DENVER - The controversy over the Arizona immigration law is spilling over into Colorado and the state's consideration of the "Secure Communities" program.
Jails already run the fingerprints of everyone arrested through a national criminal data base. The Secure Communities program would include screening through the ICE immigration data base.
Fox 31 news checked with local jails to see how they handle suspected illegal immigrants now.
The Jefferson County Sheriffs Department says they have so few suspected illegal immigrants that they don't track it. Arapahoe County Jail Sheriff Grayson Robinson explained deputies there already do a thorough screening of all suspected illegal immigrants through ICE data bases.
He said on any given day, they have up to 120 suspected illegal immigrants in the Arapahoe County Jail on an ICE hold. He said that, since the first of the year, ICE has picked up 520 illegal immigrants after they served their time on the criminal charges they were arrested for.
It's hard to tell what happens in each case, but ICE explained that they generally launch the deportation process. Depending on the person's status, they might be deported as soon as possible or they might go through a judicial process which they can also appeal.
ICE said since the first of the year, it has deported nearly 5,000 illegal immigrants in the Colorado- Wyoming area. The vast majority, more than 3,000, have criminal convictions.
Marat Kudlis, the father of a little boy who was killed in a crash caused by an illegal immigrant who had been arrested but never deported, thinks programs like Secure Communities are a good idea. "I think it's a wonderful idea. I think it's going to help the crime situation with illegal people here," he said.
But immigrant rights groups fear such programs could have unintended consequences.
Julien Ross, with the Colorado Immigration Rights Coalition, fears it might prompt police to arrest people they would otherwise let go, simply to have them deported.
"We're also worried than non offenders, people who have not committed a violent crime will be swept up in this dragnet policy," he said.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Leaking of List of Illegal Immigrants in Utah Terrifies Latino Community
Utah Officials Identify Two State Workers Who May Be Behind The Leak of 1300 Names, Addresses, Phone Numbers, and Even Due Dates of Pregnant Women.
BY DAVID WRIGHT, BONNIE MCLEAN And JESSICA HOPPER
July 15, 2010—
In Utah's Latino community, "The List" is causing a panic.
The 29 page printout includes the names of 1300 Utah residents of Latino descent with their addresses, phone numbers, workplaces and in some cases social security numbers.
Utah officials said that they have identified at least two state workers who accessed confidential documents that may have been used to create the list. The workers were from the Department of Workforce Services.
A group called Concerned Citizens of the United States mailed the list this week to media outlets and law enforcement agencies demanding the immediate deportation of those named.
"Some of the women on the list are pregnant," the cover letter warned. "And steps should be taken for immediate deportation."
In the letter, the group writes that they "observe these individuals in our neighborhoods, driving on our streets, working in our stores, attending our schools and entering our public welfare buildings."
They go on to write, "They need to go and go now."
'We Can All Be Torn Apart'
A Latino woman who asked that ABC News use only her first name, Guadalupe, is here legally, but some of her family members are on the list. They're terrified.
"My mother-in-law was almost in tears when she heard about it," Guadalupe said. "Just for someone putting a name on here, we can all be torn apart."
The information included in the list was so personal, it even included the names of children and the due dates of pregnant women on the list.
State officials now say that they have found evidence the sensitive personal information may have come from a state database. Officials said evidence will be delivered to the state attorney general Monday for possible prosecution.
The leaking comes as Utah lawmakers are considering immigration legislation similar to the tough, new law recently passed by Arizona.
Arizona's law, which takes effect July 29, allows police to ask anyone they suspect of being in the state illegally about their immigration status. Recently, the federal government filed a legal challenge to the law.
'Witch Hunt'
In Utah, members of the Hispanic community are terrified that the list will fuel deportation and racial profiling.
ABC News reached out to more than 50 names on the list. Most of them were not willing to talk to us.
One woman named Mina told us she's pregnant with her second child. She is scared that she'll be deported and separated from her two-year-old child, a U.S. citizen.
Many of the women appear to be illegal immigrants with children who were born in this country.
"I'm afraid sometimes to go out," said a woman named Alma whose name is on the list.
Another woman, too scared to show her face, said that she has a son and "he's from here and I don't want them to take him away."
"It's a witch hunt to Latinos. Let's choke them, let's find ways and means to get these people out," Tony Yapias, founder of Utah Latinos, said. "The immigration debate is at a new level. Now it's 'We're going to hunt you, we know where you live.' "
Common Denominator
One common denominator for many of the people on this list: they sought help from Utah's Department of Workforce Services. A disgruntled state employee there was recently caught on tape venting her outrage about illegal immigrants.
"It's not fair that this family gets food stamps, they get financials, husbands at home, they're dealing drugs," she said.
She's not alone in her feelings. Plenty of Utah residents said that authorities need to crack down on illegal immigration.
"If I had my druthers, we'd go down every name on that list and send them back where they came from," Eli Cawley from the Utah Minutemen said.
But authorities in Utah said it's unlikely that they'll start rounding up people on the list.
"I don't think it helps the circumstances right now," Utah Governor Gary Herbert said. "It can be like putting kerosene on fire."
The concern for some is that vigilantes may take action on their own just as the people circulating the list did in the first place.
Senator Reid taking heat for what some call controversial comment about Hispanics
Senator Harry Reid is taking some political shots from conservative Hispanics after a comment he made on the immigration reform debate.
The Nevada Democrat is quoted in the Las Vegas Review Journal as saying, "I don't know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican.. Ok. Do i need to say more?."
He reportedly made the remark in a room packed with Hispanic voters while voicing his frustration with Republicans over immigration reform.
Wednesday, the President of the Hispanic leadership responded.
Mario H. Lopez wrote, "Harry Reid has offered little to the Hispanic community except government dependency radical job-destroying economic policies and direct attacks on our values. [He] even voted for poison pill amendments to kill immigration reform in 2007. Harry Reid wanting to anoint himself as some sort of authority on what it means to be Hispanic is the height of arrogance."
Senator Reid release the following statement:
"Sen. Reid has long enjoyed the support of many Hispanic Republicans in Nevada and he appreciates that support. Sen. Reid's contention was simply that he doesn't understand how anyone, Hispanic or otherwise, would vote for Republican candidates because they oppose saving teachers' jobs, oppose job-creating tax incentives for small businesses, oppose investments in job-creating clean energy projects, and oppose the help for struggling, unemployed Nevadans to put food on the table and stay in their homes.
Nevadans are suffering in this economy. Senator Reid was rightly pointing out that Republicans like Sharron Angle who oppose job-creating measures and unemployment benefits, oppose emergency aid to save 1200 Nevada teachers, and who want to wipe out critical programs like Social Security and Medicare, are part of the problem, not part of the solution."
- Senator Harry Reid
Risch interested in examining 14th Amendment in immigration debate
Last week, U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner suggested to Fox News that Congress might need to re-examine the 14th Amendment in the immigration debate, and that the country should re-think giving automatic citizenship to anyone born in the United States. Sen. Jim Risch, Idaho’s junior member of the U.S. Senate, told IdahoReporter.com Monday that examination of the amendment should enter the immigration discussion, but that it must be coupled with strict immigration enforcement.
Boehner said officials must consider that illegal immigrants might come to the United States simply to have babies to create an anchor in the country. ”There is a problem. To provide an incentive for illegal immigrants to come here so that their children can be U.S. citizens does, in fact, draw more people to our country,” Boehner said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I do think that it’s time for us to secure our borders and enforce the law and allow this conversation about the 14th Amendment to continue.”
Risch said the topic needs debate. “I am open to the option of looking at changes to the 14th Amendment to prevent what some call ‘birth tourism,’” Risch told IdahoReporter.com. ”However, constitutional changes are very difficult and lengthy, as they should be. What is needed right now is stronger border security to prevent the unlawful entry into the United States.”
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was enacted July 9, 1868, and was meant to rectify the 1857 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, which said that children of African-American slaves brought in from outside the country were not considered citizens of the country within the confines of the Constitution.
Wyoming illegal immigration cases triple
CHEYENNE - Illegal immigration re-entry cases tripled in Wyoming from 2008 to last year and increased nearly tenfold from a decade ago.
Illegal immigration accounted for a third of federal prosecutions in Wyoming in 2009, a year in which there were more criminal cases in the U.S. District Court in Wyoming than in the past decade.
Many of the illegal immigration cases come out of Teton County, those involved with the federal system said.
The majority of cases involved Mexican nationals who are found working in a gamut of jobs, a federal public defender said.
Some are involved in criminal activity, while others have lived in the United States for 15 years and have families.
And while economics plays a role in Wyoming's situation and possibly a national trend, additional immigration enforcement staff at local offices could account greatly for the increase.
How the system works
Carl Rusnok, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, called re-entry a serious offense.
"If they had originally been deported because they committed an aggravated felony, the prosecution of their re-entry can be up to 20 years in prison," Rusnok said.
There are several programs that ICE, an agency that falls under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, uses to crack down on illegal immigrants.
Through these programs, and local law enforcement agencies running suspects through ICE databases, agents can find illegal immigrants and present cases for prosecution.
"Any means that we have of encountering aliens that are illegally in the country, we can, using our databases, identify those people who have already been deported, and then we can present those cases for prosecution," Rusnok said.
Rusnok said ICE targets people who have final orders of deportation, meaning a judge already made a ruling before a defendant is arrested.
"We find out, usually from the local law enforcement agencies, that someone has been arrested on criminal charges," Rusnok said.
A recent report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data gathering and research organization at Syracuse University, showed Congress increased national ICE spending $24 billion in the past five years.
From 2005 to last year, ICE's overall budget increased 67 percent, and detention and removal spending specifically increased 104 percent.
"There were some changes that occurred as far as administratively, and that impacted a lot of things," Rusnok said.
More recently, additions were made to local ICE offices in Wyoming.
"We significantly increased our detention and removal agents on site there at the local offices in Wyoming," Rusnok said.
Rusnok would not offer more details, citing security concerns.
In the last few years, control of Wyoming immigration enforcement was moved from Salt Lake City to Denver, Rusnok said.
John Powell, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Wyoming, said the increase in cases does have an effect, but that "it's part of what we do anyway."
"It takes a percentage of our time, but it's not onerous in any way," he said.
Will the number of cases from last year hold steady into the future?
"It's difficult to estimate because of the economy situation and the amount of work here," Powell said.
Simplifying the system
Federal Public Defender David Weiss approached the U.S. Attorney's Office here earlier last year because he noticed an increase in illegal immigration cases.
"I noticed a lot of people sitting needlessly," he said.
In conjunction with prosecutors, Weiss created an informal "fast track" program that significantly reduced the time it takes to process cases.
Typically, illegal immigration cases take four or five months, depending on how closely the defendant is picked up near indictment, Weiss indicated.
Fast-tracking those cases means it takes two to three months to complete their prosecution, he said.
Such a system formally is used in jurisdictions like Texas and Arizona, where there are thousands of immigration cases.
The penalty a defendant receives varies.
"It depends on the number of times they've been in the system," Powell said.
Many of the defendants are sentenced to time served in jail while awaiting the resolution of the case and then deported back to their country of origin.
Weiss said the vast majority of his clients are from Mexico, with the occasional Guatemalan or Honduran. He represented one defendant from Brazil.
Many of the cases involve blue-collar workers, Weiss said, running the gamut from restaurant work to landscaping to skilled construction to oil rig workers.
A high number of cases come out of Teton County, Weiss said.
Teton County, depending on the agency conducting the study, can be listed as the wealthiest per capita county in the country.
"You have a tourism industry there that I think a lot of people work in," Powell said.
Weiss said some of the defendants are bad individuals, but some are not.
"They are guys who've been here 10, 15 years and they have families, kids," Weiss said.
He said it is a legislative issue.
"Neither me nor the U.S. attorneys charging the cases have any say in immigration policy," he said.
A complex issue
University of Wyoming professor Eddie Munoz teaches criminal justice and Chicano studies.
While ICE refers to illegal immigrants as "criminal aliens," Munoz uses the term "undocumented immigrants."
"It's such a complex problem, getting into the economics of it, the politics of it, even some of the social aspects of it," Munoz said.
There always has been an ebb and flow of immigration from Mexico into the United States, Munoz said.
"I think it's been an issue historically for the entire United States," he said.
He said the U.S. wouldn't have as many undocumented immigrants if people didn't hire them.
"If there are jobs, they're going to come," he said.
The professor characterized immigrants as a diverse group of people who come to the United States seeking work.
"Overall, immigration has been beneficial to U.S. society," he said.
Munoz said undocumented immigrants often do pay sales taxes because they buy local. That also pumps money into the local economy, he said.
And undocumented workers often have some form of papers for employment, so they are still contributing to payroll taxes, Munoz said. In those cases, they often don't apply for tax refunds if they are eligible, he said.
Munoz advocated for some system to allow undocumented immigrants to gain citizenship and pay taxes.
"There's this kind of myth that undocumented immigrants don't pay taxes," Munoz said.
He said law enforcement funds typically go to punish immigrants, not the people who employ them.
Communities often want businesses to do well; and sometimes it's difficult for employers to know whether an employee is an undocumented immigrant because they don't thoroughly examine documentation.
Labor costs are the most expensive part of doing business.
"When we have tough economic times, we don't want immigrants," he said. "But when we have good economic times, we want immigrants."
Mexican street gang members arrested in Bozeman, West Yellowstone
A two-week federal investigation in Gallatin County ended Friday with the arrest of 10 Mexican-born men, seven of whom are associated with a dangerous street gang known as the Sureños, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.
Nine of the men are awaiting deportation, ICE spokesperson Carl Rusnok said Friday.
The tenth man will face federal charges in Montana of reentering the United States after having been previously deported "multiple times," Rusnok said.
Federal officials did not release the men's names.
The Gallatin County Sheriff's Office, Missouri River Drug Task Force and West Yellowstone Police Department all helped arrest the gang members -- two in West Yellowstone and eight in Bozeman, according to an ICE statement.
The operation and arrests went smoothly, Gallatin County Sheriff Jim Cashell said Friday. Federal authorities "called and asked for help so we assigned some people to it," he said, but could not say how many deputies were involved.
Cashell declined to comment further. "We're not going to say anything that would compromise the federal investigation."
The Hispanic gang is most active criminally in Southern California, Richard Valdemar wrote in a story about the gang in the April edition of Police magazine. Its members hold significant sway in and out of most California Department of Corrections facilities, and are rapidly gaining footholds in the federal prisons.
The Sureños are subservient to the Mexican Mafia and if any member "becomes involved in a fight with law enforcement, all Sureños are required to assist the gang member against the police" or prison staff member, Valdemar wrote.
In the Gallatin County arrests, illegal reentry is the only criminal charge pending, "at least so far," Rusnok said.
However, information collected by law-enforcement agencies "indicates that criminal gangs, such as the Sureños and others, are becoming increasingly involved in Montana with smuggling and distributing narcotics, laundering illicit drug proceeds, and other illegal activities," the ICE release stated.
A 46-year-old Livingston man indicted last month on federal racketeering charges was identified as the president of a fledgling chapter of the Outlaw motorcycle gang. John "Bull" Banthem "was actively recruiting members and trying to establish" the group in the area, Park County Attorney Brett Linneweber told the Chronicle at the time.
Friday's arrests were made as part of a national initiative -- Operation Community Shield -- that partners ICE agents with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies "to target the significant public safety threat posed by transnational criminal street gangs," ICE agents said in the written statement.
As for whether the arrests mark the end of the Sureños gang in this area, Rusnok said, "That would be a little naïve. This is an ongoing process."
Oregon Citizens Rally Against Arizona Immigration Law
(SALEM, Ore.) - Salem hosted one of forty rallies across the United States today in reaction to Arizona’s new immigration law, advocating for realistic immigration reform.
Hundreds of people of all ethnicities showed up at Oregon’s Capitol to join in the march, with 50,000 expected in Phoenix at the Arizona state Capitol in 95 degree weather. Oregon's mild May climate was less taxing on participants.
The theme of the rally in Salem on Saturday morning was one of peace, unity, and even negotiation. What it wasn't, was obligatory. The group was nothing less than patriotic, and insistent on their rights as citizens. They began the rally with the Pledge of Allegiance, which was almost emotional for many, hands proudly held over their hearts.
SB1070, the Arizona law, is set to take effect July 29th, and critics say it will lead to racial profiling and that it unfairly targets Hispanics or those that "look" like they may be of Hispanic descent. It gives police the right to ask any one for proof of their immigration status if there is “reasonable suspicion” that they might be in the United States illegally, though the definition of “reasonable suspicion” has yet to be explained.
Speakers in Salem called on President Obama and Oregon leaders to enact national immigration reform that keeps families together, and unites communities through a path to citizenship and due process rights for new immigrants.
Signs exclaiming “Citizenship Yes, Deportation No” and "We Are America" abounded at the rally, and the crowd responded with enthusiasm as the speakers proclaimed the intention to move forward toward their common goals.
Supporters of the new Arizona law say it is important because the federal government has failed to enforce immigration laws, and their state wants something done.
Others think they have gone too far, attempting to circumvent federal laws by making it a state crime to be in the country illegally.
“Immigration is only part of the problem. Greed and selfishness are at the root of it all,” said one participant. “We are all in this together. If we don’t start looking at it that way, we’ll all lose.”
Recently, much of the United States has been introduced to a new slogan, “Boycott Arizona”, while Arizonians are hoping to attract those with like attitudes to their own, through a “Buycott” Arizona message encouraging people (papered US citizens) to vacation in the desert this summer.
The boycott campaign asks citizens to do just the opposite through canceling conventions and buying products through companies from other states, hoping the economic impact to the Arizona wallet will influence the law being overturned.
However, according to an Associated Press-Gfk poll, almost twice as many Arizonians people support the Arizona law as those who oppose it. The poll found that 42 percent favored it, 24 percent opposed it, and 29 percent were neutral.
These views are expressed in some degree throughout the United States, but none so harshly as in Arizona. There are varied views on what it will mean if the law is allowed to be enforced.
“What do they think will happen? People aren’t going to suddenly become legal just because Arizona made this law. ‘Illegals’ will just go to other states to work, where they won’t be so harassed,” noted an elderly man. “Why would anyone want to live in Arizona when they’re so hateful?”
Salem’s rally was very positive, with no opposition noticeable. The rally in Portland outside the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was set to begin at 4:00 p.m., and a large protest is planned for Saturday night in San Francisco at the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game against the Giants. The uproar that Arizona started with their law may be more than they bargained for.
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