SEE LINK For Restoring TRUST Campaign Analysis of ICE Announcement
On December 21st, Immigration Customs Enforcement announced record number of deportations over the last year 409,849. Much of ICE’s new ability to deport such high numbers, exceeding their own annual quotas, has to do with a program known as “Secure Communities” (S-Com) wherein local police are asked to hold immigrants who are suspected to be here without documents. Often times these detainer requests are issued on minor infractions such as traffic stops, but there have been such egregious cases in which victims of crime, even women abused by their husbands who call for police support, but end up detained and deported.
S-Com has become a mass deportation program, although it is suppose to target only criminal immigrants, it has instead served to create a framework and narrative that criminalizes all immigrants. The announcement today intended to reform S-Com makes no significant changes(see advocates Analysis Link above). After counties such as Cook County, Santa Clara County and Washington DC have set new policies that limit S-Com, and after California almost passed statewide legislation called the TRUST Act, which would only honor ICE Holds for violent crimes or felony convictions, ICE is forced to respond with their own reforms to S-Com.
Each local region has the self-determination within the laws of the land to limit how Federal Administrative policies affect them since they are only administrative and not legislative or congressional policies. The California Attorney General recently released a bulletin recognizing that ICE Holds are indeed voluntary requests and not federal law.
People of faith have joined coalitions, and joined the campaigns against S-com at the local level because faith leaders have felt the negative impact on their congregations and on their communities (See IIC Restoring Trust Campaign). In 2011, 95,000 parents of U.S. citizen were deported. Families and communities are being separated at a record rate.
Now is the time to work toward Compassionate and Humane Immigration Reform, but it is impossible to simultaneously criminalize and legalize. Now is the time for people of faith to organize, take action, join the Restoring TRUST Campaign and work towards a pathway to citizenship so that there can be compassionate immigration reform at the federal level! See Breaking Bread and Building Bridges and get ready to take action this Spring! Sign the IIC Compassionate Immigration Reform for faith leaders, denominations and faith organizations.
blog by Rev. Noel Andersen of Church World Service
