Three States Short of a Secure Community
By PETER H. SCHUCK
NYT
EARLIER this month, New York and Massachusetts joined Illinois in withdrawing from Secure Communities, the promising immigration enforcement program that the Obama administration hopes to extend nationwide by 2013. The effort, begun in 2008 and since expanded to nearly 1,800 jurisdictions in 43 states and territories, links federal, state and local arrest data with the immigration status and fingerprint records of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency; the agency then uses that information to decide whether to deport lawbreakers.
The idea behind Secure Communities is to focus enforcement on those immigrants who pose the greatest public safety threat. The program is far from perfect — immigration officials sometimes deport minor offenders, like traffic law violators, rather than the more serious criminals, who should be the top priority. But by withdrawing from the program, these states are weakening an essential immigration enforcement tool rather than working to improve it.
Indeed, in many ways Secure Communities is already the sort of program on which people on all sides of the debate should be able to agree: it piggybacks on existing technology and databases, and it lets federal agents decide how to proceed, rather than relying on state and local police officers with little knowledge of immigration law. It fits seamlessly into established booking routines, and requires no extra input from localities or training for their officials.
Even so, many immigrant advocacy groups that pay lip service to the need for vigorous enforcement oppose Secure Communities and almost any measure that might actually increase deportations, without proposing any effective enforcement alternatives. Supporters of Secure Communities respond that the government should deport even relatively minor offenders, so long as they are here illegally.
(More here.)
NYT
EARLIER this month, New York and Massachusetts joined Illinois in withdrawing from Secure Communities, the promising immigration enforcement program that the Obama administration hopes to extend nationwide by 2013. The effort, begun in 2008 and since expanded to nearly 1,800 jurisdictions in 43 states and territories, links federal, state and local arrest data with the immigration status and fingerprint records of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency; the agency then uses that information to decide whether to deport lawbreakers.
The idea behind Secure Communities is to focus enforcement on those immigrants who pose the greatest public safety threat. The program is far from perfect — immigration officials sometimes deport minor offenders, like traffic law violators, rather than the more serious criminals, who should be the top priority. But by withdrawing from the program, these states are weakening an essential immigration enforcement tool rather than working to improve it.
Indeed, in many ways Secure Communities is already the sort of program on which people on all sides of the debate should be able to agree: it piggybacks on existing technology and databases, and it lets federal agents decide how to proceed, rather than relying on state and local police officers with little knowledge of immigration law. It fits seamlessly into established booking routines, and requires no extra input from localities or training for their officials.
Even so, many immigrant advocacy groups that pay lip service to the need for vigorous enforcement oppose Secure Communities and almost any measure that might actually increase deportations, without proposing any effective enforcement alternatives. Supporters of Secure Communities respond that the government should deport even relatively minor offenders, so long as they are here illegally.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home