Chicago, The Next Anti-Arizona

NEW YORK TIMES (Blog)

By Lawrence Downes

July 12, 2012

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/chicago-the-next-anti-arizona/

Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago is the latest official to diverge from the Obama administration’s widening use of local police in deporting illegal immigrants. He is seeking an ordinance that would bar Chicago cops from turning immigrants over to federal authorities if they do not have serious criminal convictions or outstanding warrants.

The Obama administration has been rolling out a nationwide program, Secure Communities, to catch illegal immigrants through the wide screening of people who are arrested and get fingerprinted in local jails. This has led to many thousands of deportations—and fierce criticism that the feds are catching way too many non-criminals and minor offenders, while delegating too much power to local cops.

The administration says it has been working harder to deport only the bad guys, by using greater “discretion” in whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains and prosecutes.

Mr. Emanuel’s response to the feds: You do your job and we’ll do ours. If you want the violent criminals, gangbangers and fugitives—take them. But we won’t be part of any roundups of non-offenders, traffic violators and other small fry. The cost in public safety is too great, when people in immigrant communities are too afraid that they will be deported if they report crimes or cooperate with local cops.

“If you have no criminal record, being part of a community is not a problem for you,” Mr. Emanuel said on Tuesday in a Latino neighborhood. “We want to welcome you to the city of Chicago.”

Mr. Emanuel is not seeking to upend federal immigration policy or defy any laws. Chicago is not trying to be like Arizona and Alabama, which have drafted their own immigration schemes, with new restrictions and punishments that displace and distort federal enforcement priorities (unconstitutionally, according to the Supreme Court). In fact, Mr. Emanuel’s plan to use discretion with nonviolent and minor offenders is completely in sync with ICE’s stated (though not always honored) enforcement priorities.

And for good reasons. Better policing, less fear and greater cooperation among immigrants and the police—those are the same reasons that California is moving toward passing the Trust Act, which forbids the local police to send immigrants to ICE unless they have been convicted of serious or violent felonies. The bill passed the state Senate last week, and is expected to become law later this year.

When Mr. Emanuel worked in the White House, immigrant advocates viewed him with suspicion because he called immigration a political “third rail” that President Obama shouldn’t touch. Mr. Obama’s disheartening performance in defense of reform and immigrants’ rights (as opposed to harsher enforcement, which he pursued with enthusiasm), was seen as partly Mr. Emanuel’s fault.

But now Mayor Emanuel has put himself and his city in a better place. He is in good company, along with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, who has endorsed the Trust Act, and three big-state governors—Andrew Cuomo of New York, Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and Pat Quinn of Illinois—who have all objected to Secure Communities and suspended their states’ involvement in it.

Their opposition puts the President in an awkward spot. Mr. Obama—and his Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, and John Morton, the head of ICE—surely don’t want to lumped among the defenders of more intense state and local crackdowns. Because on that side lies Arizona, where crackpots and zealots have been leading the country down a dangerous anti-immigrant path.

It’s a fair question for Mr. Obama: Whom is he closer to? Old friends and allies like Mr. Emanuel and Mr. Patrick? Or Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona and the Sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, who is heading to trial in federal court in Phoenix next week, accused of years of racial profiling and other civil-rights abuses in enforcing immigration laws?