President Obama, please don't expand failed immigration program 287(g)
Sunday, July 19th 2009, 4:00 AM

The more things change the more they stay the same. When it comes to immigration, despite the promises, that old dictum seems as truthful under President Obama as ever.

Believe it or not, despite Obama's stated commitment to tackle immigration reform, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano is expanding the disastrous 287(g) program. This program, said Aarti Shahani, co-author of "Local Democracy on ICE," - a thorough investigation of the 287(g) - "turns traffic cops into jail guards and deportation agents."

According to Shahani, the program has been under intensive investigation for rampant mismanagement on the part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and racial profiling on the part of lawmen such as Arizona's infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who operates the nation's largest 287(g) agreement.

Implemented under George W. Bush, it authorizes police, traffic cops and correction officers to arrest immigrants without cause. At the time of its inception it was justified as a public safety program designed to get "illegal criminal aliens" off the streets.

Instead, the 287(g) quickly became synonymous with racial profiling and human rights abuse. The much ballyhooed program has done nothing to increase public safety, enhance national security or solve the immigration crisis.

"The statute is being applied to corn vendors and people with broken taillights," Shahani said.

For all its bluster, 287(g)'s main target have been day laborers and traffic violators. These are the "criminal illegal aliens" routinely arrested, without probable cause, by deputized officers.

"Up to this point, 287(g) has been the worst thing to happen to law enforcement since John Dillinger," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. "It has been an utter failure.

"It has spawned widespread racial profiling, sparked lawsuits and civil rights investigations, and literally let loose local cowboys to round people up in immigrant communities," he added.

Even most of the nation's chiefs of police are united in their opposition to it.

At a July 1 meeting in Miami, the chiefs called on Washington to fix the broken immigration system for reasons of public safety and strongly condemned using local police as immigration agents.

The logic of their reasoning was flawless. When immigrant members of the community fear contact with law enforcement, the chiefs argued, their ability to do their job is jeopardized, along with the safety of the community.

Yet, Homeland Security has just decided to expand the program, although it says it will be revamped. This time, the department said, 287(g) will really focus on "criminal illegal aliens" and not on busboys and gardeners.

But few believe that 287(g) can be redeemed, no matter what Napolitano says. What everybody is certain of is that the Homeland Security secretary's focus is on repression.

Yet deporting 12 million immigrants is a practical impossibility and will not happen. Furthermore, those who believe that increasing repression will make immigrants leave on their own know nothing about the desperate poverty that pushed them across the border in the first place. They should keep in mind that as long as those conditions remain unchanged in their countries, people will keep coming.

Any solution to the immigration crisis must take the comprehensive reform route. This means providing legal avenues for people to immigrate to the U.S., and opening ways for those already here to legalize their status and become full-fledged members of American society.

For the Obama administration to hawkishly expand the clearly disastrous 287(g) program is disappointing and the wrong way to go.

aruiz@nydailynews.com


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