Yesterday, the District of Columbia announced that it was refusing to participate in the Department of Justice's controversial "Secure Communities" deportation program. According to the Washington Post, Mayor Vince Gray signed an Executive Order "that prohibits public safety agencies from asking about a person’s immigrant status or contacting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement." The announcement came on the same day that researchers released a new report calling into question the record number of deportations occurring under the Obama administration. According to PBS, Secure Communities really does break up families (lots of them) and racially profiles Latinos:
...a new report, released today, raises major questions about a program that has lead to many of those deportations.
Secure Communities, a high-tech way of tracking immigration violators via fingerprint data, has led to the disproportionate arrest of Latinos, the wrongful detention of U.S. citizens and families being split apart when a spouse or parent is deported, according to a new study, [PDF] released today by the Warren Institute at the University of California, Berkeley Law School, in conjunction with the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
The study is the first to analyze government data on the program. Among its findings:
