With anger in their voices and powerful stories to share, try dozens of people rallied at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Aurora Friday to protest Se Communities – a controversial program that requires local police to share fingerprints with immigration officials.
DetailsA new federal program called IMAGE (ICE Mutual Agreement between Government and Employers) was just adopted by the city of Escondido in California. Through IMAGE, the employer agrees to use e-verify and also submit to regular audits of its employee information. Of course, case this will only have the same impact as e-verify – facilitating worker exploitation by pushing workers underground. See more here: Escondido: City becomes first in county to volunteer for immigration audit
DetailsLa súbita expansión del programa federal Comunidades Seguras a todos los condados de Colorado ha causado preocupación entre los dirigentes proinmigrantes porque la medida deja sin efecto leyes estatales que hasta ahora protegían a personas indocumentadas víctimas de ciertos delitos. Hasta el pasado martes, Comunidades Seguras funcionaba solamente en tres condados de Colorado. Desde ayer, store 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, en inglés).
DetailsA federal information-sharing policy newly implemented in Vermont has put the state’s look-the-other-way, order bias-free policing policy in jeopardy. The policy, pharm Se Communities, uses existing procedure and infrastructure to assist the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division in catching illegal immigrants. Before Tuesday, when state or local police in Vermont made an arrest and submitted the suspect’s fingerprints into the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) database, the fingerprint information only went to the FBI database. The fingerprints were checked against known criminals or outstanding warrants, allowing for increased law enforcement capability across state lines. Se Communities is simple: It takes down a previously existing division between the FBI fingerprint database and ICE, thereby allowing immigration officials to track and investigate arrested individuals in Vermont.
DetailsA top federal law enforcement official confirmed for New England Cable News Monday that the Vermont rollout of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s information-sharing program known as Se Communities will happen Tuesday. It is already operational in most of the country, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, official told NECN. At the Burlington, Vt. offices of the advocacy group Migrant Justice, Danilo Lopez worried about the measure’s implementation. “Many more people will be deported because of this program,” Lopez predicted. ICE insists Se Communities will be a helpful tool to share fingerprint records between the FBI and Homeland Security, targeting threats to public safety from people who are in this country unlawfully. A fingerprint gathered during an investigation of a minor crime may reveal a more serious history of offenses, the ICE official said.
DetailsA federal program aimed at identifying illegal immigrants who are arrested for crimes expanded to Vermont on Tuesday, touching off opposition from advocacy groups for immigrants. Those groups say the Se Communities program was implemented by the federal government in Vermont without consulting state officials, ed and they fear it will help destroy a trust that most of the state’s law enforcement community has worked to build with the immigrant community. The nationwide program, now in 46 states and Puerto Rico, enables police to check the immigration status of suspected illegal immigrants by sharing their fingerprints with the Department of Homeland Security. The group Migrant Justice held a protest outside the Vermont campaign headquarters of President Barack Obama in Burlington on Tuesday afternoon with about 40 people. They started to march shortly before 6 p.m.
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