Thread: NY-Residents react to immigration detention reform

Residents react to immigration detention reform
By Suzan Clarke • snclarke@lohud.com • August 11, 2009



People on both sides of the immigration issues in the Lower Hudson Valley appreciate a planned overhaul of the federal immigration detention system, but maintain that there is a critical need for comprehensive immigration law reform.

Last week, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, announced the detention structure would be reformed by strengthening federal oversight and centralizing a 32,000-bed system now scattered throughout 350 local jails, state prisons and contract facilities.

Juan Pablo Ramirez, a member of the Rockland Immigration Coalition and Hispanic community advocate, said mixed messages are being sent.

On one hand, he said, ICE is expanding 287(g), a federal program in which local police departments partner with federal immigration enforcement agents. On the other, he said, authorities were also evaluating the detention system.

"They're trying to appease both sides of the aisle, in my view," he said, adding: "In reality, we need immigration reform, and until that takes place, I don't think the Latino community is going to be satisfied."

Local immigrant advocates want reform that would give amnesty to undocumented immigrants in the country; opponents favor reform that would make it harder for undocumented immigrants to remain in the country or get any government benefits or privileges.

The dialogue about the need for immigration law has grown more polarized, particularly given the outrage in the wider community over recent drunken-driving arrests of illegal immigrants, including a June 8 crash in Brewster in which a woman and her young daughter were killed.

The Suffern and Brewster police departments have applied to be part of 287(g).

Brewster's Mayor James Schoenig said yesterday that the village's Police Department would no longer pursue the partnership. Suffern's Police Chief Clarke Osborn said his department hoped to have a ruling soon on its application.

Following a meeting last week with ICE officials and Rep. John Hall, Osborn said his department would now use ICE's Law Enforcement Support Center, a 24-hour facility in Vermont, to check on crime suspects' immigration status.

ICE's goal in three to five years is to redesign and begin rebuilding a system that houses immigration violators in fewer locations, closer to major cities with access to courts, attorneys and medical care, and under conditions that more consistently meet federal standards.

"With these reforms, ICE will move away from our present decentralized jail approach to a system that is wholly designed for and based on civil detention needs," John Morton, ICE's director, said last week.

Although most immigration violators have no criminal record and are held pending removal on administrative grounds, detainees are subject to penal system practices, typically confined in jail cells, prison blocks or remote detention centers where they face strict confinement and group punishment for disciplinary infractions. Being in the U.S. illegally is a civil offense.

Robin Bikkal, an immigration attorney in White Plains and president of the service agency El Centro Hispano in White Plains, criticized the current system, in which detainees who are in the United States without proper documentation are housed alongside violent criminals.

"That is pretty preposterous," she said, adding that the reform was a positive development. "But it barely scratches the surface of what needs to be done."

Jim Russell, a Hawthorne resident who favors stricter enforcement of immigration laws and who opposes any amnesty, said he thought the detention reform plan made sense.

He deemed it a "fair and equitable approach" not to place noncriminal undocumented immigrants with the general prison population.

But Russell, who chairs the Westchester-Rockland Citizens for Immigration Control, wants the government to focus more upon penalizing employers who hire undocumented workers.

http://www.lohud.com/article/20090811/N ... 5/-1/RSS01

NO Amnesty via Health/Medical Care for Illegal Immigrants! Make the employers pay 5% -10% NON DEDUCTIBLE TAX based on behavior of hiring illegal aliens.

Being in the U.S. illegally is a civil offense.

Why? Lets make it a criminal offense!