Nashville keeps ICE program as others cast it off

Heidi Hall, hhall@tennessean.com10 a.m. CDT July 27, 2014


(Photo: Steven S. Harman / Tennessean)

Nashville’s mayor took the stage at a conference in Washington this month to explain how his city makes immigrants feel welcome — turning its libraries into citizenship assistance hubs, opening an academy to teach how government works and convening an immigrant advisory council.

Juana Villegas responded with wide-eyed shock to the news that Nashville tried to teach anything to anybody about the best way to treat immigrants.

Stopped on a 2008 careless driving charge that a Berry Hill judge later dismissed, Villegas was famously shackled to a Metro General Hospital bed during parts of her labor. The reason she gave birth in custody was a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement program Nashville was volunteering to use at the time, called 287(g). The jail’s check of her immigration status showed she’d been deported before and re-entered the country illegally.

That program’s replacement, adopted here two years ago, is a nationwide version called Secure Communities. Counties and cities across the country — Chicago, New York and Newark, N.J., among them — are casting it aside, saying it’s too expensive, targets minor offenders and exposes local government to Fourth Amendment violation lawsuits. Local advocates for the immigrant community are suggesting Nashville stop participating, too.

But for now, it seems unlikely Mayor Karl Dean would use his bully pulpit to influence that process. He issued a statement saying the police and sheriff’s departments here haven’t reported any problems with Secure Communities, although he recognizes its chilling effect in other parts of the country.

After her jail stay made national news, Villegas became the face of immigrant treatment in Nashville, someone people stop on the street to ask for advice. Her little boy born in custody, Gael, is 6 now, preparing to start the first grade. He’s a sun-kissed, happy kid, who loves baseball and says his favorite school subject is recess.

They live in the family’s tidy, brick split-level in South Nashville, paid for in part with Villegas’ $490,000 legal settlement with Metro Nashville over her treatment.

While the average Nashvillian may be a bit nicer to his immigrant neighbors these days, she said, little has changed in the way of the city’s approach.

“I’ve seen a series of cases of people who are pulled over, get a citation for a minor infraction, are delivered to ICE and get deported,” Villegas said in Spanish, through an interpreter. “Up to this day, I get really nervous when I’m driving and I see police. I have my license now, and they have pulled me over.”

She’s in the country legally now, on a work permit that allows her to be an assistant manager at a fast-food restaurant. Two weeks ago, she put in 65 hours.

Mistrust of police
From outside its immigrant communities, Nashville seems like a different city from the one that had to vote in 2009 on whether to allow city employees to speak Spanish to Latino residents. In addition to the formal programs the mayor talked about, the city hosts frequent, well-attended international festivals.

The mistrust is of law enforcement, Villegas and other immigrants say. City police make the arrests, sometimes taking foreign-born residents to jail instead of writing them citations for minor offenses. Once in Metro’s jail, which is run by Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall, they’re subject to a check through Secure Communities, a 48-hour ICE hold and, if it’s found they’re here illegally, deportation.

A study of ICE detainers in fiscal years 2012 and 2013 by Syracuse University shows more than half the immigrants subject to them in Nashville aren’t convicted for the crimes that put them in jail. Forty-one percent are convicted of Level 3 offenses — things such as intimidation, shoplifting or refusing to aid an officer.

Another study by an advocacy group called Migrahack brought journalists and computer programmers together to analyze data and identify where Secure Communities is most aggressively used for deportation. Davidson County was among the communities that stood out to researchers, and Human Rights Watchfollowed up here with interviews.

“The first thing immigrants in Davidson County mentioned is that they are afraid to talk to police, because for any reason — even if you have an emergency — police may ask them for their documents and send them through Secure Communities,” said Claudia Núñez, Migrahack director.

Don Aaron, a spokesman for Metro Police, said the department’s El Protector program is working hard to let immigrants know they can safely report crimes. If police stop people suspected of misdemeanors who don’t have proper identification — and officers can even accept rent receipts and utility bills for that purpose, he said — they have no choice under law but to take them to jail.

Nearly 1,100 people have been subject to ICE detainers under Secure Communities since the program began here in October 2012. The sheriff’s department doesn’t track how much that costs local taxpayers, but a spokeswoman said it costs $95 per day per inmate for a jail stay.

Hall estimates Secure Communities has cost Davidson County about $200,000 since its inception. He has no intention of dropping it.

“I think everybody agrees on one thing: The system is a mess. We were talking about 287(g), and now with activists and the political winds growing, we’re getting into conversations about the Secure Communities,” said Hall, who is considering a 2015 run for mayor.

“It’s all a symptom of the problem. What does society want to do with someone in the country illegally who has been arrested in some community?”

Asking for a change
Expense was an issue in Los Angeles changing its policy around Secure Communities, and that city ceased honoring immigration detainers this year unless a judge determines there’s probable cause or issues a warrant.

A study by nonprofit research group Justice Strategies showed the detainers likely cost Los Angeles $26 million per year. Since it was released, author Judith Greene said, she’s been hearing from researchers from across the country who want to do the same calculations where they are.

“When jurisdictions started opting out, the Department of Homeland Security turned the tables on them and said, ‘No, you can’t — we never meant this to be voluntary,’” Greene said. “That has left a lot of public officials annoyed.”

Other city leaders are worried about possible legal exposure after a federal judge ruled in April that Clackamas County, Oregon, violated a woman’s Fourth Amendment rights by honoring an ICE detainer.

Hall said he’s monitoring any fallout from that case.

The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, on the other hand, has no qualms about asking local governments across Tennessee to stop participating in Secure Communities.

“Secure Communities is a flawed and expensive program that separates immigrant families, diverts local law enforcement resources, and undermines trust between the immigrant community and law enforcement,” said Stephanie Teatro, the coalition’s interim co-director.

“Now that ICE has confirmed that honoring detainers is voluntary and federal courts have determined that local jails may be held liable for detaining people on an ICE hold, hundreds of jurisdictions have made the smart decision to stop honoring detainers.”

If Nashville wants to continue being a leader in the Southeast, she said, it needs to do the same.

Reach Heidi Hall at hhall@tennessean.com or on Twitter @HeidiHallTN.

Secure Communities
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement program fingerprints people taken to jail and runs those prints through an immigration database. Undocumented immigrants can be held for up to 48 hours for ICE to pick up. Here are how many ICE detainers have been issued in Nashville under Secure Communities since it launched in October 2012.

2012:
213

2013:
588

2014*:
287
*Through July 20

Source: Davidson County Sheriff’s Office

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