Warren: Se Communities needs fix before full implementation

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren says the federal Se Communities law should be improved before it is fully implemented by the end of next year. Warren said today that the law as it currently stands does not focus on violent offenders and would create barriers between immigrant communities and local police. The Harvard Law School professor spoke to reporters after appearing at a Statehouse event held by the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Coalition. Under Se Communities, look fingerprints taken from a crime suspect by local police would be turned over to federal authorities, who could bring deportation proceedings if the person was in the U.S. illegally. – Boston Herald

Connecticut Day Laborers Often Cheated Out of Weekly Pay

At the break of dawn in communities around the nation, men in work clothes gather to find construction and landscaping work and similar hands-on employment at customary locations. Sometimes these day laborers work much longer hours, and for much less, than they had been promised. Most have little chance of recovering hard-earned wages. One survey found that only one in 130 cases result in a filed claim. The laws are there. Society agrees a worker deserves to be paid, but there are vast gaps in legal enforcement. That’s where New Haven’s Community Labor Rights Clinic comes in. It’s modeled after a five-year old project in Stamford, the Day Laborer Project, operated by Connecticut Legal Services. The New Haven clinic was launched last month by New Haven Legal Assistance Association attorney James Bhandary-Alexander, a former National Labor Relations Board lawyer. Two nights a month, the clinic aims to serve this underserved client population.

Protestan en EU contra programa Comunidades Seguras de inmigración

Decenas de personas protestaron hoy en Maryland contra el programa Comunidades Seguras, view que faculta a policías locales a cooperar con el Servicio de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE) para la deportación de extranjeros con antecedentes penales. El activista comunitario de la organización Casa de Maryland, Lindolfo Carballo, dijo que varios dirigentes reunieron 600 firmas para pedir a las autoridades y la policía del condado de Montgomery que eviten la discriminación en la aplicación de la ley. “Es hora de decir basta” a Comunidades Seguras, “que convierte a la policía en agente de inmigración”, señaló Carballo. El programa cuestionado fue iniciado por el anterior presidente George W. Bush, y ha continuado y expandido bajo el gobierno de Barack Obama.

Sheriff in crossfire on immigration program – San Jose Mercury News

Santa Cruz County Sheriff-Coroner Phil Wowak on Tuesday found himself caught between an encroaching federal immigration program and resistance from local Latinos who want the county’s top law enforcement official to take a strong stand against it. Appearing before the county Board of Supervisors, Wowak outline his plans to layer his own local reviews into a Department of Homeland Security program known as Se Communities, which uses local jail bookings to help deport undocumented immigrants. It is aimed at those with a history of violence. But critics say the program sweeps up nonviolent offenders and even U.S. citizens, and local rights groups say Se Communities could impact public safety here by making illegal immigrants more reluctant to contact police. They want Wowak to resist the program. Wowak said he would implement assessments of jailed immigrants.

Homeland Security inspectors release a pair of reports on Se Communities | 89.3 KPCC

The federal immigration enforcement program supported by Sheriff Lee Baca and used in county jails has faced growing local opposition in the past two years. Now Se Communities is facing scrutiny from the feds themselves. Two recent internal reports question whether the Department failed to communicate early on whether states and counties had any choice in joining Se Communities. Another addresses whether the enforcement program has been effective. The reports were a response to Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren from San Jose, a critic of the program. The way Se Communities works is simple: when a person is booked into county jail, the detainee’s fingerprint information is shared with immigration authorities. If the person is in the country illegally, deportation proceedings could begin immediately.

Alarming Statistics Brings ICE Federal Program Under Fire

A program to get rid of the most dangerous criminals here illegally is under fire again. On Saturday, some of the biggest civil right activists will be right here on the central coast hoping to do something about it. A federal program known as Se Communities is supposed to deport criminals who are here illegally, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement said from August 2010 to August 2011, 53 percent of the people deported from Monterey County had no criminal record. That’s the highest in the country. In Santa Cruz county, that number was 42 percent. “A vast majority of people deported do not have criminal convictions so that’s an area of concern for us because that’s not the proported purpose of the Se Communities program,” said Blanca Zarazua, co-chair for the Monterey County Immigration Coalition and Monterey Consul for Mexico. – Central Coast News KION/KCBA

Immigration Reports Mask a Monster’s Malice

On Friday the Department for Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General released two reports addressing how the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement communicated the intent and requirements for participation in the wrongly-named “Se Communities” (S-Comm) program to states and local jurisdictions and how the program is meeting its priorities. The OIG is tasked with periodic audits, inspection, and special reports prepared as part of the oversight responsibilities within DHS.   The following is a statement from Angelica Salas, executive director for CHIRLA, a regional human and immigrant rights organization based in Los Angeles. “The reports do not even begin to address the myriad, factual and legitimate concerns that communities across the country have long had about DHS-ICE’s metastasized deportation dragnet, “S-Comm”.