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.

Arizona SCOTUS Ruling Frames NY “Se Communities” Debate

NEW YORK – Just one day after the U.S. Supreme Court’s split decision on Arizona’s controversial immigration law, a new education campaign is being launched today to deal with local fears surrounding enforcement on Long Island of federal immigration rules, particularly the Se Communities immigration program, known as S-com. Ted Hesson, online editor for Long Island Wins, says that for now the portion of the Supreme Court ruling that upholds the “show me your papers law” applies to Arizona police, but his group is concerned because there have been plenty of copycat laws around the nation. “Whereas S-com is sort of de facto authorizing police to act as immigration agents on the local level, this is actually requiring the police who are out there to be doing this as part of their job.” The Supreme Court ruled that the remaining three provisions of Arizona’s immigration law violate the Constitution.

Is your home state being Arizonified? – UU World

A major reason for holding a Justice GA in Arizona has always been so that participants could learn how to take lessons home to confront anti-immigrant measures wherever they live. Sarahi Uribe At an education session Thursday titled “Confronting Arizonification in Our Own Backyard” Sarahi Uribe, Angie Junck, and the Rev. Craig Roshaven shared strategies for doing just that. Uribe is with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, Junck with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, and Roshaven is director of the UUA’s Witness Ministries staff group. Roshaven noted the UUA is developing a campaign to challenge the federal government’s Se Communities program, which deports many people including some who are arrested for minor law violations.

After SCOTUS SB1070 Ruling, California Bill, TRUST Act, Sets State on Path to Become the “Anti-Arizona”

   TRUST Act to limit unfair detentions, profiling in California Senate   Sacramento. 06.27.2012 – As the US Supreme Court’s June 25, 2012 ruling on Arizona’s anti-immigrant law continues to spur passionate reactions across the nation, California is moving toward a vote on AB 1081, the TRUST Act, to become the “Anti-Arizona.”   The TRUST Act…

SB 1070 Ruling Refocuses Attention on Se Communities and ICE

Monday’s Supreme Court decision that allowed a portion of SB 1070 (Section 2B) to stand included the measure empowering the state to require local law enforcement to check the immigration status of suspects who are detained. If an officer stops someone for a non-immigration related reason and suspects that the person may be undocumented, story Arizona law enforcement agents have to determine the immigration status of the person being held. Immigration advocates have argued that this particular provision of SB 1070 has a similar effect to the Obama administration’s Se Communities program, there which deputizes local law enforcement to act in an immigration capacity. And because of the continued expansion of the Se Communities (S-Comm) and notice that participation in federal program is mandatory, the lines between the Arizona law and the Obama policy have become blurred.

Over 100 Arizona Organizations and Notables Call on DHS Secretary Napolitano to End Collaboration with the State of Arizona

 

Mary Rose Wilcox, Pastor Stewart, Puente, ACLU Cite Pending Humanitarian Crisis, Call for Suspension of Se Communities, Termination of All 287(g) Agreements in Arizona

 

PHOENIX, 6/27/2012 — In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in the Department of Justice SB1070 case that allowed section 2B, the racial profiling section of the law to move forward, more than one hundred Arizona-based organizations and notable individuals sent a letter calling on the state’s former governor, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano, to end DHS’ collaboration with Arizona to prevent a pending “humanitarian crisis.”