immigration

On Wednesday, Fran Ansley, a Jobs with Justice leader from East Tennessee, was arrested along with three others in an action with the No Papers No Fear Ride for Justice.

The four, including two undocumented immigrants, were arrested after sitting down in the street in front of the Knox County Sheriff’s office.  For months, Sheriff JJ Jones has refused to meet with the migrant community but regularly meets with ICE in an attempt to bring the federal deportation program known as 287(g) to Knoxville, Tennessee.

Tennessee already takes part in the controversial “Secure Communities” deportation program, and by bringing in 287(g) the Sheriff would further blur the lines between his department and the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is the biggest action taken to counter the countries broken immigration system in decades.  It is not the biggest action taken overall when you consider the several billion dollar ramp up of border security and the takeoff of a record breaking deportation programs in recent years.  Nonetheless, DACA is the first progressive policy move in decades and has the potential to help move more than 800,000 undocumented youth out of the shadows and into the authorized workforce.

Photo by Causa Oregon: Deferred Action advice session in Oregon.    

For three weeks now, Jobs with Justice has been watching a courageous action moving across the South.  The No Papers, No Fear: Ride for Justice has made stops in more than a dozen communities.  At each stop the bus riders have come together with community members to demonstrate that they will not be complicit to the hate and fear that tries to divide communities and families, separate students from their education, and deny workers dignity.

Yesterday, D.C. City Council made an important decision to limit collaboration between local law enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  The council  signed the legislation, Bill19-585, on the heels of California’s Trust Act, preventing the overreach of immigration detainers in local jails and counteracting flawed deportation programs such as S-Comm.  These bills couldn’t come at a better time, marking the beginning of a national week of action to launch the Restoring Trust campaign, which seeks to promote local alternatives to counteract Arizona-style immigration laws and draconian federal deportation programs.

Monday’s Supreme Court decision on Arizona’s SB 1070 was better than most expected, setting a strong precedent that immigration is in the hands of the federal government and validating prosecutorial discretion policies.  The court struck down three of the four provisions it heard, including the provision that would have criminalized the act of working for the first time in our history.  Despite the good news, the continued peril of SB 1070 is real and goes beyond the “papers please” racial profiling provision left behind.

SB 1070 has been divisive and expensive at a time we need to be working together to fix our economy.  SB 1070 has spawned copy cats in other state, drawing yet more boycotts, protests and lawsuits and costing business owners, taxpayers and communities.  The divisive language has moved us further away from discussing real solutions for our broken immigration system.  It has pitted worker against worker, instead of fostering understanding through a shared identity.

In response to news that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) planned to implement the Secure Communities deportation program in DC on June 5th, the DC Council unanimously passed emergency legislation to limit ICE's access to people being held in DC police stations and jails. In doing so, DC joined Cook County, IL, Santa Clara, CA and several other communities who have recently adopted similar policies.

A broad coalition of  community, faith, and labor organizations had been working with the Council to draft the legislation, which was introduced by Councilmember Phil Mendelson (D-At-large), and will limit Immigration and Customs Enforcement's use of District facilities and equipment and also narrows S-Comm’s deportation dragnet by only responding to immigration detention requests for individuals who are over 18 and have been convicted of a dangerous crime. Last fall the permanent version of the act, the Immigration Detainer Compliance Amendment, was unanimously co-sponsored by all DC councilmembers. The act builds upon the Mayor’s Order 2011-174 (October 19, 2011) that prohibits all public safety agencies from inquiring about individuals’ immigration status or transmitting information about immigration status.

Last Friday, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released a report outlining how it will continue to push forward with the "Secure Communities" program (S-Comm).  The report published on the ICE website was in response to the agency task force that recommended changes to the seriously flawed program.  It comes as no surprise that ICE largely disregarded the issues that originally spurred the need for the task force's review, such as a lack of transparency, conflicting messaging, co-option of local police agencies and disregard for community policing.

In its report, ICE outlined how it would continue to move forward with S-Comm, including the deportation of individuals for minor traffic offenses.  Such measures have been loudly condemned for encouraging racial profiling (see AFL-CIO and National Immigration Forum’s letter to DHS) and pulling apart working families. 

Today the Supreme Court will hear arguments on Arizona’s SB 1070, and communities across the country will once again unite to call for an end of unsanctioned state immigration laws that promote racial profiling.

When SB 1070 passed it was unprecedented for a state to create its own immigration laws in spite of federal laws.  Now, two years later, legislatures in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, and Utah have passed similar laws, in part of what has been called the “Arizonification” of the country.

While the threats of SB 1070 type laws to workers and their communities are real, as the moral and civil rights complications are many, the question in front of the Supreme Court is much more fundamental.  They Supreme Court will be asked to decide if we are a country with a singular immigration law, or will we be a country divided by different immigration laws that vary from state to state.

Today we will join in solidarity with labor, faith, student, and immigrant right groups on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court and in communities across the country to demand a decision that falls on the side of justice and civil rights, and promotes national cohesion. 

On Tuesday, November 29, 2011, Kentucky Equal Justice Center, KentuckyJobs with Justice and the Network Center for Community Change hosted aWorkers Rights Board hearing on the issue of Wage Theft. After listening to testimony, the worker’s rights board deliberated and made recommendations in moving forward. They supported some of the legislativeremedies suggested by the presenters and also highlighted the need for furthereducation about the problem.