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| Home Front: Politix | |
| Immigration enforcement program to be shut down | |
| 2012-02-22 | |
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have trained local officers around the country to act as their agencies' immigration officers. Working either in jails or in the field, the officers can check the immigration status of suspects and place immigration holds on them. The program, known as 287(g), reached its peak under President George W. Bush, when 60 local agencies signed contracts with ICE to implement it. But that trend slowed significantly under President Obama— only eight agencies have signed up since he took office, and none has done so since August 2010. Now, in their proposed budget for the upcoming year, Department of Homeland Security officials say they will not sign new contracts for 287(g) officers working in the field and will terminate the "least productive" of those agreements — saving an estimated $17 million. All the contracts between ICE and local police agencies run for three years, so that portion of the program could be finished by November when the last contract for field officers expires. In its budget request, DHS said officials instead will focus on expanding Secure Communities, a program that checks the fingerprints of all people booked into local jails against federal immigration databases. The followup work in those cases is done by ICE agents, not local police. "The Secure Communities screening process is more consistent, efficient and cost-effective in identifying and removing criminal and other priority aliens," the department explained in its budget request. The program had been criticized by Homeland Security inspector general reports, which found that local officers were not being properly trained and there was not enough oversight to ensure that local agencies weren't using the program to engage in racial profiling. A study last year by the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank, found that immigrants developed "fear and mistrust of authorities" when they realized that local police could act as immigration agents. The main complaint Friday from groups that oppose 287(g) was that the program isn't being terminated immediately, and that its replacement — Secure Communities — is not much better. "The 287(g) program has been repeatedly called into question by advocates as well as the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general, and should be terminated rather than sustained with taxpayer money," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. "The Secure Communities program is surrounded by grave concerns about the impact to public safety, community policing and civil rights abuses." Defenders of the program, such as Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, say Homeland Security is "putting politics ahead of public safety" by cutting back the 287(g) program. She said Secure Communities is helpful but that local officers working in the field are better able to identify illegal immigrants who may not have their fingerprints in federal databases, making it harder to identify them. She said some agencies such as the Colorado Department of Public Safety have used their 287(g) officers to suppress drug and human smuggling, gang activity and identity theft and said many sheriffs and police chiefs prefer the program to Secure Communities. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #10 Board of Directors for the National Immigration Forum. National Immigration Forum has ties to AFL-CIO, the National Restaurant Association, the American Nursery and Landscape Association, and the US Chamber of Commerce. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2012-02-22 18:49 |
| #9 Combining a comment from this thread & from a different one on the 'Burg today: -- Nothing criminal, probably not even unethical, but does not seem like leadership to me -- a culture of decadence and false-imagry whose prominant members make millions. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2012-02-22 15:34 |
| #8 "[Migration Policy Institute] grew out of the International Migration Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace." - MPI website Also has ties with Brookings and UNHCR. Board of Trustees for the Migration Policy Institute. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2012-02-22 15:08 |
| #7 Gosh. I really miss the olden days when my father talked of him and his fellow US Soldiers prior to WWII guarding the border with 50 caliber machine gun nests... |
| Posted by: Creamble Juns1331 2012-02-22 14:48 |
| #6 ...saving an estimated $17 million... So you see, it's all about saving $17 million so they can give it away to fat cats, welfare moms and illegal aliens. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2012-02-22 11:28 |
| #5 Many on the left favor "open borders." So how is that concept working for us? Maybe the administration's strategy is to weaken the U.S. economy so that it is worse than Mexico's and the flow of illegals reverses. Does this mean that the govmint's Fast and Furious program has stopped and the drug trade, and human slave trade are under control? |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2012-02-22 09:25 |
| #4 As a member of the fawning masses, I patiently await the open coach Duesenberg parades. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2012-02-22 07:43 |
| #3 In other words he wants it shut down because local law enforcement tend to want to... enforce the law. Instead they want to replace them with buearucrats who are more interested in insuring that the proper "race quota's" are not exceeded. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2012-02-22 07:39 |
| #2 I think the vacation costs chargable to the First Family are mostly picked up by doners, not the taxpayers (at least not until favors get called in), but that doesn't include the huge increase in taxpayer-funded overhead to provide security, etc. while 'on the road.' Nothing criminal, probably not even unethical, but does not seem like leadership to me. Unless what they are trying to lead us to do is spend lots of money - which may be the case, and is consistent with a lot of other actions as well. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2012-02-22 07:30 |
| #1 In other news: Presidential family ski vacations and golf outings....fully funded. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2012-02-22 02:14 |