South Florida immigrant rights advocates plan to stage a ral

South Florida immigrant rights advocates plan to stage a rally to protest Arizona's new law


South Florida advocates have joined the reignited immigration debate, demanding a stop to county collaboration with federal authorities and denouncing the new Arizona law.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/28/1 ... ights.html

BY ALFONSO CHARDY AND JUAN CARLOS CHAVEZ
achardy@ElNuevoHerald.com

South Florida immigrant rights advocates on Tuesday denounced a new Arizona law that requires police officers to detain suspected undocumented immigrants and announced plans for a rally Saturday in Miami to support legalizing those who live and work illegally in the United States.

Fearful Miami may go the way of Arizona, they also demanded that South Florida authorities end their participation in a federal program that encourages local law enforcement to share fingerprint records of foreign nationals who are arrested and jailed. The program, say federal officials, seeks to identify and deport illegal immigrants who commit major crimes.

Advocates, in two separate news conferences in Miami-Dade, said they plan to hold a rally in downtown Miami Saturday to demand legalization for the nation's estimated 10.8 million undocumented immigrants, including 720,000 in Florida.

The rally will be one of many around the country in which immigrants and their advocates will express their frustration at the failure of the Obama administration to push aggressively for immigration reform.

STUDENT WALK



Joining a rally in Washington, D.C. will be four young immigrant students from South Florida who are scheduled to end their four-month, 1,500-mile walk from Miami at the nation's capital on Wednesday. They will attend a news conference at the National Press Club Wednesday and then walk to the White House to deliver a petition demanding an end to the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrant students.

The events are part of a national strategy by pro-legalization groups to step up pressure on President Barack Obama to champion the fight for legalization in Congress and protest the Arizona law.

Being in the country illegally is a civil offense elsewhere, including Florida.

Obama has labeled the Arizona law ``misguided'' and reaffirmed his commitment to immigration reform but has not announced a specific time when congressional debate could begin.

He has called on Republicans to embrace immigration reform and has suggested that it can only move forward as a bipartisan bill.

But the key Republican senator working with Democrats on immigration reform, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said this week it likely will not happen until 2012.

The focus of local immigrant rights activists' anger Tuesday was the Secure Communities program -- a cooperative agreement among U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and 20 states, including 24 Florida counties.

In South Florida, participants include the Miami-Dade Corrections Department and Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.

Under the program, a detained suspect's immigration status and record is checked against a federal Homeland Security database linked to computers at booking centers of certain local jails nationwide.

SWEPT UP

While ICE officials maintain the program's priority is the arrest of dangerous foreign nationals with criminal convictions, immigrant rights advocates insisted Tuesday that undocumented immigrants without criminal records are also swept up in the program.

``We are here to demand that our local county officials do not turn Miami-Dade County into another Arizona,'' Subbash Kateel, a community organizer for Florida Immigrant Coalition told a news conference in front of the county hall building downtown.

Nicole Navas, an ICE spokeswoman, reaffirmed her agency's contention that Secure Communities is focused on locating dangerous ``criminal aliens.''

``Because of Secure Communities, there are fewer murderers, rapists and drug dealers walking the street. Since its inception in October 2008, Secure Communities has identified more than 18,000 aliens charged with or convicted of level one crimes, such as murder, rape and kidnapping -- 4,000 of whom have already been removed from the United States,'' Navas said.

``One of the greatest challenges in ICE's ongoing effort to target dangerous criminal aliens for removal has been getting timely, accurate information from local law enforcement agencies when foreign national criminal offenders come into their custody.''

SPREADING FEAR

Jonathan Fried, executive director of the Homestead-based WeCount! immigrant rights group, said local law enforcement cooperation with ICE has spread fear among immigrants.