New voices unite against deportation program

Throughout the country, more and more voices are uniting against abusive immigration practices like raids and the 287(g) program. The latter checks the immigration status of those entering in jail.

Nationally, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has 67 agreements with local and state police agencies that allow these agencies to apply federal immigration laws. In North Carolina, Alamance, Cabarrus, Cumberland, Gaston, Henderson, Mecklenburg, Wake and Durham counties have the 287(g) program.

A few editions ago we presented conclusions from a study conducted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which affirms that the 287(g) program encourages racial profiling, lowers the community’s trust in the authorities, and distracts officials from their job of arresting true criminals. In Mecklenburg, 90% of those processed through this program were arrested for traffic violations.

The discontent with this inefficient program is growing at the national level. This was the main topic of a March 5th meeting of the House Committee of Homeland Security. The meeting was motivated by the results of an investigation by the Government Accountability Office that showed the faults of the program. (You can read this story on page 4 of this edition of La Noticia).

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has ordered that the 287(g) program be examined.

The March 4th editorial in The New York Times denounced Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has assigned the police the task of fighting against illegal immigration. The editorial also criticizes a raid in a factory that rebuilds car engines in Bellingham, Washington state, saying:

“Americans who might applaud any crackdown on illegal immigrants, particularly in a recession, should know that scattershot raids and rampaging sheriffs are not the answer. The idea that enforcement alone will eliminate the underground economy is a great delusion. It runs up against the impossible arithmetic of mass expulsion — no conceivable regime of raids will wrench 12 million illegal immigrants from their jobs and homes.â€