Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (Photo: Flickr/The National Guard)

Former members of a task force on Secure Communities sent a letter this week to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano calling on her to suspend the immigration enforcement program.

The letter also expressed their concern that an Arizona law enforcement agency that has committed a “wide range of civil rights violations” still has access to Secure Communities.

Brittney Nystrom of the National Immigration Forum and Andrea Zuniga DiBitetto of the AFL-CIO write in the letter:

As former members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, Task Force on Secure Communities, we note with concern the multiple findings of racial profiling of Latinos and other civil rights violations by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on December 15.

The findings of a pattern and practice of racial profiling of Latinos in Maricopa County, Arizona, demonstrate that abuse can occur while the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is actively collaborating with enforcement agencies through both the 287(g) program and the Secure Communities program and through informal collaboration between DHS and law enforcement agencies.

“My understanding is that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is continuing to operate Secure Communities in Maricopa County despite the findings of discriminatory policing by that sheriffs department,” Nystrom tells The Florida Independent.

Secure Communities allows local law enforcement agencies to check the fingerprints of people they detain and match them up with federal immigration and criminal databases, with the stated goal of deporting undocumented immigrant criminals. All 67 Florida jurisdictions participate in Secure Communities.

Napolitano said in October that the termination of Secure Communities “would only weaken public safety, and move the immigration enforcement system back towards the ad hoc approach where non-criminal aliens are more likely to be removed than criminals.”

Opponents of Secure Communities have repeatedly called on the Obama administration to end the fingerprint-sharing program because immigrants who have committed no crime are being detained and deported, leaving behind U.S.-born children and families that, in many cases, will struggle to make ends meet.

Nystrom says that Homeland Security officials said they were “limiting” the Maricopa sheriff’s office’s “access to Secure Communities, but that in [her] thinking and Andrea’s thinking doesn’t go far enough to prevent someone who was picked up in a biased manner from being put into the deportation machine.”

The letter adds that the Secure Communities termination should also include Alabama, “where immigration enforcement laws that have been challenged as unconstitutional by the Department of Justice are in effect.”

Currently, spouses of U.S. citizens must leave the country to apply and are often barred from returning to their families for as long as 10 years. The new rule would allow many of them to get back to their families much quicker.

“This policy will save the lives of American citizens,” said U.S. Rep Jared Polis, D-Colorado. “Jake Martinez would be alive today if this had been in place. It’s past time that we reformed our immigration system so that families aren’t torn apart or sent off to dangerous cities like Juarez, Mexico as they wait to have their cases processed. Congress still must pass comprehensive immigration reform but this proposal is a welcome change over an unfair process that splits apart families and sends husbands, wives and children off to some of the most perilous parts of the world while their cases are heard.”

The case of Tania Nava Palacios of Colorado is a primary example of the danger inherent in the current process, Polis said in a press release. Nava Palacios was forced to depart Colorado and to live in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, with her U.S. citizen husband and son while USCIS adjudicated her I-601. Her husband, Jake Martinez, was killed in front of their home. The new process announced today for the adjudication of these waivers will prevent other families from the United States from suffering a similar fate, Polis’s office said.

Allowing these individuals to apply in the U.S. before they must depart the country would create a more predictable and transparent process while improving processing times, Polis said. It would also encourage individuals who may be eligible for permanent residency to apply for a waiver by reducing the amount of time they would need to spend away from their U.S. citizen spouse or parent.

A recently published study (PDF), to be disseminated to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, reports that barriers built to keep out illegal immigrants are blocking black bears in Arizona from their relatives in Mexico. Border fences are choking off bear migration corridors that are already under stress from urban encroachment, according to the study authored by the Department of Agriculture’s Todd C. Atwood and Julie K. Young, and other biologists.

“While black bears are not a species of concern in [the] U.S., they are in Mexico, which represents the southern extent of their historic and current range,” the study reads, noting that border bears “may be particularly vulnerable to further loss of habitat due to urbanization and border security activities.”

The study focused on Arizona’s desert Sky Island mountain ranges, which are also home to mountain lions and jaguars and encompass one of the nation’s most biologically diverse regions.

Its findings come as the State of Arizona is soliciting private donations to build a wall in an attempt to secure the remaining 82 miles of the state’s 388-mile border with Mexico that isn’t fenced.

A mishmash of barriers currently cover about one-third of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border with nearly half of them in Arizona and the rest equally split between California, New Mexico and Texas.

The U.S. Border Patrol first began erecting barriers in 1990 to deter illegal entries and drug smuggling in San Diego and, in 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which bestowed what is now the Department of Homeland Security broad authority to construct fencing. Then in 2005, Congress passed the REAL ID Act, authorizing Homeland Security to waive all legal requirements to expedite the construction of border barriers. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 directed Homeland Security to build 850 more miles of border fencing, though that requirement was later modified to authorize fencing along not fewer than 700 miles.

Republican congressmen and women from Colorado have historically voted for federal fence-building while Democrats such as Mark Udall and Diana DeGette have opposed it and questioned the effectiveness of barriers, their cost, environmental impacts and diplomatic ramifications.

Border security doesn’t come cheap. The Government Accountability Office estimates (pdf) the federal government doled out between $400,000 to $4.8 million for every mile of border fencing it constructed and that another $6.5 billion is needed for its maintenance over the next 20 years.

Atwood, Young and the other biologists urge government officials and policymakers to identify opportunities to maintain and restore suitable wildlife habitat to protect borderland migrations.

“Currently, in the western U.S., there is opportunity to integrate connectivity conservation with land-planning. For example, land-use planners in the Tucson metropolitan area have developed a regional conservation plan with a specific focus on maintaining wildlife linkages and increasing the permeability of transportation corridors. The information we present here, if incorporated into land-use planning, may aid in ameliorating the adverse effects of inevitable urbanization and border security activities. If connectivity can be maintained, there is greater likelihood of the longterm persistence of species such as black bears, mountain lions, and jaguars along the U.S.-Mexico border.”

The bill to extend payroll tax cuts and extend unemployment benefits is part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012, H.R. 3671, a $1 trillion dollar omnibus spending bill that funds several federal government departments, including Defense and Homeland Security.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that “the House voted Tuesday to scuttle a deal brokered in the Senate to extend the payroll-tax holiday and federal unemployment insurance for two months.”

The Journal adds that the “vote leaves Congress at a familiar impasse, just days after a final deal seemed to be in sight. Senate leaders reached an agreement late last week to extend for two months the payroll-tax cut, federal unemployment benefits and a measure to reimburse doctors for treating Medicare patients.”

The 2012 Appropriations Act includes funding that raises the number of immigration detention beds to about 34,000.

The final Fiscal Year 2012 Appropriations 1,200-page bill package includes “a total of $39.6 billion in regular discretionary funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – a decrease of $2 billion below last year’s level and $4 billion below the President’s request.”

According to a detailed summary (.pdf), “the bill provides $5.9 billion for [Immigrations and Customs Enforcement], which is $50 million more than last year’s level. This includes funding for 34,000 detention beds – the largest detention capacity in ICE’s history – and increases in immigration enforcement activities.”

Residents of Pembroke Pines and the town of Southwest Ranches are opposed to the federally funded and privately managed detention center set to be built in South Florida.

The 2012 Appropriations Act also includes $11.7 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “an increase of $362 million over last year’s level.”

Photo: An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer (ice.gov)

The Supreme Court seal (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Hayfordoleary)

Spanish-language news reporters who spoke Sunday on Al Punto, a Univision program, said the coming Supreme Court decision on Arizona’s immigration enforcement law S.B. 1070 will have an impact on both the 2012 elections and on the lives of millions of immigrants.

Alan Rivera of Hispanic News Network said that the Supreme Court decision that would come in June, in the midst of the 2012 presidential campaign, and will greatly influence the Obama campaign against the eventual Republican nominee.

Rivera highlighted the fact that, with Justice Elena Kagan not voting, five of the remaining eight justices were selected by Republican administrations. He also said the immigration issue is a constitutional one, and “the court cannot decide against the Constitution,” adding that “the Constitution says that Congress decides” on legislative issues.

Marcello Raimon of Agencia ANSA — a Latin-American news agency — said “we have to wait with our fingers crossed,” hoping “that the Supreme Court does not decide to allow states to do what they want.”

“It is on the conscience of the justices if they will destroy the lives of millions of people,” Raimon said.

“I find it very interesting that instead of talking about immigration reform for 11 million undocumented immigrants, the anti-immigrant environment in the U.S. is so large we’re talking about these issues,” Al Punto host Jorge Ramos said.

The Supreme Court decision to hear the legal challenge to Arizona’s controversial immigration enforcement law comes at a time when the leading GOP presidential candidates are talking about immigration and trying to strengthen support with Latino voters.

Newt Gingrich has called for a “humane” approach to immigration enforcement, and Republicans share his approach to immigration, but the GOP still has to work hard to get Latino voters in important swing states in the 2012 presidential elections, according to surveys.

ABC News reported that Mitt Romney, during the Fox News debate last week, “laid out more clearly than he has before details of a proposed national ID card system for legal immigrants and the requirement that employers run checks on workers or face ‘very serious sanctions.’”

According to ABC, “Romney said the new protocols would add pressure on illegal immigrants to voluntarily return to their native countries and force them to apply to the U.S. from the ‘back of the line.’”

The Washington Post reported Friday:

Republicans are increasingly worried that their party’s efforts to win a competitive slice of the fast-growing Hispanic vote in important presidential battleground states are being undermined by Mitt Romney’s heated rhetoric on illegal immigration.

Several leading GOP strategists say Romney’s sharp-tongued attacks have gained wide attention in Hispanic media and are eroding the party’s already fragile standing in that community.

The Post adds that  leaders of  conservative groups like the Hispanic Leadership Fund and the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles do not agree with Romney on immigration.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio (Photo: Flickr/Gage Skidmore)

Homeland Security writes:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is troubled by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) findings of discriminatory policing practices within the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO). Discrimination undermines law enforcement and erodes the public trust. DHS will not be a party to such practices. Accordingly, and effective immediately, DHS is terminating MCSO’s 287(g) jail model agreement and is restricting the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office access to the Secure Communities program. DHS will utilize federal resources for the purpose of identifying and detaining those individuals who meet U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) immigration enforcement priorities. The Department will continue to enforce federal immigration laws in Maricopa County in smart, effective ways that focus our resources on criminal aliens, recent border crossers, repeat and egregious immigration law violators and employers who knowingly hire illegal labor.

A Department of Justice report released Thursday found that Arpaio, an advocate for controversial immigration enforcement and detention measures, has committed a “wide range of civil rights violations.”

The Department of Justice states that the ongoing civil rights investigation of the Arpaio’s office found “reasonable cause to believe that MCSO, under the leadership of Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio, has engaged in a pattern or practice of misconduct that violates the Constitution and federal law.”

“We are pleased the Department of Justice report compelled the Department of Homeland Security to take steps today that should have been taken years ago,” said Chris Newman, Legal Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network in a written statement.

The Network adds:

As the DOJ report implies, DHS was an accomplice in the rights violations caused by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. DHS enabled Sheriff Arpaio to conduct his reign of terror, and expansion of the Maricopa Sheriff’s approach led to SB 1070 and to the potential Arizonification of the country. Today, the Department of Justice again acted to clean up the mess caused by failed DHS policies that enlist local police into the business of enforcing unjust immigration laws. It is time for DHS to stop contributing to the civil rights crisis described in the DOJ report and end the programs that made Arpaio’s crimes possible.”

The National Immigration Forum writes that the “Justice Department findings confirm what the American public had already suspected: Sheriff Arpaio has been more concerned with headlines than the Constitution and the law,” adding that they “also hail Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s prompt termination of the MCSO’s 287g agreement, which delegates authority for immigration enforcement to local officials, and restriction of the MCSO’s access to the Secure Communities program.”

Immigrant advocates across the U.S. have denounced Secure Communities, a highly controversial federal immigration enforcement program critics say contributes to racial profiling, demanding that the Obama administration terminate the program immediately.

Photo: Sheriff Joe Arpaio (Flickr/Gage Skidmore)

Sheriff Joe Arpaio (Photo: Flickr/Gage Skidmore)

A federal report released Thursday finds that Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., an advocate for controversial immigration enforcement and detention measures, has committed a “wide range of civil rights violations.”

The Associated Press reports:

The federal government issued a scathing report Thursday that outlines how Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office has committed a wide range of civil rights violations against Latinos, including a pattern of racial profiling and discrimination and carrying out heavy-handed immigration patrols based on racially charged citizen complaints.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its release, is a result of the U.S. Justice Department’s three-year investigation of Arpaio’s office amid complaints of racial profiling and a culture of bias at the agency’s top level.

The AP adds that federal authorities will continue to investigate, among other complaints, “a large number of sex-crimes cases that were assigned to” Arpaio’s office “but weren’t followed up on or investigated at all.”

In a press release issued Thursday, the Department of Justice states that the ongoing civil rights investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office found “reasonable cause to believe that MCSO, under the leadership of Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio, has engaged in a pattern or practice of misconduct that violates the Constitution and federal law.”

The department found

a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conduct and/or violations of federal law occurred in several areas, including:

• Discriminatory policing practices including unlawful stops, detentions and arrests of Latinos;
• Unlawful retaliation against individuals exercising their First Amendment right to criticize MCSO’s policies or practices, including but not limited to practices relating to its discriminatory treatment of Latinos; and
• Discriminatory jail practices against Latino inmates with limited English proficiency by punishing them and denying them critical services.

Arpaio has said he trains his deputies with federal immigration officials, has the largest group of cross-certified law enforcement men and women (160 of them) and proudly talks about his “tent city,” where about 2,000 detainees live “in Korean War tents” and “sleep in bunk beds, 20 to a tent.”

Asked what he would do if the Supreme Court decides to strike down Arizona’s immigration enforcement law S.B. 1070, Arapio said on CNN this week:

It doesn’t change anything. I do like certain parts of that new law, but I’ll tell you one thing, we’ve been doing it under two other state laws. We have two other state laws, one is the employer sanction that the Supreme Court ruled in our favor. So, it’s not going to change anything I’m doing, regardless of what that decision is.

Arapaio endorsed GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry in late November, saying Perry “has done more to combat illegal immigration and secure the border than any other candidate in the Republican presidential field.”

The Supreme Court of the United States Blog wrote Monday: “Adding further to the historic rank of the Supreme Court’s current Term, the Justices on Monday took on the searing constitutional — and political — controversy over state power to strictly limit the way undocumented immigrants live their lives in the U.S.”

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) “welcomes the decision by the United States Supreme Court to review Arizona’s immigration enforcement law, SB 1070.” The group not only welcomed S.B. 1070 but also helped draft the law through its affiliate — the Immigration Reform Law Institute.

FAIR, according to Open Secrets, spent more than $3.4 million from 1998 through 2011 to lobby Congress on immigration-related legislation, like a proposed House GOP sponsored resolution that “would have prohibited the U.S. Department of Justice from using any funds to sue Arizona in an effort to strike down its new immigration enforcement law, SB 1070.”

“We believe that SB 1070 is a legitimate effort by a state to partner with the federal government in assisting in the enforcement of our immigration laws,” said FAIR President Dan Stein.

The National Immigration Forum wrote Monday: “We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will clarify once and for all that only the federal government has the authority to create and enforce immigration law. We believe Arizona’s SB1070 is misguided and unconstitutional and expect the Supreme Court to use this opportunity to slam the brakes on other state-based immigration laws that are in conflict with our Constitution and core American values.”

According to Open Secrets, the Forum has spent more than $1.5 million since 1998 to lobby Congress on issues related to comprehensive immigration reform.

The American Spectator, a publication that “serves as a resource and an outlet for a host of both young and established conservative writers and thinkers” writes today: “Health care reform isn’t the only major policy battle the Obama administration will fight before the Supreme Court. The justices will also hear a case in which the Obama Justice Department asks them to overturn Arizona’s SB 1070, a controversial law empowering state and local police to detain suspected illegal immigrants in the course of their normal work.”

The Spectator, adds:

“We won 5 to 3 on the E-Verify case,” [former Arizona Sen. Russell Pearce, one of the architects of S.B. 1070,] says. “The same issues and constitutional principles are at stake here. I expect we’ll win 5 to 3 again.” (Justice Elena Kagan, the former solicitor general, recused herself in the last case and will do so again in the forthcoming one.) Indeed, the Supreme Court found that Arizona immigration law fell “well within the confines of the authority Congress chose to leave to the States.”

The National Council of La Raza ”hopes that by intervening in this case, the Supreme Court will affirm that the federal government is responsible for immigration enforcement and that states do not have the right to usurp that authority by establishing their own immigration laws.”

La Raza is a Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization that according to Open Secrets spent more than $5.6 million to lobby Congress from 1998 through 2011 on immigration, as well as other issues: the federal budget, economic development, education, health issues, housing and law enforcement and crime.

The Supreme Court of the United States Blog added: “The Arizona measure, and one in Alabama that goes even further, were passed by state legislatures with the specific intent of making life so difficult for undocumented aliens that they would choose to leave the state. Other states are also passing similar measures.”

The New York Times reports today that “the Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether Arizona may impose tough anti-immigration measures. Among them, in a law enacted last year, is a requirement that the police there question people they stop about their immigration status.”

ABC News reports ”the case will be argued sometime this spring,” adding that, “although deeply opposed to the law, the Obama administration had asked the Supreme Court to refrain from taking up the case at this juncture.”

Kris Kobach, current Kansas secretary of state and the coauthor of S.B. 1070 and other immigration enforcement-only efforts, wrote in May 2010: “[S.B. 1070] makes it a state crime for an alien to commit certain federal immigration violations while in Arizona.”

S.B. 1070 was passed by the Arizona Legislature in the first months of 2010, and was signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer in April; the measure was immediately challenged by the Obama administration.

The Times adds that the Obama administration “challenged four provisions” of S.B. 1070: “The most prominent was a requirement that state law enforcement officials determine the immigration status of anyone they stop or arrest if officials have reason to believe that the individual might be an illegal immigrant.”

According to ABC News, “similar legislation is pending in Utah, South Carolina, Indiana, Georgia and Alabama.”

The Supreme Court of the United States Blog writes today: “The Arizona measure, and one in Alabama that goes even further, were passed by state legislatures with the specific intent of making life so difficult for undocumented aliens that they would choose to leave the state. Other states are also passing similar measures.”

“Arizona’s infamous anti-immigrant law, SB 1070,” and other similar state laws, according to the Immigration Policy Center, ”impose unfunded mandates on the police, jails, and courts; drive away workers, taxpayers, and consumers upon whom the state economy depends; and invite costly lawsuits and tourist boycotts. These are economic consequences which few states can afford at a time of gaping budget deficits.”

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Gage Skidmore)

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s recent call for a “humane” path to immigration enforcement for undocumented immigrants does not seem to have hurt his poling numbers.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports today: ”A month before voting starts, Gingrich has established double-digit leads in some polls in the early voting states of Iowa and South Carolina.”

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, two thirds of 10.2 million undocumented immigrants have lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years. The Pew report adds that 35 percent of unauthorized adult immigrants have resided in the U.S. for 15 years or more, and 28 percent for 10 to 14 years.

The Journal Constitution adds  that Gingrich “hasn’t fully fleshed out his plan or set a minimum number of years for how long illegal immigrants must live here before they could be eligible for a path to legal status.”

Michael Smerconish, “a nationally syndicated radio host” attended a Gringrich event in Naples and wrote:

[Gingrich] said he favored a “sequencing” approach rather than comprehensive reform. He noted that the solution to those already here would come only after there had been completion of several prior steps, including gaining control of the border; making English the official language; ensuring that those who become citizens are knowledgeable about the history of our founding; improving the visa program; deporting criminals; and establishing a guest-worker program.

In mid-November, during the CNN GOP presidential debate focused on national security, Gingrich said, “I don’t see how the — the party that says it’s the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter century. And I’m prepared to take the heat for saying, ‘Let’s be humane in enforcing the law without giving them citizenship, but by finding a way to create legality so that they are not separated from their families.’”

Smerconish adds that Gingrich said, “I do not think anybody should be eligible for citizenship,” adding that he supports “a certification to legality with no right to vote and no right to become an American citizen unless they go home and apply through the regular procedures back home and get in line behind everybody else who has obeyed the law.”