This email contains the following news about federal proposals to have state and local police enforce immigration laws:
1) Congressional update
2) Sign on letter -- deadline EXTENDED
3) New materials
4) Talking Points

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1) CONGRESS

When last we left off, Reps. Steve King (R-IA) and Tom Tancredo (R-CO) were plotting amendments to the Science, Commerce, State, and Justice appropriations bill in mid-June that attempted to penalize state and local governments that have policies protecting the immigration information of crime victims and witnesses. The amendments were poorly drafted and would not have much of an effect on their face, but were designed to send a message to state and local governments. The King amendment passed (218-208, see http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll267.xml) while the Tancredo amendment failed (204-222, see http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll262.xml). The Senate has not yet voted on their companion to this appropriations bill.

It's clear we need to do a lot more work educating members of Congress about where these policies are in place (scores of states, cities, and localities around the country) and WHY. We know they are public safety policies, but members of Congress who want police to round up immigrants simply say that these policies shield criminals and terrorists, and easily pick up votes from other members who aren't up to speed on the issue. Many may not even be aware that they are voting against their own state or local governments, who have enacted these policies for a reason. Our talking points have been revised to reflect the fact that these confidentiality policies are consistently under attack in the House (see attached). For sample local policy language and a chart showing many of the places where such policies are in place, visit the National Immigration Law Center's web site at http://www.nilc.org/immlawpolicy/LocalLaw/index.htm.

Even while we have been revising our strategy to focus on the more diffuse targets that were coming at us fast and furious from the House, Rep. Norwood has been working to re-introduce his failed CLEAR Act proposal from last year. We don't know how he has revised the legislation, but we can all find out more on June 30th when he unveils the proposal. See http://www.house.gov/norwood/ for more information. This legislation was "one of the most dynamic immigration reform measures of the last Congress," according to Rep. Norwood's web site.

We do not yet know if Senator Sessions (R-AL) will be re-introducing the Senate companion. We do know that the issue was included in an outline of the enforcement portion of an immigration bill Senators Cornyn (R-TX) and Kyl (R-AZ) are drafting for introduction in early July(http://www.cornyn.senate.gov/doc_archive/Enforcement_section-by-section.pdf). Please do weigh in now with Senator Cornyn, chair of the Immigration subcommittee, about this misguided policy.

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2) SIGN-ON LETTER

National Council of La Raza has kindly extended the deadline for its sign-on letter rejecting proposals that make state and local police enforce immigration laws. Please reply to Nina Frias (nfrias@nclr.org) by Friday July 1 if your organization would like to be listed on the letter. The text of the letter is attached (second document).

We also encourage you to send your own letters to members of both the House and Senate, and to ask your local government officials, police departments, community members, et cetera to do the same.

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3) MATERIALS

To assist you in drafting those letters and other advocacy pieces, we have revised our talking points to reflect the diffuse nature of attacks we are facing currently. The talking points are attached to this email. Included in this document is a link to more information on the amendments co-opting NCIC to enforce immigration laws. Given the fact that we may be facing new legislation from Representative Norwood very soon, these talking points may need to be revised to reflect that bill. If so, we will circulate new arguments as soon as possible.

FYI, the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center issued a report in April 2005 called "Securing Our Borders: Post 9/11 Scapegoating of Immigrants." Chapter Three of the report focuses in on how state and local police officers are becoming more involved in federal immigration law enforcement. See http://www.fiacfla.org/reports/securingborders.pdf for a summary or contact FIAC to obtain the complete report (www.fiacfla.org).

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3) TALKING POINTS

Oppose Congressional Proposals to Have State and Local Police Enforce Federal Immigration Laws

In the last Congress, legislation to coerce state and local police into becoming immigration law enforcers stalled in both chambers. The CLEAR Act in the House (H.R. 2671) and the Homeland Security Enhancement Act in the Senate (S. 1906) were derailed due to widespread opposition from state and local governments, law enforcement agencies and associations, crime victim advocates, faith-based institutions, community groups, and others who recognize that making police enforce immigration laws would have a detrimental effect on community policing and public safety.

In the 109th Congress, proponents of local enforcement of immigration laws are taking a new approach. Members of the House have been offering different pieces of the discredited CLEAR Act as amendments to unrelated bills moving through the legislative process, with limited success. They will also likely pounce when the Senate (and the House) take up comprehensive immigration reform legislation this Congress.

Below are reasons why immigration law enforcement must remain a federal function. For more on the topic, visit the web site of the National Immigration Forum at:
http://www.immigrationforum.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabname=Leg_StateLocal_109thCongress.

The Proposals Harm Public Safety

These proposals strike a direct blow at the efforts of police to win the trust of the communities they serve. If police become immigration agents, word will spread like wildfire among newcomers that any contact with police could mean deportation for themselves or their family members. People will stop coming forward with useful information, and criminals will see immigrants as easy prey, making our streets less safe.

Experience shows that this fear will extend not only to contact with police, but also to the fire department, hospitals, and the public school system. And these proposals do not just impact undocumented immigrants. Immigrants with temporary status, who are waiting for renewed immigration documents, who have family members in legal limbo, or who are unsure how the latest laws coming out of Congress affect them will also be less likely to come forward.

The Proposals Undermine National Security

Security experts and law enforcement agree that good intelligence and relationships are the keys to keeping our nation and our streets safe. These proposals would make foreign nationals who might otherwise be helpful to security investigations reluctant to come forward, for fear of immigration consequences. If immigrant communities are alienated rather than embraced, local law enforcement loses important relationships that can lead to information they might not otherwise have access to.

They Proposals Bully State and Local Governments

Some of these proposals target the scores of state and local governments who have enacted policies that encourage immigrant victims of crime to report their attackers. These policies do not shelter criminals, but rather allow crime victims and witnesses to interact with local police without fearing that their immigration status (or that of a relative) could come into question. They do not state that police cannot or should not work with the Department of Homeland Security to deal with foreign nationals who have committed crimes. In fact, the cities that have confidentiality policies in place are often those who contact the DHS most regularly to check immigration status of crime perpetrators (as reported by the Law Enforcement Support Center at DHS), or who are recipients of funding for incarcerating foreign nationals who have committed crimes (under the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program).

These cities, from New York to Houston to Seattle and many places in between, have public safety as their number one priority. Their policies are supported by organizations who work with immigrant crime victims and by countless law enforcement associations, departments, and officers all across the United States. Congressional proposals seeking to overturn these policies are not only dangerous to local communities, but violate the spirit of federalism.

The Proposals Ignore Established Police Authority and Roles

Proponents say these policy changes are needed to address the "criminal alien crisis." They ignore the fact that police already have the authority to arrest criminals, both in enforcing state or local laws and assisting the federal government. It is absurd to suggest that foreign nationals are somehow immune from our criminal laws unless we have new legislation, or that police are unauthorized to detain criminals who are also immigration law violators. They do so every day.

Those areas of the country that have policies ensuring the confidentiality of crime victims' and witnesses' immigration information are also those who call the federal government most often to check the immigration status of crime perpetrators. These are often areas with large immigrant populations, so they understand the most effective policing strategies for these communities. They distinguish between enforcing criminal laws and enforcing civil immigration laws-a mandate best left to the federal agencies who do not also have local crime-fighting responsibilities.

Proponents also ignore the fact that there exists a mechanism in current law to allow a greater role for those few state or local police agencies who want it. Section 287(g) of the immigration code outlines a process whereby state and local governments can enter into agreements with the federal government (MOUs, or memoranda of understanding) that permit them to receive training and enforce federal immigration laws. Therefore, these additional proposals are simply unnecessary and send a dangerous message to our communities that it may no longer be safe to have contact with local police.

The Proposals Corrupt a Useful Criminal Database

Many of these proposals involve entering the names of civil immigration law violators into the FBI's criminal database of wanted people, the National Crime Information Center. Advocates for this policy change want to load up an otherwise functioning database with the names of people who may have at one time had a deportation order, a technical visa violation, or a voluntary departure agreement whether or not the person is currently in the United States with legal status or has already left the country.

Immigration data is notoriously inaccurate, and evaluating someone's status takes not just weeks of federal immigration law training, but also access to case files and information that won't be part of the NCIC. Junking up this crucial database police use 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with information on civil violations that may or may not be current is a horrible idea. It also skews law enforcement priorities. Do we really want police arresting students who may have dropped a course one semester, or using their time and resources to locate actual criminals?

For more, see http://immigrationforum.org/documents/PolicyWire/Legislation/NCICEntrants.pdf.

The Proposals Make Police Officers' Jobs Harder or Even Impossible

Because immigrants will be less likely to report crimes or give information to police, local law enforcement's main priority-investigating and fighting crime-will be much harder. The recent debate over the authority of police to enforce immigration laws has required some state and local officers to get on the airwaves and in the local newspapers and explain that they are not interested in a crime victim or witness' immigration status. Continued discussion in Congress about having police enforce immigration laws will only further erode such trust between communities and the police officers assigned to protect them.

In addition to the public safety costs associated with these policies, state and local law enforcement agents are also untrained and ill-equipped to enforce immigration laws. Federal immigration officers go through seventeen weeks of training, and have access to individuals' immigration histories as well as legal and policy guidance in order to do their jobs. This is a complicated area of law that is constantly changing, and people's immigration statuses are fluid based upon individual circumstances and processing times controlled by the federal government. You can't simply hand a local police officer a brochure or give her a few hours of training and say she's an immigration agent.

These proposals put the burden on state and local police to "pick up the slack" for the federal government, without investing in the time or expense it would take to equip them for the job. It's immigration enforcement on the cheap, and is bound to lead to costly problems for state and local governments and our communities.

The Proposals Expose State and Local Governments to Legal Problems

These proposals often try to induce state and local police into enforcing civil immigration laws by threatening them with loss of needed revenue, or by loading up the NCIC with ambiguous information about "immigration violators" who may or may not actually be in violation of the immigration code. When state and local police detain people in accordance with these federal proposals, they risk making unlawful arrests and exposing themselves to legal liability. In previous instances where police have attempted a greater role in immigration enforcement, they have been met with costly lawsuits and settlements when civil rights were violated or errors were made. A better alternative would be to leave federal immigration law enforcement to those trained-and responsible-for this complex area of the law.

The Proposals Expose Immigrants and Citizens to Unlawful Arrests and Civil Rights Violations

There are nearly eleven million naturalized US citizens, and more than twenty-five million native-born Americans of Latin American, Asian, and African descent. In this free nation we are not required to carry "papers" to prove our citizenship, and few of us do. Because police are not equipped to determine who has violated an immigration law, some will inevitably stop and question people of certain ethnic backgrounds, who speak foreign languages, or who have accents in English. These proposals will therefore engender race- and ethnicity-based profiling and will undoubtedly lead to serious civil rights violations and abuse. Again, a better alternative is to leave such enforcement to the federal agents trained and responsible for it.

The Proposals Will Not End Undocumented Immigration

The answer to undocumented immigration is not asking state and local governments to make up for the failures of the feds. The answer is modernizing the immigration system so that well-intentioned migrants can enter to work and reunite with their families legally. When the current undocumented population is brought out of the shadows for a proper vetting and gets on a path to legal status, our enforcement resources will be better focused on the smugglers and fake document rings, the drug runners and violent criminals, and the terrorists who might manipulate our system.

Congress needs to enact comprehensive immigration reform so that those undocumented immigrants who are contributing to this nation can live above board, and so that future migrants have legal options for entering the U.S. to work or reunite with their families.

As President Bush said, once immigrants have legal papers, "Law enforcement will face fewer problems with undocumented workers, and will be better able to focus on the true threats to our nation from criminals and terrorists. . . . Temporary workers will be able to establish their identities by obtaining the legal documents we all take for granted. And they will be able to talk openly to authorities, to report crimes when they are harmed, without the fear of being deported" (White House policy announcement, 01/07/2004).

Such reforms are the real solution-not proposals to make police enforce immigration laws.

June 27, 2005

National Immigration Forum
URL: www.immigrationforum.org