FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Friday, April 16, 2010

Contact:
Dimple Rana
Deported Diaspora, Member Organization of Resist the Raids! Network
(617) 299-1996, Dimple.Scorpio@gmail.com

Urmi Chakrabarti
MataHari Eye of the Day, Member Organization of Resist the Raids! Network
817-999-2388, urmich@gmail.com

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s visit to Cambridge, MA sparked

Pro-Immigrant advocates to highlight Immigration Enforcement flaws

Resist the Raids! Network and Allies spoke out against increased detentions and deportations

CAMBRIDGE, MA – “I am a humanitarian and an immigration detention survivor in the

United States. For more than 21 months, I was unjustly held in immigration related
detention in seven states; Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania,
Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. Someone tell me how this is humane and a good
use of American tax dollars, “said Rama Carty, former Haitian American detainee.

Today, a diverse group of pro-immigrant rights advocates, organizers, students and

allies from across the state came together to make a public statement to Department of
Homeland Security’s (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano who came to Harvard
University’s JFK School of Government. The group held a press conference before she
spoke, where they addressed the dehumanizing impact the US immigration system,
particularly its enforcement programs, has on immigrants and communities of color.

In the past two days, Napolitano’s home state of Arizona has instilled fear and panic in
its immigrant communities and could nationally be a cause of alert if its enforcement
model replicates. Yesterday, Arizona passed a state bill to criminalize immigrants. It
actually allows local law enforcement to stop anyone “if they have probable cause to
believe they are undocumented.” While Napolitano was Governor there, she signed the
nation’s first state-level employer sanctions bill. Today 800 law enforcement agents
carried out an operation in Arizona which detained 47 people and terrorized many
more. When Napolitano was asked for the need for so many agents, and the abuse of
money and power, she dismissed it as a law and order ordeal and not the human rights
aspect of turning her home state in a police state.

There has been a lot of talk lately on different media outlets about the prospects of
fixing our current broken immigration system, but there is a lot of uncertainty as to what
members of congress are really willing to accomplish before the upcoming mid-term
congressional electoral cycle. Immigrant communities, elections or no elections this is a
long term battle, certainly understand what the current administration should be able to
do right now.

“It is hypocritical to say on the one hand that immigration policy is broken and needs
fixing; and on the other hand uses the very same law to destroy families. As long as
Congress refuses to take action to transform our deeply flawed, wasteful and inhumane
immigration system, we will insist that the Obama Administration use its executive
discretion to put a stop to raids and deportations that tear our families apart. ” said
Maria Elena Letona, Associate Director of the National Alliance for Latin American and
Caribbean Communities (NALACC).

Most of these tactics that are promoted through different ICE enforcement programs
use very violent, furtive, and arbitrary tactics to raid homes and traumatize families.
Racial profiling of communities of color is especially a huge issue when untrained local
law enforcement gets involved. Alex Telarana, member of the Resist the Raids!
Network, caught Napolitano’s attention with his “Homeland Security Since 1492” t-shirt,
asked “How do ICE’s programs like 287(g), which work to devolve immigration
enforcement from federal to local hands, continue when last week, the Office of the
Inspector General issued a report saying the management of 287(g) and the program
don’t work? How is DHS preventing putting power in the hands of activist sheriffs like
Joe Arpaio, so that they don’t provoke racist politics and terrorize regular people?” Alex
continued to ask about last week’s leaked ICE memo regarding quotas. It revealed that
ICE issued deportation quotas for field officers, directly calling into question pledges
made by the Obama administration.

Under the Obama Administration deportations have increased by 5 percent, reaching

387,790 removals in fiscal year 2009. James Chaparro, head of ICE detention and
removal operations, was upset that removals were still "well under the Agency’s goal of
400,000," and said so in this memo that was eventually leaked to the Washington Post.

According to a recent press release by the American Friends Service Committee, most
families are forced to migrate due to unfair trade policies globally. Families are then
exposed to labor exploitation because of their status, and even with those arrested,
detained and deported do not even have basic criminal rights and are tried in court
without access to counsel or a fair trial.

Local 615 President Rocio Saenz said, “ICE’s ‘strategy’ of sowing misery in
communities and breaking up families fails to tackle the underlying issue of our broken
immigration system. ICE’s tactics also undercut efforts to improve the wages and
working conditions of all U.S. workers. ICE should focus scarce resources on bad-actor
employers who take advantage of our broken immigration system to exploit workers and
push down wages for everyone.”

"It is time for Napolitano to break from the Bush Administration’s failures and use her
authority to stop expanding broken systems, restore justice and eliminate undue
suffering." Stated Dimple Rana, Co-Director of Deported Diaspora, a member
organization of Resist the Raids! Network.

http://resisttheraids.org

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