What's Up with Immigration in the 112th Congress?

The rhetoric throughout many congressional campaigns was hot. Some of the newly elected members of the House committed to an agenda that would reduce the number of immigrants – both legal and illegal – and send packing all those who are here illegally. Will those campaign promises define the agenda of the 112^th Congress?

Probably not.

Democrats and Republicans – and indeed most people around the country – seem to agree on one central fact: our immigration system is broken. Families are broken up by the multi-year waiting lines for legal immigration – employers of both skilled and unskilled workers have difficulty finding that one particular scientist to fit in a research team, or teams of seasonal workers to harvest crops and serve tourists.

Meanwhile, many employers of workers who entered or stayed in the country illegally are able to take advantage of their workers’ status by offering low pay, demanding long hours, and maintaining unsafe working conditions. The ability of these employers to undercut wage, hour, and safety laws drags down the pay and benefits of other workers on the same rung of the employment ladder, including those born in the U.S. The system is broken – it needs to be fixed.

The disagreement comes in describing the fix. Should the objective be to seal off the country, scan the documents of every person within U.S. borders, and deport all those who don’t make the cut? Should the objective be to re-examine U.S. relations with our neighbors to the South, to determine the extent to which NAFTA and other trade agreements and practices have contributed to the pressures for immigration northward? Should the objective be to address the practical problems in the immigration system itself, to repair what can be repaired?

The new Congress will probably land somewhere in that third objective – fix what needs to be fixed. Which begs the question: what needs to be fixed? FCNL has urged that the legal immigration itself be repaired, to reduce the long lines for visas, to re-unite families and to reduce the pressure for immigration outside the legal system. At the same time, FCNL has encouraged enforcement of wage, hour and safety laws in all places of employment, regardless of the legal status of the workers there. If employers are

(1) able to find workers (fix the legal system) and

(2) unable to

• pay their workers less than minimum wage, or
• forego paying them at all, or
• require more than forty hours of work without overtime pay, or
• require work in unsafe conditions

then the employers’ incentive to reach beyond available U.S. workers to find “imported labor” evaporates. Enforcement of existing “worker protection” laws levels the playing field.

Rep. Lamar Smith, the new chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has said that his priorities for immigration will center on job creation and job protection. He will focus on workplace enforcement, consider an expansion of the E-Verify program, and step up enforcement of requirements on employers to hire only workers with appropriate documentation. (The E-Verify program is a digital system that would permit employers to check Social Security records immediately to determine whether a job applicant has a valid Social Security number. FCNL and others have opposed broad implementation of the program because of the high incidence of errors in Social Security records, and the fact that most of those errors occur with non-European names.)

Most immigration bills – and indeed, several other bills – in the past several years have included increased and intensified border enforcement. Now that the military and detention industries have entered that arena, it is reasonable to expect that there will be continued upward pressure for more detention space (offered by contractor Corrections Corporation of America) and more military-style hardware and technology at the border (offered by the major weapons manufacturers.) Spending for border security will likely be exempted from concerns about deficit spending, as the Department of Homeland Security is usually lumped in with the Pentagon in the rhetoric about cutting all discretionary spending – except for “security spending.”

One important signal about the coming agenda is the appointment of Rep. Elton Gallegley of California as the chair of the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration. Firebrand Steve King of Iowa was in line for the post and was widely rumored to be the next subcommittee chair; but Chairman Smith chose a more moderate member, one who has not been a prime champion of some of the more extreme rhetorical demands, such as ending birthright citizenship.

Can we expect anything that will actually fix the system? President Obama, meeting with the leadership of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said he would address immigration reform in the State of the Union address. He still wants to seek reforms in the immigration system. The nation needs answers to current problems such as the millions of people living in the U.S. now without appropriate documentation. Rational solutions to that problem and others may be proposed – but they will very likely be coupled (as they have been in the past) with increased border enforcement and employer-based enforcement.

Will the Dream Act resurface? Possibly, in a modified form. Some of the modifications introduced late in the debate last year already severely limited any financial assistance that non-citizen students might receive under the act – those limitations, at least, would return. A more worrisome development would be the elimination of the education option entirely. Military recruiters still strongly support the bill, and would not be unhappy to see the education path eliminated.

Injunction Granted, Just in Time!

Great news!!

A federal judge has blocked key provisions of S.B. 1070, the controversial immigration law in Arizona that was scheduled to go into effect tomorrow. The judge has blocked the requirement that police have to check the immigration status of anyone they "reasonably suspect" of being in the country without authorization.

A judge grants a preliminary injunction if he or she finds that the case is likely to suffer "irreparable harm" if the judge does not prevent the law (or part of the law) from going into effect. If police in Arizona were to start enforcing S.B. 1070 tomorrow, it would profoundly alter the context in which the lawsuits are considered.

You can read the full decision here.

Still, even though the critical components of S.B. 1070 will not go into effect tomorrow, some of the horrific effects of this discriminatory immigration law are already visible:

• Immigrants - both those with and without papers - have been packing up and fleeing the state in search of safer territory.
• Arizona's economy has plummeted due to a national boycott in which tourism has dropped, conferences have been rescheduled elsewhere, and cities across the country have refused to support business with Arizona.
• U.S. citizens fear being wrongfully deported if they experience racial profiling.
• Well-intentioned police officers in Arizona struggle to determine how to walk a fine line.
  

For more information, see the Detention Watch Network's website about the consequences of S.B. 1070, or see Immigration Policy Institute's new report, "A State of Confusion."

Advocates have been gathering in Arizona to participate in prayer vigils and to consider acts of civil disobedience if the law were to fully come into effect tomorrow. Meanwhile, the private prison industry stands to make a profit from increased arrests, detentions, and deportations - even if the people they detain were picked up due to racial profiling. No matter what, all eyes have been on Arizona.

At FCNL, we welcome the injunction against S.B. 1070. We hope that states considering similar proposals will rethink their positions, given the situation in Arizona at this point. Above all, we urge President Obama and members of Congress to act swiftly to comprehensively reform the broken immigration system, to reassert federal control and restore the U.S. tradition of welcoming immigrants.

In Our Community: Immigration News

It's been a hot, hot week in DC and immigration has been heating up around the country, with Arizona's new immigration law (S.B. 1070) so close to taking effect. Keep up with the news on immigration from Monday, July 19 to Monday, July 26.

On July 24, advocates created their own ICE checkpoint at Netroots Nation, demanding the "papers" of all white conference participants before they would be allowed to enter the cafeteria. This creative direct action drew attention to the problems of racial profiling in immigration enforcement. One of the people who got stopped said, "Even though it was a total satire, it was right on. And you can begin to get a sense of what that would be like to constantly have the fear that you will be asked to produce papers." The checkpoint was inspired by this direct action, posted on YouTube earlier in the year.

Human Rights Watch has published a new report, "Deportation by Default," which addresses the particular vulnerabilities of immigrants with mental disabilities who are held in jail-like detention centers for months or even years. These immigrants do not have the right to a lawyer and they are often unable to represent themselves. Justice is denied. As Sarah Mehta, the report's lead author, says, "Someone who doesn't know their own name or what country they're from is going through some of the most complicated legal proceedings in the United States with no right to assistance, even when everyone in the courtroom knows they need it."

One in five New York public school districts is requiring immigration papers in order for a child to enroll in school, even though the Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that all children, regardless of legal status, must be given equal access to public education. This discriminatory requirement discourages families from bringing their children to school, for fear of being deported.

The Feet in Two Worlds blog has posted an excellent story, "Listening to Both Sides in Arizona's Immigration Debate," which interviews two individuals on different sides of the immigration debate. It's an important reminder of this basic lesson: Listening to one another helps establish trust, which counters the fear that too often drives the conversation on immigration issues.

The TransAfrica Forum has released a new report assessing the conditions in Haiti, now six months after the devastating earthquake. The displacement camps continue to face "atrocious" conditions, with issues such as flooding, gender-based violence, disease, and access to food, water, and housing remaining severe. FCNL worked to secure Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians in the United States, which was granted just after the earthquake.

In Our Community: Immigration News

Grab a cup of coffee and join us in reviewing the immigration news from Monday, July 12 to Monday, July 19:

What's happening in Arizona these days? Immigration Impact offers a closer look at the 7 lawsuits against SB 1070. Unless the court issues an injunction, the new law will go into effect on July 29, a mere ten days from now. Meanwhile, eight states (Michigan, Florida, Alabama, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Virginia) have submitted an amicus brief in support of SB 1070, despite the Justice Department's assertion that the new law is unconstitutional. In addition, Arizona's tourism industry feels the effects of the boycott and managers express uncertainty about whether the downturn in business will continue into 2011.

Grassroots Leadership has published a draft paper, "Operation Streamline: Drowning Justice and Draining Dollars along the Rio Grande." This report lays out concerns with the Operation Streamline policy, which requires all undocumented immigrants apprehended near the border to be detained and processed in the criminal justice system. Operation Streamline overloads federal criminal courts, strains taxpayers' resources, and fails to provide a practical and humane solution for undocumented immigrants seeking entry to the United States.

More on the border: A Washington Post op-ed finds that it costs about $10 billion per year to maintain operations on the US-Mexico border, but increased enforcement actually has some pretty serious unintended consequences - trapping undocumented workers in the United States. TRAC reports that immigration prosecutions are at the highest level they've been since the height of prosecutions under the Bush administration, with more than 10,000 prosecutions in April 2010 alone.

A new immigration detention center is being built in Virginia. Once completed, it will be the largest of its kind in the Mid-Atlantic, holding between 500 and 1000 immigrant detainees. The state anticipates a rapid influx in detainees as it fully implements the Secure Communities program, which scans jail databases for anyone who may be undocumented. This facility, like many across the country, is privately run. It is clear that Secure Communities, a problematic immigration enforcement initiative, will do one job very well: boosting the profit margins of many private prison contractors.

You can read more about the intersection of immigration and the private prison industry here and here.

The New York Times reports on the Obama administration's shift in worksite enforcement, from high-profile raids to so-called "silent raids" in which companies are audited for hiring undocumented workers. The raids of earlier years would detain workers en masse, tear apart families, and deny justice to those who were deported. Audits are certainly more orderly, and they focus on punishing employers rather than employees. Still, without overhauling the immigration system, the economy still requires foreign workers and even well-intentioned employers may struggle to meet those demands while remaining within the bounds of the law.

In Our Community: Immigration News

Image courtesy of WikiMedia Commons

Congress has remained pretty quiet lately on the subject of immigration, but the impacts of the broken immigrations system continue to disrupt our communities. I'll share a bit of news with you from Monday, July 5 to Monday, July 12.

On July 6, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Arizona over S.B. 1070, the new immigration law that would require police officers to check the legal status of anyone they "reasonably suspect" to be an undocumented immigrant. You can read more about it on our "breaking news" blog post from that date. In addition, Attorney General Eric Holder has requested an injunction to prevent S.B. 1070 from going into effect at the end of the month.

In an effort to push back against hate rhetoric in our communities, FCNL has developed a Letters-to-the-Editor Toolkit for you. Letters to the editor take no more time to write than emails to Congress, and by writing for a public forum, you can potentially influence both your state and federal legislators and many of the voters who elect them.

I've been listening to podcasts from a workshop on detention in the United Kingdom, "Meaning & Practice of Immigration Detention - Perspectives from Legal, Social & Political Theory." The lectures examine the legal and political frameworks as well as the social impact of immigration detention and asylum.

Unemployed? We've got a solution for you. Stephen Colbert and the United Farm Workers have teamed up to promote a new tongue-in-cheek campaign, "Take Our Jobs." This campaign hopes to "recruit U.S. citizens and legal residents to fill jobs that frequently go to undocumented farm workers and to urge enactment of immigration reform."

I'll leave you with a wonderful thought piece from Taquiena Boston, the Director of Multicultural Growth and Witness with the Unitarian Universalist Association, who writes:

In multicultural ministry borders or “la frontera” are described as places where encounter, conflict, and transformation can occur when people of faith use our collective power to amplify the voices and concerns of the oppressed. To my mind when Unitarian Universalists voted at the Minneapolis General Assembly to act in solidarity with Puente and others to support immigrant justice, our movement waded into the turbulence of a human rights issue that puts us at odds with the majority of Americans. To paraphrase an African American spiritual, Unitarian Universalists made a commitment to “trouble the borders.”

Now that the U.S. Justice Department has challenged the constitutionality of Arizona’s SB 1070 legislation, I hope that our movement will not think that we can relax our efforts around immigration...

Comprehensive Immigration Bill in House Secures 100 Cosponsors

Families attend the immigration march in DC in March 2010.

Today, Representative Luis Gutierrez (IL) held a press conference to announce that his bill, CIR ASAP (Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity), has secured 100 cosponsors.

FCNL welcomed the introduction of CIR ASAP in December 2009, and we have worked to promote cosponsorship of the bill. Thank you to the thousands of constituents who wrote letters to their representatives urging them to join this comprehensive immigration reform bill. As Rep. Gutierrez said today, the achievement of gaining 100 cosponsors is a "milestone."

The immigration system is broken, and the consequences of inaction are becoming increasingly severe. More than 22 states are considering or have introduced legislation that mimics Arizona's new law, S.B. 1070, against which the Department of Justice will be filing a lawsuit. Families are torn apart on a daily basis and the number of detentions and deportations is skyrocketing.

I'll leave you with a quote from Rep. Gutierrez's press release this morning:

We know the legislative clock is ticking. We know people are getting deported at the highest rate in modern history. We know that the inter-related problems of illegal immigration, clogged and unattainable legal immigration, border security, deportation, detention, and a two-tiered labor market that hurts all workers will not solve themselves... We need a rational solution. We need a practical solution. We need a fair solution.

Senator Franken Introduces HELP Separated Children Act

Today, Senators Al Franken (MN) and Herb Kohl (WI) introduced the Humane Enforcement and Legal Protections (HELP) for Separated Children Act. FCNL is proud to support this legislation. Here is Senator Franken's press release:

Franken, Kohl Introduce HELP Separated Children Act
Legislation Would Ensure Children’s Safety During Immigration Raids

WASHINGTON, D.C. [06/22/10] – Today, U.S. Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) introduced the Humane Enforcement and Legal Protections (HELP) for Separated Children Act to keep kids safe, informed, and accounted for during Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.

According to the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service, 108,434 parents of U.S. citizen children were deported in the past 10 years.

On December 12, 2006, ICE carried out enforcement actions on Swift & Company meatpacking plants in six states, including a plant in Worthington, Minnesota. The raids left numerous children – most of them citizens and legal residents – without their parents and with no way of finding them. One second-grader in Worthington came home that night to find his two-year old brother alone and his mother and father missing. For the next week, the second-grader stayed home to care for his brother while his grandmother traveled to Worthington to meet them.

“Four million U.S. citizen children in our country have at least one undocumented immigrant parent,” said Sen. Franken. “Forty-thousand of those children live in Minnesota. They should not have to live in fear that one day their parents will simply not come home. They deserve much better than being abandoned without explanation.”

“Under no circumstances should children have to fend for themselves. Child welfare is one of my highest priorities and it is essential that children are protected and cared for when their parents are detained,” Sen. Kohl said. “This legislation offers safeguards for children whose parents are placed in federal custody so they are not left on their own.”

On June 22, 2007, ICE agents staged a raid in the Jackson Heights Manufactured Home Park in Shakopee, Minnesota. Early that Friday morning, around 6:00 am, federal agents seized a husband and his wife for suspected immigration violations. They didn’t notice the couple’s daughter, who was sleeping. Later that morning, the seven year-old girl was found wandering the park, looking for her parents. It wasn’t until some neighbors saw her and called the authorities, that she learned what had happened to her mom and dad.

The HELP Separated Children Act strengthens humanitarian protections enacted by the Bush and Obama administrations and extends them to any enforcement action. Specifically, it:

· Keeps state and local authorities in the know. It’s state schools and child welfare agencies that address the aftermath of immigration enforcement actions. Building on existing standards, this bill makes sure that state authorities are notified before or soon after enforcement actions.

· Effectively identifies at-risk kids. Detainees are afraid to tell ICE that they have kids at home. This bill permits child welfare agencies and local NGOs to screen detainees to identify parents and locate at-risk children.

· Allows parents to arrange for care of their children. Detained parents must receive free, confidential calls to arrange for their kids’ care. They should not be transferred unless they know how to contact their kids – and what will happen to them. No matter where they are, parents must be allowed daily calls and regular visits with their children.

· Protects kids during interrogations. Kids should not be forced to witness their parents’ interrogations or translate for ICE agents.

· Allows parents to participate in family court proceedings – and alert authorities to abuse. This bill requires authorities to help detained parents participate in family court proceedings affecting their children. It also gives parents free calls to report child abuse.

· Protects the best interests of children. This bill requires ICE to consider the best interests of children in detention, release, and transfer decisions affecting their parents.

The HELP Separated Children Act is also co-sponsored by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.). Related legislation was introduced in the House by Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.).

In Our Community: Immigration News

Hello again and welcome back to this week's immigration news. I hope you'll understand why I've been absent from the blog for a week or so when you see this photo. I've been traveling in New Mexico for FCNL - and you can read all about my trip right here. To get back in the swing of things, here is your immigration news from Monday, June 14 to Monday, June 21.

We finally have the extremely important news we've all been waiting for - although not, perhaps, announced in the way we would have anticipated. The Department of Justice will file a lawsuit against Arizona's anti-immigrant law. This news was announced by Secretary Clinton, not Attorney General Holder, but administration officials have confirmed the upcoming lawsuit and said that the details are in the works. Arizona SB 1070 is scheduled to go into effect on July 29, and similar bills have been introduced or considered in many states.

The Supreme Court ruled on June 14 that immigrants will not be automatically deported for minor drug offenses. This is a significant step toward ensuring due process protections for immigrants. Stringent anti-immigrant laws passed in 1996 expanded the definition of "aggravated felony" to include minor crimes such as drug possession and shoplifting, and required mandatory deportation for these crimes. Since then, immigrants have been unduly criminalized and deported without adequate judicial review. Now, Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder will protect immigrants from being automatically deported for minor drug offenses.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is overhauling its immigration detention system, and one of its contractors is getting out there early. Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) will modify its nine detention facilities to "soften the conditions of detention" and allow immigrant detainees to wear their own clothes, have lengthy contact visits with their families, and enjoy freer movement within the facility. You can read more about it here, here, and here. But this doesn't mean it's all good - these changes come on the heels of a serious incident in which a CCA guard sexually assaulted several female detainees in Texas.

Border Patrol is taking its operations to new heights - literally. CBP has received authorization to launch unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) on the border in Texas. These drones will provide surveillance for border agents to intercept smugglers and migrants. Let's not lose sight of the fact that drones are also conducting attacks in Pakistan with serious civilian casualties. The use of drones on the U.S.-Mexico line is one more step in the direction of militarization of the border.

I'll leave you with a story. Many people say immigrants should just "get in line" to come to the United States legally, but for those who try to do so, it can be near impossible. Shari Feldman and Inderjit Singh, as the New York Times reports, have spent nearly 17 years in immigration limbo as they try to prove the veracity of their marriage to immigration authorities. USCIS's efforts to prevent marriage fraud can go too far - home inspections, invasive questioning, and tricky documentation requirements often keep legitimate couples from getting green cards.

In Our Community: Immigration News

The heat from Arizona continues to radiate, so check out the news on immigration from Monday, May 3 to Monday, May 10:

At FCNL, we see the outrageous Arizona law as a wake-up call to Washington. On April 29, five senators introduced a framework for immigration reform, which was met with mixed reactions from advocates. The framework, intended to prompt bipartisan talks, has yet to yield such cooperation. We can't afford to have politicians use immigration reform as a political football to score points against one another. Write to your senators today to urge them to support humane, comprehensive immigration reform.

As Congress remains bound by hyper-partisan politics, states mimicking Arizona continue to take immigration law into their own hands. Minnesota just introduced legislation modeled exactly on the Arizona law. Eleven other states are considering similar legislation: Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pensylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Utah. Recent polling shows that the overwhelming majority of Americans think the immigration system should be overhauled, but without decisive federal action to build a realistic legal immigration system, our civil rights will continue to be trampled.

However, in two cases, officials are standing up to say NO. In New York, Governor Paterson announced that the state would consider pardons for people subject to "embarrassingly and wrongly inflexible" immigration laws. In DC, the City Council unanimously supports a boycott of Arizona and opposes the District's participation in misguided immigration enforcement programs - for more, see my blog post on the resolutions.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, best known for his courageous efforts to promote reconciliation following South Africa's apartheid, has a message for you: Arizona is not the solution. I strongly encourage you to read his entire article, excerpted here:

Abominations such as apartheid do not start with an entire population suddenly becoming inhumane. They start here. They start with generalizing unwanted characteristics across an entire segment of a population. They start with trying to solve a problem by asserting superior force over a population. They start with stripping people of rights and dignity - such as the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty - that you yourself enjoy. Not because it is right, but because you can. And because somehow, you think this is going to solve a problem.

I'll leave you with an exciting tidbit - Arizona rappers have collaborated to protest the new law requiring racial profiling. Props to these brave artists for reminding us all that hip hop can still break through commercial ties and speak truth to power. Check out their music video here:

Proud to Live in the District

The D.C. Council took a momentous step on Tuesday to stand up for immigrants' rights.

Council member Phil Mendelson introduced a bill that would block Washington, D.C. from participating in the Secure Communities program. He was met with unanimous support from the rest of the D.C. Council.

Secure Communities is a local immigration enforcement program requires police officers to check the fingerprints of anyone they're booking into jail against a national database to confirm their legal status. Of course, this opens the way for racial profiling because Secure Communities checks people's status at the point of arrest, not the point of conviction. So, the program creates incentives for pretextual arrests (for minor violations like a broken tail light - the quintissential "driving while brown" violation).

As part of ICE's efforts to detain at least 400,000 people annually, the agency has been rolling out Secure Communities and plans to go nationwide in the next few years. The D.C. Council's move to block implementation in the District constitutes the first time that a city has stood up and refused to participate.

As Mendelson said, "The Metropolitan Police Department has its hands full dealing with violent crimes in the District, and the issue of immigration is not the MPD's responsibility."

Another first: The D.C. Council also announced its unanimous support for divesting from Arizona and banning city workers from traveling to the state on official business.

In Our Community: Immigration News

The new Arizona law, and the corresponding need for decisive federal action on immigration reform legislation, continue to make headlines across the nation. So, grab a seat, buckle up, and get ready for key updates from Monday, April 26 to Monday, May 3.

The new Arizona law, which requires police officers to stop anyone who they "reasonably suspect" to be an undocumented immigrant, has been broadly criticized for permitting racial profiling. Its opponents include President Obama, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, members of Congress, the Arizona association of chiefs of police, the mayor of Phoenix, the sheriff of Pima County, many American Indians, many religious groups, immigrants rights organizations, civil liberties advocates, and more. Al Sharpton says that he is organizing "freedom walkers" to march on Arizona. Click here to learn how you can take action to oppose rampant racial profiling in Arizona.

Critics of the new Arizona law are calling for economic boycotts of the state. This means avoiding traveling to Arizona and choosing not to purchase products from companies based in Arizona. Several cities have already chosen to divest from Arizona while others - including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington DC - are considering doing so. You can do your part: See this website for easy ways to participate in the boycott.

Please note: Arizona will likely face a number of lawsuits to stop the implementation of the new law - but some recent changes to the new law may make it harder to litigate. Meanwhile, seven states are considering similar legislation.

While all eyes are on Arizona, let's not forget that immigration enforcement is out-of-control on the federal level too. Bill Quigley, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, has an excellent op-ed on the "Secure Communities" program which also leaves the door open for racial profiling. In addition, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has released a new report on immigration detention in New Jersey - and the New York Times is shocked at their findings.

Finally, last Thursday, Senators Reid, Schumer, Menendez, Durbin, and Feinstein introduced a draft framework for an immigration reform bill. Senator Menendez, in particular, spoke eloquently about the need for Congress to take action. You can watch the video clip of his speech at the press conference here. FCNL's statement on the framework is available here.

383,524 and Counting

Last year, 383,524 immigrants were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency within the Department of Homeland Security responsible for enforcing immigration laws. That's over a third of a million people.

For the sake of comparison, the number of Quakers worldwide is about 360,000.

Immigration detention has drastically expanded in the past fifteen years. The number of immigrants held annually in jail-like detention facilities has tripled since 1996. Even under the Obama administration, these numbers keep on rising.

To justify this dramatic increase, ICE officials have repeatedly stated that the agency focuses on arresting, detaining, and deporting "dangerous criminal aliens" who pose a threat to public safety or national security.

Now, a recent ICE memo leaked to the press indicates that ICE is trying to arrest and detain as many people as possible - not just dangerous criminals - in order to meet quotas. According to the memo, ICE has set a goal of detaining at least 400,000 immigrants in 2010. To meet this goal, the memo continues, ICE plans to ramp up efforts to catch undocumented immigrants who had never committed a violent crime - because they can be deported more quickly than those with criminal backgrounds. (ICE later withdrew the memo but declined to offer a public explanation for why it had originally been issued.)

To catch more non-criminal immigrants, ICE relies on controversial local enforcement programs. These programs authorize police officers to enforce immigration laws. As a recent governmental report indicates, local enforcement programs lack oversight and have resulted in the widespread use of racial profiling.

As a result, more people get trapped in the broken immigration system every year. Immigration prosecutions have skyrocketed in recent years, overwhelming the courts. Immigration judges lack the resources to process immigration cases in a timely manner. Tens of thousands of immigrants languish in detention facilities as they wait for their cases to be heard, costing taxpayers millions of dollars.


Yet ICE continues to insist that its methods are justified.

This is backwards reasoning. Taxpayers' money should not be wasted on expensive and ineffective enforcement programs. You can't deport your way into a workable immigration system.

We've tried the enforcement-only approach, and it doesn't work. We urgently need immigration reform in order to create a legal immigration system that works for everyone.

Urge your members of Congress to support immigration reform. FCNL has created a new set of talking points for you to use when you contact your senators and representatives. Write a letter to your representative or schedule a lobby visit with your senator today!

To learn more about immigration reform, read FCNL's Statement of Principles on Immigration Reform. Stay up to date by signing up for our Immigration Network list serve, which distributes monthly updates about FCNL's work on immigration.

In Our Community: Immigration News

Welcome back to your local source of up-to-date immigration news. Here is the news on immigration from Monday, March 29 to Monday, April 5. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy!

Did you know that 383,000 people were detained in immigration jails in 2009? And that ICE plans to detain more than 400,000 people in 2010? The Washington Post leaked a memo from high-ranking officials within ICE, indicating that ICE is trying to arrest and detain as many people as possible - not just dangerous criminals - in order to meet quotas. This memo caused an uproar in the civil rights advocacy community. ICE has a serious and urgent question to answer: Who does the agency focus on - "dangerous criminals" or simply people who look "foreign"?

ICE's enforcement programs cast an extremely wide net, dragging in not only undocumented immigrants who have not committed any crimes but also green card holders and even US citizens. These programs, often implemented by police officers, lack critical oversight measures and often lead to discrimination. The DHS Inspector General just released a report revealing the fundamental flaws of the 287(g) program, which deputizes state and local law enforcement agencies to enforce immigration laws. Federal immigration law should only be enforced by federal agents, so that the police can focus on protecting their communities. FCNL maintains that the 287(g) program should be immediately terminated.

Immigration detention facilities are terrifying places to be detained, and all the more so if you are coping with a disability or a history of trauma. A recent report from the New York Times reveals that immigrants with disabilities are routinely mistreated - denied medication, transferred to detention facilities far away from their families, and deported without proper arrangements for care. In other news, we recently learned that 30 Haitian survivors of the earthquake were shuffled onto planes, taken to the US, then detained in Florida even though deportations to Haiti have been suspended indefinitely. Advocates rushed to the cause and half of this group has been released; the fate of the others remains to be seen.

But enough about detention - what's happening on the border? Even though DHS Secretary Napolitano recently halted any further construction of a virtual fence on the border, some politicians still think that militarizing the border is the right answer. On March 29, Senator McCain (AZ) called for the National Guard to be sent to the border to protect US citizens. Such a deployment would set a dangerous precedent. The US is not at war with Mexico and militarizing the border is no substitute for the creation of a workable immigration policy that allows people to migrate in a legal, orderly manner. Senator McCain should push for immigration reform, not troops.

The search continues for a second Republican to introduce an immigration reform bill in the Senate, with Senators Schumer (NY) and Graham (SC). Meanwhile, FCNL has created new talking points and a revised statement of principles on immigration reform. You can share these with your members of Congress and urge them to support just, humane immigration reform.

Concerned? So Are We.

Shouldn't immigration quotas be a thing of the past, abandoned to the judgment of historians?

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) doesn't think so.

This agency, which is part of Homeland Security, is responsible for enforcing immigration laws. But there's a catch. John Morton, the director of ICE, has stated repeatedly that ICE's goal is to track down and deport "dangerous criminals." Recently, it has become clear that Morton's statements are disconnected from the reality of immigration enforcement on the ground.

This internal ICE memo, leaked by the Washington Post, indicates that ICE is trying to arrest and detain as many people as possible - not just dangerous criminals - in order to meet quotas.

The explanation goes like this: Last year, ICE detained 387,000 people and this year the agency has received a budgetary increase. So, in order to justify the increase in funding, ICE has set a goal of detaining at least 400,000 people in 2010. (ICE later withdrew the memo but declined to offer a public explanation for why it had originally been issued.)

This is backwards reasoning. Taxpayers' money should not be wasted on expensive and ineffective enforcement programs. You can't deport your way into a reasonable immigration policy.

ICE has a serious and urgent question to answer. Who does the agency focus on - "dangerous criminals" or simply people who look "foreign"?

ICE should offer clarifications, immediately, on how the agency's goals align with its methods.

In addition, oversight of ICE's local enforcement programs should be established. Asking ICE to police itself would be unreasonable. Therefore, Congress should pass detention reform bills - S. 1549, S. 1550, and H.R. 1215 - which would ensure adequate protections for U.S. citizens, green card holders, and all who are unfairly punished by harsh and discriminatory ICE policies.

In Our Community: Immigration News

As the snow melts in DC and the cherry blossoms are on the verge of appearing, we're renewing our efforts to urge Congress to support immigration reform. To get the latest updates, just keep on reading! Here is your news on immigration from Monday, March 1 to Monday, March 8.

We've been working to drum up support for the CIR ASAP bill (H.R. 4321), a bill which proposes humane reforms for the immigration system. This bill would help keep families together, allow undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows, and protect immigrants civil and human rights. We just got another cosponsor, putting the total at 94! Let's try to break 100. You can help push reforms forward by contacting your representative today!

You may have seen advertisements about the Census, and we're encouraging everyone to participate. In order to make sure that communities get fair representation and federal funds, it is important to get an accurate Census count. Please talk to your neighbors to check if they're filling out their forms!

Prepare to be scanned, weighed, and valued: Congress may soon expand the reach of the controversial E-Verify program, which would check the identities of new employees against a national database in order to confirm their immigration status. However, E-Verify raises concerns about accuracy, privacy, and fairness. Expanding workplace enforcement is no substitution for real immigration reform, which would allow workers to come to the US legally in line with the real needs of the US economy. Marc Rosenblum has more in this opinion piece.

The Obama administration is working on overhauling the immigration detention system and advocates are cautiously supportive of this initiative. However, the majority of detention facilities are run by private contractors, not the federal government. How will these contractors be held accountable? Watch this video to learn more.

Meanwhile, thousands of immigrants - the vast majority of whom are non-criminal - continue to be detained and deported without access to a fair trial. Minnesota Public Radio reports on one man's struggle to remain in the United States so he could support his children. Spoiler alert: This story, unlike many others, actually has a happy ending!

In Our Community: Immigration News

Hello again and welcome to this week's edition of In Our Community: Immigration News. Here are highlights from Monday, February 15th to Monday, February 22nd. Grab a cup of coffee and happy reading!

Electoral calculations are starting already and politicians on both sides of the aisle are taking note of growing Hispanic voting power. The Hispanic population in the United States is the fastest growing voting demographic. In the upcoming 2010 elections, politicians are going to need to take seriously the demands and concerns of immigrant communities. Two articles (available here and here) indicate that, in order to win votes, conservatives may need to shift from cracking down on the border to supporting comprehensive immigration reform. Recent polling shows that 82% of Hispanics feel strongly about immigration reform.

The Interfaith Immigration Coalition, of which FCNL is a member, launched an immigration reform campaign last week by delivering hundreds of thousands of postcards to members of Congress. This article in the Miami Herald discusses why immigration reform is important to people of faith. As one faith leader says, "This is important to us Christians, not just because we are immigrants or sons or daughters of immigrants... We have been called to treat the foreigners among us justly and to love our neighbor.''

Protestors regularly gather outside the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, WA, to protest the harsh treatment and unnecessary detention of immigrants at this jail-like facility. The NWDC has become one of the largest detention centers in the country. It holds about 1000 immigrant detainees at a time, the majority of which have never committed a crime and are being held for immigration violations only. FCNL supports alternatives to detention for these immigrants as they wait for their cases to be heard in immigration courts.

It is still not clear how the Department of Homeland Security defines "criminal alien," which is the term most commonly used for immigrants held in jail-like detention centers. Some say that an individual must be convicted of a crime to be considered a "criminal alien," while others say they just have to be accused of or suspected of a crime. If this is the measure by which enforcement programs are being justified, some clarity is urgently needed. In addition, reports show that the vast majority of immigrant detainees are noncriminal or have committed minor crimes, not the serious ones that you would be led to believe. For more information on how immigrants end up in detention, see two recent fact sheets - available here and here.

Think that areas with significant immigrant populations are more vulnerable to crime? Think again. This interesting article in The American Conservative sets the record straight, demonstrating that Hispanics have approximately the same crime rates as whites of the same age. Want to share this information with others? The Immigration Policy Center has a brief fact sheet breaking down the popular myth that immigrants are dangerous criminals.

In Our Community: Immigration News

Hello again and welcome back to your local source for immigration news! We're still digging out after more than 40 inches of snow fell in DC last week. To catch us up a bit, here are highlights from Monday, February 8 to Tuesday, February 16. Happy reading!

The faith community continues to push for comprehensive immigration reform, delivering tens of thousands of postcards to members of Congress and coordinating prayer vigils across the country. More than 100 faith events will be held in February, from South Carolina to Washington State. The Interfaith Immigration Coalition has made available an organizing guide so that you, too, can gather your community together to raise awareness about the need for reform.

Without comprehensive immigration reform, the broken immigration system creates headaches and difficulties for employers and employees alike. Two new articles - available here and here - document the challenges facing foreign farm workers, who would benefit directly from a comprehensive reform bill. Workers, compelled out of economic necessity to immigrate without the proper documents, face poor working conditions and low wages. Employers, under pressure to increase wages and fulfill Labor Department rules, struggle to keep their businesses viable. The one thing they all agree on? The time for reform is now.

Workers aren't the only ones suffering - families divided by immigration laws face serious hardships in raising their children. This heartbreaking article from the New York Times documents the life of Elizabeth Encalada. Her husband, an immigrant from Ecuador, was ordered back to his home country. He then killed himself upon learning that he would be unable to return to the United States to reunite with his family. The family visa system is clogged with applications, compelling families who play by the rules to turn to desperate measures.

The Immigration Policy Center has released a special report, "Many Happy Returns," on how remittances can help Haiti recover and strengthen the U.S. economy. Many of this country's immigrants send a large chunk of their earnings back to their families and communities in their country of origin. On the surface, it might seem like this money is just disappearing from the U.S. economy, but really, it boosts U.S. participation in the global economy.

A federal judge asks whether it's worth the cost of prosecuting non-criminal immigrants, and a new report by TRAC indicates that the majority of immigrants held in detention centers by ICE have never been convicted of any crime. Even though ICE claims to focus on non-citizens who pose a real threat to public safety, the numbers tell a different story. ICE's director, John Morton, says, "This isn't a question of whether or not we will detain people. We will detain people, and we will detain them on a grand scale." Morton's comment leads us to ask, "But why?"

But don't let me leave you with a rhetorical question - ask the government yourself! The Department of Homeland Security has created an "Open Government" website and they want your input. From now until March 19, you can submit ideas and questions to DHS about how to increase transparency about how the agency manages the immigration detention system.

In Our Community: Immigration News

With the State of the Union and the release of the federal budget, this week has been a busy time for folks in Washington, DC. With that, take a look at the news on immigration from Monday, January 25 to Monday, February 1. Happy reading!

The State of the Union was this past Wednesday and if you stuck around until the end, you heard President Obama put in a brief word on the need to keep working to fix the broken immigration system. Here, Immigration Impact bloggers offer their own interpretation of the speech. In response, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (IL), the author of the CIR ASAP bill to comprehensively reform the immigration system, wrote a powerful op-ed piece calling on Congress to take action.

Here at FCNL, we're urging you to do your part to advance President Obama's vision by organizing a prayer vigil in your community this February. By standing together in solidarity with our immigrant neighbors, we can show that we still believe that immigration reform can't wait. Take a look at the Interfaith Immigration Coalition's planning guide to coordinate your own prayer vigil today!

On Monday, January 25, DHS Assistant Secretary John Morton spoke at the Migration Policy Institute about his plans to overhaul the immigration detention system. Morton is working to create a civil detention system that would replace the jail-like model that currently detains over 30,000 immigrants a day. While we welcome the administration's commitment to reform, we urge Assistant Secretary Morton and his team to work diligently to determine who really needs to be held in detention facilities and who can be released.

As Victoria Lopez writes in the Arizona Daily Star, the immigration detention system lacks transparency and accountability. Many facilities, like this one in Georgia, are run by private prison corporations, which lack the training and oversight to manage a population of civil immigrant detainees. In Colorado, protestors and our friends with the American Friends Service Committee gather regularly outside the Aurora detention facility.

Detention reforms will become all the more important as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) expands their Secure Communities program throughout the country. This program, which checks fingerprints in local jails against an immigration database, is meant to capture high-level criminals who are in violation of immigration laws. Instead, Secure Communities ends up focusing primarily on nonviolent offenders, who get caught in the net and may then be detained and deported. Nationally, Secure Communities accounts for about 40% of the immigrants held in jail-like detention centers that are known for human rights abuses.

The United States and the international community continue to respond to the disaster in Haiti by providing emergency humanitarian relief. The extreme devastation has left people across the country wondering, What more can we do? An op-ed in the Washington Post opines that the U.S. government should accelerate visa processing for Haitians who have family members in the United States. Many of these visa applicants have been waiting four years or more to reunite with their loved ones.

Rep. Gutierrez Responds to State of the Union

Today, Representative Luis Gutierrez (IL), author of the CIR ASAP bill introduced in December in the House, wrote a powerful op-ed piece in the Huffington Post.

Rep. Gutierrez expressed concern that President Obama "did not go far enough for the four million American citizen children whose parents face deportation; the millions of Americans waiting to be reunited with loved ones overseas; hardworking Americans whose security is undermined in the workplace; women who are physically and sexually exploited on the floors of meatpacking plants; or the $1.5 trillion lacking from our Gross Domestic Product, all in the absence of real reform."

He argues, "Congress cannot wait for the President to lay out our timeline for comprehensive reform." His bill, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Act of 2009, would fix the broken immigration system by keeping families together, allowing immigrants to integrate more fully into society, and protecting immigrants from detention.

To show to Congress that you support comprehensive immigration reform, urge your representative to co-sponsor CIR ASAP.

I'll leave you with one other quote from Rep. Gutierrez's article. He writes:

"They care that we do the job we've been elected to do. But if we walk away from the tough fights --like immigration reform-- because it's hard or because it's politically risky, we're not just writing our own political eulogy; we're sentencing millions of families to a life of injustice."

In Our Community: Immigration News

With the State of the Union coming up this Wednesday, people across the country are reflecting on President Obama's first year in office. While health care and the economy are understandably the first issues on everyone's mind, let's not lose sight of the ongoing injustices against our neighbors. Immigrant families' burdens may be less visible, but they are no less significant. With that in mind, here is the news on immigration from Monday, January 18 to Monday, January 25.

Having granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Haitian immigrants on January 15, the Obama administration has now started the registration process. Haitians who are already in the United States can now apply to stay and work here for the next 18 months as Haiti recovers from the earthquake. The U.S. government is also offering humanitarian relief for Haitian orphans who are already in adoption proceedings, allowing them an accelerated path to come to the United States from Haiti.

However, most Haitians are unable to enter the United States. Advocates and certain members of Congress are now urging the Obama administration to allow two groups of Haitians to immigrate: individuals with family members legally in the United States, and children in need of emergency medical care. While it is unlikely that Congress or the Department of Homeland Security will act on these recommendations, the international community continues to provide emergency humanitarian relief to the people of Haiti.

On the state level, undocumented immigrants in Nebraska received an unwelcome surprise -- the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services announced that around 1,000 pregnant women who are undocumented will no longer receive prenatal services through the federal-state Medicaid program. These individuals will lose their benefits starting in March. At that point, Medicaid in Nebraska will only cover the cost of the delivery and the cost of treating emergency complications of pregnancy for undocumented women.

As for news on the U.S.-Mexico border, the New York Times has just published an article highlighting the damaging effects of the so-called "border war" on Indian reservations. The Tohono O'odham Nation spans the border and has become host to a number of unwelcome visitors, including Border Patrol agents and drug smugglers. Residents report even being afraid to walk in the desert during daylight for fear of running into members of the drug cartel or being caught in the middle of border security operations. The border militarization has caused residents to live in a perpetual state of fear -- as a result, residents recently agreed to create a "virtual fence" along the border, which they had previously been able to cross without disruption.

The immigration detention system continues to play host to a variety of abuses. On Tuesday, ICE agents clad in riot gear forcibly disrupted a detainee hunger strike at the Varick Street detention facility in Manhattan. About 100 immigrant detainees had gone on a hunger strike to protest detention policies and practices. ICE responded with force, using pepper spray on detainees, taking many to solitary confinement cells as punishment, and transferring about 17 to immigration detention centers in other states. This unwarranted use of force against unarmed detainees engaging in nonviolent protest should not be tolerated.

This episode comes on the tail of a recent article in the New York Times revealing that immigration officials have strenuously tried to cover up the broken immigration system -- most shockingly, by covering up the deaths of immigrants held in jail-like detention centers. Rigorous studies have shown that detention alone puts immigrants at higher risk of mental illness. What's more, as NPR reported, most detainees are non-violent yet cannot afford to make bail -- and most immigrant detainees can't even afford a lawyer. The poor standards, lack of oversight and transparency, and tolerance of mistreatment in immigration jails should no longer be treated as business-as-usual.

For those of you concerned about immigrant families being separated because of the broken immigration system, the Immigration Policy Center has put out a new report for you. This short report outlines the key principles for family immigration within the context of comprehensive immigration reform.

Finally, the Center for American Progress reports on a new poll showing that the public still continues to support comprehensive immigration reform. In fact, 87% of respondents supported a path to legal status and eventual citizenship for undocumented immigrants, as long as they completed non-punitive requirements like paying taxes and learning English. This kind of legalization program would put an end to today's two-tier society which treats undocumented immigrants as second-class contributors to society.