In a unanimous vote, the D.C. Council approved a bill on Tuesday that will limit the ability of the federal government to enforce immigration laws by restricting the circumstances in which individuals can be held in the custody of local law enforcement at the request of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, reported The Huff Post Latino Voices. The nation’s capital joined a handful of cities across the country that are taking a stand against the spate of immigration enforcement measures seen in states like Arizona, where local police are now required to ask people who they suspect of being in the country illegally for their documents, during actions as routine as traffic stops.
Immigration advocates have argued that this particular provision of SB 1070 has a similar effect to the Obama administration’s Secure Communities program, which deputizes local law enforcement to act in an immigration capacity, reported Politic365. Under Secure Communities (S-Comm), fingerprints taken by local police during arrests are given to ICE for screening to determine whether the person detained has entered the country illegally.
While the process has been amended slightly so minor traffic offenders won’t be caught in its net, the program still brings many to ICE attention who haven’t first been convicted. Critics say this practice goes directly against Secure Communities stated purpose — to deport dangerous criminals.
The D.C. measure specifically targets one of ICE’s tactics called immigration detainers — a practice in which ICE asks local law enforcement to hold an individual for up to 48 hours, so that the agency can investigate their immigration status and assume custody if necessary. The newly-approved law restricts the period in which immigrants will be held from 48 to 24 hours, requires that ICE pay the local costs of incarceration and specifies that those held on detainers must have been convicted of serious crimes.
While ICE spokeswoman Danielle Bennett declined to comment on the D.C. measure or how it would affect her agency’s ability to operate in the area, she wrote in an email that, “ICE remains committed to working with our law enforcement partners to help make our communities safer by focusing our resources on public safety and national security threats, border security, and the integrity of the immigration system.”
Opposition to Secure Communities has been growing since 2010, when a number of states and localities tried to leave the program only to find out that, despite previously being told they could opt out, there was no avenue to do so.
Since leaving the program is impossible, D.C. and other areas are attempting to go against it in a different way, with the fight against detainers one of the most recently adopted strategies for fighting the program. Santa Clara, California, and Cook County, Illinois, also limited their response to detainer requests earlier this year. Last week, the California state Senate passed a bill called the TRUST Act that resembles the D.C. measure. The bill will prohibit police from keeping any individual in custody longer than they would in normal circumstances, even if there was a detainer request, unless they have been convicted of a “serious or violent felony.”
Still, ICE agency heads have hinted that cities and states are putting their communities in danger by ignoring their requests to hold undocumented immigrants, an approach critics take issue with.
