National Report Condemns Secure Communities Program: Law Enforcement Experts and Victims of S-Comm Conclude Program Should Be Ended

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Keith Rushing, Communications Manager

(p) 202.591.3305 (c) 202.557-4291

August 16, 2011, Washington, D.C. – Today Rights Working Group along with other national and community-based organizations who came together as the National Community Advisory Commission released a substantive report condemning the Secure Communities program and calling for its termination.
 
The report by the Commission comes on the heels of the Department of Homeland Security’s [DHS] announcement earlier this month that Secure Communities is mandated to be implemented nationwide in 2013 and that joint agreements with state jurisdictions are being terminated.

The Commission was created last month because of concerns that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s [ICE] announced task force would not examine Secure Communities’ impact on racial profiling and concerns about police-community relations and safety raised by immigrant rights, human rights, civil rights and liberties groups. The concerns led to the creation of the National Community Advisory Commission, led by the National Day Labor Organizing Network, to provide information about issues of human rights, civil rights and liberties and safety that are being ignored by the DHS task force.

The formation of the commission led to the drafting of the National Community Advisory Commission’s report, led by the National Day Labor Organizing Network, to take into consideration issues of human rights, civil rights and liberties and safety that are being ignored by the DHS task force.

In addition to recommending that Secure Communities be ended, the authors of the report recommend: that the DHS Office of the Inspector General’s current audit of Secure Communities be completed, that the Department of Justice begin its own investigation into the mysterious role of the FBI in Secure Communities, and that states not be compelled to share biometric data with ICE.
 
The report includes testimony from former District Attorney of New York Robert Morgenthau, heads of law enforcement, and victims of Secure Communities, such as Isaura in Los Angeles whose 911 call for help resulted in her deportation proceedings.
 
In contrast to the DHS appointed taskforce, which has failed to enlist the voices of affected communities, scholars, or critics of Secure Communities, this report constitutes a real deliberative and representative review of the program.
  
The following statement can be attributed to the National Community Advisory Commission:

“This report confirms what immigrant communities have long known. The program called Secure Communities results in the opposite. Entangling local police in immigration enforcement is not just bad policy as the experts testify. Conscripting local police into immigration enforcement has provoked a massive civil rights crisis our country now faces. The only suitable approach is to end Secure Communities.”

“This Administration can no longer continue to stand by Secure Communities,” said Margaret Huang, executive director of the Rights Working Group, a member of the Commission. “By continuing to support this program they are sanctioning racial profiling, eroding the trust local law enforcement agencies have built with communities of color and showing the international community that our immigration system does not respect the basic human rights of all persons in our country.”

The report is available here.

The Commission includes:  American Friends Service Committee, Project Voice New England, Asian Law Caucus, CASA de Maryland, CENTRO de Igualdad y Derechos, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, Detention Watch Network, Grassroots Leadership, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, National Day Laborer Organizing Network, National Immigrant Justice Center, National Immigration Law Center, National Immigration Project of the National Lawyer’s Guild, Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, Rights Working Group, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, and We-Count! 

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