Legal Commentary

Secure Communmities Program a Threat to Immigrant Domestic Violence Victims

By Jeralyn

Safe Horizons is the largest domestic violence victims assistance organization. In the past, it has advised domestic violence victims to report crimes, even if they are undocumented residents.

No more. Homeland Security's Secured Communities program, under which their immigration status will be shared, can cause them to be deported, even though they are crime victims. Safe Horizons has now changed its recommendation.

Designed to identify and deport dangerous, undocumented immigrants with a criminal history, Secure Communities has removed about 58,300 convicts from the United States since its pilot launch in late 2008, according to ICE.

But 28 percent of the people transferred to ICE custody under Secure Communities from October 2008 through June 2010 were non-criminals, according to ICE figures. Some of the detained people--an unknown number--are victims of domestic and sexual violence.

This program will drive the undocumented back into the shadows. It's also contrary to established federal law: [More...]

Federal law protects crime victims from having to reveal their immigration status, if these victims are arrested or have been arrested in the past Secure Communities now discloses that.

38 states have now implemented Secure Communities. There's been a lot of complaints ICE isn't being truthful about the ability of states to opt out of certain aspects, like fingerprint testing and reuslt sharing. Newly released documents from an FOIA lawsuit further expose the problems. A summary of the newly released documents is here.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 26, 2011 (boomark / email).