled with Georgia House Bill 87 — adding measures for proving legality — “will lead to the profiling of anyone who looks or sounds ‘foreign’ and will exacerbate the problems ... in Cobb, Gwinnett, Hall and Whitefield counties.”

According to the Hall County Sheriff’s Office, the program was implemented countywide in 2008.

Since then, the sheriff’s office has been “very pleased with the program” and said “from its inception, 287(g) has been utilized for its intended purpose — to screen individuals who are arrested for statutory offenses unrelated to their immigration status.”

“Overall, we’re very pleased with the 287g program,” Sgt. Stephen Wilbanks, spokesman for the sheriff’s office, wrote in an email. “Philosophically speaking, we feel that we are a nation of laws, and it’s these laws that make America the greatest country in the world and the place that so many people from so many other countries want to be. As such, it’s imperative that we uphold and enforce our laws, including our immigration laws. We feel that we’ve done our best to do that in a consistent and fair manner.”

Wilbanks said the department has “noted significant reductions in what we would consider ‘quality of life’ issues such as the volume of illegal drugs coming into our community — particularly those that can be traced back to Mexico — and active gang membership.”

But, Corso said, the policy leaves the door open for more racially-based policing.

“I think that the entire policy, the whole idea of deputizing a local law enforcement agency to act like an immigration agency is a bad policy and I’ve always thought that, and that’s why I signed off on the letter,” Corso said.

“If it’s gang members and violent criminals and drug traffickers, then fine, let’s get them gone. But if it’s somebody who’s driving to work and has no criminal history and heads up a family, and the family has U.S. citizen children, and they’re contributing to our community by working in the poultry industry or the carpet industry or construction industry, and they’re paying taxes and making Gainesville a better place and Georgia a better place, I just didn’t think we should be using 287(g) to deport them.”

Corso said when the program was first implemented in the county, there were major issues with it, including what he considered to be targeted road blocks and over policing. But, he said, that landscape has changed since 2008.

“There’s been a real evolution of 287(g) in this county and where we are now is a much better place than where we were when this first started,” he said.

Wilbanks said “safety checkpoints have never been indented to be utilized as a tool to feed arrestees into the 287(g) program,” and there are policies in place that forbid such practice.

“It was never intended, nor ever implemented by the Hall County Sheriff’s Office, as a tool for patrol officers to work the streets targeting persons whom they believed to be residing in the country illegally,” Wilbanks wrote.

But, Corso said, the group’s main aim is to take that responsibility out of local law enforcement’s hands.

“What we’re saying here is if it’s bad for Arizona, it’s bad for Georgia,” said Corso. “You should cancel it in Georgia and not force good, honest, hard-working law enforcement in the field on patrol to figure out the complexities of immigration law.”

Group wants immigration program gone

A copy of the letter sent to Homeland Security:

Dear Secretary Napolitano,

We write to ask that you end the heavy hand of 287(g)-authorized state and local law enforcement in Georgia. These 287(g) agreements have led to racial profiling and due process violations, eroded trust between police and the community, and undermined public safety.

Today in Georgia, as in many states with 287(g) agreements, the color of a person’s skin and the accent of his or her voice create a target for harassment, pretextual arrest, and humiliating detention. Hard experience has taught us that local police too often fail to implement federal immigration law in a manner that is racially neutral or that conforms to the standards of your agency.

This is even more crucial in the light of the recent 11
th Circuit decision which for now let stand the "show me your papers" provision of HB 87, the Georgia racial profiling law similar to Arizona’s SB 1070. HB 87 promotes racial profiling by giving police officers discretion to determine what information is "sufficient" to prove a person's identity and choose who to subject to an investigation. This will lead to the profiling of anyone who looks or sounds "foreign" and will exacerbate the problems created by 287(g) in Cobb, Gwinnett, Hall, and Whitfield Counties.

Too often, elected sheriffs have chosen to enter into 287(g) agreements as a populist campaign issue, not a crime-stopping tool. A report by Justice Strategies found that 287(g) agreements are most prevalent in communities with fast-growing Latino populations, not high crime rates. The program then becomes an excuse for racial profiling and a hindrance to public safety. As famed law enforcement leader William Bratton has strenuously argued, "when local police enforce immigration laws, it undermines their core public safety mission, diverts scarce resources, increases their exposure to liability and litigation, and exacerbates fear in communities that are already distrustful of police."
As ACLU of Georgia investigations have shown, immigrant communities in Cobb and Gwinnett fear the police. They are reluctant to report crime because of these counties' involvement in immigration enforcement. This has led to an atmosphere of terror and isolation for immigrants and less-safe communities.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s attack on immigrant communities, which was abetted by his 287(g) agreement, led to slower responses to 911 calls and decreased criminal arrest rates before you rightfully cancelled his agreement. ICE cancelled additional agreements in Arizona after the Supreme Court decision in
Arizona vs. US, determining that such agreements were "not useful in States that have adopted immigration enforcement laws like SB 1070." We ask that you do the same with the four 287(g) agreements in Georgia. 2

While the 287(g) program was meant to make our communities safer, it is more often used to purge our towns and cities of "unwelcome" immigrants. A report by the University of North Carolina found that 87 percent of people booked through the 287(g) program were merely charged with misdemeanors, not felonies. Agencies have even arrested crime
victims.

What happened to Jenny Maria Rivadeneira is illustrative. On July 29, 2009, Jenny called 911 to stop her partner from assaulting her. But instead of protecting Jenny, the Cobb County police officers who responded to her call relied upon the abuser’s account of what happened, as she spoke little English. Her abuser's side of the story was, not surprisingly, far from honest.

As a direct consequence of seeking help from the police, Jenny was herself arrested, physically separated from her infant daughter, spent five days in the Cobb County jail, and placed in deportation.

Similarly situated survivors of crime in Cobb and other 287(g) counties in Georgia are dissuaded from seeking help.

As we elaborated in our submission to your agency’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in May 2012, civil rights violations and racial profiling abound in all four 287(g) counties in Georgia. We urge you to stop civil rights violations and improve public safety in Georgia by discontinuing all 287(g) agreements.

Sincerely,

Alterna
American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Georgia
Athens Immigrant Rights Coalition
Atlantans Building Leadership for Empowerment
Boeschen Law, PC
Castan & Lecca, PC
Coalicion De Lideres Latinos-CLILA
Coalition for the People's Agenda
Cobb Immigrant Alliance
Cobb United for Change Coalition
Corso, Kennedy & Campbell, LLP
DreamACTivist Georgia
Georgia-Alabama Chapter of AILA
Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials
Georgia Detention Watch
Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights
Georgia Peace & Justice Coalition/Atlanta
Georgia Rural Urban Summit
Georgia State Conference NAACP
Georgia Undocumented Youth Alliance
Georgia Women’s Action for New Directions
Raksha
3
Rohan Law, PC
Social Justice Committee, Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Gwinnett
Taylor Lee & Associates, LLC

http://media.morristechnology.com/me...IGRANT.Doc.pdf

Let me translate that letter: Dear Secretary Napolitano: We are special and expect to break U.S. laws whenever we please. We are offended that law enforcement feels otherwise. Hugs and kisses: the illegal population.

"As a direct consequence of seeking help from the police, Jenny was herself arrested, physically separated from her infant daughter, spent five days in the Cobb County jail, and placed in deportation."

Well, what did she expect being illegal, roses and lollipops?

Originally Posted by ReggieMay

Let me translate that letter: Dear Secretary Napolitano: We are special and expect to break U.S. laws whenever we please. We are offended that law enforcement feels otherwise. Hugs and kisses: the illegal population.

LOL Hugs and kisses: the illegal population. LOL

52 days to stop illegals from stealing your vote!

Go here:

http://www.alipac.us/f8/52-days-stop...5/#post1303723

Originally Posted by Kiara

"As a direct consequence of seeking help from the police, Jenny was herself arrested, physically separated from her infant daughter, spent five days in the Cobb County jail, and placed in deportation."

Well, what did she expect being illegal, roses and lollipops?

Is this the same woman who was actually physically fighting with the guy she later reported?