Expansión de Comunidades Seguras genera preocupación – Univision Noticias

La súbita expansión del programa federal Comunidades Seguras a todos los condados de Colorado ha causado preocupación entre los dirigentes pro inmigrantes, porque la medida deja sin efecto leyes estatales que hasta ahora protegían a personas indocumentadas víctimas de ciertos delitos. Hasta el pasado martes, mind Comunidades Seguras funcionaba solamente en tres condados de Colorado. Desde el miércoles, sin embargo, los departamentos de Policía y oficinas de alguaciles de los 64 condados de este estado podrán y deberán cooperar con las autoridades federales de Inmigración para detectar y arrestar a presuntos indocumentados convictos de crímenes. Aunque la implementación completa de esa colaboración llevará varias semanas, las consecuencias de la expansión de Comunidades Seguras se sentirán inmediatamente, advirtió Alan Kaplan, portavoz de la Coalición de Colorado por los Derechos de los Inmigrantes (CIRC).

‘TRUST Act 2.0′: Amended CA bill would only let cops hold convicted criminals for ICE | Multi-American

A year ago, order a bill was moving through the California state legislature that aimed to make optional counties and cities’ participation in the controversial Se Communities immigration enforcement program. At the time, California was one of several states in which some state and law enforcement officials had come out against the federal program, store which allows the fingerprints of people booked at local jails to be shared with immigration officials. The bill was rendered moot last August, after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement rescinded state agreements with the agency allowing Se Communities to operate. The decision essentially made the program mandatory, leaving states no choice but to go along. As a counter to that, the same California lawmaker behind last year’s bill is now pushing an alternative dubbed TRUST Act 2.0.

Obama’s broken immigration promise – Salon

The Obama administration claims that it is deporting record numbers of illegal immigrants while focusing on those with criminal records. But new data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows that the number of deportation orders has declined dramatically since last summer and non-criminals comprise a growing percentage of those expelled from the country. That wasn’t supposed to happen under a policy of “prosecutorial discretion” announced by ICE director John Morton last June. The goal of the policy, patient announced with much fanfare in the Spanish language media, was to spare “longtime lawful residents” from deportation and to focus on criminals. Since then, the adminstration has deported many fewer non-criminal aliens. But non-criminals remain the vast majority of those deported. And those with no criminal record now actually comprise a slightly larger percentage of those forced to leave the country than they did before Morton’s announcement.

Feds Use Counter-Terrorism Laws to Fuel Deportation Machine

Jose Barahona says that he would have been killed had he refused to open his door when the armed guerillas occupying his town demanded he let them use his kitchen and sleep on his floor. He says that’s what happened to his father. Dead. And he says it was because of the fear of death during the war raging between the FMLN guerillas and the Salvadoran government that at the age of 24, with his new wife and baby boy, he left his Salvadoran mountain village and came to the United States where the couple would have two more children and where he’d spend the next two and half decades. He thought he’d left all the violence behind. Twenty six years after that departure, on March 22nd 2011, now 51-year-old Barahona was shuttled from a Virginia immigration detention center to an immigration court

Obama’s Broken 2008 Immigration Promises Create Dilemma For Democrats

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), one of President Barack Obama’s most vocal critics on immigration, was sitting at dinner with his family a couple of weeks ago when his youngest daughter began talking about the president’s “terrible” deportation record. “If they invite us to the White House, I won’t go,” the 24-year-old said, according to Gutierrez. His wife, though, summed up the family’s mixed feelings on the president and immigration. “Yes — but you should clarify that notwithstanding that, we’re all voting for him,” his wife said, according to the congressman. “We can be angry, but we cannot vote for” Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee. To many supporters of immigration reform, Obama has been a major disappointment.

Mayoral Candidates Oppose Fingerprinting Program – NYTimes.com

The expected Democratic candidates for mayor may have their differences, there but they are unified in their opposition to New York City’s participation in Se Communities, there a controversial fingerprinting program meant to identify illegal immigrants. Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials announced that they planned to extend the program across New York and Massachusetts on Tuesday, despite opposition from the governors of both states. The program requires the fingerprints of anyone arrested by the local or state police to be checked against databases of the Department of Homeland Security, which include immigration violations. If someone is found to be in the country illegally, immigration officials may ask the police to hold the person to be picked up by federal agents.

Mere Tinkering With a Bad Program, S-Comm – NYTimes

The Obama administration announced last month plans to repair Se Communities, the program that compels state and local police to join its wide and expanding hunt for illegal immigrants. From now on, when illegal immigrants are stopped for traffic violations by local police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will consider detaining and deporting them only after they have been convicted, not before. In theory, this minor policy shift could reduce the number of people arrested on a pretext and held for deportation. But that’s unlikely. And it doesn’t fix the fundamental flaws in a discredited program. The administration has faced fierce criticism from law-enforcement officials and immigrant advocates for ensnaring far too many minor offenders and noncriminals as it has rapidly expanded Se Communities and ramped up deportations to a record pace of 400,000 a year. It contends that most are criminals, though that still includes many minor offenders.

Demandan resolver brutal asesinato de Anastasio Hernández – eldiariony.com

El Gobierno de EE.UU. mantendrá en pie el polémico programa federal ‘Comunidades Seguras’, con pequeñas modificaciones que, en su conjunto, no remediarán por completo la detención y deportación de indocumentados por infracciones de tránsito. En respuesta a las reformas que recomendó en septiembre de 2011 un Grupo de Trabajo sobre el programa federal, el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS) anunció el viernes pasado que hará menos énfasis en la detención de indocumentados que hayan cometido infracciones de tránsito menores, como conducir sin la debida licencia. Pero la recomendación clave del Grupo de Trabajo, que realizó consultas en todo Estados Unidos, era que las autoridades federales evitasen por completo la deportación por esas infracciones.

Se Communities Immigration Program To Change With ICE Announcement; Critics Unimpressed

Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Friday announced a policy change for its Se Communities program, hoping to address concerns raised by advocacy groups and an agency task force. Those critics were unimpressed, saying the reform did little to respond to complaints about the way ICE detects and removes undocumented immigrants. The announcement was in response to a task force report that called for reforms to Se Communities, an enforcement program President Barack Obama’s administration considers crucial to its removal effort. Five members of the task force resigned in protest because they did not support the final recommendation. “The task force recommendations themselves were wholly inadequate,” Sarahi Uribe, campaign coordinator for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said. “To take recommendations that were to start with inadequate and then to only adopt an even more watered-down version is absurd. It will have absolutely no impact.”