End the 287(g) Program in Nashville

From the Tennessean:

When it comes to immigration law, the Obama administration may be well-meaning, but it risks becoming guilty of the same mistakes that plagued the system under his predecessor.
 
Davidson County will experience this firsthand, as its sheriff is rightly concerned over Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s move to close detainee records.

The Bush administration-created 287(g) program was launched 3½ years ago as a way for local law enforcement agencies to help identify illegal immigrants and hand over their cases to federal authorities. Davidson Sheriff Daron Hall was one of the first local authorities to sign up for the program. He says fewer crimes committed in Nashville are attributable to illegal immigrants than before the program took effect. He also says his department has identified more than 5,300 illegal immigrants who have been processed for deportation.

Still, many people have taken exception to the 287(g) program here and in other states, and for good reason. The vast majority of people detained under the program have not turned out to be the dangerous criminals the program was supposedly intended to identify. Also, advocates say the program encourages racial profiling, a charge that law enforcement officials have denied.

There has been criticism from the federal level, too. The Government Accountability Office in January found widespread differences in how 287(g) is implemented by local agencies and a lack of oversight, The Associated Press reported.

Unfortunately, President Barack Obama’s Homeland Security Department (which supervises Immigration and Customs Enforcement), in trying to solve the procedural problems, has made the program worse.

Local agencies are being asked to sign an agreement that would keep information about suspects, even their names, a secret. Hall told the AP the provision “flies in the face of what I think is good policy” and may stop participating in the program.

It’s an understatement that this policy is bad. When the government can hold anyone secretly, it smacks of the policies by which South American dictators suppressed political dissent in the 1960s and ’70s. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of political prisoners simply “disappeared.” Click here for the rest of the story.

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