US deportation policy to Caribbean draws protests

Friday, August 19, 2011

WASHINGTON DC, United States (CMC) — A programme that is key to United States President Barack Obama's immigration enforcement strategy has drawn protests by a number of immigrant organisations and individuals in six cities over the last two days.

The protesters are intensifying their confrontation with the administration over the fast pace of deportations to the Caribbean and other countries.

OBAMA…programme key to his immigration enforcement strategy

Jumaane Williams, the Grenadian-American councilman, who represents the largely Caribbean 45th Council District in Brooklyn, New York, said the Obama administration's "brazen decision to ignore its agreement with state governments and impose Secure Communities is a slap in the face to New York and its immigrant population.

"I was hopeful when Governor (Mario) Cuomo suspended our (New York) participation in this unjust programme based on a knowledge that it has done nothing to make our communities more secure," Williams told the Caribbean Media Corporation.

"Instead, the Homeland Security Department has decided to return to a regime that tears at the crucial relationship between the police and our communities and wastes law enforcement officers' time and money," he added.

"As the representative of a district that is comprised of an overwhelming majority of immigrant families, I echo the anger and concern they feel over the reinstatement of this policy. I will be vigilant in supporting ways to reverse this decision and end Secure Communities once and for all," Williams said.

In Los Angeles, about 200 immigrants and their supporters walked out of a stormy meeting that was called by a task force advising the enforcement programme, known as Secure Communities.

Carrying signs that said "Stop Ripping Families Apart", the protesters called for an end to the programme, which they said had led to the deportation of victims who reported domestic violence to the police, and to parents of American citizen children.

On Tuesday in Chicago, several dozen protesters delivered thousands of petitions calling for an end to the programme to the headquarters of Obama's re-election campaign.

Petitions were also delivered by small groups of protesters to Democratic Party offices in Miami, Florida; Atlanta, Georgia; Houston, Texas; and Charlotte, North Carolina.

About two dozen prominent immigrant advocacy organisations issued a report denouncing the programme and calling on the administration to halt it.

Organisers said the protests were a response to an announcement on August 5 by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that the programme would continue to expand to meet its declared goal of covering the whole country by 2013.

ICE director John Morton said that agreements with state and local officials were not required for the agency to proceed.

In each of the last two years, immigration authorities have deported nearly 400,000 people, immigration advocates say.

Under Secure Communities, fingerprints of anyone booked into jail by the state and local police are sent to the FBI for criminal checks and also to the Department of Homeland Security, which records immigration violations. Immigration agents decide whether to detain non-citizens signaled by fingerprint matches.

Morton said the programme was working effectively to carry out his agency's focus on deporting immigrants convicted of serious crimes.

"It's the law, and we think it is very good policy, to focus our resources on people who are here unlawfully and also committing crimes," he said.

He said agency figures showed that about 90 per cent of those deported under Secure Communities since it was started in 2008 were either convicted criminals or foreigners who had failed to obey a court order to leave the country or who had returned to the United States illegally after deportation.

Morton said he had created the advisory task force, which went to work in June, to recommend fixes that would lower the numbers of deportations of illegal immigrants who did not have criminal convictions.

But the American Immigration Lawyers Association on Tuesday published a report that cast light on how Secure Communities and other enforcement programmes have stirred tensions in Caribbean and other immigrant communities.

The association, which includes 11,000 immigration lawyers, said it polled its members to see how many were handling cases of immigrants facing deportation after being stopped by local police officers for minor offences, like traffic violations.

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