FW: [decomunidad] Napolitano delays raids--article in the Washington Post

[Guest guest]

Folks,

I

thought some of you might be interested in this article from the Washington

Post.

Alice

Larson

Napolitano delays immigration raids

Feds may shift focus from workers to businesses

by Spencer S. Hsu - Mar.

29, 2009 12:00 AM

Washington Post

WASHINGTON - Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has

delayed a series of proposed immigration raids and other enforcement actions at

U.S. workplaces in recent weeks, asking agents in her department to apply more

scrutiny to the selection and investigation of targets as well as the timing of

raids, federal officials said.

A senior department official said the delays signal a pending

change in whom agents at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement choose to

prosecute, increasing the focus on businesses and executives instead of

ordinary workers.

" ICE is now scrutinizing these cases more thoroughly to

ensure that (targets) are being taken down when they should be taken down and

that the employer is being targeted and the surveillance and the investigation

is being done how it should be done, " said the official, discussing

Napolitano's views about sensitive law-enforcement matters on the condition of

anonymity.

" There will be a change in policy, but in the interim, you've

got to scrutinize the cases coming up, " the senior DHS official said,

noting Napolitano's expectations as a former federal prosecutor and state

attorney general.

Another DHS official said Napolitano, a former Arizona governor,

plans to release protocols this week to ensure more consistent work-site

investigations and less " haphazard " decision-making.

Napolitano's moves have led some to question President Barack

Obama's commitment to work-site raids, which were a signature of Bush

administration efforts to combat illegal immigration.

Napolitano has highlighted other priorities, such as combating

Mexican drug cartels and catching dangerous criminals who are illegal

immigrants.

Napolitano's moves foreshadow the difficult political decisions the

Obama administration faces as it decides whether to continue mass arrests of

illegal immigrant workers in sweeps of meatpackers, construction firms, defense

contractors and other employers.

Critics say workplace and neighborhood sweeps are harsh and indiscriminate,

and they accuse the government of racial profiling, violating due process

rights and committing other humanitarian abuses.

The raids have enraged Latino community and religious leaders,

immigrant advocates and civil liberties groups important to the Democratic

base, who have stepped up pressure on Obama to stop them.

At a rally last week in Chicago, Cardinal Francis , head of

the archdiocese of Obama's home city, called on the government " to end

immigration raids and the separation of families " and support an overhaul

of immigration law. " Reform would be a clear sign this administration is

truly about change, " said.

Also last week, House Speaker Pelosi, D-Calif., and the

Congressional Hispanic Caucus made similar calls as the caucus met formally

with Obama for the first time.

" Raids that break up families in that way, just kick in the

door in the middle of the night, taking a father, a parent away, that's just

not the American way. It must stop, " Pelosi added at a Capitol Hill

conference on border issues sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But Obama also faces pressure from conservative lawmakers and many

centrist Democrats, who say that workplace enforcement is needed to reduce the

supply of jobs that attract illegal immigrants and that any retreat in

defending American jobs in a recession could ignite a populist backlash.

Congress this year ordered ICE to spend $127 million on workplace

operations, $34 million more than President W. Bush had requested.

Reducing those amounts, even in ICE's overall $5 billion budget, would provoke

a fight, senior aides in both parties said.

Napolitano has sought to chart a middle course by ordering a

review of which immigrants are targeted for arrest. While a policy is still

under development, Napolitano has said she intends to focus more on prosecuting

criminal cases of wrongdoing by companies. Analysts say they also think ICE may

conduct fewer raids, focusing routine enforcement on civil infractions of

worker-eligibility verification rules.

Former Bush administration officials said their raids were also

targeted against supervisors, but that it took time to build complicated

white-collar cases.

In the meantime, they said, depriving companies of their

workforces and in some cases filing criminal charges against illegal immigrant

workers sent a clear message of deterrence to both management and labor.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration

Studies, which seeks to reduce immigration, said Obama aides are trying to

manage the issue until an economic turnaround permits an attempt to overhaul

immigration laws.

" I think their calculus is, how do they keep Hispanic groups

happy enough without angering the broader public so much that they sabotage

health care and their other priorities? " Krikorian said.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum,

an immigrant-advocacy group, said that to the contrary, groups such as his

support Obama's focus on going after bad employers and criminal illegal immigrants

first - or as he put it, prioritizing " drug smugglers, not window

washers. "