Questions raised over enforcement program
By Leslie Berestein
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

July 16, 2008

DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO – The growing popularity of a nationwide immigration-enforcement program that partners local law enforcement with federal immigration authorities is leading to complications that include ethnic profiling, a panel of legal experts and immigrant-rights advocates said yesterday at the National Council of La Raza Convention.

The program is referred to as 287(g), for the section of a federal law that authorized it. Under the program, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement provides participating state and local law enforcement agencies with training and authorization to identify, process and detain people who are in the country illegally or otherwise deportable.
While the intent of the program is to find dangerous individuals, according to ICE, these aren't necessarily the sort of people being turned over by participating agencies, said John Amaya, a legislative staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

One man turned over to ICE in Georgia by local authorities participating in the program had run afoul of the law for fishing without a license, Amaya said yesterday. Another, in California, had been stopped for making an illegal U-turn on a bicycle and riding in the wrong direction.

“That doesn't seem like terrorism to me, and it doesn't seem like assault and battery,â€