Jailed illegal immigrants pose policy dilemma

A U.S. program to check the immigration status of everyone booked into jail runs into local rules against such actions.

By Ken Dilanian, Tribune Washington Bureau

June 7, 2010

Reporting from Washington

Mwenda Murithi, the Kenyan-born leader of a notorious Chicago street gang, was arrested 26 times after his student visa was revoked in 2003. Charged with at least four felonies, he served 30 days in the Cook County Jail for a 2007 drug violation. By law, he could have been deported immediately.

But Chicago officials did not report him to immigration authorities because city and county ordinances prohibit them from doing so.

Not long after he got out of jail, Murithi ordered a gang hit that resulted in the death of 13-year-old Schanna Gayden, struck by a stray bullet as she frolicked at a playground.

Murithi, now serving 55 years, is just the sort of person U.S. immigration officials say they want to target under a program known as Secure Communities, which seeks to match the fingerprints of everyone booked into jail against immigration databases.

But the program, launched by the Bush administration and continued under President Obama, has become entangled in the suspicions and recriminations that characterize the debate over immigration policy.

Critics of the program say that turning illegal immigrants over to federal authorities would undermine the efforts of local law enforcement to win cooperation from immigrant communities. And they worry about providing immigration authorities with the fingerprints of those arrested on petty charges.

"I'll be reporting minor offenders, misdemeanants, people who are arrested on a traffic fine that they fail to pay," San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey said. "I think that this throws too broad of a net out over the residents of my county."

David Venturella, who runs the program for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, or ICE, said minor violators are not a priority unless they also have more serious criminal histories.

"Our focus is on criminal aliens," he said.

Many major city police agencies forbid officers from inquiring into the immigration status of witnesses and suspects, a policy adopted by local officials to shield illegal immigrants from federal authorities. But the Secure Communities program has divided those cities and the politicians within them.

Houston and Los Angeles are participating in the fingerprint sharing program despite such rules, and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom opposes the efforts of the sheriff and some county supervisors to keep his city out of it.

The federal program was designed to assuage such cities, Venturella said, because it doesn't require their active cooperation. The fingerprints are shared automatically, and ICE officers arrest those they intend to deport.

This arrangement stands in contrast to a more active federal-local effort known as the 287(g) program, under which ICE signs agreements that allow local police to arrest and detain people under immigration laws. Few big cities participate in that program.

Still, out of political sensitivity, ICE currently is not matching fingerprints from counties, such as Cook County, that object to the Secure Communities program, he said.

Secure Communities is operating in 193 counties, including Los Angeles County, and ICE has checked 2.2 million sets of fingerprints submitted by local law enforcement agencies, spokeswoman Randi Greenberg said. Through April 30, there were 216,000 hits against a database of people who previously had been fingerprinted by ICE, she said.

Of that number, 24,000 had been charged with or convicted of what ICE classifies as the most serious offenses, including rape, murder and kidnapping. The remainder involved lesser offenses, ranging from bribery and fraud to petty violations, such as gambling.

ICE deported 6,100 of those charged with or convicted of the most serious offenses, and 14,300 who were charged with or convicted of lesser offenses, she said. The goal is to expand the program nationwide by the end of 2012.

Despite Venturella's assertion that ICE won't focus on people charged with lesser offenses, immigration rights activists aren't so sure.

"We think it's an ill-conceived, ill-functioning program," said Joan Friedland, a senior attorney with the National Immigration Law Center. "Regardless of how or why a person got into police custody, whether it was based on racial profiling, whether it was a minor offense, whether the person is found not guilty, they are subject to deportation."

Friedland said she would be more comfortable with referrals based on convictions, not arrests.

In Cook County, authorities can do neither. While the policies in Los Angeles and other cities allow police to notify immigration authorities about felons they suspect are illegal immigrants, Cook County forbids that, said Steve Patterson, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Office.

Asked why, Chicago Alderman Roberto Maldonado argued that the law does allow the reporting of felons to immigration authorities. "We're not protecting criminals," he said.

The text of the law, however, contains no such provision.

Asked about the case of the Kenyan gang leader, Maldonado noted that ICE, the immigration enforcement agency, routinely peruses county arrest reports. "If ICE didn't have their eyes open, that is not our fault," he said.

In Los Angeles, a case in 2008 reenergized a long-standing debate about the city's policy toward police questioning of immigrants.

Jamiel Shaw II, a 17-year-old football star who had been recruited by Stanford and Rutgers universities, was gunned down in March 2008, allegedly by gang member Pedro Espinoza. Espinoza, a 19-year-old illegal immigrant, had been released from the Los Angeles County jail a day before the shooting after serving time on a gun charge.

Although Espinoza had been in the custody of the sheriff, not the Los Angeles Police Department, activists unsuccessfully sought to use the case to overturn Special Order 40, the LAPD rule that limits the circumstances in which officers may inquire into a person's immigration status. An effort to repeal the policy by referendum failed last year when backers couldn't muster enough signatures to put the measure on the ballot.

Unlike in Chicago, nothing prohibits Los Angeles police officers from referring people they arrest to immigration authorities, said Jorge Villegas, commander of the LAPD operations office.

If police arrest a gang member who has already been deported, for example, officers notify ICE, he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immigrant-felons-20100607,0,1053301,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Crime and Suspicion Remain Where Burge Once Held Sway

For Diane Latiker, a middle-aged mother of eight who works with troubled youth in the tough Roseland neighborhood on the Far South Side, the mention of Jon Burge makes her think of “the boogeyman.”

“The name,” she said, “makes most grown folks around here gasp.”

For Nick Jones, 17, who sits on the curbs of Chatham, a few miles north, and tries to make a few bucks pounding out beats on a plastic bucket, the name means nothing. He has never heard of Mr. Burge, the former Chicago police commander now on trial in Federal District Court, charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly lying about torturing suspects.

Mr. Jones is worried about today's police officers. “You can't do nothing positive around here without them messing with you,” he said. “They harass us every day.”

In more than two dozen interviews in the sprawling Area 2 police district that includes Roseland and Chatham — the territory where Mr. Burge once oversaw a team of detectives, some of whom were accused by suspects of engaging in a regime of torture at area headquarters — Mr. Burge's name elicited a mix of responses, from anger to indifference to “Jon who?”

Seventeen years after Mr. Burge was fired by the police board, there are lingering suspicions between the area's residents and the police. Many residents fear that a legacy of mistrust is undermining efforts to stop the violent crime that still plagues the area.

When it comes to Jon Burge, the generation gap is alive and well. The older the person is, the fresher the memories are of the man and his command.

“The community has not reacted yet as I think it will as the trial goes on,” said Zakiyyah S. Muhammad, 64, who sat through several sessions of trial testimony at the Dirksen Federal Building. “It's not a hot, hot issue like it was. I think the media might be trying to protect Burge a little bit, because you don't hear as much as you should hear.”

The case remains a hot issue for Antonio Berry, 39. “I can't imagine what those people went through,” Mr. Berry said. “It's unspeakable.”

Ms. Latiker, who runs a youth center from the living room of her house on the edge of Roseland, said she recently talked to a 21-year-old man about Mr. Burge's trial. She tried to explain to him why the decades-long case still mattered, and why the sickly, 62-year-old former police commander should face justice.

But the man — no stranger to the back of a police car — said he did not understand why people like Ms. Latiker were making such a fuss about Mr. Burge, even if he did torture suspects more than 30 years ago and then lied about it under oath.

“Wasn't he just trying to get the thugs off the street?” the man said. “With all this killing going on, what's wrong with that?”

Ms. Latiker said she was shocked at the man's attitude. “I said to him, ‘You're a thug. Would you like the police to abuse you?' ”

The man shrugged and fell silent, she said.

“These kids today have seen and experienced so much bad they're immune to it,” Ms. Latiker said. “That's why they need to see that no one is above the law, not even the police.”

Like most of the adults interviewed, Thomas Mitchell, 39, an unemployed construction worker who was waiting for a bus on 87th Street, said he had been following the Burge case for years. “You can't just turn a blind eye to stuff like that,” Mr. Mitchell said. “It shouldn't have taken this long to bring him to justice.”

The Burge trial, which begins its third week on Monday, is not the justice Mr. Mitchell and many others had hoped for. Mr. Burge is not being tried for torturing suspects: The statute of limitations ran out years ago without any torture-related criminal charges brought against him.

Instead, he is being tried on charges of lying about the torture in 2003 in a civil lawsuit filed by a former death row inmate. Mr. Burge has denied the accusations of torture. “I know that all police aren't bad,” Mr. Mitchell said. “The ones that are crooked put a bad light on the ones who are trying to protect the community.”

About 17 miles north of Area 2, in the other America that is downtown Chicago, civil rights advocates, lawyers, teachers, mothers of inmates and at least one elected official have packed Courtroom 1925 since testimony in the Burge trial began. Sometimes the size of the crowd has forced officials to open another courtroom two floors below where an audio feed of the proceedings is piped in.

Alderman Ed Smith (28th Ward) said recently that Mr. Burge was responsible for putting a lot of innocent people on death row. “The Burge case should be significant to everybody in Chicago,” Mr. Smith said. “And it should be significant to everybody in the country.”

But when asked about the case, Raheem Taylor, 35, who was standing in front of his printing shop in the 11300 block of South Michigan Avenue, replied, “Who's Jon Burge?”

A few moments later, with a little prodding, Mr. Taylor recognized the name.

“I haven't been following the case,” he said. “The big story around here has been the serial killer, the Roseland rapist.”

A 24-year-old man was arrested May 27 and charged with killing three women in Roseland and dumping their bodies in abandoned buildings.

Mr. Taylor pointed across the street to a boarded-up Harold's Chicken restaurant, its sign still promising Finger Lickin' Fried Chicken. “They found one of the murdered women in that building over there,” he said.

Mr. Taylor was joined by a man who would give his name only as Gerald. As they talked, a police officer pulled up and said, “You guys are going to have to find something else to do.”

When the officer drove off, Mr. Taylor said: “That happens all the time, telling us to move along. I'm a grown man, standing in front of my own business.”

Down the street at Legends barber shop, Macoi Long, a 30-year-old barber, said Mr. Burge “is dead, right?”

“No,” a friend said, laughing. “He's in court.

“Oh, yeah, now I remember,” Mr. Long said. “He's on trial downtown. Now he has to stand tall for what he done like the rest of us.”

Mr. Long said he had been hearing about the alleged torture crimes of Mr. Burge and his men for years, “whipping people, torturing people, sending guys to death row for something they didn't do.”

“Didn't that happen a long time ago?” asked a teenager waiting for a haircut.

“True, but he still deserves some tick,” Mr. Long said, using a slang expression for jail time.

A few miles north, Iris Gilbert, 55, was leaving a beauty college in the Gresham neighborhood with curlers in her hair. “We need our police now because it's so violent,” she said.

But, Ms. Gilbert added, “you can't trust them because of people like Burge.

“When you can't trust the police,” she said, “you take the law into your own hands. In the African-American community, they look at the police as another gang.”

That sentiment was shared by a group of teenagers and young adults who work for Ms. Latiker at her youth center, Kids Off the Block.

As the young people talked about police harassment and never meeting “a good cop,” Ms. Latiker held up her hand.

“Now wait a minute,” she said. “We don't want to group all the police in the same boat. We don't want to do to them what they do to you all. We don't want to stereotype them.”

“You're right,” one of the teenagers said. “We're better than that.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/06cncburge.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Domestic Workers' Rights

New York State has the chance to lead the nation in extending basic workplace protections to domestic workers — the nannies, housekeepers and caregivers for the elderly who are as essential to the economy as they are overlooked and unprotected.

The State Senate has just passed a domestic workers' bill of rights, with an array of guarantees that most workers take for granted, like paid holidays, sick days, vacation days and the right to overtime pay and collective bargaining. The Assembly passed its version last year. The Legislature should swiftly reconcile the bills and send a measure to Gov. David Paterson for his signature.

Domestic workers, like farm workers, have long struggled for equality in the workplace. Labor protections drafted in the New Deal specifically excluded both groups of workers, who remain highly vulnerable to exploitation. The problem is especially acute for domestic workers, a largely immigrant and female work force that toils out of public sight in private homes.

The bill in Albany gives employers and workers a baseline of fairness about pay, hours and benefits. It also gives the State Labor Department and attorney general the power to enforce its provisions.

There is little doubt that these women are vital — an estimated 200,000 of them toil in the metropolitan area, where entire industries and neighborhoods are dependent on paid domestic help. The cruel injustice is that while nannies and caregivers make it possible for professional couples to balance the demands of family and work, they often cannot take time to be with their own families when sickness or injury strikes.

The bill's success in Albany comes at a time when low-wage workers are suffering in a dismal economy, and losing battles to extend their rights. Home health aides, for example, still lack the right to a minimum wage and overtime pay, their pleas for justice having been soundly rejected by the Labor Department and the Supreme Court.

All the more reason to hail the progress in Albany, and push lawmakers there to revive and pass a long-stalled bill with similar protections for farm workers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/opinion/07mon3.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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Congress responds to deficit concerns

Proposed aid to state facing chopping block

WASHINGTON — After a pay-for-it-later splurge that lasted nearly a decade, Congress is finally wising up to the growing public concern about the federal deficit.

And plenty of Americans — from taxpayers across the state to teachers in many local school districts to youths looking for summer work in Buffalo — could pay for that concern almost immediately.

Congress left town in late May for a weeklong Memorial Day break after abandoning suddenly unpopular proposals to aid fiscally strapped states such as New York and to set aside money to avert teacher layoffs nationwide. Those proposals now look doomed, congressional aides said.

Meanwhile, other once-routine items — extended unemployment benefits, a "doc fix" that aims to prevent a 21 percent cut in Medicare fees paid to doctors and $1 billion for summer youth jobs — passed the House but now face an uncertain outlook in the Senate.

"Everything has gotten to be more and more of a struggle" because of growing concern about the deficit, said Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-Fairport.

That's no idle concern.

Ten years after the U.S. enjoyed a $236 billion surplus and its fiscal future seemed secure, this year's federal deficit is expected to be $1.38 trillion, down slightly from last year's record $1.4 trillion shortfall.

The fates, as well as Congress and the last two presidents, are responsible for the burgeoning debt.

An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that $457 billion of this year's shortfall can be attributed to the dip in revenues and increased costs due to the Great Recession.

Obama-era stimulus efforts contributed $385 billion, while Bush-era tax cuts are responsible for $335 billion, and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars contributed $191 billion.

All told, the federal debt just topped $13 trillion, which is why Republicans such as Rep. Chris Lee of Clarence say it's about time for the U.S. to get its fiscal house in order.

"We have to realize that the federal government can't keep bailing out New York State," Lee said. "The dollars just aren't there anymore."

And that's bad news for Albany.

Ballooning state deficit

New York officials had been presuming they would get $1 billion in federal aid this year to help cover the rise in Medicaid costs attributable to the recession, just as it received such aid in last year's federal stimulus package.

But House Democratic leaders had to drop their $23 billion state aid package late last month in order to get enough votes for a catch-all bill aimed at extending unemployment benefits and expiring tax breaks.

"If New York doesn't get that money, our deficit is going to balloon from $9.2 billion to $10.2 billion," Gov. David E. Paterson said on a New York radio program recently.

Similarly, on both sides of Capitol Hill, advocates abandoned their efforts to set aside $23 billion for extra education funding, saying they didn't have enough votes to pass it.

That proposal would have brought $87.1 million to Erie and Niagara counties' school districts to help avert layoffs of teachers and support staff, said Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand, D-N.Y., a key supporter of the legislation.

Without that money coming, Buffalo city schools are looking at the loss of 397 full-time positions. Suburban Buffalo school districts are looking at the loss of up to 300 positions.

Statewide, the federal school aid would save thousands of jobs, said David Albert of the New York State School Boards Association.

"It would be a lifesaver if it were enacted," Albert said.

Others — the unemployed and doctors, most notably — may still get a lifesaver when the Senate takes up the jobs and tax bill the House passed late last month.

Yet the House's struggle in passing the measure means that even if the Senate acts quickly, extended unemployment benefits and doctor pay will temporarily be cut, and the summer will begin without an infusion of summer jobs money.

The previous extension of unemployment benefits expired June 2, leaving 5.4 million unemployed Americans in doubt over whether their aid would continue.

Doctors who take Medicare patients, meanwhile, don't know when and if Congress will pass the so-called "doc fix" and push off the 21 percent reduction in reimbursements that took effect last week.

"The U.S. Senate headed home for vacation knowing that America's seniors are on the brink of a Medicare meltdown," said Dr. J. James Rohack, president of the American Medical Association.

Unemployment benefits and the "doc fix" have expired before, only to be quickly restored.

A state of limbo

But time is running out for youths in Buffalo and other cities who were counting on $1 billion in federal funding for jobs this summer.

With that money, the Buffalo Employment and Training Center would be able to hire about as many youths as it did last summer, when stimulus funding combined with more routine aid meant jobs for 2,124 teens.

Without the extra federal money this year, the agency will have money to hire only 758 teens, the agency said.

"We're in a real state of limbo right now," said Jeff Nixon, youth service manager at the center. "It's getting late in the game," given that the jobs program kicks off July 6.

Last year those youths planted trees in poor neighborhoods, worked to clean up city neighborhoods and performed an array of other tasks.

With the deficit bulging, though — and with the public souring on government spending — Republicans opposed the bill that included the summer jobs funding.

"This is not a jobs bill," said Rep. Wally Herger, R-Calif. "It is just another extension of the "tax too much, spend too much, borrow too much' philosophy that we have come to expect" from Democrats.

Democrats such as Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, are trying to balance deficit concerns against a conviction that government spending is essential to digging the U.S. economy out of the biggest hole it has been in since the 1930s.

Asked about the Republicans' newfound fiscal conservatism, Higgins rattled off a list of items that the GOP left unpaid for when it controlled Congress — including the Bush-era tax cuts, a Medicare prescription drug plan and two wars.

"There is a concern about deficit spending," Higgins said. "It's a concern that should have been heeded a decade ago."

http://www.buffalonews.com/cgi-bin/print_this.cgi

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