Last week, President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security announced that it was expanding the anti-immigrant 287(g) program—special enforcement arrangements between local police agencies and the DHS to detain, arrest and deport “suspected” undocumented immigrants.
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In this ongoing offensive against immigrants, the Obama administration is continuing Bush’s legacy of attacking so-called “illegal aliens with criminal records.” Many police departments throughout the country use 287(g) and the federal government’s wider attacks on immigrant communities as an excuse to stop, question, harass and detain Latinos and immigrants.
In the past two years, more than 120,000 people have been detained and deported through the 287(g) program. During fiscal year 2008, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deported more than 356,000 immigrants from the United States and tens of thousands more that have not been reported, which represented a 23.5 percent increase over the previous year.
Congress created the 287(g) program in 1996. The program provides resources and training to local police departments to detain, imprison and deport “suspected” undocumented immigrants. Since January 2006, more than 1,000 state and local police have been trained under this program.
Maria Hernandez, a resident of Raleigh, N.C., was booked into a Wake County jail after failing to show up for her 6-year-old son’s truancy hearing. Now she is in a deportation court. “I don’t understand why they come after people like me,” she said.
On top of the 287(g) program, the Obama administration also announced that it would continue the practice of requiring federal contractors and subcontractors to use E-Verify, an electronic system that monitors workers’ immigration status. The error-riddled electronic system has led to the firing of tens of thousands of workers.
Government policy and actions have led directly to organized assaults on immigrant communities by local law enforcement and right-wing bigots. Though the Obama administration has suggested that local law enforcement agencies arrest and deport only “violent” offenders, the new policy directive is not binding or law. Contracts between DHS and local law enforcement will be kept secret.
Joe Arpaio, the infamous racist sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona, hailed as the “champion” of enforcing the 287(g) program, has given public voice to the stance of many local law enforcement agencies toward the program: “If I’m told not to enforce immigration law except if the alien is a violent criminal, my answer to that is we are still going to do the same thing, 287g or not. We have been very successful.”
More than 30,000 undocumented immigrants have been imprisoned or deported in the Phoenix area under Arpaio’s oversight.
Obama’s campaign promise of immigration comprehensive reform is far from reality. The U.S. government’s attacks against the immigrant community are part of an overall strategy to keep workers intimidated.
Deportations and the use of the police in its escalating attacks are a component of the repressive state machinery used against undocumented workers and their families in the United States. They are an attempt to isolate immigrants, enforce divisions, keep wages as low as possible and erect barriers to a united working-class fight back against the bosses.
Fighting against the anti-immigrant attacks of the government and for full equality are key tasks for the working-class movement in the United States.
