Women Facing Deportation Confront DHS Official During Week of Action Against S-Comm

This week has marked a wave of action against Secure Communities (S-Comm), the controversial police-ICE fingerprint-sharing program that has led to the mass deportation of people with no criminal backgrounds, as well as those guilty of only minor infractions.

In Los Angeles, undocumented students engaged in a sit-in inside a detention center where many of those caught up in the S-Comm dragnet end up before they are deported. Police arrested five of them. Meanwhile, hundreds marched in Philadelphia against a local "PARS" program referred to by advocates as "S-Comm plus." And in San Jose, California, immigrant rights advocates celebrated a huge victory after they successfully pressured law enforcement to sever ties with ICE.

In one dramatic display of the toll S-Comm is taking on immigrant and minority communities, two Maryland women facing deportation confronted the assistant director of Secure Communities himself, Marc Rapp, during a public hearing in Arlington, Virginia.

One woman, Maria Bolanos, was placed in deportation proceedings after she called the police during a domestic fight. Instead of receiving help, she was charged with illegally selling phone cards and her fingerprints were run through S-Comm. It is an example of the effects of the program on community safety: When immigrants fear deportation, they are not likely to report crimes. Should domestic abuse victims have to fear reaching out to police for help?

Bolanos and Florinda Lorenzo told Rapp that they feared being separated from their children and urged that they are not criminals, only two of the thousands of immigrants facing deportation after serving as witnesses to crime or committing minor traffic offenses. As Rapp sat speechless, about 200 people walked out of the meeting, asking members of the task-force to resign in protest (see video below the jump).

Due to all the documented flaws in the Secure Communities paradigm of turning local law enforcement into immigration agents, the Department of Homeland Security recently announced that it would be looking for ways to amend the program. But protesters across the country are not taking "maybe we'll fix it" for an answer. They argue that, instead of expanding the program nationwide, DHS should be working to end it. If the basis of the program itself is flawed, they say, no amount of amending can fix that. Tell Obama and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano that it’s time to freeze this dangerous program, not expand it.

Arlington protest:

Photo Courtesy of NDLON