MINORITIES: END FINGERPRINTING
ATLANTA - Activists are demonstrating outside the state Democratic Party's headquarters in Atlanta today calling on the Obama administration to scrap a federal fingerprint-sharing program aimed at deporting illegal immigrants.
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The demonstrators complained the “Secure Communities” program is tearing families apart and distracting local police from other crime-fighting priorities. They timed their demonstration to coincide with protests in Chicago and other cities across the nation.
Also today, The National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the Center for Constitutional Rights and others made public an authoritative report condemning the Secure Communities deportation program and recommending its termination.
The report includes testimony from former District Attorney of New York Robert Morgenthau, heads of law enforcement, and victims of Secure Communities like Isaura in Los Angeles whose 911 call for help resulted in her deportation proceedings.
Said Center for Constitutional Rights Staff Attorney Sunita Patel, “Today’s report provides the voices of affected communities and critics of the program.”
The report recommends that the Secure Communities be terminated, that the current Office of Inspector General of DHS investigation of S-Comm be expanded to all ICE Access programs, that the Department of Justice begin its own investigation into the mysterious role of the FBI in Secure Communities, and that states not be compelled to share biometric data with ICE..
The following statement can be attributed to the National Community Advisory Commission:
“This report confirms what immigrant communities have long known. The program called Secure Communities results in the opposite. The experts confirm that entangling local police in immigration enforcement is not just bad policy. Conscripting local police into immigration enforcement has provoked a massive civil rights crisis our country now faces. The only suitable approach is to end Secure Communities.”
The Commission includes: American Friends Service Committee, Project Voice New England, Asian Law Caucus, CASA de Maryland, CENTRO de Igualdad y Derechos, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, Detention Watch Network, Grassroots Leadership, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, National Day Laborer Organizing Network, National Immigrant Justice Center, National Immigration Law Center, National Immigration Project of the National Lawyer’s Guild, Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, Rights Working Group, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, We-Count!
