Today, a coalition of Travis County civil and human rights groups cried out for an end to the contested “Secure Communities” immigrant enforcement program.

The coalition – which includes prominent organizations like the ACLU of Texas, American Gateways, Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition, Detention Watch Network, and TUFF – cited both personal investigations and a national report released yesterday as proof that the program is an abusive breach of human rights.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (or ICE) launched Secure Communities (S-Comm) in 2008 in an attempt to target and deport serious criminals. To make this possible, ICE gave local jurisdictions the authority and resources to investigate whether or not their criminals were undocumented immigrants. If they were, those specific local jurisdictions could then transport the undocumented criminals into deportation proceedings.

Currently, the program has expanded from 14 jurisdictions in 2008 to over 1,210 today. ICE seeks to have all 3,141 jurisdictions (meaning all state, county, and local jails and prisons) participate in the program by 2013.

The program, while perhaps well intentioned, has been far from secure. There are no regulations to govern the program’s implantation. As a result, many “criminals” that have been shuffled into an already flawed deportation system aren’t really “criminals” at all.

According to recent ICE data, 79 percent of Secure Communities deportees have no convictions or only low-level offenses, such as traffic violations. And that number is only climbing.

Moreover, a large number of groups, politicians, and victims claim that the program only really serves to facilitate racial profiling, as local police have the authority to stop, interrogate, and arrest anyone they suspect to be undocumented.

Indeed, in calling for an end to the program, the Travis County coalition pointed to one innocent Austin resident in Austin affected by S-Comm, stating,

“On November 6, 2009, Raul Zamora, a 21 year old Urban Studies Major at the University of Texas in Austin was arrested after being stopped by the University of Texas Police Department for a broken taillight. Despite calling Texas home since he was 10 years old, Raul was transferred to ICE, and was put in deportation proceedings. Now, Raul must fight to stay … in the country that he calls home.”

The coalition continues to claim that in Travis County alone, the program has deported almost 1,900 people since its inception. And like Raul, the majority has been deported for minor infractions.

The National Day Laborer Organizing Network released its national report yesterday amidst this troubling data. The report concludes that ICE’s close partnership with local police only encourages the criminalization of immigrants, diminishes our trust in the policing system, and constitutes a grave “civil and human rights crisis.”

The report delves into myriad data from local law enforcement agencies, national ICE statistics, and personal narratives from victims of S-Comm. It found that the program far from keeps communities “secure.” It did find, however,

“S-Comm threatens public safety. It distracts police from their primary functions, it diverts their resources, and it destroys trust with immigrant communities by making police frontline enforcers of broken and outdated immigration laws. Without trust, crimes go unreported, investigations go unsolved, decades of community policing efforts are destroyed, and we are all less safe.”

Bob Libal, leading organizer of TUFF and Grassroots Leadership, told me today that this report, as well as the "testimony from a broad spectrum of people from around the country demonstrate that Secure Communities is a program that undermines community policing and public safety and must be terminated."

As a result of this information, Libal and the Travis County coalition has called on the federal government to:

• Terminate Secure Communities;
• Review the impact of all Immigration and Customs Enforcement immigration screening programs on community policing, public safety, and the civil rights of all residents of Texas; and
• Recommend that Federal entities respect the requests of local and state jurisdictions seeking to opt-out of Secure Communities.

Fortunately for the Austin community, as the national report details,

“Those who S-Comm seeks to silence, criminalize, and exile are standing up to tell their stories and to be recognized as … valuable, contributing members of our community. These same brave individuals are now fighting not just for their own rights, but for the rights of us all.”

With the help of these individuals and national organizations, the coalition will be convening a Community Forum on Secure Communities on September 19^th. Interested individuals should contact Esther Reyes at esther@austinirc.org.