Secure Communities

A comprehensive immigration reform bill might be drafted by the end of this year, but President Obama said in Mexico today that he would not expect anything to pass until 2010, according to The Hill.
Immigration reform has never been at the top of the president’s agenda, although he’s said he supports it, but today he [...]

Even as the numbers of illegal immigrants entering the United States plunges and the Obama administration steps up enforcement of the immigration laws, comprehensive immigration reform that would provide a path to legalization for some undocumented immigrants already living here is in peril.
As University of California-Davis law professor Kevin Johnson writes in a post on [...]

Just to reinforce the point that the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice are expecting the expansion of the “Secure Communities” initiative that I wrote about here to create an avalanche of new deportation cases in an effort “to remove all criminal aliens held in the United States prisons and jails,” here’s the [...]

While there’s strong support for deporting dangerous criminals, federal programs such as this one are extending far beyond that goal and detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants for such minor infractions as running a stop sign or carrying an open container of alcohol.

The continued expansion of the so-called “Secure Communities” program, which sends the fingerprints of suspects booked at local jails to the federal immigration authorities to check immigration status, could have troubling consequences, immigration advocates say.
The Washington Post’s story today on the program, started last year by the Bush administration, says the initiative aims to target [...]