Another Police Department Says ‘No’ To ICE’s Detainer Requests
Mint Press News – August 27, 2013, by Katie Rucke -
Newark, N.J.’s refusal to detain undocumented immigrants for minor offenses could serve as an olive branch to the...
Mint Press News – August 27, 2013, by Katie Rucke -
Newark, N.J.’s refusal to detain undocumented immigrants for minor offenses could serve as an olive branch to the immigrant community.
As of last month, the Newark, New Jersey police department is no longer taking orders from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain undocumented immigrants who have been picked up for minor criminal offenses such as shoplifting or vandalism.
The policy was signed into law by Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio on July 24.
Newark may be the first and only law enforcement agency in New Jersey no longer to honor detainer requests from ICE, but it’s far from the only police department in the country to have done so. Police departments in Los Angeles, the District of Columbia, Chicago, New York City and New Orleans have also implemented policies stating they won’t honor ICE detainer requests.
The policy change was applauded by civil rights and faith leaders, who say the detainers — which allow law enforcement to hold in custody for up to 48 hours, without a warrant, those whose immigration status is in question — discourage communities of immigrants and law enforcement officials from having a cooperative relationship.
Immigrant-rights advocates said they view the new police protocol as an olive branch to undocumented people living in the U.S., who may be hesitant to cooperate with police officers who are investigating crimes in the community for fear they may be deported. New Jersey reportedly has one of the largest immigrant populations in the nation.
“Law enforcement officials across the country have recognized that local police officers should not be in the business of federal immigration enforcement,” said Udi Ofer, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Jersey, which advocated for the policy shift.
“With this new policy in place, the Newark Police Department has made it clear that all residents, regardless of their immigration status, are safe to cooperate with the police,” Ofer continued in the release. “This policy ensures that if you’re a victim of a crime, or have witnessed a crime, you can contact the police without having to fear deportation. This will make all Newarkers safer.”
Emily Tucker is an attorney at the Center for Popular Democracy. She said the group was “thrilled that Newark is standing in solidarity with immigrant families by rejecting all future collaboration with the federal deportation apparatus.
“Spending local tax dollars to take parents away from their children and workers away from their jobs is both morally wrong and bad for the economy,” Tucker said. “We hope the Newark policy will serve as a model for the rest of New Jersey, and for cities around the country who don’t want local resources being spent to help ICE meet its arbitrary enforcement quotas.”
New Jersey to New Orleans to Los Angeles
The New York Times recently published an editorial applauding those cities that have announced they will no longer be cooperating with ICE’s detainer requests and encouraged other cities to follow suit.
“The federal dragnet that makes little distinction between tamale sellers and dangerous criminals — greatly expanded by the use of local law enforcement officials across the country — has been ensnaring record numbers of minor offenders,” the editorial board wrote. “This melding of local crime fighting and immigration enforcement has led to unjust imprisonment, policing abuses, racial profiling and paralyzing fear in immigrant communities.
“The damage to public safety is measurable; a recent study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago found that Latinos, both immigrants and native-born, often shun the police and are reluctant to cooperate with criminal investigations. Combating domestic violence, sexual abuse and gang-related crimes becomes far more difficult when local cops are de facto federal agents.”
Amy Gottlieb, director of the American Friends Service Committee, said she hoped other law enforcement agencies would implement similar policies, adding that “any detainer policy where people are aware that the police department is acting in support of the immigrant community is going to be helpful for police and immigrant relations.”
While Newark officers will no longer hold persons in an immigration detention center for committing a minor-level offense, the Newark Police Department will still report information to ICE after arresting an individual and also will continue to share fingerprint information with federal investigators.
“If we arrest somebody for a disorderly persons offense and we get a detainer request, we’re not going to hold them in our cell block,” DeMaio said. “I don’t know if we’ve ever gotten a detainer request on a guy with a misdemeanor,” adding that the department received a total of eight detainer requests in 2012.
Helpful or harmful to a city’s crime fighters?
While California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) has said he would sign legislation limiting who state and local law enforcement officials can hold for deportation, and while Connecticut’s legislature unanimously passed similar legislation, not everyone thinks the policy is a good idea.
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan, for example, called the policy “another in a long line of missteps” by his opponent, Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D), saying the new policy will only lead to an increase in crime.
“We’re sending a signal,” he said, that “you can come to the country illegally, you can shoplift, you can vandalize but it’s alright. We’re going to make sure you’re safe. It’s a great message to our kids.”
Kevin Griffs, a spokesman for the Booker campaign, said Lonegan’s understanding of the policy was inaccurate and explained that “all serious offenders obviously go to the county jail, and ultimately, the mayor’s thinking was that this was going to improve relations between the police department and the immigrant community and help the Newark Police Department catch more of the real bad guys.”
ICE officials have declined to comment on the policy change.
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Hold the Fed Accountable: Opposing View
USA Today - March 17, 2015, by Mark Weisbrot - Should the Federal Reserve raise interest rates in order to create more unemployment and keep wages from rising? If the question were asked that way...
USA Today - March 17, 2015, by Mark Weisbrot - Should the Federal Reserve raise interest rates in order to create more unemployment and keep wages from rising? If the question were asked that way, the vast majority of Americans would say, "No!"
It is not posed in this manner, even though economists — including Fed economists — and many journalists who write for the business press know that this is exactly what the Fed will be doing when it raises interest rates.
Of course, the justification is that we "need" to do this in order to keep inflation from rising to harmful levels. But the Consumer Price Index is actually down slightly for the year ending in January; in other words, inflation is in negative territory. Why should anyone want to increase unemployment just to keep inflation down?
OUR VIEW: Why it's good news if Fed loses 'patience'
When the Fed increases unemployment, it increases it twice as much for African Americans as for everyone else. And higher unemployment also reduces wage growth much more for African-American workers and lower-wage workers. Across the board, more unemployment translates very directly into more income inequality.
This is no time to be increasing unemployment and inequality, and pushing down wages. Median household income in the U.S. is still down about 3% since the recession ended in mid-2009. For the vast majority of the workforce, wages have stagnated or declined since 1979. Meanwhile, in the first three years of the current economic recovery, the top 1% of Americans received 91% of all income gains.
Fortunately, for probably the first time in the Fed's century of existence, there is a grass-roots movement to hold America's central bank accountable to the voters, citizens and working people of this country. A coalition led by the Center for Popular Democracy is "Fed Up" and trying to make sure that the Fed doesn't cut off wage growth before it even gets rolling.
If America is to shed the title of "Land of Inequality," this is how it is going to happen: by more people becoming aware of how the Fed's monetary policy affects them and demanding that it change.
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Citizen Green: First Flint and New Orleans, then North Carolina
Citizen Green: First Flint and New Orleans, then North Carolina
Take it as a given that the state General Assembly will pass legislation to increase teacher pay when it reconvenes for the short session on April 25, albeit somewhere below the 5-percent raise...
Take it as a given that the state General Assembly will pass legislation to increase teacher pay when it reconvenes for the short session on April 25, albeit somewhere below the 5-percent raise Gov. Pat McCrory wants.
Improving teacher salaries is the kind of popular public policy the governor can take to the voters, in addition to the infrastructure bond referendum that passed last month, in his reelection bid. He’s the only one who will have to face voters across the state in November, but the ultra-conservatives in the legislature who are protected by gerrymandering owe McCrory big time after he signed HB 2.
But also expect the emboldened Republican super-majority to aggressively push through a legislative agenda that radically promotes for-profit education while punishing students in poor, low-achieving schools.
The NC School Board Association is closely monitoring a proposal by state Rep. Rob Bryan (R-Mecklenburg) to create a so-called Achievement School District. The proposal, released in the form of draft legislation in January, would yank five low-performing schools across North Carolina from the control of local school boards and place them under the administration of a statewide Achievement School District to be operated by a private company contracted by the state.
The model of states superseding local control of education by turning academically struggling schools over to charters was pioneered in 2003 in Louisiana, where it rapidly expanded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Tennessee followed suit in 2010, and Michigan got in the game in 2013. Parallel to taking control of local schools, the state of Michigan also placed the city of Flint in receivership, with disastrous consequences when citizens were exposed to lead poisoning from the water in Flint River. It should be obvious that opaque administration and lack of local accountability invites abuse and undermines democracy.
A study by the New York-based Center for Popular Democracy found that takeover districts in Louisiana, Tennessee and Michigan failed to improve test scores, while metrics were “altered from year to year, confounding accountability and transparency.”
The authors wrote, “Additionally, lawsuits and student protests demonstrate that when local oversight is stripped away, children may face harmful practices such as discriminatory enrollment, punitive disciplinary measures, and inadequate access to special education resources. Students suffer in the wake of high teacher turnover and personnel instability brought on by the rushed firing of staff. Finally, we find that a consistent lack of oversight can create an environment rife with fraud and mismanagement, where private interests gain financially while taxpayers, students and teachers are left behind. We conclude that takeover districts actually hinder children’s chances of academic success rather than improving them.”
As further warning that the Republican lawmakers intend to take away control and funding from public education, take it from Bryan Holloway, a former Republican lawmaker who now works as a lobbyist for the NC School Board Association.
A remarkable story published by the Elkin Tribune on March 30 quotes Holloway as telling the Elkin City School Board: “There could be numerous education bills go through in this short session you may not like at all.”
Last year, the state Senate approved legislation to shift funding from public schools to charters, including federal child nutrition funds, even though many charter schools don’t provide free lunch, prompting sharp criticism from many Democratic lawmakers. The House could move on the legislation and present it for Gov. McCrory’s signature in the short session.
If that’s not strange enough, the article also quotes Holloway as saying, “A bill to eliminate school boards throughout the state we’ve been told is going to be introduced. I don’t think it has legs to go anywhere, but because they are brazen enough to even be willing to file it means you’ll probably have to deal with it in the future.”
The General Assembly started down this path in 2014 when they passed a law to give every public school in the state a letter grade from A to F. Predictably, the schools that consistently earn Ds and Fs are the ones that serve communities with concentrated poverty.
Fortunately, teachers and principals see very clearly what our lawmakers in Raleigh are trying to do.
“They are putting a big red X on the schools that already have a big red X on them,” Michelle Wolverton, the principal at Hunter Elementary in Greensboro, told a few intrepid souls who braved the blustery cold for a Rally for Public Education at Greensboro’s Governmental Plaza on April 9. “They have a big red X on them because of poverty. They have a big red X on them because a high percentage of the students are immigrants. They have a big red X on them because of poverty and because the economics are not equal.”
by Jordan Green
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A Campaign for Full Employment, and the Federal Reserve
Fed Up Field Director Shawn Sebastian with the Center for Popular Democracy joins us to talk about their campaign pushing the Federal Reserve to adopt pro-worker policies, keeping interest rates...
Fed Up Field Director Shawn Sebastian with the Center for Popular Democracy joins us to talk about their campaign pushing the Federal Reserve to adopt pro-worker policies, keeping interest rates low, and how they re getting public support to build a better economy.
CHARLES SHOWALTER AND SHAWN SEBASTIAN
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Kamala Harris Fails to Explain Why She Didn’t Prosecute Steven Mnuchin’s Bank
Kamala Harris Fails to Explain Why She Didn’t Prosecute Steven Mnuchin’s Bank
FORMER CALIFORNIA ATTORNEY General Kamala Harris on Wednesday vaguely acknowledged The Intercept’s report about her declining to prosecute Steven Mnuchin’s OneWest Bank for foreclosure violations...
FORMER CALIFORNIA ATTORNEY General Kamala Harris on Wednesday vaguely acknowledged The Intercept’s report about her declining to prosecute Steven Mnuchin’s OneWest Bank for foreclosure violations in 2013, but offered no explanation.
“It’s a decision my office made,” she said, in response to questions from The Hill shortly after being sworn in as California’s newest U.S. senator.
“We went and we followed the facts and the evidence, and it’s a decision my office made,” Harris said. “We pursued it just like any other case. We go and we take a case wherever the facts lead us.”
Mnuchin is Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Treasury Department, and served as CEO of OneWest from 2009 to 2015. In an internal memo published on Tuesday by The Intercept, prosecutors at the California attorney general’s office said they had found over a thousand violations of foreclosure laws by his bank during that time, and predicted that further investigation would uncover many thousands more.
But the investigation into what the memo called “widespread misconduct” was closed after Harris’s office declined to file a civil enforcement action against the bank.
Harris’s statement on Tuesday doesn’t explain how involved she was with the decision to not prosecute, or why the decision was made. She also would not say whether the revelations would disqualify Mnuchin for the position of treasury secretary. “The hearings will reveal if it’s disqualifying or not, but certainly he has a history that should be critically examined, as do all of the nominees,” Harris told The Hill. She added that she would review the background and history of all Trump cabinet nominees.
Senate Democrats have vowed to put up a fight over Mnuchin — even creating a website inviting homeowners to list their complaints against OneWest. And yet not one senator has commented publicly on the leaked memo, which received media coverage in Politico, Bloomberg, the New York Post, CBS News, Vanity Fair, CNN, CNBC, and other outlets.
The Intercept has reached out to half a dozen Senate Democratic offices, including those of Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and leading Mnuchin critics Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, receiving no response.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., retweeted the story, as did the Twitter account of the Democratic National Committee. But another DNC tweet just hours later hinted at the bind Democrats are in when it comes to using the information against Mnuchin. That tweet praised Harris’s swearing-in. Her decision not to prosecute may make her new colleagues wary of pursuing it.
Progressive groups have not been so reluctant. Three groups — the Rootstrikers project at Demand Progress, the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up Campaign, and the California Reinvestment Coalition – have called for a delay of Mnuchin’s confirmation hearing until he publicly discloses all settlements and lawsuits OneWest has faced from its foreclosure-related activities, responds fully to all questions submitted by members of the Senate Finance Committee, and publicly discloses his role in obstructing the California attorney general investigation, or any others.
The California Reinvestment Coalition followed that up on Thursday by asking OneWest to release the obstructed evidence, which involved loan files held by a third party then known as Lender Processing Services (it’s now called Black Knight Financial Services). “That’s something the Senate Finance Committee should ask him for, prior to scheduling their hearing with him,” said Paulina Gonzalez, executive director of the California Reinvestment Coalition.
Mnuchin has already declined to answer a detailed list of questions from Finance Committee member Sherrod Brown, which Brown sent before the release of the leaked memo.
After The Intercept story was published, Mnuchin spokesperson Barney Keller called it “meritless,” and highlighted OneWest’s completion of a foreclosure review with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (which involved completely separate issues from the California inquiry) and what he claimed was OneWest’s issuance of over 100,000 loan modifications to borrowers.
“Memos like this belong in the garbage, not the news,” Keller said.
Meanwhile, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, an organizing group that made headlines in 2010 by protesting on Mnuchin’s front lawn over OneWest’s foreclosure practices, expressed disbelief that he could now become treasury secretary. “My family lived first hand the fraud and unethical behavior under his leadership when I was told to default before they could help me, and (was) instead pushed into foreclosure,” said Peggy Mears, a OneWest victim.
ACCE plans to ask incoming California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to take up the prosecution of OneWest based on the newly released evidence. And the group vowed to fight the Mnuchin nomination. “No one who oversaw the defrauding of thousands of homeowners should be allowed to serve watch over our country’s money,” Mears said.
By David Dayen
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2 years ago
2 days ago