Univision News

The House Committee on Homeland Security will hold a hearing with Sec. Janet Napolitano today to review next year’s budget. (Center for American Progress)

By JUAN GASTELUM
Channel: Immigration

On Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is scheduled to testify before Congress about this year’s proposed presidential budget. Napolitano will be talking specifically about funding for Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agency she oversees and which is responsible for carrying out most federal processes related to immigration (the Justice, State, and Labor Departments also share some responsibility).

Univision News spoke to immigration policy experts and immigrant rights advocates about the department’s proposed budget ahead of Napolitano’s testimony. Below is a collection of highlights from the 187-page document, which was released Monday, as well as some first impressions.

“When you see $1.6 billion — with a b — being used to enforce laws that are demonstrably unjust, the totality of it, $1.6 billion to separate families and disrupt people’s lives and to forcibly remove people who should be citizens, is very troubling.”

- Chris Newman
Legal Director at National Day Laborer Organizing Network

The budget cuts $17 million upfront from the 287(g) program, and suggests a gradual phase-out in favor of a nationwide expansion of Secure Communities. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will start the reductions by ending 287(g) agreements with jurisdictions that have both programs, and will no longer consider new requests for the program. 

Though both programs are designed to forge partnerships between local law enforcement agencies and federal immigration officials, there are some significant differences. For starters, 287(g) is a voluntary program, meaning jurisdictions can opt-out of participating. Local officers in the jurisdictions that choose to participate are trained by federal immigration officials to take part in immigration enforcement. They are trained, for example, on what constitutes reasonable suspicion that a person is in the country illegally and are allowed to detain people on those grounds. The program also allows local agencies to share inmate data with immigration authorities. Secure Communities, on the other hand, is mandatory, and allows local police to share the biometric information of anyone booked into their facilities with federal agencies prior to conviction. The budget includes funding for the nationwide deployment of the program in 2013.

“287(g) has been a heavily criticized, deeply controversial program. The inspector general has issued scathing reports questioning the program’s goals and structure. So, reduction in funding to 287(g) is a welcome sign. The problem is that the reduction is justified by expanding the Secure Communities program, which is also a flawed program and not ready to be expanded in its current form.” 

- Brittney Nystrom
Director of Policy and Legal Affairs at National Immigration Forum

“What has been a shock, and frankly has felt like a betrayal, is the decision to make Secure Communities mandatory in every jurisdiction in the United States by the year 2013. The country has seen the extremely dangerous effects of a program like 287(g) in the few places where it piloted — places like Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina — and the decision to essentially bump replication of 287(g) nationwide and to convert our police into agents of immigration enforcement has been one of the biggest betrayals of the Obama administration’s  enforcement of immigration law.” 

 - Chris Newman
Legal Director at National Day Laborer Organizing Network

There are $2.8 billion budgeted for Enforcement and Removal Operations, the section of ICE that handles deportations. The increase includes funds for the national expansion of Secure Communities and ramped up enforcement. However, the budget brief clarifies that the administration’s efforts will continue to focus on identifying and deporting individuals who are in the country illegally and either have criminal records, little ties to the U.S., or are repeat immigration law violators. The document also suggests the administration is opening up to detention alternatives for low-priority individuals. Those alternatives, like electronic monitoring or telephonic check-ins, are less costly than detention. The number of detention “beds”  that the agency plans to pay for per day will decrease from 34,000 to 32,800.

“It’s encouraging that there’s a flexibility that seems to be desired by DHS when it comes to detention.”

- Brittney Nystrom
Director of Policy and Legal Affairs at National Immigration Forum

“The president is trying to promote Secure Communities to appear tough on immigration enforcement, but what he has really done in the past year, with lawsuits against states that are trying to enforce immigration laws and by essentially changing national immigration laws, is cut state and local government out of enforcement so that only those people the administration wants to remove get removed.”

  - Ira Mehman
 Spokesman at Federation for American Immigration Reform

The budget also includes $264 million for the enhancement of electronic employment eligibility and immigration status verification programs run the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. That includes funds for the nationwide expansion of E-Verify Self-Check, a voluntary online service that lets individuals ensure their work authorization information is correct and up-to-date before seeking employment. Its partner program, E-Verify, is used by some employers to determine work eligibility of potential employees, but has come under scrutiny for providing inaccurate information that in some cases has prevented people from being hired. Representatives of some industries that rely on undocumented workers, such as agriculture, have come out against the program, which they say would make it impossible to find necessary laborers.

“Our organization is vigorously opposed to the expansion of E-Verify because we think that it will undermine labor standards by giving employers more tools against immigrant workers… Any time the unions and the Chamber of Commerce both agree to oppose a program, the program probably should be opposed, and that’s what has happened with E-Verify.”

  - Chris Newman
  Legal Director at National Day Laborer Organizing Network

“From a policy perspective we think that [expansion of Self Check to reduce errors in the E-Verify system] might work for a lot of people, but there’s a significant portion of the population that really isn’t going to take advantage… People who don’t have internet, who aren’t really English-proficient, or who are just unaware of this program.”

  - Tyler Moran
  Policy Director at National Immigration Law Center

DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties gets $1.3 million bump. Some of that money is specifically designated for oversight of state and local immigration enforcement under 287 (g) and Secure Communities programs.

“It’s a travesty. Just take the case of Joe Arpaio, for example. The Department of Justice released a report this year that said the civil rights violations that his enforcement agency engaged in are unprecedented. And so, we’ve seen not just a civil rights crisis, but a human rights crisis in places like Phoenix, Ariz. But you only see within the budget, a $1.3 million increase for the civil rights division. That is a drop in the bucket in comparison to the overall budget.”

  - Chris Newman
  Legal Director at National Day Laborer Organizing Network