Live From Denver: Detainers

LtoR: Lasch, Stumpf, Silverstein, Markowitz

“Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead” is the song floating through my head during this afternoon’s panel on immigration detainers, which are official requests from ICE that local law enforcement entities (think jails) hold non-citizens for eventual pick-up.

Unfortunately, immigration detainers are not yet “Undeniably and reliably Dead” even if they might be “morally, ethic’lly” so. But they are dead in large portions of the country (see the map below). And that is a “historic victory” as Peter Markowitz (Cardozo) remarked today.

Panelists Markowitz, Chris Lasch (DU), Juliet Stumpf (Lewis & Clark), and Mark Silverstein (ACLU CO) spoke about the decline of immigration detainers. They spoke about the power of “legal theory and grassroots organizing” (Markowitz) which proved to local law enforcement agencies (LEAs) that immigration detainers were not mandatory and, moreover, compliance with them might subject LEAs to civil rights suits. Fear of lawsuits, it turns out, is a powerful motivator for change. Go figure.

Perhaps soon we will be able to report on not just the “decline” of immigration detainers but their “demise.” And then we really will be able to “sing it high, sing it low. Let them know. The Wicked Witch is dead!”

Map via the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

-KitJ