Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced new plans on Thursday  to develop an oversight process and to train local police who participate in the Secure Communities program during a 2012 budget request hearing for the department. “ICE will work with DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Department of Justice to develop a robust oversight and evaluation process of Secure Communities and to provide training to state and local law enforcement,”... Read More

Many of the documents were heavily redacted. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) recently released 15,000 pages of internal documents about whether participation in Secure Communities is mandatory. To learn about the details they reveal, Deportation Nation interviewed Sarahi Uribe of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. She is a plaintiff in the FOIA lawsuit that led to the release of the documents. “We now see that ICE had a different definition... Read More

Many of the released ICE documents were heavily redacted. Newly released records reveal how federal authorities kept altering their stance on whether local police are required to share arrest data with immigration agents, even if they ask not to. “Keeping you in the loop as we progress with always changing policy as it relates to [Secure Communities],” reads a May 2010 email update from an unidentified sender about the controversial program. The message is one of hundreds... Read More

As President Obama prepares to release his 2012 budget on Monday, a new report suggests he should re-evaluate the price tag for two immigration enforcement programs that have failed to meet their mandate. The government spends $23,000 to deport a single immigrant, almost double what it previously estimated, suggests the report from the National Immigration Forum (NIF). It highlights costs associated with identifying, detaining, and deporting non-citizens as the Obama administration’s... Read More

Editor’s note: This is the latest blog post from a 27-year-old college graduate who ran a small construction clean-up company in Arizona until he was stopped by police for a traffic infraction in late summer of 2010. After Yogi (not his real name) was arrested and fingerprinted his information was shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He was then transferred from jail to ICE custody because he lacked proper immigration papers. Yogi has... Read More

Editor’s note: This is the latest blog post from a 27-year-old college graduate who ran a small construction clean-up company in Arizona until he was stopped by police for a traffic infraction in late summer of 2010. After Yogi (not his real name) was arrested and fingerprinted his information was shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He was then transferred from jail to ICE custody because he lacked proper immigration papers. Yogi has lived... Read More

A request for records concerning the Secure Communities program has stalled once again. This time the delay is credited to formatting problems. Judge Shira Scheindlin in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of  New York has asked in a Feb. 3 ruling for both parties in the dispute to resolve the issue. “Once again, this Court is required to rule on an e-discovery issue that could have been avoided had the parties had the good sense to ‘meet and confer,’... Read More

If steps aren’t taken to monitor local police not trained in immigration enforcement, the federal immigration agency’s Secure Communities program could invite racial profiling and pretexual arrests on a larger scale – more so than the highly controversial 287(g) program, warns a new report from the Migration Policy Institute. The warning is part of a report released by the Institute Monday that focuses on the 287(g) program, which provides local police with federal... Read More