Worcester Immigrants Say No to "S-Comm"

"We blew it," said John Grossman on Saturday afternoon to a Worcester meeting room packed with 150 to 200 immigrants. "And I’m here to apologize."

As undersecretary for the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, Grossman was referring to the collective failure of the Patrick administration to consult with the state's immigrant community before signing onto a controversial new immigration enforcement program, Secure Communities. The Worcester meeting, held at the city’s public library and hosted by The African Council, was the first of ten gatherings across the state at which Patrick’s representatives will work to rectify that wrong. Grossman promised that community questions and concerns would all be considered, and then "the governor is going to make a decision [about signing onto Secure Communities] sometime over the summer."

Judging from the passion of the questions and concerns aired in the two-hour meeting, the governor will be making that decision having heard that immigrants across Massachusetts oppose Secure Communities loud and clear. Slated for national implementation by 2013, the federal program reports the fingerprints of all persons arrested by local police to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which then may ask local police to hold the immigrant until deportation proceedings can begin. ICE's stated intention is to catch and deport serious criminal offenders, but studies have shown that non-criminals are often ensnared in the program's huge net. Secure Communities has operated in Boston as a pilot program since 2006. According to statistics going back to November 2008, 53 percent of those deported through Boston’s operations have NOT been criminal offenders. The primary effect of the program, instead, has been to turn local police into de facto immigration officials.

Speaking on a two-person panel, undersecretary Grossman enumerating the most common concerns about Secure Communities -- concerns that the community reiterated throughout the afternoon. First, it breaks the bond of trust built between immigrant communities and local police, potentially making our towns and cities more insecure for everyone. Second, it could encourage zealous police officers to target those they suspect of being undocumented, therefore raising the ugly specter of racial profiling. Third, Secure Communities contradicts President Obama’s claim to support just and humane immigration reform. As the president well knows, the vast majority of undocumented immigrants are otherwise law-abiding workers and family members. Given this country's antiquated and thoroughly dysfunctional immigration system, deportation is a punishment that far exceeds these immigrants’ violations, with reverberations that can decimate families and local communities as well.

The second panelist, MIRA Executive Director Eva Millona, elaborated on the program's problems in her portion of the presentation, offering charts showing the preponderance of non-criminal and low-level offenders actually deported in Boston and other municipalities. Millona also stressed the lack of transparency and complaint mechanisms in the system.

After the panel presentations, the audience stepped forward with questions and comments for the remainder of the two-hour meeting. In addition to numerous immigrants who spoke of their fears and concerns for loved ones, the commentators included a local Episcopalian Minister, a Worcester immigration lawyer, at least one domestic violence councilor, and a representative for Worcester Mayor Joseph O’Brien, who read a public letter asking Governor Patrick to reject the program. Most of the speakers addressed the governor’s delegation in English, though translators were on hand for those speaking Spanish and Portuguese.

Undersecretary Grossman stressed that legal confusion reigns about the governor’s obligation to sign onto the program, and he noted that it didn't need the administration’s approval to go forward. Grossman also offered some defense of the program itself, noting that the Ecuadoran mother and child recently killed in Brockton could possibly have been saved by Secure Communities. But others noted that mechanisms are already in place to catch dangerous criminals with immigration violations, and that Governor Patrick should listen to the concerns of the vast majority of law-abiding immigrants, just as he did during the hearings for the New Americans Agenda (NAA).

“Two years ago, through the NAA Executive Order, the governor showed leadership in the nation,” said Dolores Thibault-Muñoz, director of the Cleghorn Neighborhood Center, an organization that participated in the NAA hearings. “I ask the governor, instead of signing on to the Secure Communities program, that he implement the 131 recommendations he committed to in the NAA. If he signs onto Secure Communities instead, it’s like taking 131 steps backward.”