The very first post on this blog back in May of last year concerned the abuses of the so-called “Secure Communities” program run by the Department of Homeland Security, through the ICE. Not that it is the only federal/state/local law enforcement “cooperative” that has come under fire. You wouldn’t expect the Seattle Times to catch on to anything like this (unless it has a gender politics angle), but the Weekly ran a detailed investigation on the Phillip Chinn case; Chinn was a student and local anti-war activist whose activities ((mainly meetings and protest events) were apparently the subject of extensive surveillance by the state patrol and local police at the behest of civilian employees working for the military's Force Protection Agency. This surveillance included infiltration by at least one agent-provocateur who fed information to local authorities; according to the ACLU, the illegal activities of the FPA and its law enforcement partners "appear to be far more pervasive than we had thought.” This included an arrest on a false charge of DUI as an excuse to detain Chinn, and despite no evidence that Chinn had alcohol in his system or otherwise had done anything remotely criminal, the local prosecutor refused to drop charges against him until publicity about the illegalities surrounding the arrest became public knowledge.
But it is similar “information sharing” programs like Secure Communities that particularly rankles, and I am compelled to bring the issue back to the surface after encountering a recent story in the Seattle Times with the headline “Illegal-immigrant crime targeted,” followed by a pathetically insular, one-sided story by reporter Amy Harris, who gives an adoring account of the Secure Communities program. This “program” has been sold to the public as targeting violent criminals amongst illegal immigrants, but the reality is that it goes far beyond that. The abuses of Secure Communities are such that cities that have had enough of it and have tried to opt out of the program have found that it is next to impossible to dislodge unwanted federal immigration agents who terrorize whole communities.
After complaints by local law enforcement about the high-handed interference by ICE agents, Illinois governor Pat Quinn recently terminated the entire state’s “memoranda of agreement” with the Secure Communities program. But last month, ICE director John Morton repeated the DHS dictum that Secure Communities was not a “voluntary” program, telling a San Diego public radio station that once “invited” in, the ICE was a permanent "guest." “An individual state can’t come to the federal government and say, 'we don’t want the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to share information or seek to prevent that information sharing.' That is between federal departments.” There are now calls by some in Congress for an investigation of the program, as well as appeals to Barack Obama to terminate the program altogether.
Harris, who is clearly one of those naïve reporters who has a set attitude from a sheltered upbringing far from “the elements” and the “others,” dispensed with objectivity and seems overly enamored with current local law enforcement propaganda and popular prejudice. Not a single Latino was asked his or her opinion concerning the dehumanizing propaganda and intolerant attitudes that is fueling the drive to bring Secure Communities to places where there seems to be “too many” Latinos for whites to take; they just want them to “disappear.” Harris gushes about Latinos being “snagged” as if they were mere animals caught in a steel trap, quoting the Yakima County Sheriff who says people (presumably white residents who see a filthy criminal in every Latino face) are “sick of crime and gang” problems. Nothing is said about the underlying prejudice and discrimination these people face, or the fact that “gangs” are not a first generation immigrant problem—but another “American” problem.
Security Communities may cause a wedge between the Latino community and police, but this is a relatively minor issue. To repeat what I posted last year, and has not changed: The reality is that the Secure Communities “mandate” goes far beyond illegal immigrants who commit “serious” crimes, which it claims is its focus. Secure Communities is in fact a completely unregulated and unaccountable operation. The program, operating in virtual secrecy since 2008, purports to focus on “identifying and removing dangerous criminal aliens” in what is called “Level 1” crimes, like murder, rape and kidnapping; the truth is that legal as well as illegal immigrants are targeted for deportation for even minor crimes. The University of North Carolina, in conjunction with the local ACLU, found that the ICE and local police who cooperate with them do not in fact “prioritize” their activities by “level” of crime, but cast a wide net over the Latino population (i.e. racial profiling in action) in “fishing” operations. Rather than focus on immigrants accused of serious crimes, those with immigration status or traffic violations are treated with equal harshness--probably to "pad" the stats; in fact these “crimes” constitute the vast majority of the 77,000 detentions made through Secure Communities that Harris gullibly quotes in her Times story. This rather strongly suggests that “Secure Communities” is just a cover to intimidate and expel the Latino populations in the various intolerant communities that have signed-up on the program. And many of those detained have been arrested based on information from notoriously inaccurate databases that have been accused of leading to many false identification matches—leading to even U.S. citizens being detained or deported, especially if their English is not “good.”
The ICE’s claim that it is merely running an “information sharing" program is belied by accusations by the ACLU that local police in conjunction with ICE officers have set-up driver’s license “checkpoints” outside of Latino community centers and churches in many locales, which amounts to deliberate racial profiling and harassment. Furthermore, the Secure Communities program is accused of violating the civil rights of the “accused” by limiting their access to attorneys, or to fight criminal charges based on false information. The ICE is also accused, more insidiously, of using the program to expel “derivative” citizens, which one becomes when one of their parents is naturalized, and who may not be aware of their citizenship status when required to show “papers.”
Despite the fact that right-wing hate fanatics like Michelle Malkin scour the net for stories about illegal immigrant crime, illegal immigrants are far more vulnerable to crime, especially in the South, and murder elsewhere, such as the incident in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. A 2005 study by The American Journal of Health noted that the rate of violent crime by Mexican-Americans was “significantly lower than among non-Latino white and black Americans,” suggesting that media propaganda is responsible for a different impression (much as the media fascination with white female victims belies the reality that white females are the demographic least likely to be a victim of a crime). The Southern Poverty Law Center has also noted studies that show that “second- and third-generation immigrants (of all races and ethnicities) are significantly more criminal than their parents, suggesting that U.S. culture somehow eventually produces more, not less, criminality among its citizens.” There is no doubt that this society “glorifies” violence and guns, and adding discrimination and poverty into the mix, why should anyone be surprised what comes out of that?
Instead of context and facts (the “progressive” tradition), what the Seattle Times’ gives its readers is thinly disguised racism, paranoia and propaganda—employing reporters who live in a world of illusion fed by their “superstars-in-their-own-mind” arrogance. If this newspaper—already reduced to essentially two slim “sections”--ever goes completely under, I say good riddance to bad rubbish.
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