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PLEASE JOIN US TO DEMAND AN END TO RACIAL PROFILING
IN IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT!
This week 521 organizations from around the country -- civil rights, criminal justice, community and immigrant rights organizations -- joined together to send a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to terminate the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) widely criticized 287(g) program, which relinquishes the authority to enforce civil federal immigration law to local law enforcement and corrections officials. Advocates, expecting a major overhaul – or termination – of this controversial program, were shocked to learn that DHS was expanding it to 11 new jurisdictions. While DHS claims to have standardized the agreements, close scrutiny has shown that these changes do nothing to prevent civil and human rights abuses, and in fact only further exacerbate the program's pervasive problems.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County, AZ has been the most public example of the egregious human rights abuses that have resulted from the program. However, despite an ongoing civil rights investigation into the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office by the Department of Justice, DHS has not terminated its 287(g) agreement. Similarly, other law enforcement agencies around the country have aggressively targeted immigrants by using pretextual traffic stops or other racial profiling tactics.
We are asking for you to add your voice to this demand. Click here to send President Obama, the Department of Homeland Security, and members of Congress an email in support of the demand to terminate the 287(g) program and to restore fundamental fairness for all in our immigration enforcement policy.
For a full list of the organizations which have signed the letter, click here.
The 287(g) program, which has contributed to the pervasive racial profiling our communities face day after day, must come to end.
Now is the time to join together to highlight for the President the urgent need to safeguard against civil rights and human rights abuses occurring under the 287(g) program. When Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested in his own home last month, President Obama in response publicly recognized the “long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately". We must seize this critical moment to demand longstanding American values liberty, fairness and justice for all people.
Please distribute this link widely.
In solidarity,
All of Us or None
Center for Constitutional Rights
Detention Watch Network
Florida Immigrant Coalition
Grassroots Leadership
Homies Unidos
Immigration Law Clinic, UC Davis School of Law
Justice Strategies
Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
National Day Laborer Organizing Network
National Immigration Law Center
Partnership for Safety and Justice
Southern Center for Human Rights
Youth Justice Coalition
