Our cover story in the current issue of The Independent explores how Maricopa County isn’t the only area where the Sheriff Dept. is accused of racial profiling and ICE has gone ahead with plans to activate Secure Communities – using those same officers as its “force multipliers.”

We report that the New York Police Department has a “Stop, Question and Frisk” program that has been show to disproportionately target Black and Latino residents.

Now New York City is on the verge of joining the controversial federal program that puts immigrants who come into contact with police at risk of deportation.

Here is an excerpt from the story:

Blacks and Latinos each make up about a quarter of the city’s population, but they account for more than 80 percent of stop-and frisk encounters. By comparison, Whites are about 45 percent of the city’s residents, but make up just 10 percent of the stops.

“You have hundreds of thousands of New York City residents who are stopped for no other reason other than their national origin and their race,” said Sunita Patel. A staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, Patel is co-counsel on a lawsuit alleging that stop and frisks violate Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure.

NYPD precincts where people are stopped and frisked most frequently are also home to large immigrant communities from the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa. They include Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Jackson Heights, East Harlem and the North Shore of Staten Island.

Now those subjected to racial profiling could be dragged into the deportation system.

“Secure Communities has the potential to create a real pipeline from basic police interaction to detention and removal,” said Patel.