PLEASE JOIN US TO DEMAND AN END TO RACIAL PROFILING
IN IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT!
We are writing to ask that your organization sign on to a letter urging President Obama to terminate the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) widely criticized 287(g) program, which relinquishes the authority to enforce civil federal immigration law to local law enforcement and corrections officials. Earlier this month, advocates, expecting a major overhaul of – or possibly an end to – this controversial program, were shocked to learn that DHS was expanding it to 11 new jurisdictions. While DHS claims to have standardized the agreements, close scrutiny has shown that these changes do nothing to prevent civil and human rights abuses, and in fact only further exacerbate the program’s pervasive problems.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County, AZ has been the most public example of the egregious human rights abuses that have resulted from the program. However, despite an ongoing civil rights investigation into the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office by the Department of Justice, DHS has not terminated its 287(g) agreement. Similarly, other law enforcement agencies around the country have aggressively targeted immigrants by using pretextual traffic stops or other racial profiling tactics.
Today marks the start of a five-day campaign aimed at gathering five hundred organizational signatures requesting that President Obama put an end to the 287(g) program.
Civil rights, criminal justice, community and immigrant rights organizations must stand in solidarity to send a clear message to the President:
The 287(g) program, which has contributed to the pervasive racial profiling our communities face day after day, must come to end.
Click here to co-sign this letter to President Obama. http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/371/t/4527/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=2040
In the coming days, individuals also will have the option to send a message directly to the President, but this week, the letter campaign is limited to organizations.
The deadline for signatures is 3pm EST, Friday, July 31, 2009.
Calling on such a large number of organizations to sign on in five days will require extraordinary collective effort, but the time is exactly right. When Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested in his own home earlier this week, President Obama in response publicly recognized the “long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately”. Now is the time to join together to highlight for the President the urgent need to safeguard against civil rights and human rights abuses occurring under the 287(g) program.
Please distribute this link widely. If you have organizations that you can personally reach out to, please do.
In solidarity,
All of Us or None
Center for Constitutional Rights
Detention Watch Network
Florida Immigrant Coalition
Grassroots Leadership
Homies Unidos
Immigration Law Clinic, UC Davis School of Law
Justice Strategies
Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
National Day Laborer Organizing Network
National Immigration Law Center
Partnership for Safety and Justice
Southern Center for Human Rights
Youth Justice Coalition
