Using Fingerprints to Track Immigration
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on May 9th, 2010 4:47 am by HL
Using Fingerprints to Track Immigration
A recently implemented immigration program in Oakland subjects anyone booked at local jails to a fingerprint check to determine if they are in the country illegally. The deportation scheme is part of a $1.4 billion federal program that is supposed to be running in every jail in the country within a few years. The program, called “Secure Communities,” was introduced on April 20 in Alameda County and is already under fire from civil rights advocates, who claim it will likely lead to racial profiling and the deportation of undocumented immigrants who pose no safety risk. —JCL Oakland North: If you are arrested in Oakland, prepare to have your immigration history checked. Alameda County recently became the fourth Bay Area county to participate in a federal immigration enforcement program that mandates fingerprint checks on everyone booked at local jails to determine whether they are subject to deportation. The program, which was locally introduced on April 20 and is slowly expanding across the country, has been criticized by civil rights advocates who say its implementation could lead to racial profiling and the deportation of immigrants who do not pose a public safety threat. The program is called Secure Communities and is administered by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, commonly known as ICE. Under the program, ICE will receive alerts whenever the system reveals that someone booked in a local jail is subject to deportation. “Our hopes are to quickly identify criminal aliens who come into the system,” said Craig Meyer, Assistant Field Office Director for Detention and Removal Operations at ICE’s San Francisco office. “We want to make the Bay Area community safer and that is the goal with this.” Read more
A recently implemented immigration program in Oakland subjects anyone booked at local jails to a fingerprint check to determine if they are in the country illegally. The deportation scheme is part of a $1.4 billion federal program that is supposed to be running in every jail in the country within a few years.
The program, called “Secure Communities,” was introduced on April 20 in Alameda County and is already under fire from civil rights advocates, who claim it will likely lead to racial profiling and the deportation of undocumented immigrants who pose no safety risk. —JCL
Oakland North:
If you are arrested in Oakland, prepare to have your immigration history checked.
Alameda County recently became the fourth Bay Area county to participate in a federal immigration enforcement program that mandates fingerprint checks on everyone booked at local jails to determine whether they are subject to deportation. The program, which was locally introduced on April 20 and is slowly expanding across the country, has been criticized by civil rights advocates who say its implementation could lead to racial profiling and the deportation of immigrants who do not pose a public safety threat.
The program is called Secure Communities and is administered by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, commonly known as ICE. Under the program, ICE will receive alerts whenever the system reveals that someone booked in a local jail is subject to deportation. “Our hopes are to quickly identify criminal aliens who come into the system,” said Craig Meyer, Assistant Field Office Director for Detention and Removal Operations at ICE’s San Francisco office. “We want to make the Bay Area community safer and that is the goal with this.”
Related Entries
- May 6, 2010 Arizona F***ed With the Wrong Mexican
- May 4, 2010 Glenn Beck Gets It Right
Copycat Bills Aim at Illegal Immigrants
The push to criminalize undocumented immigrants, as seen most poignantly in the recent legislation adopted in Arizona, is growing. Many more states are seeing anti-immigrant bills introduced in their legislatures, backed by the far-right group Federation for American Immigration Reform Check out this informative essay by Seth Freed Wessler at Colorlines. —JCL Colorlines: The growing number of immigration-enforcement bills in state legislatures around the country are not merely following Arizona’s lead. Rather, the bills—which legislators have discussed or introduced in at least 11 states—are the fruits of a concerted political strategy seeded by the far-right group Federation for American Immigration Reform, which has taken money from a eugenics foundation and was created by a man who warned of a “Latin onslaught.” In a majority of the states where legislation has been proposed or discussed, the leading lawmakers behind the bills are associated with FAIR’s legislative arm, a group called State Legislators for Legal Immigration (SLLI) that operates in at least 35 states. FAIR was founded over 30 years ago by John Tanton, who is widely credited with spurring the contemporary anti-immigrant movement. Over the past three decades Tanton has expanded FAIR’s reach by cultivating a network of associated organizations, each of which plays a distinct role in the anti-immigrant movement’s infrastructure. According the the Center for New Community in Chicago, that network includes the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), credited with helping to write SB 1070, and the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank which is regularly used as a source by major newspapers including the New York Times. Read more
The push to criminalize undocumented immigrants, as seen most poignantly in the recent legislation adopted in Arizona, is growing. Many more states are seeing anti-immigrant bills introduced in their legislatures, backed by the far-right group Federation for American Immigration Reform
Check out this informative essay by Seth Freed Wessler at Colorlines. —JCL
Colorlines:
The growing number of immigration-enforcement bills in state legislatures around the country are not merely following Arizona’s lead. Rather, the bills—which legislators have discussed or introduced in at least 11 states—are the fruits of a concerted political strategy seeded by the far-right group Federation for American Immigration Reform, which has taken money from a eugenics foundation and was created by a man who warned of a “Latin onslaught.”
In a majority of the states where legislation has been proposed or discussed, the leading lawmakers behind the bills are associated with FAIR’s legislative arm, a group called State Legislators for Legal Immigration (SLLI) that operates in at least 35 states. FAIR was founded over 30 years ago by John Tanton, who is widely credited with spurring the contemporary anti-immigrant movement. Over the past three decades Tanton has expanded FAIR’s reach by cultivating a network of associated organizations, each of which plays a distinct role in the anti-immigrant movement’s infrastructure.
According the the Center for New Community in Chicago, that network includes the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), credited with helping to write SB 1070, and the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank which is regularly used as a source by major newspapers including the New York Times.
Related Entries
- May 6, 2010 Arizona F***ed With the Wrong Mexican
- May 4, 2010 Glenn Beck Gets It Right
