Thread: Latinos Said to Bear Weight of a Deportation Program

Latinos Said to Bear Weight of a Deportation Program



By JULIA PRESTON
Published: October 18, 2011

A deportation program that is central to the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement strategy has led disproportionately to the removal of Latino immigrants and to arrests by immigration authorities of hundreds of United States citizens, according to a report by two law schools using new, in-depth official data on deportation cases.


The report also found that about a third of around 226,000 immigrants who have been deported under the program, known as Secure Communities, had spouses or children who were United States citizens, suggesting a broad impact from those removals on Americans in Latino communities.

The report, to be released Wednesday, is the first analysis of deportations under the Secure Communities program based on data about individual cases, which was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the University of California, Berkeley, law school and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.

The Secure Communities program has drawn intense criticism from immigrant communities and from some state and local officials, who have said it led to deportations of many immigrants who were not dangerous offenders and eroded trust between the communities and local police.

Obama administration officials have just as vigorously defended the program. On Tuesday, immigration officials said that the latest deportation figures show that Secure Communities and the Obama administration’s larger strategy are working, announcing that they had deported a total of 396,906 foreigners over the last year, a record number in the last decade.

The officials said that 55 percent of the immigrants deported were criminal convicts, including 51,620 people convicted of felonies like homicide, drug trafficking and sexual offenses. The results were an 89 percent increase in deportations of criminals since the beginning of the Obama administration, the officials said. Of the remaining illegal immigrants deported, the great majority were arrested soon after they crossed the border illegally or had returned illegally after being deported, officials said.

“We came into office focused on creating a smart enforcement system by setting a rational system of priorities, and we have done that,â€

The report found that 93 percent of immigrants arrested under Secure Communities were Latinos, although Latino immigrants are only about two-thirds of the illegal immigrants in the United States.

Ummm perhaps it means that 93% are criminal aliens who got caught for their actions and not their ethnicity?

If you don't like it, don't do the crime!!

They don't get deported because they are Latino immigrants.

They get deported because they are illegal aliens who commit additional crimes when they are here. Because you can't get a driver's license without documentation does not give you a free pass to drive without a license without consequences because you are a Latino.

I love this mentallity of blame the laws not the criminal for what's happening! So basicly what I get from this article is its ok for people to cross a national border illegallybut if your latino better watch out because americans don't like that and will split up your family! What a crock of shyt. I wish americans were going down to messico in huge numbers like they come here id like to see how patient and understanding their people are in a simular situation.

[quote]“The Secure Communities protocol too often is arrest first and investigate later, and that is not what the Constitution dictates,â€