U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement program faces novel challenge

We’ve been hearing a lot about how immigration enforcement intersects with local law enforcement. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Arizona requirement that police officers check the immigration status of people they stop for other reasons. Now we’ll hear from our West Side bureau about a suburban Chicago man who got tangled up with immigration enforcement after a arrest. He has filed a suit that offers a novel challenge to one of President Obama’s key immigration-enforcement programs. MITCHELL: There’s no doubt James Makowski of Clarendan Hills did something illegal. In 2010 police caught him with heroin and he pleaded guilty to that. A judge approved him for a state-run boot camp. But that’s not where Makowski ended up. MAKOWSKI: I thought I would be home in 120 days but — then after I get a note back from a counselor, view after I’d asked about when I’d be shipping to boot camp — she said that I was ineligible for boot camp due to an immigration detainer.

Newly Obtained Documents Reveal Se Communities Program Leads to Deportations of People Who Have Never Been Arrested

July 3, 2012—Today, advocates released emails from the FBI and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) that show that ICE’s controversial Se Communities deportation program is sweeping in individuals who have never been criminally arrested. The emails—which were obtained as a result of Freedom of Information Act litigation brought by the National Day Laborer…

After Arizona, a Struggle Continues – NYT Editorial

The Supreme Court ruling on Arizona’s immigration law shredded the law’s radical premise — that a state can write its own foreign policy, order impose its own criminal punishments on the undocumented, check set its own enforcement priorities and oblige the federal government to go along. That should be the final warning to Arizona and copycat states like Alabama: stop concocting criminal dragnets for civil violators. It’s not your job and you can’t do it.