Transparency challenges new DHS "Secure Communities" program

BTC- If they can challenge your citizenship, they can challenge your human rights as a U.S. citizen. If they can take away your rights, they can throw you in jail indefinitely without legal representation, counsel or due process or even deport you without contacting your family.

Think this scenario isn't real?

"This program is designed to fail because it relies on information from infamously inaccurate databases. We've already seen an increase in racial profiling, pre-textual arrests and mistaken identity of US citizens," she said, adding, "Combined with the lack of regulation and publicly available information on Secure Communities, ICE will be essentially immune to accountability or transparency. With a budget reaching the billions, taxpayers should be very concerned."

It could be you.

c/o Truthout

A little-known program run by the Department of Homeland Security is using inaccurate databases and functioning "as little more than a dragnet to funnel even more people into the already overburdened" detention and deportation system of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, according to three civil rights organizations that have filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

ICE claims that the program, called "Secure Communities," targets "dangerous criminal aliens."

The "Secure Communities" initiative furthers the ever-worsening trend of involving local and state law enforcement agencies in federal immigration enforcement. The three groups say that since the inception of the program, there has been a marked increase in racial profiling, excessive costs to state and local government and due-process violations.

The groups are the National Day Laborer Organization Network (NDLON), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. They filed their FOIA request in January.

Sunita Patel, a CCR staff attorney, told Truthout, "Our principal concern is that this is a very secretive program about which there is little public information. It is being implemented in communities, but the lack of transparency makes it impossible for community groups to determine whether abuses are being committed. We hope our FOIA suit will shed some light on the issue.

"This program is designed to fail because it relies on information from infamously inaccurate databases. We've already seen an increase in racial profiling, pre-textual arrests and mistaken identity of US citizens," she said, adding, "Combined with the lack of regulation and publicly available information on Secure Communities, ICE will be essentially immune to accountability or transparency. With a budget reaching the billions, taxpayers should be very concerned."

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