Group Wants Federal Immigration Program Dismantled

An organization dedicated to promoting rights for immigrants says that a federal program designed to help state and local governments crack down on illegal immigration is not working.

The report put out by the National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic rights advocacy group in the U.S., concludes that the 287(g) program, a provision within the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows state and local law enforcement officials to enter into agreements to enforce federal immigration laws, is causing harm to Latino communities nationwide.

“The 287(g) program has been implemented without adequate training, oversight, transparency and accountability,” said La Raza official Elena Lacayo during a conference call with reporters on Thursday.

“The program should be terminated,” she added.

According to the report, the program has produced several unintended consequences, such as granting police unchecked authority to arrest nonviolent immigrants, and using race as a basis for doing so. Moreover, the report states that 287(g) “has led to a clear deterioration of the relationship between Hispanics and the police.”

As an alternative, La Raza and other like-minded organizations want Congress to prioritize passing comprehensive immigration reform that would include a pathway to citizenship for illegals currently in the U.S. However, since the failure of the McCain-Kennedy bill in 2007, efforts to pass legislation have largely stalled, with lawmakers and groups alike pressing for enhanced border control.

That could change now that the Senate has passed a bill aimed at tightening security along parts of the country’s southwest border. The $600 million measure, which the Senate passed today by taking a temporary break from its August recess, will send 1,500 Border Patrol agents to the region, and will fund two unmanned aerial drones as well as establish military-style bases along the border. Supporters, mostly Democrats, say the bill represents the bargaining chip they believe is necessary to get Republicans to negotiate with them on reform. Still, as of now there are no plans to scrap 287(g).

Since 1996, roughly 70 local police jurisdictions have become enrolled in the program. Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB 1070, grew largely out of the state’s participation in 287(g), which has also taken root in areas close to Washington. Prince William County, a suburb located just 20 miles south of DC, officially enrolled its police department in 287(g) in 2007. Prince William officials attribute reduced crime in their county to participation in the program.

““287(g) is one of the few bright spots in immigration enforcement,” said County Board Supervisor Corey Stewart (R). “I would credit [the program] with reducing Prince William County’s crime rate by 37% in the last two years,” he added.

Earlier this week, Stewart released draft legislation that if passed, would allow the state of Virginia to enforce federal immigration laws. Stewart’s bill is modeled after SB 1070, but avoids what he calls “legal pitfalls” that utimately gave a U.S. District Judge cause to enjoin certain parts of the Arizona law.

Virginia Lawmaker To Introduce Arizona-Esque Immigration Bill

A new battle over the right of states to enforce federal immigration law may soon spring up in Congress’ backyard.

Using Arizona’s controversial immigration law as a model, Prince William County (Va.) Board Chairman Corey Stewart has crafted a proposal to crack down on those who are in the state illegally. Stewart’s bill would allow state and local police to check the immigration status during any lawful stop, detention, or arrest of any person suspected to be an illegal alien. The bill would also place restrictions on hiring illegals, and would ban all policies and ordinances that grant sanctuary status to illegals. Additionally, like Arizona’s SB 1070, the bill contains language that completely forbids law enforcement officials from using racial profiling as a means of targeting suspected illegals.

Yet Stewart’s camp says that unlike the Arizona law, key parts of which were enjoined earlier this week by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton, their bill would hold up in court.

In her ruling, Bolton said that “requiring police to check the immigration status of those they arrest or whom they stop and suspect are in the country illegally would overwhelm the federal government’s ability to respond, and could mean legal immigrants are wrongly arrested.”

“Judge Bolton enjoined the sections of SB 1070, which created the mirror state code violation for alien registration or traveling without legal documentation, but none of the sections which simply directed [law enforcement officials] to enforce federal law,” an aide to Stewart told me.
 
“Section 3 [of Stewart’s bill] as a whole mirrors the section of SB 1070 which was upheld, not enjoined, and therefore Corey’s version of the model Virginia law puts the direction to enforce federal immigration law in the same section,” he added.

Stewart’s latest foray into immigration policy is certainly not his first. In 2007, Stewart, the highest elected official in Prince William County, a suburb of Washington, D.C. located just 25 miles south of the city, campaigned for and passed a county-wide resolution that allowed local law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of anyone they arrested. The initiative also enrolled the county in the federal government’s 287g program.  Last year, it was reported that violent crime in the county had dropped almost 37%, a statistic Stewart credited in part to the enactment of his policy.

Stewart will push state lawmakers to consider his bill, the Virginia Rule of Law Act, when they convene for a new legislative session in January 2011.

Virginia Politician Urging State To Adopt Arizona Immigration Law

By Linn Grubbstrom
Talk Radio News Service

The top elected official of a Northern Virginia county located less than 40 miles from the nation's capital says he wants his state to pass a very similar version of the anti-illegal immigration law passed earlier this year in Arizona.

Corey Stewart, the chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, says he will lobby Virginia lawmakers this year in an effort to persuade them to pass a measure that would increase the power of state and local law enforcement to capture, detain and deport illegal immigrants. The plan Stewart is pushing would also outlaw day laborer centers, places where illegals are known to gather.

Stewart, who earned national notoriety in 2007 for instituting a county-wide crackdown on illegals, told Talk Radio News Service that adopting the Arizona bill would drastically decrease Virginia's crime rate.

"The first two years after the crackdown on illegal immigration in Prince William we had a 37 % drop in the violent crime rate," he said. "Based upon that experience we believe that we would have similar results in the rest of the Commonwealth of Virginia."

In fact, of the 2,000 people arrested last year for major crimes -- including violence -- in Prince William County, only 121 were found to be living in the state illegally. That figure represents a significant decline from the level recorded before Stewart initiated the crackdown two years ago.

However, on a statewide level, over 17% of those arrested in Virginia last year for violent crime offenses were found to be non-residents: A frightening statistic in Stewart's view.

"We need to bring the rule of law to all of Virginia," he told the Washington Post in an interview this week.

Though Arizona has faced mounting threats of economic boycotts by cities and businesses in neighboring states, Stewart insists that enacting such a bill in Virginia would have minimal negative impacts on the state's economy.

"Businesses do even better, because when you crack down on illegal immigration, the quality of life improves and the crime rate goes down and that's the type of environment that businesses want to move to."

Stewart said he expects to encounter push-back on the effort from federal officials, but added that a lack of federal enforcement of the nation's immigration laws has created a need for action on the local level.

"In their typical political fashion I would expect that the Obama administration will try to intimidate the Commonwealth of Virginia, try to sue the Commonwealth of Virginia. But we have to do what is right precisely because the federal government has refused to do anything about illegal immigration."

With change comes reaction: Immigrants in the US

by Christina Lovato, University of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service


Because there is an increasing number of immigrants moving into U.S.
suburban neighborhoods there comes change. At a discussion on
“Immigration, Politics and Local Responses” immigration experts shared
their research from all around the United States on how local
residents reacted to the growing rate of immigrants moving into their
neighborhoods.

Angeles Ortega-Moore, the Chief Executive Officer of the Latin
American Coalition (LAC), said that at first LAC was a cultural
organization for Latinos in North Carolina but as the immigrant
population grew they had to change their programming. “No longer we
were doing Pasofino and horse shows and things like that. We started
to do English as a second language, how do we help people applying for
their driving licenses...We became really fully a social service
organization.” she said.

Audrey Singer, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy
Program shared her research on immigration in Prince William County,
Virginia, and said that changes in the suburban neighborhoods got
residents frustrated and in March 2007 some of them started a “Help
save Manassas” group, whose stated goal was, “To reduce the number of
illegal aliens living in our community.” That led to two resolutions
that directed police to ascertain a person’s legal status only when
they had probable cause to believe the person was illegally present
and to restrict unauthorized immigrants from receiving business
licenses and participating in eight social service programs. From her
research, Singer recommended that leaders be more organized when
creating new policies. “Facts are important for policy making...and
officials should communicate policy changes clearly. Many of the
residents were confused by the new policies...and many in the
immigrant community were fearful about how the new policies would
affect them.”