S-Comm Attracts More Critics
Jaime Omar Yassin writes for KALW News:
City and police officials across the country are realizing that adding immigration enforcement to police duties may not be as good an idea as it once seemed. Increasing local resistance to the federal Secure Communities program, which shares fingerprints of all arrestees with immigration control, has produced at least one political casualty. A little over a week after criticizing Providence’s Public Safety Commissioner for requesting clarification from the Justice Department on the “opt out” procedure for the program, State Police Superintendent Brendan P. Dougherty has resigned. Officials in Rhode Island–like the governor and the mayor of Providence–have been skeptical of the program, which some say is a dragnet for rounding up undocumented immigrants.
Dougherty had been Superintendent for just two weeks, but ran into trouble once his pro-Secure Communities stance became public.
The resignation comes on the heels of a report issued by the Police Executive Research Forum—a national research and advocacy organization of progressive police administrators—detailing increasing wariness of local police and city officials to mix immigration control with policing. Despite listing fairly centrist recommendations for national immigration policy, the report nevertheless takes a sharp view on programs like Secure Communities and 287(g), a program that deputizes police as immigration agents. The report recommends that local police forces be “prohibited from arresting or detaining persons for the sole purpose of investigating their immigration status” and that “officers should arrest” perpetrators “without regard to the immigration status of the alleged perpetrator or victim.” The recommendations go to the heart of the two most controversial aspects of Secure Communities that have led many observers to conclude that victims of crimes, including domestic violence, may be reluctant to contact police, for fear of arrest on immigration violations. Camila Hayes at the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence told the California Report that increased anxiety over immigration status caused by the Secure Communities program would cause victims to be “more likely to stay with an abusive partner.” Read more….
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