End Racial Profiling in Immigration Enforcement

This just came via my friend Lois Ahrens out at The Real Cost of Prisons Project:

*PLEASE JOIN PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS AROUND THE COUNTRY TO DEMAND AN END TO RACIAL PROFILING IN IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT!*

This week 521 organizations from around the country -- civil rights, criminal justice, community and immigrant rights organizations -- joined together to send a letter to President Barack Obama urging him 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. Advocates, expecting a major overhaul – or termination – of 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.

We are asking for you to add your voice to this demand. Click *here <http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6074/t/7154/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=1992>* (go here if link doesn't work: http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6074/t/7154/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=1992) to send President Obama, the Department of Homeland Security, and members of Congress an email in support of the demand to terminate the 287(g) program and to restore fundamental fairness for _all_ in our immigration enforcement policy.

*The 287(g) program, which has contributed to the pervasive racial profiling our communities face day after day, must come to end. *

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. When Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested in his own home last month, President Obama in response publicly recognized the “long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately". We must seize this critical moment to demand longstanding American values liberty, fairness and justice for _all_ people.

___Please distribute this widely_.