First, a central norm in human rights is
proportionality: the punishment must fit the crime. With Secure Communities, we
have witnessed record deportations and detentions, often for minor offenses
where the criminal courts don't even seek jail time.
Second, even though human rights standards
require freedom from all forms of discrimination, Secure Communities is plagued
with racial and ethnic profiling. Anti-immigrant jurisdictions use it to hide
illegal and race-based arrests, and the federal government allows places like
Maricopa County, Los Angeles, New York and New Orleans, places with well
documented histories of racial profiling and abusive cops, to use Secure
Communities without meaningful oversight.
Third, human rights principles require full
and fair hearings and urge release from detention over incarceration, but in
localities with Secure Communities, immigration holds prevent release of
thousands of non-citizens at the expense of local jailers and with the
consequence of coercing criminal pleas and deportation.
Fourth, human rights treaties provide
special protections to women, children and victims of violence, but Secure
Communities is criticized for placing trafficking and domestic violence survivors
at risk of removal.
Fifth, a common thread in human rights
is the idea of engagement. A government should listen and engage with the
people it represents and allow us to have a real voice in setting policy. But
Secure Communities, despite heavy resistance and requests by states and
localities to end the program, has been forced on us. Even though the people and officials of
places like San Francisco, Santa Clara, and Arlington, and entire states such
as New York, Illinois and Massachusetts have said they don't want anything to
do with Secure Communities, it's being implemented anyway.
The
Center for Constitutional Rights has the honor and privilege of representing
one of the national leaders in the movement towards immigrant justice -- the
National Day Laborer Organizing Network -- in a lawsuit against federal agencies
for information about Secure Communities. Through this lawsuit we have
uncovered literally thousands of pages of internal documents that expose a
record of the federal government's deceit and misrepresentation. These documents have been used in a national
campaign to uncover the truth behind police and ICE collaborations. Advocates
around the country have questioned the government's policy, educated local
police and state officials and created a groundswell of resistance against
merging the criminal and immigration systems.
Secure
Communities is now a symbol of government dishonesty and deception. The Obama
administration was not transparent with Congress about Secure Communities' true
purpose when it asked for over $2 billion for the program; it tricked state and
local officials into believing they could limit or opt out of the program; and
worst of all the government sold untruths to the public to get this program
launched at any cost.
Kofi
Annan, former Secretary-general of the United Nations, once said: "Human rights
are what reason requires and conscience demands. They are us and we are them.
Human rights are rights that any person has as a human being. We are all human
beings; we are all deserving of human rights. One cannot be true without the
other."
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