Last Wednesday, a group of progressive volunteers gathered in Monument Square in Portland, Maine, to quiz passersby about citizenship. Could they answer sample civics questions from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services test to become an American citizen? (Most couldn’t.) Did they know how much it costs to become a More…
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman said not to read too much into it, but the August document listing steps for communities to opt out of the Secure Communities program seems to have disappeared from the ICE website. The document was one of several written records More…
After Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials shot down the idea of communities opting out of an ICE program, law enforcement leaders in Santa Clara, Calif., are looking at other ways to avoid stepping up their involvement in immigration enforcement. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted Sept. More…
More bad news for cities that want to opt out of Secure Communities: Immigration and Customs Enforcement Chief John Morton confirmed to the Associated Press Friday that participation in the program, which shares fingerprints taken by police with federal immigration enforcement, is not voluntary.
Local governments More…
Until last week, local officials in Arlington, Va., Santa Clara, Calif., San Francisco and Washington, D.C., thought they’d have no trouble opting out of the Secure Communities program, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiative that runs fingerprints collected by local police through federal immigration databases. After all, Secretary of Homeland More…
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano confirmed today that Secure Communities, a program that provides federal immigration officials with fingerprint data from local police, is mandatory for local jurisdictions. “We don’t consider Secure Communities an opt in/opt out program,” Napolitano said, according to an Immigration and Customs More…
The first state communities are beginning to opt out of Secure Communities, a fingerprint-sharing program between local police and federal immigration enforcement officers. The program, which the Department of Homeland Security plans to extend nationwide by 2013, goes against some communities’ philosophies about policing immigration. Although the program has always More…
The feud is officially over! Jerry Brown’s campaign announced today in a press release that Bill Clinton will be joining him and San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom for a series of events on the campaign trail in California on October 15 and 17 in support of their candidacies for governor More…
Part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s much-touted strategy switch has been to focus on deporting illegal immigrants deemed dangerous rather than undocumented people quietly living in the U.S. But immigrants rights groups argue that some of the agency’s enforcement programs, most notably Secure Communities, too often sweep up More…
On the heels of new information about the number of non-criminals deported by the Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Communities program, the agency announced today it has expanded the program to all 25 counties along the U.S.-Mexico border. Secure Communities requires local law enforcement to give More…
rss