FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
August 16, 2011
National Leaders, Experts, and Victims of S-Comm Conclude Program Should End
LOS ANGELES, Calif. – Today the National Immigration Law Center and others made public an authoritative report condemning the Secure Communities (S-Comm) deportation program and recommending its termination.
The report, titled “Restoring Community: A National Community Advisory Report on ICE’s Failed ‘Secure Communities’ Program,” includes testimony from former New York district attorney Robert Morgenthau, heads of law enforcement, and victims of S-Comm such as Isaura in Los Angeles, whose 911 call for help resulted in her being placed in deportation proceedings.
In contrast to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)–appointed taskforce, which has failed to enlist the voices of affected communities, scholars, or critics on the subject, this report constitutes a real, deliberative, and representative review of the program.
The report recommends that S-Comm be terminated, that the current investigation by the DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) of S-Comm be expanded to review all of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “Agreements of Cooperation in Communities to Enhance Safety and Security” (ICE ACCESS) programs, that the Department of Justice begin its own investigation into the mysterious role of the FBI in S-Comm, and that states not be compelled to share biometric data with ICE.
The following statement can be attributed to the National Community Advisory Commission:
“This report confirms what immigrant communities have long known. The program called Secure Communities results in the opposite. Entangling local police in immigration enforcement is not just bad policy, as the experts testify. Conscripting local police into immigration enforcement has provoked a massive civil rights crisis our country now faces. The only suitable approach is to end Secure Communities.”
The commission includes: American Friends Service Committee, Project Voice New England, Asian Law Caucus, CASA de Maryland, CENTRO de Igualdad y Derechos, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, Detention Watch Network, Grassroots Leadership, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, National Day Laborer Organizing Network, National Immigrant Justice Center, National Immigration Law Center, National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, Rights Working Group, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, and We-Count!
View the report.
Background information on S-Comm is available athttp://altopolimigra.com/s-comm-shadow-report/ and www.uncoverthetruth.org.
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