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October 19, 2011

U.S. Deportations Hit Record; Report Finds Immigration Program Disproportionately Targeting Latinos 
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New figures show U.S. deportations of undocumented immigrants are at a
record high. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency says it
deported nearly 400,000 people in fiscal year 2011, the highest total in
the agency's eight years. In announcing the figures, ICE credited the
growing number of deportations to programs, like Secure Communities,
which requires local police to forward fingerprints of every person they
arrest to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. A new report being
released today has provided the most detailed picture to date on how
Secure Communities has disproportionately targeted Latino communities in
the United States. Citing government figures, researchers at the
University of California-Berkeley law school and the Benjamin Cardozo
School of Law in New York found that 93 percent of immigrants arrested
under Secure Communities were Latinos, even though Latino immigrants
account for only about two-thirds of undocumented immigrants in the
United
States. The report also found that at least 680 United States citizens
have been held under the program, in many cases for no apparent reason.
Around a third of the 226,000 immigrants deported under Secure
Communities have spouses or children who are U.S. citizens.



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