Illionois Governor Pat Quinn terminates secure communities with ICE.
Today, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn sent a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement notifying the agency that because of its indiscriminate use of the “Secure Communities” deportation program, the State is ending its participation in the program. The letter states “that the implementation of the Secure Communities program in Illinois is contrary to the stated purpose of the MOA… By ICE’s own measure, less than 20% of those who have been deported from Illinois under the program have ever been convicted of a serious crime.” The Governor’s letter concludes, “With this termination, no new counties in Illinois can be activated and those counties that were previously activated… must be deactivated and removed from the Secure Communities program.”
ICE officials were upset that Washington D.C. opted out of the program and New York State also refused to participate, testing ICE assertions that the program is mandatory, as revealed in documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) and Benjamin Cardozo Law School.
Joshua Hoyt, Executive Director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, praised the Governor’s action: “Governor Quinn took the state of Illinois one step forward toward sensible solutions for our broken immigration system. We need more policies like the Illinois DREAM Act, which the Senate passed today, not indiscriminate and reckless enforcement.”
The Governor’s letter comes in the wake of mounting criticism of the “Secure Communities” program for what U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California describes as outright deception in its implementation and for the widely reported use of the program to deport people still presumed to be innocent despite the program’s mission of focusing on “convicted dangerous criminals.”
Governor Pat Quinn is ending Illinois’s participation in a controversial federal immigration program meant to deport immigrants guilty of serious crimes, which has resulted in the detention of mostly immigrants convicted of no crimes or minor offenses.
Illinois was the first state in the nation to agree to participate and then withdraw from the Secure Communities program, which obligates local law enforcement agencies to share fingerprints of anyone arrested with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
As the Chicago News Cooperative reported in March, ICE officials and contractors had aggressively pushed to implement the program in Chicago despite county and city ordinances that appear to prohibit city and county law enforcement agencies from participating.
ICE officials have said state and local participation in Secure Communities is mandatory and plan to implement the program nationwide. But Quinn said in a statement today that the agency has not answered state and local officials’ questions about the high number of immigrants detained after being arrested for often minor offenses, including traffic stops. ICE statistics show that in Illinois more than three quarters of those targeted for deportation through the program were convicted of no crimes or minor misdemeanors.
“Secure Communities as it has been implemented has turned into a program that is indiscriminately destroying families,” said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which obtained internal ICE documents showing how ICE officials strategized to convince Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and Mayor Richard M. Daley to cooperate with the program.
Gov. Pat Quin's letter:
http://uncoverthetruth.org/wp-content/uploads/2011-05ilterminate.pdf
Link:
http://uncoverthetruth.org/pr-governor-quinn-terminates-troubled-deportation-program-cites-actual-results-contrary-to-stated-purpose-as-reason-to-withdraw-from-secure-communities