“Secure Communities” Public Hearing [Wednesday]

[josefro...@aol.com]

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The ICE Public Hearing on Secure Communities will be held at the IBEW Hall at 600 W Washington on Wednesday, August 17th.  ICE just released the location last night.  Please spread the word by 1) forwarding this information to your lists.

Wednesday, August 17^th

“Secure Communities” Public Hearing @ 6pm

IBEW Hall, 600 W. Washington Blvd, Chicago, IL 60661 

John Morton, Director

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement

500 12th St., SW
Washington, D.C. 20536

 

Dear Director Morton:

 

We, the undersigned elected officials, law enforcement officers, and community leaders write to strongly disapprove of your agency’s announcement on Friday, August 5, regarding the “Secure Communities” program.  On that date, your agency unilaterally terminated all existing Memoranda of Agreement with states that participated in the program, including Illinois.  In doing so, ICE rejected Governor Pat Quinn’s formal request to opt-out of this broken program.

 

This decision by your agency shows appalling disrespect for our Governor and the people of our state.  Governor Quinn recognized the deep flaws within “Secure Communities.”  In his termination notice of May 4, he argued that even though this program had been targeted against individuals with serious criminal convictions, a disproportionate number of people deported under this program had no criminal convictions whatsoever.  Rather than making us safer, Secure Communities makes us less safe – eroding public trust with police and diverting limited police resources to detain non-criminals.  Based on this conflict between the program’s stated goals and its actual results, Governor Quinn exercised our state’s right under the Memorandum to withdraw the state from the program.  Rather than address the flaws raised by Governor Quinn, your agency disregarded those concerns and has now undercut a signed agreement with our State – and with every other state nationwide, making the Secure Communities program compulsory.

 

ICE says it is committed to reform, but this recent decision discredits the agency’s own efforts to “reform” the program.  The latest announcement came while DHS’ task force on “Secure Communities” was still meeting to decide what to do about the state MOA’s and the program as a whole.  By unilaterally deciding one of the key issues before the task force, ICE has demonstrated its own bad faith toward the law enforcement and community members serving on the task force – and has called into question how serious it could ever be in hearing the concerns of the community or fixing this flawed program.

 

“Secure Communities” has strayed far from President Obama’s stated immigration enforcement goal of “focusing primarily on criminals,” to the detriment of immigrant communities and law enforcement agencies.  In Illinois, 78% of immigrants arrested by ICE under this program have no criminal convictions, or are guilty of only minor offenses.  Local law enforcement agencies bear the costs of the program, including the diversion of limited jail space and officer time.  Perhaps more important, local police agencies must deal with the erosion of the trust they must have with immigrant communities if they are to protect the public safety of the entire communities they serve.

 

We call upon you to immediately halt the Secure Communities program and work to reshape enforcement policies so that they respect local law enforcement, immigrant families, and the will of our Governor and our people.

 

Sincerely,

 

Sheriff Patrick Perez-D, Kane County                     

Sherrif Mark Curran-R, Lake County

Alie Kabba, ICIRR President

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Jose Herrera

773-632-9992

[Ocelocihuatzin Moyolehuani Necahual]

dear jose and others, what shall we do there? --- On Sun, 8/14/11, josefro...@aol.com <josefro...@aol.com> wrote: