While all eyes are still fixed on Arizona's cruel new anti-immigrant law, SB1070, a police-immigration collaboration program with disturbing similarities is being secretively forced on counties across the country. 

In fact, just yesterday, ICE thrust the so-called “Secure” Communities program on San Francisco, despite vocal objections from the Sheriff and Board of Supervisors that the program will actually hurt public safety. In a press statement, SF rights groups condemned this "dangerous entanglement between local law enforcement and ICE."

And on our side of the bay, the public didn’t even find out the program was operational in Alameda County until two weeks after the fact. But community groups are vowing to fight back.

IN-Secure Communities: breaking up families, sabotaging safety

This program gives Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) access to the fingerprint database to which everyone booked at a jail is added.  That means immigrants can be torn from their families and turned over to ICE for deportation without having their day in court, even for minor offenses like not paying a traffic fine.  

EBASE’s outgoing immigrant rights organizer, Diana Rashid – who will be starting  law school at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall this fall – offers these observations:

“It’s hard not to draw comparisons between the use of the so-called "Secure" Communities program and the new law in Arizona. Like the Arizona law, S-Comm is a complete violation of the constitutional right to due process. Like Arizona, it opens the door to Police officers to have wide discretion about who they let off with a warning versus who they take in to jail to be charged, thereby allowing bad apple cops to take advantage of their power to arrest immigrants they suspect of being undocumented because the immigrants will end up being deported.   

Furthermore, like SB1070, this program is a threat to public safety. It creates mistrust between the immigrant communities and the police, making it less likely for immigrants to report crimes. Finally, it does not make the community any safer, as ICE’s own numbers show that of all immigrants deported as a result of S-Comm, only 12 percent had been charged with serious crimes and would have been deported anyway as federal law already requires, instead the other 90 percent will now also be deported for being charged with (not convicted of) minor crimes.”

From Oakland to San Francisco to Washington, DC, communities are standing up to say no to this dangerous initiative.

Instead of these harsh and unreasonable enforcement policies, we need real solutions that will make us all safer, uphold our values of fairness, and let immigrants contribute fully to our society.

First posted at workingeastbay.org