Activists Press Council to Limit D.C.’s Involvement with Immigration Detainers

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Human rights, civil rights, immigrant rights and labor groups rallied last week outside the city’s Wilson Building, to urge the D.C. City Council to maintain its historic role of leadership in creating laws that protect immigrants.

Activists packed council chambers at a city council hearing at the district's Wilson Building to support an act that would impose limits on the way the city complies with federal immigration authorities in detaining undocumented migrants.

As part of an effort to use local and state police to enforce immigration law, federal immigration officials issue detainer requests to local law enforcement agencies when they learn an alleged undocumented migrant is in a local jail. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issues the request so the alleged undocumented migrant can be transferred by immigration authorities to a detention facility for deportation proceedings.

The Immigration Detainer Compliance Amendment Act of 2011 would ensure that D.C. is complying with its requirements under federal law but not going beyond those requirements, voluntarily, to assist immigration authorities in detaining undocumented migrants.

If passed, the Act would ensure that local jails will not facilitate the deportation of D.C. residents with only minor or old criminal convictions. Furthermore, the Act would make sure that the district only holds individuals for transfer to the immigration detention and deportation system if they are currently in custody because of a conviction for a specified set of serious crimes, or, if they have been convicted of such crimes within recent years.

Additionally, the Act would:

• Guarantee that the District’s youth who are under 21 are not transferred to the immigration detention system from local jails.
• Require that the federal government reimburse the District for the costs associated with any immigration detainer requests it complies with.

This law would be a benefit to anyone interested in public safety and building strong relationships between communities of color and police. When city residents see local police and jails turning over their family members and friends to immigration authorities the trust between those communities and police erodes.  Police need the cooperation of all communities to report and help them solve crimes.

The city has a track record of taking steps to limit its entanglement in immigration enforcement. Last year, City Council voted to opt out of the Department of Homeland Security's Secure Communities program and Mayor Vincent Gray signed an executive order that sought to keep city employees from involvement with immigration enforcement initiatives that weren’t required by federal law.

--By Keith Rushing

--Photo from September 27, 2011 rally in support of the detainer bill outside the WIlson Building.