ICE Halts Deportation At ACLU’s Request

By Judicial Watch
May 19, 2011

In the latest collusion between the Obama Administration and the leftwing American Civil Liberties Union, Homeland Security officials have suspended the scheduled deportation of an illegal immigrant at the ACLU’s request.

The move is part of a bigger plan to perhaps eliminate the federal program (Secure Communities) that identified the illegal alien in the first place. The influential open borders movement—which includes the ACLU—has aggressively pressured the administration to nix Secure Communities, which requires local authorities to check the fingerprints of arrestees against a federal database. The idea is to deport dangerous criminals, many of whom have fallen through the cracks over the years.

But immigrant rights advocates insist the program is racist, has led to the removal of hard-working immigrants who contribute to society and has tragically separated families. They want the Obama Administration to get rid of it and that could very well happen as the president panders for votes in 2012. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General announced this week that it’s planning an investigation of Secure Communities.

The probe will determine the extent to which the program is used to identify and remove dangerous criminal aliens from the United States, according to a news report of the inspector general’s plans. The IG will also examine cost and the accuracy of the data collection and determine if Secure Communities is being applied “equitably across communities.”

Those who dare to read between the lines can probably see where this is going. The illegal immigrant whose deportation was abruptly halted by the government headlined an ACLU-sponsored press conference decrying Secure Communities. She was arrested earlier this year in Los Angeles after a domestic violence dispute and was identified as an illegal alien when the county jail forwarded her fingerprints to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

At the ACLU’s behest ICE conducted a “comprehensive review” of the illegal immigrant’s case and determined to “terminate the removal proceedings against her,” according to an agency statement published in a local newspaper. Immigration advocates used the case as an opportunity to chastise Secure Communities as a “destructive program” that endangers public safety because immigrants won’t cooperate with police out of fear of being deported.

Interestingly, the elected sheriff who operates jails in Los Angeles and patrols a huge chunk of the sprawling county insists that Secure Communities works. In a piece published this week by the state’s largest newspaper, L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca writes that many serious criminals have been deported. Prior to implementing Secure Communities a “growing number of criminal illegal immigrants who were taken into custody” were eventually released back into the community, according to Baca who has been sheriff since 1998.

In the piece Baca offers several examples of violent illegal aliens who were removed from the U.S. thanks to Secure Communities. Among them is a felon who lived in the area despite three drug-trafficking convictions and six deportations and another who had been previously removed after getting convicted for killing a child in the late 1990s.

Back to the unscrupulous collaboration between the Obama Administration and the ACLU; earlier this year Judicial Watch uncovered documents from the Department of Justice that show the agency worked hand-in-hand with the ACLU in mounting their respective legal challenges to Arizona’s immigration control law.

http://www.themoralliberal.com/2011/05/19/ice-halts-deportation-at-aclu%E2%80%99s-request/

Iowa immigration raid case scrutinized

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immig1-2008aug01,0,7416056.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Iowa immigration raid case scrutinized

U.S. prosecutors' rapid-fire court processing may have violated the rights of hundreds of workers arrested at a meatpacking plant in May, the ACLU says.By Nicole GaouetteLos Angeles Times Staff Writer

August 1, 2008

WASHINGTON — Justice Department officials who prosecuted hundreds of illegal immigrants arrested at an Iowa meatpacking plant in May used a government-created manual to speed through guilty pleas, a potential violation of the rights of those detained in the raid, the American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday.

The manual was assembled before the workers were arrested or their lawyers were appointed. It lays out suggested guilty pleas for the arrested workers and specifies how they should waive their legal rights.

It includes detailed scripts for judges and lawyers to recite.

One suggests the judge say, "I want each of you to state your name, so I'll know who you are."

The manual ends with forms for sentencing and deportation.

ACLU lawyers said the scripts and the rapid-fire sentencing procedure had raised concerns that the Bush administration subverted fundamentals of legal justice in its push for an enforcement victory.

"The government's tactics really undermined the constitutional protections of due process and presumption of innocence," ACLU staff attorney Monica Ramirez said.