Immigrant Rights

by Jason Pramas, 06/28/2010 - Open Media Boston

For a time, most Americans believed theirs to be a liberal democratic republic respectful of individual freedoms, and many including some with authority, behaved as if it were. As long as there was a separation of powers—the federal authority limited by the power of states, while itself divided by across executive, judicial and legislative branches, and big business balanced by government regulation—it was believed that space exists for individual freedom. Where the individual confronted the state, due process would guard against abuse. However plausible as a theory, or even as a description of reality, the United-States-as-a-liberal-democratic-republic notion now appears to be antiquated and tattered.

The decision, by President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to impose the Secure Communities Program on the State of Massachusetts, seriously undermines reasonable sovereignty claims of the states, encourages the practice racial profiling, and erodes individual rights to due process. Of course, it targets immigrants and specifically Latinos. But this is no aberration. Secure communities is cut from the same cloth as the National Defense Authorization Act providing for the indefinite worldwide detention of individuals, or the executive branch assertion that it has the right to kill anyone it deems to be a threat (regardless of their citizenship and without benefit of any judicial process), or the attempt via SOPA/PIPA and now CISPA to make either federal agencies or powerful companies the arbiters of internet content and property claims. If fabricated by a broader more repressive set of legislation and executive actions, Secure Communities is also colored by a harsh, xenophobic dye of anti-immigrant animus. In short, the program electronically connects local law enforcement with the federal government, all arrestees' information is shared, individuals are then subject to the whim of the federal officials and potentially slated for deportation in an expedited process.