The number of Bush’s measures retained, enhanced or adapted by Obama is continuing to grow.
The controversial 287(g) programme is a law passed in 1996 under former president Bill Clinton. It allows local law enforcement agencies to enter into agreements with ICE, the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Under 287(g) police effectively now have the power of federal immigration agents. Earlier in August Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, announced the expansion of the widely criticised 287(g) scheme into 11 new locations across the country.
Such agreements under 287(g) have been shown to increase incidents of racial profiling and to single out immigrants for arrest without suspicion of crime. Freedom has reported before on such abuses by the likes of Maricopa County Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, in Napolitano’s home state of Arizona.
He – despite being under federal investigation – is being invited to continue and increase his participation; and seems likely to be able to worsen his persecution of the Latino community under the auspices of 287(g).
A new participating area, on the other hand, is Morristown, New Jersey. Here, apparently, the chief of police himself didn’t even know that his own agency was being recruited into 287(g).
In response, a community meeting of 150 community members was held in mid-August.
A typical comment was that of one woman, who said: “[I]magine if you’re a victim of domestic violence. If we have this program in Morristown, New Jersey, how can you call the police? Because the police will come, they will deport your husband, even if you don’t want that, and they could even deport you.”
Aarti Shahani is lead author of ‘Local Democracy on ICE’, a report on 287(g) from Justice Strategies, and co-founder of Families for Freedom.
She describes the scheme thus: “[It] turns traffic cops and jail guards into deportation agents. [Bush] turned [287(g)] into an all-out program to recruit law enforcement into the deportation agenda. “Our understanding, those of us who were watching Obama and had hopes in Obama, was that, under Obama, programs like 287(g) would be terminated, because they are driven off of a desire for racial profiling. [P]olice already have the power to arrest people for crimes; that power rests in criminal law. And so 287(g) comes in precisely when you lack reasonable suspicion of a crime … Joe Arpaio has told me, ‘287(g) takes the handcuffs off of law enforcement. That’s why we want it.’”
Obama has announced the expansion of parallel schemes. E-Verify is an electronic system that checks people’s eligibility to work and eliminates undocumented guest workers more easily. Secure Communities gets ICE agents into local jails to identify and deport prisoners without documentation.
Louis Further
