Fox News Latino
31 August 2011
Chicago – With a call to "be patient and be careful," U.S. Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez and pro-immigrant groups announced Tuesday a national information campaign about the significance of the Department of Homeland Security's new deportations policy.
The first forum will be held Sept. 10 at Chicago's Benito Juarez High School, where the Illinois Democrat will be able to provide the first-hand information he expects to obtain next week at a meeting with John Morton, director de Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Gutierrez discussed the information campaign in a press conference at the Chicago headquarters of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
While the DHS decision to review the cases of 300,000 people in the process of deportation is "not everything we asked for," it does represent progress "after so much bad news," the lawmaker said.
According to the new guidelines conveyed to the offices of ICE, people with no serious criminal records, with members of their immediate families who are American citizens or who have lived in the country from a very young age, will be considered low-priority cases and will be taken off the deportation list.
Gutierrez warned, however, that this is not an amnesty nor is it a legalization program that undocumented immigrants can sign up for.
He said that ICE is continuing its usual work and in particular is sticking to its controversial programs of Secure Communities and 287(g), under which local police share detainees' fingerprints with the federal government.
"To the community we are saying, 'Be patient and be careful.' We do not want you to fall victim to false promises and those who would exploit your hopes and fears for profit," Gutierrez said, mentioning the possibility that "unscrupulous" lawyers could offer them a magic solution.
He also stressed that undocumented migrants not currently facing deportation should not give themselves up to the authorities thinking that they will then be able to apply for a work permit.
Present at Tuesday's press conference were families that could benefit from the new policy, one with an 18-year-old recent high school graduate entering university despite being undocumented.
"Thank you, President Obama, though we know that you can do a lot more for us," Giselle Hernandez said.
National Guard Spc. Hector Nuñez thanked Obama as commander in chief for having allowed his wife Rosa to return to Chicago from Mexico with their ill son at the end of December.
Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2011/08/31/information-campaign-on-new-deportations-policy-announced/#ixzz1WhGkVnKv
Showing posts with label Congressman Gutierrez. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Congressman Gutierrez. Show all posts
Friday, September 2, 2011
Friday, August 5, 2011
The New Operation Wetback: Immigration and Mass Incarceration in the Obama Era
By JAMES KILGORE
Counterpunch
4 August 2011
Last week Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) joined a demonstration in Washington D.C. to protest the refusal of President Obama to use his executive powers to halt the deportations of the undocumented. Gutierrez’ arrest came only two days after Obama had addressed a conference of the National Council of La Raza. Conveniently forgetting the history of the civil right struggles that made his Presidency a possibility, Obama reminded those attending that he was bound to “uphold the laws on the books.”
With over 392,000 deportations in 2010, more than in any of the Bush years, many activists fear we are in the midst of a repeat of notorious episodes of the past such as the “Repatriation” campaign of the 1930s and the infamous Operation Wetback of 1954, both of which resulted in the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Latinos.
But several things are different this time around. A crucial distinction is that we are in the era of mass incarceration. Not only are the undocumented being deported, many are going to prison for years before being delivered across the border. While the writings of Michelle Alexander and others have highlighted the widespread targeting of young African-American males by the criminal justice system, few have noted that in the last decade the complexion of new faces behind bars has been dramatically changing. Since the turn of the century, the number of blacks in prisons has declined slightly, while the ranks of Latinos incarcerated has increased by nearly 50%, reaching just over 300,000 in 2009.
A second distinguishing feature of the current state of affairs is the presence of the private prison corporations. For the likes of the industry’s leading powers, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group, detaining immigrants has been the life blood for reviving their financial fortunes.
Just over a decade ago their bottom lines were flagging. Freshly built prisons sat with empty beds while share values plummeted. For financial year 1999 CCA reported losses of $53.4 million and laid off 40% of its workforce. Then came the windfall - 9/11.
In 2001 Steven Logan, then CEO of Cornell Industries, a private prison firm which has since merged with GEO, spelled out exactly what this meant for his sector :
"I think it's clear that with the events of Sept. 11, there's a heightened focus on detention, both on the borders and within the U.S. [and] more people are gonna get caught…So that's a positive for our business. The federal business is the best business for us. It's the most consistent business for us, and the events of Sept. 11 are increasing that level of business."
Logan was right. The Patriot Act and other legislation led to a new wave of immigration detentions. By linking immigrants to terrorism, aggressive roundups supplied Latinos and other undocumented people to fill those empty private prison cells. Tougher immigration laws mandated felony convictions and prison time for cases which previously merited only deportation. Suddenly, the business of detaining immigrants was booming. PBS Commentator Maria Hinojosa went so far as to call this the new “Gold Rush” for private prisons.
The figures support Hinojosa’s assertion. While private prisons own or operate only 8% of general prison beds, they control 49% of the immigration detention market. CCA alone operates 14 facilities via contracts with ICE, providing 14, 556 beds. They have laid the groundwork for more business through the creation of a vast lobbying and advocacy network. From 1999-2009 the corporation spent more than $18 million on lobbying, mostly focusing on harsher sentencing, prison privatization and immigration.
One significant result of their lobbying efforts was the passage of SB 1070 in Arizona, a law which nearly provides police with a license to profile Latinos for stops and searches. The roots of SB 1070 lie in the halls of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a far right grouping that specializes in supplying template legislation to elected state officials. CCA and other private prison firms are key participants in ALEC and played a major role in the development of the template that ended up as SB 1070.
For its part, GEO Group has also been carving out its immigration market niche. Earlier this year they broke ground on a new 600 bed detention center in Karnes County, Texas. At about the same time the company bought a controlling interest in BI Corporation, the largest provider of electronic monitoring systems in the U.S. The primary motivation for this takeover was the five year, $372 million contract BI signed with ICE in 2009 to step up the Bush initiated Intense Supervision Appearance Program. (ISAP 11). Under this arrangement the Feds hired BI to provide ankle bracelets and a host of other surveillance for some 27,000 people awaiting deportation or asylum hearings.
Sadly, the Obama presidency has consistently provided encouragement for the likes of CCA and GEO to grow the market for detainees. While failing to pass immigration reform or the Dream Act, the current administration has kept the core of the previous administration’s immigration policy measures intact. These include the Operation Endgame, a 2003 measure that promised to purge the nation of all “illegals” by 2012 and the more vibrant Secure Communities (S-Comm). Under S-Comm the Federal government authorizes local authorities to share fingerprints with ICE of all those they arrest. Though supposedly intended to capture only people with serious criminal backgrounds, in reality S-Comm has led to the detention and deportation of thousands of people with no previous convictions.
At the National Council of La Raza’s Conference Obama tried to console the audience by saying that he knows “very well the pain and heartbreak deportation has caused.” His words failed to resonate. Instead Rep. Gutierrez and others took to the streets, demonstrating that “I feel your pain” statements and appeals to the audacity of hope carry little credibility these days. It is time for a serious change of direction on immigration issues or pretty soon, just as Michelle Alexander has referred to the mass incarceration of African-Americans as the New Jim Crow, we may hear people start to call the ongoing repression of Latinos a “New Operation Wetback.”
James Kilgore is a Research Scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois. He is the author of three novels, We Are All Zimbabweans Now, Freedom Never Rests and Prudence Couldn’t Swim, all written during his six and a half years of incarceration. He can be reached at waazn1@gmail.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/kilgore08042011.html
Counterpunch
4 August 2011
Last week Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) joined a demonstration in Washington D.C. to protest the refusal of President Obama to use his executive powers to halt the deportations of the undocumented. Gutierrez’ arrest came only two days after Obama had addressed a conference of the National Council of La Raza. Conveniently forgetting the history of the civil right struggles that made his Presidency a possibility, Obama reminded those attending that he was bound to “uphold the laws on the books.”
With over 392,000 deportations in 2010, more than in any of the Bush years, many activists fear we are in the midst of a repeat of notorious episodes of the past such as the “Repatriation” campaign of the 1930s and the infamous Operation Wetback of 1954, both of which resulted in the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Latinos.
But several things are different this time around. A crucial distinction is that we are in the era of mass incarceration. Not only are the undocumented being deported, many are going to prison for years before being delivered across the border. While the writings of Michelle Alexander and others have highlighted the widespread targeting of young African-American males by the criminal justice system, few have noted that in the last decade the complexion of new faces behind bars has been dramatically changing. Since the turn of the century, the number of blacks in prisons has declined slightly, while the ranks of Latinos incarcerated has increased by nearly 50%, reaching just over 300,000 in 2009.
A second distinguishing feature of the current state of affairs is the presence of the private prison corporations. For the likes of the industry’s leading powers, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group, detaining immigrants has been the life blood for reviving their financial fortunes.
Just over a decade ago their bottom lines were flagging. Freshly built prisons sat with empty beds while share values plummeted. For financial year 1999 CCA reported losses of $53.4 million and laid off 40% of its workforce. Then came the windfall - 9/11.
In 2001 Steven Logan, then CEO of Cornell Industries, a private prison firm which has since merged with GEO, spelled out exactly what this meant for his sector :
"I think it's clear that with the events of Sept. 11, there's a heightened focus on detention, both on the borders and within the U.S. [and] more people are gonna get caught…So that's a positive for our business. The federal business is the best business for us. It's the most consistent business for us, and the events of Sept. 11 are increasing that level of business."
Logan was right. The Patriot Act and other legislation led to a new wave of immigration detentions. By linking immigrants to terrorism, aggressive roundups supplied Latinos and other undocumented people to fill those empty private prison cells. Tougher immigration laws mandated felony convictions and prison time for cases which previously merited only deportation. Suddenly, the business of detaining immigrants was booming. PBS Commentator Maria Hinojosa went so far as to call this the new “Gold Rush” for private prisons.
The figures support Hinojosa’s assertion. While private prisons own or operate only 8% of general prison beds, they control 49% of the immigration detention market. CCA alone operates 14 facilities via contracts with ICE, providing 14, 556 beds. They have laid the groundwork for more business through the creation of a vast lobbying and advocacy network. From 1999-2009 the corporation spent more than $18 million on lobbying, mostly focusing on harsher sentencing, prison privatization and immigration.
One significant result of their lobbying efforts was the passage of SB 1070 in Arizona, a law which nearly provides police with a license to profile Latinos for stops and searches. The roots of SB 1070 lie in the halls of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a far right grouping that specializes in supplying template legislation to elected state officials. CCA and other private prison firms are key participants in ALEC and played a major role in the development of the template that ended up as SB 1070.
For its part, GEO Group has also been carving out its immigration market niche. Earlier this year they broke ground on a new 600 bed detention center in Karnes County, Texas. At about the same time the company bought a controlling interest in BI Corporation, the largest provider of electronic monitoring systems in the U.S. The primary motivation for this takeover was the five year, $372 million contract BI signed with ICE in 2009 to step up the Bush initiated Intense Supervision Appearance Program. (ISAP 11). Under this arrangement the Feds hired BI to provide ankle bracelets and a host of other surveillance for some 27,000 people awaiting deportation or asylum hearings.
Sadly, the Obama presidency has consistently provided encouragement for the likes of CCA and GEO to grow the market for detainees. While failing to pass immigration reform or the Dream Act, the current administration has kept the core of the previous administration’s immigration policy measures intact. These include the Operation Endgame, a 2003 measure that promised to purge the nation of all “illegals” by 2012 and the more vibrant Secure Communities (S-Comm). Under S-Comm the Federal government authorizes local authorities to share fingerprints with ICE of all those they arrest. Though supposedly intended to capture only people with serious criminal backgrounds, in reality S-Comm has led to the detention and deportation of thousands of people with no previous convictions.
At the National Council of La Raza’s Conference Obama tried to console the audience by saying that he knows “very well the pain and heartbreak deportation has caused.” His words failed to resonate. Instead Rep. Gutierrez and others took to the streets, demonstrating that “I feel your pain” statements and appeals to the audacity of hope carry little credibility these days. It is time for a serious change of direction on immigration issues or pretty soon, just as Michelle Alexander has referred to the mass incarceration of African-Americans as the New Jim Crow, we may hear people start to call the ongoing repression of Latinos a “New Operation Wetback.”
James Kilgore is a Research Scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois. He is the author of three novels, We Are All Zimbabweans Now, Freedom Never Rests and Prudence Couldn’t Swim, all written during his six and a half years of incarceration. He can be reached at waazn1@gmail.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/kilgore08042011.html
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Activists head to White House to stop deportations
By Theresa Gutierrez
ABC7 News
July 19, 2011
July 19, 2011 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- Students, children and families are preparing to join Congressman Luis Gutierrez and delegations from throughout the nation in Washington, D.C.
On July 26 they will make a final appeal to the White House to stop the deportations and separations of families. They want to urge President Barack Obama to use his discretionary power to stop the deportation of the parents of U.S. citizen children who have no criminal convictions.
The group is preparing for a face-off at the White House on deportations and separation of families. "We want the president to use the power that the Latino community gave him in the vote to use his executive authority to stop the deportation and separation of families," said activist Walter Coleman.
The group says they recognize the current political deadlock in Congress means no meaningful immigration reform can be passed. They say the president has broken his promise to them and they do not understand the president's discretionary choice to deport 400,000 people a year.
"We're preparing to go to Washington to send a clear message to President Obama that he does not have the Latino vote until he keeps his promise, " said Emma Lozano of Lincoln United Methodist Church. "He should do what's right. Otherwise we won't vote for him."
"The government is deporting on average 1,100 people a day. These are unprecedented numbers: 400,000 the last year," said immigration attorney Royal Berg. "The law provides that these people may be deported, but the president has a discretion to stop it."
The group believes that Hispanics have been targeted by immigration authorities.
"I think the easiest targets to go after are people that appear to be Hispanic," Berg said, "and that's what we're seeing in these secure community efforts."
Mirian Perez was in the U.S. illegally and was deported to Mexico and separated from her family. She is now back in the country legally.
"I couldn't see my kid for a year," said Perez. U.S. citizen Katie Sosa says her husband, who was in the U.S. illegally, went back to Mexico on his own to re-enter legally and is now being held there and told he cannot come back to the states for 10 years.
"We wanted to do things the right way and we got punished," Sosa said.
The activists say they will not help to re-elect President Obama if he does not fulfill his campaign promises to them.
The group will be traveling with Armando Gutierrez and his children to Washington. Gutierrez faces deportation and has no criminal record.
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=8259408
ABC7 News
July 19, 2011
July 19, 2011 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- Students, children and families are preparing to join Congressman Luis Gutierrez and delegations from throughout the nation in Washington, D.C.
On July 26 they will make a final appeal to the White House to stop the deportations and separations of families. They want to urge President Barack Obama to use his discretionary power to stop the deportation of the parents of U.S. citizen children who have no criminal convictions.
The group is preparing for a face-off at the White House on deportations and separation of families. "We want the president to use the power that the Latino community gave him in the vote to use his executive authority to stop the deportation and separation of families," said activist Walter Coleman.
The group says they recognize the current political deadlock in Congress means no meaningful immigration reform can be passed. They say the president has broken his promise to them and they do not understand the president's discretionary choice to deport 400,000 people a year.
"We're preparing to go to Washington to send a clear message to President Obama that he does not have the Latino vote until he keeps his promise, " said Emma Lozano of Lincoln United Methodist Church. "He should do what's right. Otherwise we won't vote for him."
"The government is deporting on average 1,100 people a day. These are unprecedented numbers: 400,000 the last year," said immigration attorney Royal Berg. "The law provides that these people may be deported, but the president has a discretion to stop it."
The group believes that Hispanics have been targeted by immigration authorities.
"I think the easiest targets to go after are people that appear to be Hispanic," Berg said, "and that's what we're seeing in these secure community efforts."
Mirian Perez was in the U.S. illegally and was deported to Mexico and separated from her family. She is now back in the country legally.
"I couldn't see my kid for a year," said Perez. U.S. citizen Katie Sosa says her husband, who was in the U.S. illegally, went back to Mexico on his own to re-enter legally and is now being held there and told he cannot come back to the states for 10 years.
"We wanted to do things the right way and we got punished," Sosa said.
The activists say they will not help to re-elect President Obama if he does not fulfill his campaign promises to them.
The group will be traveling with Armando Gutierrez and his children to Washington. Gutierrez faces deportation and has no criminal record.
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=8259408
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief
By Elise Foley
The Huffington Post
20 June 2011
WASHINGTON -- In a meeting with bloggers last week, longtime immigrant rights advocate Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said President Barack Obama should not count on Latinos to vote for him in 2012 unless he takes executive action to stop some deportations.
The Obama administration has said repeatedly that it has no options for halting the deportation of either undocumented students or the family members of citizens, even though it has frequently cited its use of discretion in immigration enforcement. Although the government says it prioritizes deportation of undocumented people who are considered threats to society, young men and women who grew up in the United States, as well as the parents and spouses of citizens, are still deported.
In a frank discussion with bloggers at the progressive conference Netroots Nation, Gutierrez said he will encourage Latinos to withhold votes from Obama unless the president uses his discretion.
The main demand is to block deportation of families and young men and women who would benefit from the DREAM Act, a failed bill that would have allowed some undocumented people who entered the U.S. as children to gain legal status and attend college or join the military.
Gutierrez, who carries considerable clout among Latinos, is touring the country under the banner "Change Takes Courage" to rally support for administrative relief from deportations.
He said in order to win support, Obama should create deferred action or parole for DREAM Act-eligible young people, allowing them to live and work in the U.S. until Congress acts on immigration reform. Instead, the administration often carries deportation proceedings to nearly the last minute, then allows an immigrant to stay after public outrage.
"They stop the deportation when you do a little petition. When Change.org does a petition and gets a few hundred signatures, they stop the deportation," Gutierrez said. "Don't tell me you ain't got the power."
Advertisement
Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), called in April for Obama to stop deporting DREAM Act students.
Gutierrez is also pushing for the president to create a new definition of "extreme hardship," a classification for men and women applying for legal status for their family members.
Separating families should be considered "extreme hardship," he said.
Gutierrez acknowledged that exercising executive power ran the risk of a legislative backlash from Republicans, but said that should not be an excuse.
"Anything that you put in to safeguard people, then they're going to take it away from you -- then why did we put you there?" he said.
Gutierrez said the first sign of Obama's triangulation strategies on immigration came in 2007, when the then-senator voted for a border fence between the U.S. and Mexico.
Latino leaders in Illinois were furious, and Gutierrez said Obama called him for an explanation.
"I should have known something then," he said. "He didn't get it, but he said to me, 'I've got to show the Republicans that I'm someone that they can work with.' It's still the same person."
The problem, Gutierrez said, is that Obama continues to court Latino votes despite failing to follow through with immigration reform, which polls consistently list as among the top five issues for Latino voters.
Obama recently spoke about immigration in El Paso, Texas, and Puerto Rico, but has said repeatedly he cannot act administratively to end deportations.
Gutierrez said he thinks Latinos should vote for Obama in 2012 -- but only if the president first takes actions to relieve deportation threats for families of citizens and would-be DREAM Act beneficiaries. He said Latino voters should put their votes in a metaphorical lock box and only let them out if and when Obama makes progress on immigration reform.
Gutierrez said Latinos are unlikely to vote for the Republican Party, which has decried what it considers "amnesty" for illegal immigrants, or for alternatives such as the Tequila Party organized to rally Hispanic voters.
"It's not about voting for the Tequila Party and it's not about voting for Republicans," he said. "I don't see Latinos doing that. What I see them doing is staying home."
A boycott by Latino voters could hurt Obama in the end, he acknowledged, but he said the issue is too important to ignore.
"It's always the same conversation: If we do too much it will hurt Obama?" he said. "Civil rights and human rights movements cannot be so closely aligned with parties because they're going to eventually have contradictions. I think of Rosa Parks and I think of her getting on that bus and saying, 'Will this upset the Speaker?' ... They didn't think about what was going to happen to a particular party. They moved."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/luis-gutierrez-lays-out-plans-for-deportation-relief_n_880643.html
The Huffington Post
20 June 2011
WASHINGTON -- In a meeting with bloggers last week, longtime immigrant rights advocate Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said President Barack Obama should not count on Latinos to vote for him in 2012 unless he takes executive action to stop some deportations.
The Obama administration has said repeatedly that it has no options for halting the deportation of either undocumented students or the family members of citizens, even though it has frequently cited its use of discretion in immigration enforcement. Although the government says it prioritizes deportation of undocumented people who are considered threats to society, young men and women who grew up in the United States, as well as the parents and spouses of citizens, are still deported.
In a frank discussion with bloggers at the progressive conference Netroots Nation, Gutierrez said he will encourage Latinos to withhold votes from Obama unless the president uses his discretion.
The main demand is to block deportation of families and young men and women who would benefit from the DREAM Act, a failed bill that would have allowed some undocumented people who entered the U.S. as children to gain legal status and attend college or join the military.
Gutierrez, who carries considerable clout among Latinos, is touring the country under the banner "Change Takes Courage" to rally support for administrative relief from deportations.
He said in order to win support, Obama should create deferred action or parole for DREAM Act-eligible young people, allowing them to live and work in the U.S. until Congress acts on immigration reform. Instead, the administration often carries deportation proceedings to nearly the last minute, then allows an immigrant to stay after public outrage.
"They stop the deportation when you do a little petition. When Change.org does a petition and gets a few hundred signatures, they stop the deportation," Gutierrez said. "Don't tell me you ain't got the power."
Advertisement
Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), called in April for Obama to stop deporting DREAM Act students.
Gutierrez is also pushing for the president to create a new definition of "extreme hardship," a classification for men and women applying for legal status for their family members.
Separating families should be considered "extreme hardship," he said.
Gutierrez acknowledged that exercising executive power ran the risk of a legislative backlash from Republicans, but said that should not be an excuse.
"Anything that you put in to safeguard people, then they're going to take it away from you -- then why did we put you there?" he said.
Gutierrez said the first sign of Obama's triangulation strategies on immigration came in 2007, when the then-senator voted for a border fence between the U.S. and Mexico.
Latino leaders in Illinois were furious, and Gutierrez said Obama called him for an explanation.
"I should have known something then," he said. "He didn't get it, but he said to me, 'I've got to show the Republicans that I'm someone that they can work with.' It's still the same person."
The problem, Gutierrez said, is that Obama continues to court Latino votes despite failing to follow through with immigration reform, which polls consistently list as among the top five issues for Latino voters.
Obama recently spoke about immigration in El Paso, Texas, and Puerto Rico, but has said repeatedly he cannot act administratively to end deportations.
Gutierrez said he thinks Latinos should vote for Obama in 2012 -- but only if the president first takes actions to relieve deportation threats for families of citizens and would-be DREAM Act beneficiaries. He said Latino voters should put their votes in a metaphorical lock box and only let them out if and when Obama makes progress on immigration reform.
Gutierrez said Latinos are unlikely to vote for the Republican Party, which has decried what it considers "amnesty" for illegal immigrants, or for alternatives such as the Tequila Party organized to rally Hispanic voters.
"It's not about voting for the Tequila Party and it's not about voting for Republicans," he said. "I don't see Latinos doing that. What I see them doing is staying home."
A boycott by Latino voters could hurt Obama in the end, he acknowledged, but he said the issue is too important to ignore.
"It's always the same conversation: If we do too much it will hurt Obama?" he said. "Civil rights and human rights movements cannot be so closely aligned with parties because they're going to eventually have contradictions. I think of Rosa Parks and I think of her getting on that bus and saying, 'Will this upset the Speaker?' ... They didn't think about what was going to happen to a particular party. They moved."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/luis-gutierrez-lays-out-plans-for-deportation-relief_n_880643.html
Monday, May 9, 2011
Gutierrez wants Obama to stop deporting immigrants with U.S.-born children
By Abdon M. Pallasch
Chicago Sun Times
May 9, 2011
A day ahead of President Obama’s trip to El Paso, Texas, to talk about immigration, Rep. Luis Gutierrez told a Chicago audience he hopes the president will announce his administration will stop deporting non-criminal parents of American-born children.
“We ask and implore the president to use the wide discretion that he has as the president of the United States to seek out these communities of people who are deserving and to grant them relief and sanctuary in the United States of America,” Gutierrez told civil leaders at the City Club of Chicago.
Gutierrez and other Hispanic members of Congress met with Obama Tuesday and showed him a legal opinion arguing he has the authority — without having to persuade congressional Republicans — to tell his own administrative agencies to stop deporting immigrants whose only crime is coming to the U.S. without documentation or being brought here by their parents years ago.
A crackdown on deportation that started with a focus on those convicted of crimes expanded to anyone even arrested, acquitted or just picked up on suspicion of a crime, leaving 20-year-residents, some brought here as children, “a traffic stop away” from deportation, Gutierrez said.
“Under President Obama, our nation is deporting 400,000 people a year. That’s 1,100 a day, an increase over the presidency of George Bush,” Gutierrez said. “Barack Obama is not focusing just on dangerous criminals in his crackdown. The numbers reflect increased deportations across the board. It’s not just drug dealers. It’s not just gang-bangers.”
Gutierrez has failed in attempts to reform the immigration system or grant citizenship to young immigrants who serve in the military or go to college. He and the other Latino officials asked Obama to try again on those issues.
Gutierrez has travelled the country speaking to immigrant groups, and he has not shied from criticizing his friends and allies such as Obama or his former neighboring congressman Rahm Emanuel when he felt they were not fully on-board with his chosen positions.
Gutierrez said he will attend Emanuel’s mayoral inauguration next Monday and has no hard feelings about Emanuel’s earlier battles with Gutierrez over immigration.
“While Mayor Daley might simply ignore my criticism, Rahm was more likely to respond. There are no children in the room, are there? Let’s just say he might suggest some private places where I could store my criticism,” Gutierrez said.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/5274391-418/gutierrez-wants-obama-to-stop-deporting-immigrants-with-u.s.-born-children
Chicago Sun Times
May 9, 2011
A day ahead of President Obama’s trip to El Paso, Texas, to talk about immigration, Rep. Luis Gutierrez told a Chicago audience he hopes the president will announce his administration will stop deporting non-criminal parents of American-born children.
“We ask and implore the president to use the wide discretion that he has as the president of the United States to seek out these communities of people who are deserving and to grant them relief and sanctuary in the United States of America,” Gutierrez told civil leaders at the City Club of Chicago.
Gutierrez and other Hispanic members of Congress met with Obama Tuesday and showed him a legal opinion arguing he has the authority — without having to persuade congressional Republicans — to tell his own administrative agencies to stop deporting immigrants whose only crime is coming to the U.S. without documentation or being brought here by their parents years ago.
A crackdown on deportation that started with a focus on those convicted of crimes expanded to anyone even arrested, acquitted or just picked up on suspicion of a crime, leaving 20-year-residents, some brought here as children, “a traffic stop away” from deportation, Gutierrez said.
“Under President Obama, our nation is deporting 400,000 people a year. That’s 1,100 a day, an increase over the presidency of George Bush,” Gutierrez said. “Barack Obama is not focusing just on dangerous criminals in his crackdown. The numbers reflect increased deportations across the board. It’s not just drug dealers. It’s not just gang-bangers.”
Gutierrez has failed in attempts to reform the immigration system or grant citizenship to young immigrants who serve in the military or go to college. He and the other Latino officials asked Obama to try again on those issues.
Gutierrez has travelled the country speaking to immigrant groups, and he has not shied from criticizing his friends and allies such as Obama or his former neighboring congressman Rahm Emanuel when he felt they were not fully on-board with his chosen positions.
Gutierrez said he will attend Emanuel’s mayoral inauguration next Monday and has no hard feelings about Emanuel’s earlier battles with Gutierrez over immigration.
“While Mayor Daley might simply ignore my criticism, Rahm was more likely to respond. There are no children in the room, are there? Let’s just say he might suggest some private places where I could store my criticism,” Gutierrez said.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/5274391-418/gutierrez-wants-obama-to-stop-deporting-immigrants-with-u.s.-born-children
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Latinos and Democrats Press Obama to Curb Deportations
By JULIA PRESTON
The New York Times
April 20, 2011
With prospects for an immigration overhaul looking dim, President Obama is facing increasing pressure from Latinos, Democratic lawmakers and immigrant groups to use his executive powers to offer relief from deportation to broad groups of illegal immigrants.
Demands for immediate action by Mr. Obama to slow the pace of the immigration crackdown in Latino communities have not eased since a White House meeting on Tuesday in which the president gathered political, business and religious leaders to brainstorm about how to revive the overhaul legislation, which is stalled in Congress.
Latinos and Democrats praised Mr. Obama for trying to jump-start efforts to pass the bill, which would grant legal status to millions of illegal immigrants. But with many leaders of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives strongly opposed to the measure, the bill’s supporters remain skeptical that it will go anywhere before the presidential election next year.
They are calling on Mr. Obama to use authorities they say he already has under current immigration law to defer deportations of illegal immigrant students who would be eligible for legal status under a bill known as the Dream Act.
“We know that immigration reform is doable, but it is just rather difficult given the makeup of Congress,” said Representative Charlie Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas, who is chairman of the Hispanic Caucus in the House. “We are asking the president if he could provide some sort of relief to innocent people who are the most impacted by the inequities of the immigration system.”
Religious and civil rights groups have asked Mr. Obama to expand waivers that would make it easier for illegal immigrants who are immediate relatives of American citizens to fix their legal status without having to leave the United States.
Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and 11 other lawmakers sent a letter asking the Obama administration to postpone deportations of immigrants in same-sex marriages with American citizens. The administration recently decided that it would no longer defend in the courts a law barring the federal government from recognizing those marriages.
Some Hispanic lawmakers, in the most ambitious demands, have said the president should halt deportations of illegal immigrants whose children are American citizens. An estimated four million young citizens have at least one parent who is an illegal immigrant.
Democrats are leaning on the White House as they look to the elections next year, when Latino voters could play pivotal roles in several crucial states. Under the Obama administration, immigration authorities have carried out record numbers of deportations, with nearly 400,000 immigrants removed in each of the last two years. The deportations are drawing increasingly irate protests from Latino communities.
But Republicans in Congress say the administration has not done enough to remove illegal immigrants, and they oppose any action by Mr. Obama that would offer what they call a “stealth amnesty.”
Mr. Obama “should not selectively enforce the law,” said Elton Gallegly, Republican of California, who is chairman of the House Judiciary immigration subcommittee. “Amnesty — whether universal or selective — only encourages illegal immigration.”
Administration officials said Mr. Obama had rejected any move that would appear to circumvent Congress, which could alienate the handful of Republicans who might be persuaded to join an effort to pass the overhaul legislation. The president told the White House meeting on Tuesday that he did not believe there were any shortcuts he could use to help illegal immigrants.
“At the end of the day, the president cannot fix administratively what is broken in the immigration system,” said a senior White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue. The official said the White House had made a strategic decision to focus all its efforts on passing the overhaul rather than acting unilaterally to make smaller changes.
Mr. Obama first rejected executive action to suspend deportations during a town-hall-style meeting broadcast in late March on Univision, the Spanish-language television network.
But calls for him to change his mind have only multiplied since then. In a letter on April 13, the top two Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, and 20 other Democrats sent a letter asking the president to defer deportations of illegal immigrant students. The Dream Act bill passed the House but failed in the Senate last year.
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, denounced the Democrats’ letter in a speech on the floor. “I’m just appalled that members of this body think an executive order to grant amnesty behind our backs is not an assault on the democratic process,” Mr. Grassley said.
Acting case by case, the immigration authorities suspended deportations of 34,448 immigrants last year, according to figures sent to Mr. Grassley by the Department of Homeland Security.
Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, a critic of the administration on immigration, is touring the country holding town-hall-style meetings in Latino communities to demand the suspension of deportation for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/us/politics/21immigration.html
The New York Times
April 20, 2011
With prospects for an immigration overhaul looking dim, President Obama is facing increasing pressure from Latinos, Democratic lawmakers and immigrant groups to use his executive powers to offer relief from deportation to broad groups of illegal immigrants.
Demands for immediate action by Mr. Obama to slow the pace of the immigration crackdown in Latino communities have not eased since a White House meeting on Tuesday in which the president gathered political, business and religious leaders to brainstorm about how to revive the overhaul legislation, which is stalled in Congress.
Latinos and Democrats praised Mr. Obama for trying to jump-start efforts to pass the bill, which would grant legal status to millions of illegal immigrants. But with many leaders of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives strongly opposed to the measure, the bill’s supporters remain skeptical that it will go anywhere before the presidential election next year.
They are calling on Mr. Obama to use authorities they say he already has under current immigration law to defer deportations of illegal immigrant students who would be eligible for legal status under a bill known as the Dream Act.
“We know that immigration reform is doable, but it is just rather difficult given the makeup of Congress,” said Representative Charlie Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas, who is chairman of the Hispanic Caucus in the House. “We are asking the president if he could provide some sort of relief to innocent people who are the most impacted by the inequities of the immigration system.”
Religious and civil rights groups have asked Mr. Obama to expand waivers that would make it easier for illegal immigrants who are immediate relatives of American citizens to fix their legal status without having to leave the United States.
Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and 11 other lawmakers sent a letter asking the Obama administration to postpone deportations of immigrants in same-sex marriages with American citizens. The administration recently decided that it would no longer defend in the courts a law barring the federal government from recognizing those marriages.
Some Hispanic lawmakers, in the most ambitious demands, have said the president should halt deportations of illegal immigrants whose children are American citizens. An estimated four million young citizens have at least one parent who is an illegal immigrant.
Democrats are leaning on the White House as they look to the elections next year, when Latino voters could play pivotal roles in several crucial states. Under the Obama administration, immigration authorities have carried out record numbers of deportations, with nearly 400,000 immigrants removed in each of the last two years. The deportations are drawing increasingly irate protests from Latino communities.
But Republicans in Congress say the administration has not done enough to remove illegal immigrants, and they oppose any action by Mr. Obama that would offer what they call a “stealth amnesty.”
Mr. Obama “should not selectively enforce the law,” said Elton Gallegly, Republican of California, who is chairman of the House Judiciary immigration subcommittee. “Amnesty — whether universal or selective — only encourages illegal immigration.”
Administration officials said Mr. Obama had rejected any move that would appear to circumvent Congress, which could alienate the handful of Republicans who might be persuaded to join an effort to pass the overhaul legislation. The president told the White House meeting on Tuesday that he did not believe there were any shortcuts he could use to help illegal immigrants.
“At the end of the day, the president cannot fix administratively what is broken in the immigration system,” said a senior White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue. The official said the White House had made a strategic decision to focus all its efforts on passing the overhaul rather than acting unilaterally to make smaller changes.
Mr. Obama first rejected executive action to suspend deportations during a town-hall-style meeting broadcast in late March on Univision, the Spanish-language television network.
But calls for him to change his mind have only multiplied since then. In a letter on April 13, the top two Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, and 20 other Democrats sent a letter asking the president to defer deportations of illegal immigrant students. The Dream Act bill passed the House but failed in the Senate last year.
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, denounced the Democrats’ letter in a speech on the floor. “I’m just appalled that members of this body think an executive order to grant amnesty behind our backs is not an assault on the democratic process,” Mr. Grassley said.
Acting case by case, the immigration authorities suspended deportations of 34,448 immigrants last year, according to figures sent to Mr. Grassley by the Department of Homeland Security.
Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, a critic of the administration on immigration, is touring the country holding town-hall-style meetings in Latino communities to demand the suspension of deportation for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/us/politics/21immigration.html
Friday, December 17, 2010
What Gets Lost in the Immigration Deportation Dragnet
By Braden Goyette
Campus Progress
December 14th, 2010
It’s the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and the basement chapel of St. Brigid’s Church in Brooklyn is packed to capacity. The energy in the room is palpable. Spontaneous cries of “Si Se Puede!” echo through the hall. People break into chants in Spanish as they wait for speakers to address the audience: "Lucando creando poder popular!" and "Obama escucha estamos en la lucha!" It feels like the energy of President Barack Obama’s movement has moved on without him—okay, maybe he can’t, they seem to be saying, but we sure as hell can.
Everyone is here today to talk about immigration reform, though things look bleak on the congressional front. New York City councilors and national congressmen are there alongside the community activists who organized the event, headed up by the New York Immigration Coalition and Make The Road New York. Immigrant New Yorkers from all the five boroughs—Latinos, Asians, Caribbeans, and Arab Americans—fill the pews. They’re waiting for Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) to take the mic.
Gutierrez has been a fiery advocate for comprehensive immigration reform during his nine terms in Congress, and he’s stepped up his game over the past year, clashing with top Obama administration officials, and even getting arrested while protesting current U.S. immigration policy in front of the White House.
“There are four million American citizen children whose parents are undocumented,” he shouts. “We need to call for a moratorium on deportations."
He repeats it a few more times, like a new mantra: “Our movement is the moratorium. The moratorium is the movement.”
Even if comprehensive immigration reform isn’t coming through Congress, he says, it’s still time to act to keep American families together. “The President will tell us we need Republican votes in order to pass legislation, and he's correct. But let me tell you something. With the executive stroke of that pen, he can stop the deportation and the destruction of our families.”
The new (and old) SB 1070
For the past few years, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been expanding its reach far beyond the capacity of its own personnel within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and has begun relying increasingly on partnerships with local police forces.
Gutierrez’s call for a moratorium on deportation comes at a time when ICE is deporting people in record numbers: 392,000 people were deported in the past fiscal year. These numbers are driven in part by the expansion of one of ICE’s newest partnerships with local police departments, the Secure Communities program (S-Comm), which has been implemented in close to 600 U.S. counties, and is on track to be nationwide by 2013.
On the community level, these programs are doing many of the things people feared Arizona’s SB 1070 would do—encouraging racial profiling and breeding distrust between police and the people they serve—but they’re less obvious in the ways they have this effect.
The main component of S-Comm is a data sharing program that ICE claims will help reduce instances of profiling.Under S-Comm, local police collect fingerprints from anyone they arrest and forward them to ICE to be checked against immigration and criminal databases. David Venturella, head of the Secure Communities Program, has testified that the program will help ICE focus their efforts on individuals who pose a real threat to public safety.
But critics are concerned it will provide incentive for police to target immigrants indiscriminately, knowing there’s a chance an arrest could put them on track for removal proceedings.AsRenée Feltz, a journalist who’s been covering S-Comm for the past several months for DeportationNation.org, recently put it: It’s true that “biometric information usually identifies people accurately, but this doesn’t keep police from racially profiling people and arresting them on charges that later get dropped but still feed them into detention.”
“What S-Comm is doing is both facilitating and concealing racial profiling,” says Hannah Weinstein of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law’s Immigrant Justice Clinic, which gives law students at Yeshiva University the opportunity to represent immigrants facing deportation in immigration court and the U.S. Court of Appeals. “There’s no provision in S-Comm that says the crimes for which an individual are picked up must be prosecuted.”
Before S-Comm, there was the Criminal Alien Program (CAP), which allows local police to hold arrestees in jail while ICE investigates their immigration status—even if they aren’t ultimately charged with any crime.
A study that tracked police stops of Hispanic residents in Irving, Texas before and after CAP was implemented in 2006 found the program dramatically increased arrests of Hispanic residents in the town for petty offenses [PDF]. The authors concluded that “these arrests represent one part of an implicit, but relatively clear logic: The higher the number of Hispanic arrests, the larger the pool of Hispanic detainees; the larger the pool of detainees, the more illegal immigrants that can be purged from the city via the CAP screening system.”
States where S-Comm hasn’t been activated are looking to CAP for signs of what S-Comm might do to their communities. On the whole, that means increasing the number of people who lead otherwise ordinary lives, aside from their lack of papers, who’ll be pulled into the deportation dragnet, including legal permanent residents.
The public cost of deportation
Deportation is an extreme punishment—it uproots a person from everything he or she has built in his or her life and rips that person away from everyone he or she knows.
Alina Das, a fellow at NYU’s immigration law clinic, is among those questioning whether the punishment of deportation in the case of unlawful immigration really fits the crime, and whether it really serves the overall need for public safety. “There's generally a misconception that some folks have about immigrants, this idea that most immigrants are recent newcomers to our cities and towns,” Das says, “but the reality is that many immigrants, regardless of their status—whether they're without status or refugees or greencard holders—are very engrained into families and communities across the country.”
“These are people the criminal justice system itself has gotten to the point where they recognize these individuals are better off returned to their families, given the treatment, the services, the tools they need to return to their communities as productive members of society.” Das adds. “By inserting deportation and detention policies at that point when a person would otherwise be released, the immigration system is creating all sorts of unintended consequences for community and public safety.”
The record deportation figures touted by ICE are more than just numbers—they are hundreds and thousands of families. According to the Pew Hispanic Center [PDF], at least 6.6 million American families were of mixed status as of 2005.Over the past ten years, the government has deported the lawful permanent resident parents of about 103,000 children. Of those, 88,000 are U.S. citizens.
Das describes a significant disconnect between an individual’s net impact on public life and the way the system treats him or her. “Once you're in the system it often does not matter if you've lived here since childhood, if you worked and paid taxes your entire life, if you gave back to the community and served in the military,” Das says. “The laws are so draconian that immigration judges are not able to consider these factors in many cases.”
Critics of immigration reform argue that undocumented immigrants are all hurting Americans by coming here without permission and putting strain on the economy. But a number of studies, including research coming out of U.S. Federal Reserve banks, have shown thatcreating more avenues for legal immigration would benefit the U.S. economy and create jobs.
Meanwhile, it is expensive to run detention facilities and to deport people. Aarti Shahani, a researcher for the prisoner advocacy group Justice Strategies, cites the increased detention costs CAP incurs by holding people in detention for 73 days longer than average.
Picking up more non-criminals
In October, Eligio Valerio, a middle-aged New York cab driver who’s been a legal permanent resident for the past 30 years, was picked up through CAP on old gun charge. He’d purchased an illegal gun to defend himself from stick ups when he ran a corner store back in the 1980s. He’d served his time, gotten probation, and thought he was done with the whole thing—until ICE came around to his house and he found they were threatening him with deportation just as his daughter was about to give birth.
Northatattan.com, a project by Columbia Journalism School students, reported that Valerio was well-known in the community, and that even the judge on his case was surprised to find him in court facing charges.Though Valerio was eventually able to avoid deportation, City Councilor Ydanis Rodriguez worried that with the increasing use of federal-local partnerships, we’ll be seeing more cases like this one.He stated the problem bluntly: “ICE is out of control.”
Other stories have been surfacing in recent months. People are getting picked up for deportation out of the blue, like Maria Bolanos, who was picked up through S-Comm after calling the police for help during a fight with her partner that had turned violent.
Though S-Comm director Venturella said that Bolanos’s case was not actually an S-Comm case when she confronted him about it at a public meeting, an ICE official later emailed a Washington Post reporter to say that it actually was. In a sense, the contradictions and mixed signals were in keeping with the way the program has been presented to the public thus far.
Though ICE has stated its top priority is to deport people who pose a threat to public safety, federal-local partnerships like S-Comm, CAP, and the 287(g) program, which allows local police to perform ID checks and detain immigrants at any time without criminal charge, are scooping up large numbers of non-criminals. In fact, 79 percent of people deported by S-Comm are non-criminals. These people tend to be picked up for minor offenses like traffic violations.
According to the University of Syracuse’s Transitional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), immigration courts have been backed up with a record number of cases, with average wait times of 459 days this past year. Thirty-one percent of cases that come before these courts are thrown out, often because they’ve been brought against people who are actually legally entitled to be in this country. In cities with large immigrant populations like New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, more than half of cases have been thrown out in the past year.
ICE isn’t being forthcoming with information about why this is the case, either. TRAC filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in May to find out more, and ICE hasn’t complied. In a press release, TRAC said that the agency is “denying the American people concrete information about an important and controversial aspect of a key responsibility of the federal government: What is it doing and not doing to enforce the nation's immigration laws.”
The Irving CAP study suggests federal-local partnerships contribute to ICE bringing in the wrong people. The authors found “that ICE consistently issued detainers for fewer individuals than were referred by the local police, indicating that local officials were likely referring lawful residents to ICE.”
Shahani, who coauthored a report for Justice Strategies on immigration detainers issued in New York City jails, agrees. “We found that they're playing a numbers game—rather than having a strategy that reflects public safety concerns, DHS is just tagging people who show up in local facilities.”
San Francisco, Santa Clara, Calif., and Arlington, Va., recently tried to opt out of S-Comm. But ICE has been incredibly unclear about whether this is an option, issuing contradicting statements on the process for the past several months. In August, ICE released a statement that seemed to indicate it was possible to opt out. In October, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that S-Comm isn’t a voluntary program.Cordozo filed a FOIA request in April along with the National Day Laborers Organization Network and the Center for Constitutional Rights to get definitive information on whether S-Comm is in fact voluntary or mandatory.
Though ICE has been making it seem more and more like local communities must participate in S-Comm, Weinstein says ICE still hasn’t made a definitive statement, and the jury isn’t out until documents on their actual policy are made public.
And it’s vital that the public get this information, Weinstein says. This program hurts families, overburdens local police, costs a lot for the American taxpayer, and is still not transparent in its operations to those very taxpayers. “Until ICE releases these records to states and communities, the public can’t have an informed debate about what we believe is an incredibly dangerous program,” she says.
Since ICE failed to release the documents, the three human rights groups launched a lawsuit on October 28. Last Thursday, a New York judge ruled that ICE must turn over the requested documents by January 17.
Does deportation make American safer?
Back in St. Brigid’s church, Rep. Nydia Velasquez is convinced the answer to the question of whether deportation makes America safer is “no,” and that the buck has to stop here, regardless of the climate of the incoming Congress when it comes to immigration reform.
“In the ’60s, when people were fighting for human rights or civil rights, and were told so many times, this is not the right time? There is not a right or wrong time—there is a moral time,” Velasquez says.
She and Gutierrez are calling into question how much these programs actually serve the interest of public safety. They’re rejecting the overly simplistic moral equation that leads to the criminalization of immigrants, and struggling to regain the moral high ground.
“No man, not even the president of the United States, can divide what men and women and God have brought together,” Gutierrez shouts.
He asks everyone to remember a woman in the ‘50s, who got on a bus after a long day of work and took a seat in the front—claiming her place there made simple moral sense to her, even though the rest of society hadn’t caught up yet. “Do you think Rosa Parks said, 'I’ve got to call the Speaker before I act? I’ve got to see how many votes I have in the Senate before I act?'”
Time will tell if Obama knows the answer.
Braden Goyette is a staff writer for Campus Progress.
http://campusprogress.org/articles/what_gets_lost_in_the_immigration_deportation_dragnet/
Campus Progress
December 14th, 2010
It’s the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and the basement chapel of St. Brigid’s Church in Brooklyn is packed to capacity. The energy in the room is palpable. Spontaneous cries of “Si Se Puede!” echo through the hall. People break into chants in Spanish as they wait for speakers to address the audience: "Lucando creando poder popular!" and "Obama escucha estamos en la lucha!" It feels like the energy of President Barack Obama’s movement has moved on without him—okay, maybe he can’t, they seem to be saying, but we sure as hell can.
Everyone is here today to talk about immigration reform, though things look bleak on the congressional front. New York City councilors and national congressmen are there alongside the community activists who organized the event, headed up by the New York Immigration Coalition and Make The Road New York. Immigrant New Yorkers from all the five boroughs—Latinos, Asians, Caribbeans, and Arab Americans—fill the pews. They’re waiting for Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) to take the mic.
Gutierrez has been a fiery advocate for comprehensive immigration reform during his nine terms in Congress, and he’s stepped up his game over the past year, clashing with top Obama administration officials, and even getting arrested while protesting current U.S. immigration policy in front of the White House.
“There are four million American citizen children whose parents are undocumented,” he shouts. “We need to call for a moratorium on deportations."
He repeats it a few more times, like a new mantra: “Our movement is the moratorium. The moratorium is the movement.”
Even if comprehensive immigration reform isn’t coming through Congress, he says, it’s still time to act to keep American families together. “The President will tell us we need Republican votes in order to pass legislation, and he's correct. But let me tell you something. With the executive stroke of that pen, he can stop the deportation and the destruction of our families.”
The new (and old) SB 1070
For the past few years, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been expanding its reach far beyond the capacity of its own personnel within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and has begun relying increasingly on partnerships with local police forces.
Gutierrez’s call for a moratorium on deportation comes at a time when ICE is deporting people in record numbers: 392,000 people were deported in the past fiscal year. These numbers are driven in part by the expansion of one of ICE’s newest partnerships with local police departments, the Secure Communities program (S-Comm), which has been implemented in close to 600 U.S. counties, and is on track to be nationwide by 2013.
On the community level, these programs are doing many of the things people feared Arizona’s SB 1070 would do—encouraging racial profiling and breeding distrust between police and the people they serve—but they’re less obvious in the ways they have this effect.
The main component of S-Comm is a data sharing program that ICE claims will help reduce instances of profiling.Under S-Comm, local police collect fingerprints from anyone they arrest and forward them to ICE to be checked against immigration and criminal databases. David Venturella, head of the Secure Communities Program, has testified that the program will help ICE focus their efforts on individuals who pose a real threat to public safety.
But critics are concerned it will provide incentive for police to target immigrants indiscriminately, knowing there’s a chance an arrest could put them on track for removal proceedings.AsRenée Feltz, a journalist who’s been covering S-Comm for the past several months for DeportationNation.org, recently put it: It’s true that “biometric information usually identifies people accurately, but this doesn’t keep police from racially profiling people and arresting them on charges that later get dropped but still feed them into detention.”
“What S-Comm is doing is both facilitating and concealing racial profiling,” says Hannah Weinstein of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law’s Immigrant Justice Clinic, which gives law students at Yeshiva University the opportunity to represent immigrants facing deportation in immigration court and the U.S. Court of Appeals. “There’s no provision in S-Comm that says the crimes for which an individual are picked up must be prosecuted.”
Before S-Comm, there was the Criminal Alien Program (CAP), which allows local police to hold arrestees in jail while ICE investigates their immigration status—even if they aren’t ultimately charged with any crime.
A study that tracked police stops of Hispanic residents in Irving, Texas before and after CAP was implemented in 2006 found the program dramatically increased arrests of Hispanic residents in the town for petty offenses [PDF]. The authors concluded that “these arrests represent one part of an implicit, but relatively clear logic: The higher the number of Hispanic arrests, the larger the pool of Hispanic detainees; the larger the pool of detainees, the more illegal immigrants that can be purged from the city via the CAP screening system.”
States where S-Comm hasn’t been activated are looking to CAP for signs of what S-Comm might do to their communities. On the whole, that means increasing the number of people who lead otherwise ordinary lives, aside from their lack of papers, who’ll be pulled into the deportation dragnet, including legal permanent residents.
The public cost of deportation
Deportation is an extreme punishment—it uproots a person from everything he or she has built in his or her life and rips that person away from everyone he or she knows.
Alina Das, a fellow at NYU’s immigration law clinic, is among those questioning whether the punishment of deportation in the case of unlawful immigration really fits the crime, and whether it really serves the overall need for public safety. “There's generally a misconception that some folks have about immigrants, this idea that most immigrants are recent newcomers to our cities and towns,” Das says, “but the reality is that many immigrants, regardless of their status—whether they're without status or refugees or greencard holders—are very engrained into families and communities across the country.”
“These are people the criminal justice system itself has gotten to the point where they recognize these individuals are better off returned to their families, given the treatment, the services, the tools they need to return to their communities as productive members of society.” Das adds. “By inserting deportation and detention policies at that point when a person would otherwise be released, the immigration system is creating all sorts of unintended consequences for community and public safety.”
The record deportation figures touted by ICE are more than just numbers—they are hundreds and thousands of families. According to the Pew Hispanic Center [PDF], at least 6.6 million American families were of mixed status as of 2005.Over the past ten years, the government has deported the lawful permanent resident parents of about 103,000 children. Of those, 88,000 are U.S. citizens.
Das describes a significant disconnect between an individual’s net impact on public life and the way the system treats him or her. “Once you're in the system it often does not matter if you've lived here since childhood, if you worked and paid taxes your entire life, if you gave back to the community and served in the military,” Das says. “The laws are so draconian that immigration judges are not able to consider these factors in many cases.”
Critics of immigration reform argue that undocumented immigrants are all hurting Americans by coming here without permission and putting strain on the economy. But a number of studies, including research coming out of U.S. Federal Reserve banks, have shown thatcreating more avenues for legal immigration would benefit the U.S. economy and create jobs.
Meanwhile, it is expensive to run detention facilities and to deport people. Aarti Shahani, a researcher for the prisoner advocacy group Justice Strategies, cites the increased detention costs CAP incurs by holding people in detention for 73 days longer than average.
Picking up more non-criminals
In October, Eligio Valerio, a middle-aged New York cab driver who’s been a legal permanent resident for the past 30 years, was picked up through CAP on old gun charge. He’d purchased an illegal gun to defend himself from stick ups when he ran a corner store back in the 1980s. He’d served his time, gotten probation, and thought he was done with the whole thing—until ICE came around to his house and he found they were threatening him with deportation just as his daughter was about to give birth.
Northatattan.com, a project by Columbia Journalism School students, reported that Valerio was well-known in the community, and that even the judge on his case was surprised to find him in court facing charges.Though Valerio was eventually able to avoid deportation, City Councilor Ydanis Rodriguez worried that with the increasing use of federal-local partnerships, we’ll be seeing more cases like this one.He stated the problem bluntly: “ICE is out of control.”
Other stories have been surfacing in recent months. People are getting picked up for deportation out of the blue, like Maria Bolanos, who was picked up through S-Comm after calling the police for help during a fight with her partner that had turned violent.
Though S-Comm director Venturella said that Bolanos’s case was not actually an S-Comm case when she confronted him about it at a public meeting, an ICE official later emailed a Washington Post reporter to say that it actually was. In a sense, the contradictions and mixed signals were in keeping with the way the program has been presented to the public thus far.
Though ICE has stated its top priority is to deport people who pose a threat to public safety, federal-local partnerships like S-Comm, CAP, and the 287(g) program, which allows local police to perform ID checks and detain immigrants at any time without criminal charge, are scooping up large numbers of non-criminals. In fact, 79 percent of people deported by S-Comm are non-criminals. These people tend to be picked up for minor offenses like traffic violations.
According to the University of Syracuse’s Transitional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), immigration courts have been backed up with a record number of cases, with average wait times of 459 days this past year. Thirty-one percent of cases that come before these courts are thrown out, often because they’ve been brought against people who are actually legally entitled to be in this country. In cities with large immigrant populations like New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, more than half of cases have been thrown out in the past year.
ICE isn’t being forthcoming with information about why this is the case, either. TRAC filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in May to find out more, and ICE hasn’t complied. In a press release, TRAC said that the agency is “denying the American people concrete information about an important and controversial aspect of a key responsibility of the federal government: What is it doing and not doing to enforce the nation's immigration laws.”
The Irving CAP study suggests federal-local partnerships contribute to ICE bringing in the wrong people. The authors found “that ICE consistently issued detainers for fewer individuals than were referred by the local police, indicating that local officials were likely referring lawful residents to ICE.”
Shahani, who coauthored a report for Justice Strategies on immigration detainers issued in New York City jails, agrees. “We found that they're playing a numbers game—rather than having a strategy that reflects public safety concerns, DHS is just tagging people who show up in local facilities.”
San Francisco, Santa Clara, Calif., and Arlington, Va., recently tried to opt out of S-Comm. But ICE has been incredibly unclear about whether this is an option, issuing contradicting statements on the process for the past several months. In August, ICE released a statement that seemed to indicate it was possible to opt out. In October, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that S-Comm isn’t a voluntary program.Cordozo filed a FOIA request in April along with the National Day Laborers Organization Network and the Center for Constitutional Rights to get definitive information on whether S-Comm is in fact voluntary or mandatory.
Though ICE has been making it seem more and more like local communities must participate in S-Comm, Weinstein says ICE still hasn’t made a definitive statement, and the jury isn’t out until documents on their actual policy are made public.
And it’s vital that the public get this information, Weinstein says. This program hurts families, overburdens local police, costs a lot for the American taxpayer, and is still not transparent in its operations to those very taxpayers. “Until ICE releases these records to states and communities, the public can’t have an informed debate about what we believe is an incredibly dangerous program,” she says.
Since ICE failed to release the documents, the three human rights groups launched a lawsuit on October 28. Last Thursday, a New York judge ruled that ICE must turn over the requested documents by January 17.
Does deportation make American safer?
Back in St. Brigid’s church, Rep. Nydia Velasquez is convinced the answer to the question of whether deportation makes America safer is “no,” and that the buck has to stop here, regardless of the climate of the incoming Congress when it comes to immigration reform.
“In the ’60s, when people were fighting for human rights or civil rights, and were told so many times, this is not the right time? There is not a right or wrong time—there is a moral time,” Velasquez says.
She and Gutierrez are calling into question how much these programs actually serve the interest of public safety. They’re rejecting the overly simplistic moral equation that leads to the criminalization of immigrants, and struggling to regain the moral high ground.
“No man, not even the president of the United States, can divide what men and women and God have brought together,” Gutierrez shouts.
He asks everyone to remember a woman in the ‘50s, who got on a bus after a long day of work and took a seat in the front—claiming her place there made simple moral sense to her, even though the rest of society hadn’t caught up yet. “Do you think Rosa Parks said, 'I’ve got to call the Speaker before I act? I’ve got to see how many votes I have in the Senate before I act?'”
Time will tell if Obama knows the answer.
Braden Goyette is a staff writer for Campus Progress.
http://campusprogress.org/articles/what_gets_lost_in_the_immigration_deportation_dragnet/
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Keeping Obama to His Word
Rep. Luis Gutierrez is a hero to many Hispanics. He says he won’t change his methods, no matter who gets irritated.
by Arian Campo-Flores
Newsweek
November 29, 2010
Once you’ve made a promise to U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, it’s a bad idea to break it. Because if you do, he’ll call you on it, and then he’ll broadcast your perfidy incessantly, with every megaphone he can get his hands on, to anyone who will listen. Just ask President Barack Obama, who failed to keep his word on tackling immigration reform in his first year in office. Though the two Chicago Democrats were once close, Gutierrez has spent much of the past two years badgering the president on the issue. “He was clear in his commitment to me,” says Gutierrez. And yet “everything has been enforcement, enforcement, enforcement”—more deportations of undocumented immigrants, more troops |on the border. “How,” asks Gutierrez, “is this different from what George W. Bush did?”
Gutierrez, 56, is the most passionate, tireless, and nettlesome voice in Congress on immigration matters. He’s a constant presence at rallies and on TV, defending the undocumented and railing against xenophobia. It’s no surprise that a recent Pew Hispanic Center survey ranked him the second-most-important Latino leader in the country, after Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “He’s as close as the Latino community has to a Martin Luther King figure,” says Frank Sharry, founder of the pro-immigrant group America’s Voice. Yet Gutierrez’s tactics are controversial. While many admire his tenacity and credit him with keeping immigration reform alive, others, including members of the Obama administration, believe his confrontational style can be counterproductive. He sees things more simply. “I have only one loyalty,” he says, “and that’s to the immigrant community.”
Rep. Luis Gutierrez is a hero to many Hispanics.
Gutierrez has now embarked on his latest campaign: to secure quick passage of the DREAM Act, which would legalize undocumented youths who attend college or serve in the military. With a Republican takeover of the House imminent, the lame-duck session of Congress offers the last chance (for a while, at least) to get it done. It won’t be easy, given the noxious atmosphere in Washington. Yet Gutierrez has already launched a nationwide tour of churches to rally immigrants and their supporters, and has begun rounding up votes in the House. Two weeks ago, he and a few other lawmakers met with Obama at the White House. “We want you to put everything you can behind this,” he says they told the president. Obama agreed to help—by, among other things, placing personal calls to wavering lawmakers.
Gutierrez’s first stop on his church tour was St. Brigid’s in Brooklyn a week ago. Joined by Rep. Nydia Velázquez, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and other elected officials, he was received with adulation by the hundreds of people packed in the pews. His speeches at events like these—delivered in a stentorian voice, despite his slight physique—resemble revivalist sermons. He started off softly, then crescendoed to ear-splitting decibels, jabbing his index finger toward the heavens. “The other side is waiting for us to get tired!” Gutierrez thundered in Spanish. “Is anyone here tired?” “No!” the audience roared back.
The son of Puerto Rican parents, Gutierrez has long had a fiery streak. He was a student leader and community organizer before entering politics, first as an alderman and then a congressman representing a majority-Latino district. Though he’s about to start his 10th term, Gutierrez’s activist roots still show. Within weeks of Obama’s taking office, he set off on a 30-city tour to highlight the stories of families split apart by deportations and to pressure the administration to take on immigration reform. One year later, with things at a standstill, Gutierrez turned more adversarial. He said Hispanics were becoming angry and disillusioned, and were losing patience with the president. In May of this year, he was arrested at an immigration protest in front of the White House. The following month, he threatened to urge Latinos to sit out the midterm elections if Democrats didn’t act on immigration reform. “In any movement, you need agitators,” says Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, which has pushed for reform. “I frankly admire him for having the courage to take on friends and allies.”
That sentiment isn’t shared by many in the administration. Gutierrez clashed repeatedly with Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, whom he considered a prime impediment to an immigration overhaul. Another administration official, who didn’t want to be named to avoid exacerbating tensions, complains that Gutierrez “has contributed to the flawed impression that the president can do this by himself”—when, in fact, he depends on Congress to move legislation. “It saddens me … that [the president] and I have had these very public differences,” says Gutierrez.
It’s quite a turnaround for the two men. When Obama was a freshman U.S. senator, he used to call Gutierrez regularly for advice. When he decided to run for president, he sought Gutierrez’s endorsement early on—and got it. “There was a time when I was the only elected Latino that was for him. They were all for Hillary [Clinton],” says Gutierrez. “I love him. I want him to do well … But I have to be true to what I believe in.” (Cecilia Muñoz, a White House point person on immigration, calls Gutierrez “an important moral voice” and says that he and the president “are on the same side of the issue.”)
Outside the administration, some backers of immigration reform also have misgivings about Gutierrez’s approach. He “transformed what had been a narrow policy issue into a litmus-test identity issue for Hispanics, and that made the debate a whole different ball game,” says Tamar Jacoby, president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a coalition of business groups that rely on immigrant labor. Gutierrez is “incredibly effective at what he does … [But] there’s part of me that always gets a little worried about identity politics.”
Still, Gutierrez has a track record of pragmatism, too. He took flak from some advocates for including strict enforcement provisions in an immigration bill he crafted with Republican Rep. Jeff Flake in 2007 (it didn’t pass). “He can go from being a bomb thrower to being a dealmaker,” says Angela Kelley of the Center for American Progress. “That’s a pretty important bilingual ability.” Gutierrez’s promotion of the DREAM Act is itself a compromise. Pro-immigrant forces agonized over whether to abandon the fight for a comprehensive bill in favor of a narrower one that would benefit only a slice of the undocumented population. In the end, they concluded that only the DREAM Act had a real chance.
Gutierrez thinks the measure can prevail in the House. The bigger challenge is in the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid has pledged to bring the bill to the floor in the next few weeks. Given the need for 60 votes to break a filibuster and the likely defection of a handful of Democrats, the measure’s backers need to win over at least a half dozen Republicans—a tall order these days. But seven current Senate GOP members voted for the DREAM Act in 2007, and a few others who are retiring aren’t considered hardliners.
The immigrant movement will face a much more adverse climate in Congress next year. As a result, Gutierrez is trying to redirect its energy toward a different end: persuading Obama to use his executive powers to stop the deportation of law-abiding illegal immigrants. To ratchet up the pressure, Gutierrez is encouraging acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. “We cannot be a slave to the legislative process,” he says. “That’s what we’ve done, and it hasn’t served us very well.” Given that some Republican lawmakers have made clear they plan to use their newfound power to crack down even more on illegal immigrants, “the next couple of years are going to be an extraordinary battle,” says Rosenberg. Gutierrez’s “voice will be needed more than ever.” And you can be certain you’ll hear it.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/29/pushing-obama-on-immigration-reform.html
by Arian Campo-Flores
Newsweek
November 29, 2010
Once you’ve made a promise to U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, it’s a bad idea to break it. Because if you do, he’ll call you on it, and then he’ll broadcast your perfidy incessantly, with every megaphone he can get his hands on, to anyone who will listen. Just ask President Barack Obama, who failed to keep his word on tackling immigration reform in his first year in office. Though the two Chicago Democrats were once close, Gutierrez has spent much of the past two years badgering the president on the issue. “He was clear in his commitment to me,” says Gutierrez. And yet “everything has been enforcement, enforcement, enforcement”—more deportations of undocumented immigrants, more troops |on the border. “How,” asks Gutierrez, “is this different from what George W. Bush did?”
Gutierrez, 56, is the most passionate, tireless, and nettlesome voice in Congress on immigration matters. He’s a constant presence at rallies and on TV, defending the undocumented and railing against xenophobia. It’s no surprise that a recent Pew Hispanic Center survey ranked him the second-most-important Latino leader in the country, after Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “He’s as close as the Latino community has to a Martin Luther King figure,” says Frank Sharry, founder of the pro-immigrant group America’s Voice. Yet Gutierrez’s tactics are controversial. While many admire his tenacity and credit him with keeping immigration reform alive, others, including members of the Obama administration, believe his confrontational style can be counterproductive. He sees things more simply. “I have only one loyalty,” he says, “and that’s to the immigrant community.”
Rep. Luis Gutierrez is a hero to many Hispanics.
Gutierrez has now embarked on his latest campaign: to secure quick passage of the DREAM Act, which would legalize undocumented youths who attend college or serve in the military. With a Republican takeover of the House imminent, the lame-duck session of Congress offers the last chance (for a while, at least) to get it done. It won’t be easy, given the noxious atmosphere in Washington. Yet Gutierrez has already launched a nationwide tour of churches to rally immigrants and their supporters, and has begun rounding up votes in the House. Two weeks ago, he and a few other lawmakers met with Obama at the White House. “We want you to put everything you can behind this,” he says they told the president. Obama agreed to help—by, among other things, placing personal calls to wavering lawmakers.
Gutierrez’s first stop on his church tour was St. Brigid’s in Brooklyn a week ago. Joined by Rep. Nydia Velázquez, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and other elected officials, he was received with adulation by the hundreds of people packed in the pews. His speeches at events like these—delivered in a stentorian voice, despite his slight physique—resemble revivalist sermons. He started off softly, then crescendoed to ear-splitting decibels, jabbing his index finger toward the heavens. “The other side is waiting for us to get tired!” Gutierrez thundered in Spanish. “Is anyone here tired?” “No!” the audience roared back.
The son of Puerto Rican parents, Gutierrez has long had a fiery streak. He was a student leader and community organizer before entering politics, first as an alderman and then a congressman representing a majority-Latino district. Though he’s about to start his 10th term, Gutierrez’s activist roots still show. Within weeks of Obama’s taking office, he set off on a 30-city tour to highlight the stories of families split apart by deportations and to pressure the administration to take on immigration reform. One year later, with things at a standstill, Gutierrez turned more adversarial. He said Hispanics were becoming angry and disillusioned, and were losing patience with the president. In May of this year, he was arrested at an immigration protest in front of the White House. The following month, he threatened to urge Latinos to sit out the midterm elections if Democrats didn’t act on immigration reform. “In any movement, you need agitators,” says Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, which has pushed for reform. “I frankly admire him for having the courage to take on friends and allies.”
That sentiment isn’t shared by many in the administration. Gutierrez clashed repeatedly with Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, whom he considered a prime impediment to an immigration overhaul. Another administration official, who didn’t want to be named to avoid exacerbating tensions, complains that Gutierrez “has contributed to the flawed impression that the president can do this by himself”—when, in fact, he depends on Congress to move legislation. “It saddens me … that [the president] and I have had these very public differences,” says Gutierrez.
It’s quite a turnaround for the two men. When Obama was a freshman U.S. senator, he used to call Gutierrez regularly for advice. When he decided to run for president, he sought Gutierrez’s endorsement early on—and got it. “There was a time when I was the only elected Latino that was for him. They were all for Hillary [Clinton],” says Gutierrez. “I love him. I want him to do well … But I have to be true to what I believe in.” (Cecilia Muñoz, a White House point person on immigration, calls Gutierrez “an important moral voice” and says that he and the president “are on the same side of the issue.”)
Outside the administration, some backers of immigration reform also have misgivings about Gutierrez’s approach. He “transformed what had been a narrow policy issue into a litmus-test identity issue for Hispanics, and that made the debate a whole different ball game,” says Tamar Jacoby, president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a coalition of business groups that rely on immigrant labor. Gutierrez is “incredibly effective at what he does … [But] there’s part of me that always gets a little worried about identity politics.”
Still, Gutierrez has a track record of pragmatism, too. He took flak from some advocates for including strict enforcement provisions in an immigration bill he crafted with Republican Rep. Jeff Flake in 2007 (it didn’t pass). “He can go from being a bomb thrower to being a dealmaker,” says Angela Kelley of the Center for American Progress. “That’s a pretty important bilingual ability.” Gutierrez’s promotion of the DREAM Act is itself a compromise. Pro-immigrant forces agonized over whether to abandon the fight for a comprehensive bill in favor of a narrower one that would benefit only a slice of the undocumented population. In the end, they concluded that only the DREAM Act had a real chance.
Gutierrez thinks the measure can prevail in the House. The bigger challenge is in the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid has pledged to bring the bill to the floor in the next few weeks. Given the need for 60 votes to break a filibuster and the likely defection of a handful of Democrats, the measure’s backers need to win over at least a half dozen Republicans—a tall order these days. But seven current Senate GOP members voted for the DREAM Act in 2007, and a few others who are retiring aren’t considered hardliners.
The immigrant movement will face a much more adverse climate in Congress next year. As a result, Gutierrez is trying to redirect its energy toward a different end: persuading Obama to use his executive powers to stop the deportation of law-abiding illegal immigrants. To ratchet up the pressure, Gutierrez is encouraging acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. “We cannot be a slave to the legislative process,” he says. “That’s what we’ve done, and it hasn’t served us very well.” Given that some Republican lawmakers have made clear they plan to use their newfound power to crack down even more on illegal immigrants, “the next couple of years are going to be an extraordinary battle,” says Rosenberg. Gutierrez’s “voice will be needed more than ever.” And you can be certain you’ll hear it.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/29/pushing-obama-on-immigration-reform.html
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