CJJC continues fight for immigrant rights

Angelica is crying. She’s remembering the time her husband was pulled over by police while driving in a Bay Area city. It seemed like a random stop — perhaps a rosary hanging from the rear view mirror, maybe a drive through a yellow light. Driving below the speed limit. Pick a reason. He was taken into custody at Santa Rita jail, where his fingerprints where checked against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s database. Angelica said that because he had a previous DUI, or, criminal conviction, a hold was issued for him. ICE picked him up. He was deported.

The onslaught of policies targeting immigrants is extreme. From Arizona’s SB1070, that would give law enforcement the authority to ask for proof of citizenship for anyone they stop, to legislation under consideration that would take citizenship away from U.S.-born children, to the so-called Secure Communities program, the list goes on.

These hardball policies and plans have the immigrant community feeling vulnerable and targeted. To address thimmigforum-4aese fears locally, the No S-Comm in Alameda County Coalition recently held a community forum on Policing and Immigration at the Spanish-Speaking Citizen’s Foundation in Oakland’s Fruitvale district.

The impact of S-Comm is apparent here in the Bay Area. The initiative makes state and local police an arm of federal immigration enforcement. Under the S-Comm program, the fingerprints of anyone detained by police or sheriff deputies can be checked against the Dept. of Homeland security records to find out if there has been a criminal conviction.

Immigration authorities are notified when there is a match. It targets detainees for deportation and detention even if their criminal charges are minor, eventually dismissed, or the result of unlawful arrest, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). Under S-Comm some 40 to 80 people are deported each month in San Francisco County alone, according to Renee Saucedo, of La Raza Centro Legal.

Causa Justa :: Just Cause, along with the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, and other organizations joined about 100 people at the forum to strategize over ways to deal with the gang injunction, an increased level of racial profiling by local law enforcement, and its links to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“We felt it was a critical time to invite communities to participate in a process of dialogue. To … make connections between what’s happening in one community and what’s happening in another community. A lot of times, it’s the same policies… affecting us in different ways,” said Laura Rivas of the National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights in Oakland.

Critics call it a racial profiling dragnet that targets undocumented immigrants. Gina Acebo, of the Applied Research Center in Oakland attended the forum. She said:


Race is at the core of it. If in fact we can racially profile people, we can say that they don’t count. We need to have different solutions that make people count in our community, “Penalizing them, doing a dragnet on them, having double jeopardy on them as a way to put fear in our communities is not a real way to build community. We have to have better solutions than that.


In February, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, introduced a SB1081, a bill that would give counties the option of not to participating in the S-COMM program. On April 5, the Judiciary Committee of the State Assembly will hold a hearing on the bill. Locally, a contingent of immigrant rights advocates is set to head to Sacramento April 4 where they will pay legislative visits to members of the committee to urge them to support Ammiano’s proposed bill, and they’ll be at the hearing the following day.

immigforum5a“They talk about it like it is just about ‘sharing data’, but it’s another way of continuing the criminalization, deportation, and separation of families,” said Cinthya Muñoz Ramos, immigrant rights organizer for Causa Justa :: Just Cause.

Documents pertaining to the S-Comm program were recently obtained from federal agencies through a Freedom of Information Act request and subsequent lawsuit by immigrant and civil rights organizations.

ICE records show “that the vast majority (79 percent) of people deported due to S-Comm are not criminals or, were picked up for lower offenses,” according to the CCR, one of the organizations that had to sue the government to get the information.

Approximately 28 percent of people ICE has deported through S-Comm are non-criminals, according to ICE’s own records.

Said Muñoz Ramos:


Most of the folks have been deported over minor infractions, sometimes not even misdemeanors. Because of how it works, they are arrested on alleged crimes, their fingerprints are run, ICE puts a detainer on them, the police hold that person without having a day in court and then the person gets picked up by ICE and deported or sent to a detention center, without ever seeing a judge.


The immigration forum — held with day care and simultaneous Spanish-English interpretation — brought a diverse group of community members together to identify problems caused by the federally sponsored “Secure Communities” and to talk about the impact of local gang ordinances and to find ways to combat the oppressive policies being put in place.

In the discussion groups, one participant noted increasing intrusive police surveillance of young people on playgrounds, in soccer fields, and in community centers, and, what they believe is racially profiled-driven arrests for such low-level infractions as jay-walking.

Other participants talked about unscrupulous landlords who force them to pay for legally mandated repairs or refuse to do them altogether, leaving undocumented tenants at risk of entering into a local legal system increasingly stacked against them. Others added that the new climate of fear leads to confusion about seeking out food stamps and other local assistance programs.

Participants also offered possible solutions. These ranged from engaging communities in the re-integration of ex-gang members and felons, training and organizing community members in methods of documenting police actions, and recruiting members of local police that oppose Secure Communities legislation into the struggle.

The recent addition of six counties in California completes the entire participation of the state in the program. As Jorge-Mario Cabrero pointed out in his article for the Huffington Post, California has become S-Comm’s pilot state. “The Golden State… now serves as ICE’s full-time laboratory project.”