Confronting PoliMigra: Drawing the Line Between Police/ICE Collaboration

Confronting the PoliMigra: Drawing the Line Between Police/Ice Collaboration.

On  11/5, I was fortune to attend an eye-opening conference at Willamette University: Confronting the PoliMigra: Drawing the Line Between Police/ICE Collaboration. Put on by CAUSA, this day-long workshop examined the contradiction between federal immigration policy and actual local practice of immigration enforcement, including specifically Oregon. 

To begin with, it is important to note that local law enforcement is not intended to enforce immigration; Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is the federal agency responsible for that work. In most immigration hold cases -- especially those resulting from minor (what would normally be ticketable) offenses -- local law enforcement is not required by state or federal law to honor requested ICE detentions. In fact, Oregon law 181850 categorically prohibits using local law enforcement resources for the purposes of immigration control. 

Current federal immigration policy unequivocally affirms that deportations are reserved solely for “the worst of the worst” undocumented citizens. A memo released in June 2011 by John Morton, the director of ICE, clearly outlined which undocumented immigrants were “low priority” for deportation. This “low priority” group includes veterans, crime victims, caregivers, the elderly, the sick, those who would qualify for the DREAM act, and those with proven community ties. While the federal government may de-emphasize deportations as a course of policy, local practice and raw statistics contradict the federal strategy. In the last three years, over 1 million undocumented immigrants have been deported, with over 400,000 deportations this last year alone.

So why is this happening?

The reasons are numerous and, for the most part, conspicuous. For one, the Secure Communities initiative (S-Comm) encourages police to fingerprint all detained undocumented immigrants and share that information with other agencies upon request. There is also a new importance on possessing legally accepted forms of identification. For undocumented immigrants, though, this is tremendously difficult because a) Oregon has made made it nearly impossible for undocumented immigrants to obtain state-issued Driver’s License or ID, and b) most local law enforcement will not accept the Mexican consulate-issued Matricula identification -- significantly, Marion County accepts the Matricula, an example of progressive local police enforcement. 

Beyond the need for acceptable identification and the inability to obtain it, local law enforcement is collaborating with ICE in an entirely insidious way. Certain jails in Oregon, as well as other states, actively invite ICE to set-up a desk in their respective local and country prisons; other times, ICE requests permission to set-up shop at jails, using the prospect of increased funding to entice local law enforcement to permit ICE’s presence. It may not seem like such a sinister arrangement until one considers the following highly probable scenario:

An undocumented immigrant gets pulled over for routine traffic violation. Because he lacks acceptable identification, however, he is detained at a nearby jail. Once in detention, if the immigrant -- who most likely does not know his rights and often is not provided a translator -- discloses in anyway that he was not born in the United States, a vicious deportation cycle has begun. ICE will most likely transfer the undocumented immigrant to a new regional jail each day (a deportation jailing route common to our area is: 1st night in a jail in Bend , 2nd night in Klamath Falls, 3rd night in Portland, and finally 4th night in Tacoma at a privately ran deportation processing center.

The process of transferring undocumented immigrants to multiple jails, before a likely deportation in Tacoma, is the result of a few policies. Most significantly, ICE uses funding and reimbursements to coerce local police to collaborate on immigration. ICE only fully refunds local law enforcement for the cost of holding immigrants if the immigrants remain in the prison system 4 days or more. The collaboration between local law enforcement and ICE expedites deportations, but discourages proactivity and resistance from family members, concerned private citizens, and the faith based community. The whole system is stacked in the favor of speedy detention and removal of immigrants, at the expense of families and communities. Despite the Morton memo    

stressing the need for prosecutorial discretion and consideration of extenuating circumstances on a case by case basis, deportations are often unwarranted, breaking apart families and communities.

The good news is that awareness of the issue is increasing, and the debate is beginning to shift. More and more, people have come to realize that the PoliMigra collaboration, rather than making our communities safer, are in fact hurting public safety, as immigrants are reluctant to trust/talk to local law enforcement officials for fear of immigration problems. At an organizational level, many social justice groups in Oregon and elsewhere meet regularly with local police and jail officials. They compile and present raw data that underlines the importance of kicking ICE out of local and county jails so that undocumented immigrants aren’t deported for minor infractions -- such as having a brake light out or lacking an acceptable form of ID. Some immigration lawyers are also stepping up to the plate, providing Pro bono services for certain deportation cases. The faith based community, too, is centrally involved. Pastors and priests have begun meeting with Police Chiefs and Sheriffs -- many of whom resist or refuse to meet with nonprofits and committees of concerned citizens -- in order to persuade local law enforcement to discontinue its unnecessary role in immigration enforcement.

Immigrant Family Advocacy (IFA), a Bend nonprofit, has been keeping meticulous data about undocumented immigrants detained in Central Oregon and recently released a revealing report with lots of hard data and compelling arguments. I hope to get there permission to publish a copy of that report online.