ICE Cold

Interacting with the Philly PD becomes more troubling for undocumented immigrants.

by Daniel Schwartz

Dan Schwartz Many undocumented immigrants like Edwin Lopez are afraid to cooperate with local police departments. In Lopez's case, for good reason.

[ change isn't always good ]

Edwin Lopez, an undocumented immigrant, used to be afraid of the police. Turned out it was for good reason. The 25-year-old from Guatemala was detained by two Philadelphia Police officers while working at a construction site earlier this year. He was never charged with a crime by them, but the arrest landed him in the hands of federal immigration authorities. Now he's in the immigration system and facing probable deportation.

What happened to Lopez appeared to be against the official policy of the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) — a 2001 memorandum said the city "has no obligation to report any illegal immigrants to the federal government as long as they are law abiding" and vowed to "preserve the confidentiality of all information regarding [them]." For years, immigrant advocates worried that, in cases like Lopez's, individual police officers were violating this policy, building distrust of the department in immigrant communities.

Now they have something new to worry about: Immigrants detained by the Philadelphia Police now get reported to federal authorities. The PPD says it hasn't changed its policy, only the state has. But the reality for immigrants in Philly has changed all the same.

On July 21, the PPD was enrolled in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Secure Communities Program. Secure Communities establishes a data link between the PPD's arrest database and the Department of Homeland Security's database. This means that anyone who is fingerprinted in a Philadelphia Police station will automatically have his or her information forwarded to both the FBI and ICE.

ICE, the federal agency responsible for enforcing all immigration laws, says that Secure Communities targets those illegal immigrants guilty of committing serious crimes like gang activity, murder and rape. But immigrant advocates say the program will thrust lower-level offenders and innocent people behind bars, and hinder police in their work with immigrant communities.

ICE has been attempting to extend its reach into municipal police departments since its inception in 2003. Typically, local police officers have no jurisdiction over immigration-related offenses. But through initiatives like Secure Communities and others, they have begun to play a key role in efforts to identify, detain and deport undocumented immigrants.

These programs have had their challenges. In January, the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a scathing report on a different ICE initiative, the 287(g) program, which has trained over 60 state and local police departments to enforce immigration laws within their jurisdictions. The report concludes that this program lacks "internal control standards."Rather than targeting immigrants suspected of serious criminal behavior, as is its mission, 287(g) has largely netted immigrants caught committing minor offenses like traffic violations. (It is perhaps not a coincidence that many local police departments enrolled in 287(g) are facing accusations of and lawsuits about racial profiling.) Some might believe this is a desirable outcome. But it's not what the program aspires to do, and it has lead to a glut of deportation proceedings that are clogging and bankrupting prisons.

Regan Cooper, executive director of the Pennsylvania Immigration & Citizenship Coalition (PICC), believes the same thing will happen with the program Philly has enrolled in. "The stated goal of 287(g) is to screen people with serious offenses throughout the system," she says. "Everyone likes that. But the stated goal is different from what actually happens. We're worried that the same will be true of Secure Communities."

The GAO report on 287(g) also validates the number one concern that immigrant rights activists like Cooper cite when speaking of ICE initiatives: As the line between ICE and local police blurs, whole communities sink into a swamp of distrust.

"When everyone in a community is scared of the police, that hurts both groups — both the police and the community members," explains Cooper. "Not every immigrant who is arrested is guilty of committing a crime. But under 287(g) and Secure Communities, everyone's fingerprint gets sent to ICE." This means that potential witnesses, informants and even victims of crimes like domestic abuse end up shying away from police interaction. ICE misses its target, police find their workplace more hostile, and immigrants live without the protection of the law.

Says Cooper: "It's extremely important that the immigrant community interacts with the police safely, but now, the community is getting scared."

The PPD has acknowledged this concern. The 2001 memo establishing its immigration policy explained that the police didn't want to create an atmosphere where immigrants "fear that any contact ... may bring their immigration status to the attention of federal authorities."

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Bill Johnson, executive director of the Police Advisory Commission, the official city oversight agency for the PPD, thinks the shift is a problem. "The PPD has told the communities that they're not concerned with immigration status. But to engage in a program like this kind of belies that."

But is this a shift by the PPD? It's true that both Mayor Michael Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey have publicly expressed a desire to strengthen police relations within immigrant communities and avoid developing stronger bonds with ICE. The city may not have had a choice in this matter, however. The arrangement with ICE was set up by the state.

"We're sending fingerprints electronically to the Pennsylvania State Police. It's the state police that then submits them to the FBI and then on to ICE," says PPD spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore. ICE spokesman Mark Medvesky confirms this, though he says that not all of Pennsylvania is sending the info in yet. "The first two counties to do it in Pennsylvania were Bucks and Montgomery. They've been doing it since December. Philadelphia started in July, and we expect that nationwide, all booking will be running through [Secure Communities] in the next three years." Spokespeople for the PPD, the state police and ICE all seemed doubtful that Philadelphia could have chosen not to enroll in Secure Communities, had it wanted to.

Cooper isn't satisfied with this explanation. As an advocate, when you have a mayor who openly expresses a desire to strengthen police/immigrant relations, you want that to mean something in practice. She believes that the city hasn't shown much resistance. She and other advocates are holding a press conference this morning (Thursday) at City Hall, to deliver Mayor Nutter a letter calling on him to take action on this issue.

The bottom line, Cooper believes, is that Secure Communities gives those police who were already willing to break the rules even more incentive to do so — and the city is just allowing it to happen. This means that cases like Edwin Lopez's may become more frequent. And immigrant communities will sink deeper into distrust.

(editorial@citypaper.net)