New York Times (Editorial)
October 3, 2014
The
New York City Council is about to take a welcome step toward more
sensible and constitutional immigration policies. Its speaker, Melissa
Mark-Viverito, plans to introduce
two bills next week to limit the city’s cooperation with federal
authorities in jailing immigrants and to remove federal immigration
agents from Rikers Island.
The
first bill has to do with “detainers,” requests to hold suspected
immigration violators in jail for up to 48 hours until federal agents
can come and get them. In many
places these requests, issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
are honored as a routine matter, turning states and localities into a
key link in the federal deportation pipeline. Under Ms. Mark-Viverito’s
bill, the Police Department and the Department
of Correction would stop honoring detainers unless there was a judge’s
warrant and the detainee had been convicted of a violent or serious
crime or was on a terrorist watch list.
The
bills stem from the realization that misplaced enforcement has been
more effective at destroying families than at upholding a sane, humane
immigration system and the
rule of law. As federal courts have recently held, detainers pose the
constitutional problem of imprisoning people without cause; they are not
arrest warrants, just administrative requests to hold people who may or
may not be immigration violators. And many
detainees are minor offenders or noncriminals, not a danger to society.
As
President Obama’s administration has ramped up deportations, to well
over two million since he took office, a growing number of states and
localities have decided to
opt out of the dragnet. They have decided the cost — in damage to
immigrant communities and families, in undermining their own policing
and the literal expense of housing detainees — is too great.
If
New York reforms its detainer policies — and Mayor Bill de Blasio has
said he supports the proposals — it will join a national groundswell.
Because Congress and Mr.
Obama continue not to repair immigration laws that are broken and
unjust — bipartisan reform is still dead, and Mr. Obama’s promise of
executive action is still just talk — states and cities are realizing
they want no part of this system’s cruelest failures.
It’s past time that New York City joined them.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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