Stop immigration status checks, group asks Obama

[The Northerner]

LOS ANGELES - Hundreds of human rights groups are asking the Obama administration to end programs that allow local police to check the immigration status of arrestees.

A letter to the president on Wednesday says it encourages racial profiling and calls it a dangerous merger of the federal immigration enforcement system with state criminal justice systems.

The letter is signed by the AFL-CIO and a broad range of criminal justice, peace, religious, ethnic and immigrant rights groups around the country, including the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is expanding a program that permits local police officers to run arrestees' names through a Department of Homeland Security database.

An e-mail to Homeland Security seeking comment wasn't immediately returned.

Source: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/09/29/20100929stop-immigration-status-checks-group-asks-obama29-ON.html#ixzz10wjbNn00

[ZombieHorde]

1. Recommended. nt

[pampango]

2. Common Dreams: Groups Condemn Merger of Criminal Justice & Immigration Systems

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/09/29-8

Citing systemic problems within both the immigration and criminal justice systems, 500 groups from across the country, including the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) today delivered a letter to President Obama demanding that he end the merger of immigration enforcement with criminal justice. The three‐page letter expressed concerns and presented proof that the Obama administration’s increased reliance on local law enforcement to arrest, detain, and deport immigrants has exacerbated existing problems in the criminal justice system.

According to the groups, “The merger of immigration enforcement and local criminal justice agencies is not only bad public policy, it also sabotages local law enforcement agencies’ core mission of protecting public safety by undermining the trust of the communities they serve. It discourages people from turning to the police when they need to, even to report crimes. It undermines public safety by diverting scarce resources away from local policing and focuses them on false threats from people who look or sound foreign.”

According to Pablo Alvarado, executive director of NDLON, “The letter we deliver today is a clear statement that the Arizona-like policies the president is intent on nationalizing must be stopped. How large must the chorus of denunciations grow before the president joins us in a sensible immigration policy that legalizes instead of criminalizes the millions who are here contributing to our country?”

“President Obama cannot sue the state of Arizona on the one hand and spread similar policies known for racial profiling on the other,” explains Sarahí Uribe of NDLON. “In Florida, North Carolina, and all across the country, president Obama’s police/ice collaborations are creating Arpaio’s in all of our backyards.”

The letter itself is 3 pages long with 12 pages of signatories.

http://bit.ly/crimmigration