Monday, March 23, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
finally!
Tucson Region
US House panel to hold Arpaio hearing
The Associated Press Tucson, Arizona | Published: 03.12.2009WASHINGTON — A House committee chairman said Wednesday that he'll hold a hearing next month on alleged civil-rights abuses by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said at a news conference that he will hold a hearing examining the conduct of Arpaio, who has been conducting sweeps in Hispanic neighborhoods in the Phoenix area that have resulted in the arrests of illegal immigrants.
A spokesman for Conyers, D-Mich., said the hearing is also expected to examine other examples from around the country of alleged abuses of a program that allows local police departments to enforce federal immigration laws.
"We're not trying to persecute or take advantage of anybody," Conyers said. "Law enforcement officers have a very important and valuable function. The problem is, they can't interpret the law their own way to harass or use racial strategies to determine who they arrest."
He was joined at the press conference by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the committee's civil rights subcommittee, Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., and Mary Rose Wilcox, the lone Democrat on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, as well as representatives from several civil-rights and Hispanic-advocacy organizations.
The Justice Department's civil-rights division said in a letter to Arpaio this week that he is under investigation for an alleged pattern of discriminatory police practices and of discrimination based on national origin.
The letter offers no specific allegations. But Arpaio said he believes the investigation was spurred by his department's often-controversial efforts to combat illegal immigration in Maricopa County.
The investigation and the congressional hearing are "saying to the country and the people of Arizona that no one is above the law," Grijalva said.
Arpaio's department has aggressively pursued investigations under Arizona's employer-sanctions law and a state anti-smuggling law.
The smuggling law was designed to help local police fight smugglers, but an interpretation by Maricopa County's top prosecutor opened the door for Arpaio's deputies to arrest people who pay smugglers and accuse them of being co-conspirators.
No other police agency or prosecutor's office in Arizona has used that legal approach in enforcing the smuggling law.
Arpaio recently began to separate illegal immigrants from other inmates in Tent City, a section of the county jail where all inmates are housed in tents.
His tactics have attracted national attention and have led some critics, including immigration activists, to accuse Arpaio's department of racial profiling.
The sheriff said he will cooperate with the Justice Department.
Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, the prosecutor who for years has collaborated with Arpaio in cracking down on illegal immigration, said Wednesday that he wasn't aware of any racial profiling in Arpaio's crime and immigration sweeps.
"He has drawn a lot of criticism (for his immigration crackdowns) and a lot of protest because he is willing to be a leader in the fight against illegal immigration," Thomas said.
"I think that has to be recognized here."
Sunday, March 8, 2009
WORRY: With this economy, will they have jobs when they get home?
U.S. Withdrawing 12,000 Troops From Iraq
NPR.org, March 8, 2009 · The U.S. military in Baghdad has announced it will be withdrawing 12,000 American troops in the next six months.
In a statement, the U.S. military said that two brigade combat teams who were scheduled to redeploy in the next six months along with enabling forces such as logistics, engineers and intelligence, will not be replaced.
That would reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq — currently around 140,000 — by around 12,000. A U.S. combat brigade typically has 4,000-5,000 soldiers.
The announcement is an initial step in President Obama's plan to end combat operations in Iraq by Aug. 2010. Beyond this drawdown, U.S. troop strength is not expected to be significantly reduced this year.
Iraq still has to conduct crucial national elections at the end of the year. And while violence is dramatically down, there are still daily attacks — a suicide bomber today blew himself up outside Baghdad's main police academy, killing and wounding dozens.
Friday, March 6, 2009
THE DISAPPEARED
ICE Program Shifts Immigration Costs, Abuses
New America Media, Commentary, By Aarti Shahani and Judith Greene, Posted: Feb 26, 2009 Review it on NewsTrust
“We can make a person disappear,” a high-level ICE official told the audience at the 2008 Police Foundation conference. Jaws dropped. ICE is the Homeland Security agency in charge of deporting immigrants from the nation’s interior. The spokesman was alluding to ICE’s extraordinary powers under civil immigration law. Although “civil” sounds less serious than “criminal,” civil immigration law has fewer constitutional protections than criminal law. Civil immigration arrests can happen without probable cause of a crime; the arrestee faces trial without a public defender; and there’s no statute of limitations.
Through the 287(g) program, ICE is fusing civil immigration and criminal law. 287(g), a tiny law passed in 1996, enables any public servant to receive civil immigration powers. The work is purely voluntary. The statute forbids the feds to pay the locals. It also makes the feds responsible to “supervise and direct” all local activities.
In 2005, ICE began enlisting criminal law enforcement agents – from traffic cops to jail guards – into its frontlines. Early critics charged that turning police into deportation patrol would result in racial profiling, and make immigrant victims afraid to call 911. ICE justified 287(g) as an urgent public safety program. ICE is the largest investigative arm of Homeland Security. 287(g)-deputized officers would gain “necessary resources and authority to pursue investigations relating to violent crimes, human smuggling, gang/organized crime activity, sexual-related offenses, narcotics smuggling and money laundering.” ICE assured that, “The 287(g) program is not designed to allow state and local agencies to perform random street operations…It does not impact traffic offenses such as driving without a license unless the offense leads to an arrest.”
Reality tells a different story. Justice Strategies, a non-partisan criminal justice institute, investigated the 287(g) program. We found that ICE didn’t target crime hot spots. Of the 63 states and localities that ICE deputized by summer 2008, 61 percent had lower crime rates than the national average. Meanwhile 87 percent saw their Latino populations grow faster than the national average. The public safety program is more closely related to race than to crime.
The 287(g) program amounts to a state and local bailout of the federal government’s failed immigration enforcement business. This ICE program does not pay police salaries; it shifts civil detention costs to local governments. Prince William County, Virginia spent $5 million more in local tax monies than anticipated for the first year of its 287(g) program. The county had to raise property taxes and cut police and fire safety budgets to compensate. In Morris County, New Jersey, a Republican sheriff estimated that the program would cost $1.3 million and “ICE would not reimburse the county for any start up costs,” such as personnel and facility expenses. His county board rejected the program. Local officials nationwide have rejected 287(g) because it does not serve public safety or generate income, leaving the feds to partner with more zealous and politically-motivated officers.
ICE’s choice of partners is peculiar. The Missouri State Highway Patrol, deputized in 2008, is an agency whose core mandate is to enforce traffic laws. In Butler County, Ohio, ICE extended immigration arrest powers to the sheriff after he campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform.
The most famous 287(g) partner is Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona. ICE gave him the largest and most powerful agreement, after his office was ordered to pay $43 million in death and abuse lawsuits. He has been nationally criticized for street sweeps of day laborers and racial profiling. He told us about the added-value of 287(g): “When we stop a car for probable cause, we take the other passengers too.” Last week, Sheriff Joe marched his 287(g) arrestees into “Tent City,” a notoriously mismanaged jail under the blazing desert sun. Yet ICE, by law required to “supervise and direct” all 287(g) activity, maintains that the sheriff has not violated the contract.
Sheriff Arpaio is not a one-man show. 287(g) set off other efforts in Arizona to crackdown on immigrants. The state legislature renamed the anti-gang taskforce into the “gang and immigration” taskforce, and pumped tax monies into local immigration enforcement.
In Phoenix, the “fusion” of civil immigration and criminal law has wreaked havoc in the criminal justice system. Under a new state law that denies bail to immigrants for most crimes, judicial officers who are neutral arbiters in the court’s criminal process have become investigators of possible immigration violations. The first state-level trafficking law in U.S. history has been perverted, as prosecutors charge the victims of trafficking as co-conspirators in the act of smuggling. The overburdened courts and jails have swelled with immigrants who are in no sense a danger to public safety.
In this moment of economic crisis, we can’t afford to let this specious public safety program continue. In 2006, Congress gave the 287(g) program its first budget line of $5 million, and continued that level of funding through fiscal year 2008. Monies were intended for ICE expenses only. Yet through 2008, ICE overspent at least $50 million in program costs. Today 287(g) is the largest Homeland Security program for state and local law enforcement.
The Obama Administration should terminate the 287(g) program. 287(g) was destined to fail, and it has failed. It was created on the faulty assumption that civil and criminal law enforcement are compatible. But just imagine if the IRS, another federal civil agency, started deputizing police to check the tax returns of every driver, and arrest anyone with an imperfect 1040. Citizens would be furious at such waste of public safety resources. Yet under 287(g), people are jailed when their civil immigration status is in question. The General Accounting Office should investigate how the program operated nationwide. 287(g) is critical data in the project of reforming ICE.
Aarti Shahani is the lead author of the report Local Democracy on Ice. Judith Greene is Justice Strategies Director of Tides Center that produced the report.
THIS ARTICLE FROM http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=463c44a3a154dc703486f8b3d3afe168&from=rss
New America Media, Commentary, By Aarti Shahani and Judith Greene, Posted: Feb 26, 2009 Review it on NewsTrust
“We can make a person disappear,” a high-level ICE official told the audience at the 2008 Police Foundation conference. Jaws dropped. ICE is the Homeland Security agency in charge of deporting immigrants from the nation’s interior. The spokesman was alluding to ICE’s extraordinary powers under civil immigration law. Although “civil” sounds less serious than “criminal,” civil immigration law has fewer constitutional protections than criminal law. Civil immigration arrests can happen without probable cause of a crime; the arrestee faces trial without a public defender; and there’s no statute of limitations.
Through the 287(g) program, ICE is fusing civil immigration and criminal law. 287(g), a tiny law passed in 1996, enables any public servant to receive civil immigration powers. The work is purely voluntary. The statute forbids the feds to pay the locals. It also makes the feds responsible to “supervise and direct” all local activities.
In 2005, ICE began enlisting criminal law enforcement agents – from traffic cops to jail guards – into its frontlines. Early critics charged that turning police into deportation patrol would result in racial profiling, and make immigrant victims afraid to call 911. ICE justified 287(g) as an urgent public safety program. ICE is the largest investigative arm of Homeland Security. 287(g)-deputized officers would gain “necessary resources and authority to pursue investigations relating to violent crimes, human smuggling, gang/organized crime activity, sexual-related offenses, narcotics smuggling and money laundering.” ICE assured that, “The 287(g) program is not designed to allow state and local agencies to perform random street operations…It does not impact traffic offenses such as driving without a license unless the offense leads to an arrest.”
Reality tells a different story. Justice Strategies, a non-partisan criminal justice institute, investigated the 287(g) program. We found that ICE didn’t target crime hot spots. Of the 63 states and localities that ICE deputized by summer 2008, 61 percent had lower crime rates than the national average. Meanwhile 87 percent saw their Latino populations grow faster than the national average. The public safety program is more closely related to race than to crime.
The 287(g) program amounts to a state and local bailout of the federal government’s failed immigration enforcement business. This ICE program does not pay police salaries; it shifts civil detention costs to local governments. Prince William County, Virginia spent $5 million more in local tax monies than anticipated for the first year of its 287(g) program. The county had to raise property taxes and cut police and fire safety budgets to compensate. In Morris County, New Jersey, a Republican sheriff estimated that the program would cost $1.3 million and “ICE would not reimburse the county for any start up costs,” such as personnel and facility expenses. His county board rejected the program. Local officials nationwide have rejected 287(g) because it does not serve public safety or generate income, leaving the feds to partner with more zealous and politically-motivated officers.
ICE’s choice of partners is peculiar. The Missouri State Highway Patrol, deputized in 2008, is an agency whose core mandate is to enforce traffic laws. In Butler County, Ohio, ICE extended immigration arrest powers to the sheriff after he campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform.
The most famous 287(g) partner is Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona. ICE gave him the largest and most powerful agreement, after his office was ordered to pay $43 million in death and abuse lawsuits. He has been nationally criticized for street sweeps of day laborers and racial profiling. He told us about the added-value of 287(g): “When we stop a car for probable cause, we take the other passengers too.” Last week, Sheriff Joe marched his 287(g) arrestees into “Tent City,” a notoriously mismanaged jail under the blazing desert sun. Yet ICE, by law required to “supervise and direct” all 287(g) activity, maintains that the sheriff has not violated the contract.
Sheriff Arpaio is not a one-man show. 287(g) set off other efforts in Arizona to crackdown on immigrants. The state legislature renamed the anti-gang taskforce into the “gang and immigration” taskforce, and pumped tax monies into local immigration enforcement.
In Phoenix, the “fusion” of civil immigration and criminal law has wreaked havoc in the criminal justice system. Under a new state law that denies bail to immigrants for most crimes, judicial officers who are neutral arbiters in the court’s criminal process have become investigators of possible immigration violations. The first state-level trafficking law in U.S. history has been perverted, as prosecutors charge the victims of trafficking as co-conspirators in the act of smuggling. The overburdened courts and jails have swelled with immigrants who are in no sense a danger to public safety.
In this moment of economic crisis, we can’t afford to let this specious public safety program continue. In 2006, Congress gave the 287(g) program its first budget line of $5 million, and continued that level of funding through fiscal year 2008. Monies were intended for ICE expenses only. Yet through 2008, ICE overspent at least $50 million in program costs. Today 287(g) is the largest Homeland Security program for state and local law enforcement.
The Obama Administration should terminate the 287(g) program. 287(g) was destined to fail, and it has failed. It was created on the faulty assumption that civil and criminal law enforcement are compatible. But just imagine if the IRS, another federal civil agency, started deputizing police to check the tax returns of every driver, and arrest anyone with an imperfect 1040. Citizens would be furious at such waste of public safety resources. Yet under 287(g), people are jailed when their civil immigration status is in question. The General Accounting Office should investigate how the program operated nationwide. 287(g) is critical data in the project of reforming ICE.
Aarti Shahani is the lead author of the report Local Democracy on Ice. Judith Greene is Justice Strategies Director of Tides Center that produced the report.
THIS ARTICLE FROM http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=463c44a3a154dc703486f8b3d3afe168&from=rss
Monday, March 2, 2009
WHY WOULD YOU RECORD SOMETHING AND THEN DESTROY THE RECORD?
CIA Destroyed Nearly 100 Interrogation Videotapes
By DEVLIN BARRETT
The Associated Press
Monday, March 2, 2009; 4:26 PM
WASHINGTON -- The CIA destroyed nearly 100 videotapes of interrogations and other U.S. treatment of terror suspects, far more than previously acknowledged, the Obama administration said Monday as it began disclosing details of post-Sept. 11 Bush-era actions.
THIS STORY
CIA Destroyed Nearly 100 Interrogation Videotapes
From FindLaw: Letter (ACLU, et al. v. Dept. of Defense)
The interrogations were a highly contentious issue during the administration of President George W. Bush, with many Democrats and other critics saying that some methods used amounted to torture _ a contention Bush and other officials rejected. A criminal prosecutor is wrapping up his investigation in the matter.
Monday's acknowledgment, however, involved a civil lawsuit filed in New York by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking more details of the interrogation programs following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
"The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed," said the letter submitted in that case by Acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin. "Ninety-two videotapes were destroyed."
It is not clear what exactly was on the recordings. The government's letter cites interrogation videos, but the lawsuit against the Defense Department also seeks records related to treatment of detainees, any deaths of detainees and the CIA's sending of suspects overseas, known as "extraordinary rendition."
At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters he hadn't spoken to the president about the report, but called the news about the videotapes "sad," and said Obama was committed to ending torture while also protecting American values.
ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said the CIA should be held in contempt of court for holding back the information for so long.
"The large number of videotapes destroyed confirms that the agency engaged in a systematic attempt to hide evidence of its illegal interrogations and to evade the court's order," Singh said.
CIA spokesman George Little said the agency "has certainly cooperated with the Department of Justice investigation. If anyone thinks it's agency policy to impede the enforcement of American law, they simply don't know the facts."
The details of interrogations of terror suspects, and the existence of tapes documenting those sessions, have become the subject of long fights in a number of different court cases. In the trial of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, prosecutors initially claimed no such recordings existed, then acknowledged after the trial was over that two videotapes and one audiotape had been made.
The Dassin letter, dated March 2 to Judge Alvin Hellerstein, says the CIA is now gathering more details for the lawsuit, including a list of the destroyed records, any secondary accounts that describe the destroyed contents and the identities of those who may have viewed or possessed the recordings before they were destroyed.
But the lawyers also note that some of that information may be classified, such as the names of CIA personnel who viewed the tapes.
"The CIA intends to produce all of the information requested to the court and to produce as much information as possible on the public record to the plaintiffs," states the letter.
The separate criminal investigation includes interrogations of al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Zubaydah and another top al-Qaida leader. Tapes of those interrogations were destroyed, in part, the Bush administration said, to protect the identities of the government questioners at a time the Justice Department was debating whether or not the tactics used during the interrogations were legal.
Former CIA director Michael Hayden acknowledged that waterboarding _ simulated drowning _ was used on three suspects, including two whose interrogations were recorded.
John Durham, a senior career prosecutor in Connecticut, is leading the criminal investigation, out of Virginia, and had asked that he be given until the end of February to wrap up his work before requests for information in the civil lawsuit were dealt with.
Durham's spokesman, Tom Carson, had no immediate comment.
___
Associated Press Writers Pamela Hess, Philip Elliott and Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.
By DEVLIN BARRETT
The Associated Press
Monday, March 2, 2009; 4:26 PM
WASHINGTON -- The CIA destroyed nearly 100 videotapes of interrogations and other U.S. treatment of terror suspects, far more than previously acknowledged, the Obama administration said Monday as it began disclosing details of post-Sept. 11 Bush-era actions.
THIS STORY
CIA Destroyed Nearly 100 Interrogation Videotapes
From FindLaw: Letter (ACLU, et al. v. Dept. of Defense)
The interrogations were a highly contentious issue during the administration of President George W. Bush, with many Democrats and other critics saying that some methods used amounted to torture _ a contention Bush and other officials rejected. A criminal prosecutor is wrapping up his investigation in the matter.
Monday's acknowledgment, however, involved a civil lawsuit filed in New York by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking more details of the interrogation programs following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
"The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed," said the letter submitted in that case by Acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin. "Ninety-two videotapes were destroyed."
It is not clear what exactly was on the recordings. The government's letter cites interrogation videos, but the lawsuit against the Defense Department also seeks records related to treatment of detainees, any deaths of detainees and the CIA's sending of suspects overseas, known as "extraordinary rendition."
At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters he hadn't spoken to the president about the report, but called the news about the videotapes "sad," and said Obama was committed to ending torture while also protecting American values.
ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said the CIA should be held in contempt of court for holding back the information for so long.
"The large number of videotapes destroyed confirms that the agency engaged in a systematic attempt to hide evidence of its illegal interrogations and to evade the court's order," Singh said.
CIA spokesman George Little said the agency "has certainly cooperated with the Department of Justice investigation. If anyone thinks it's agency policy to impede the enforcement of American law, they simply don't know the facts."
The details of interrogations of terror suspects, and the existence of tapes documenting those sessions, have become the subject of long fights in a number of different court cases. In the trial of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, prosecutors initially claimed no such recordings existed, then acknowledged after the trial was over that two videotapes and one audiotape had been made.
The Dassin letter, dated March 2 to Judge Alvin Hellerstein, says the CIA is now gathering more details for the lawsuit, including a list of the destroyed records, any secondary accounts that describe the destroyed contents and the identities of those who may have viewed or possessed the recordings before they were destroyed.
But the lawyers also note that some of that information may be classified, such as the names of CIA personnel who viewed the tapes.
"The CIA intends to produce all of the information requested to the court and to produce as much information as possible on the public record to the plaintiffs," states the letter.
The separate criminal investigation includes interrogations of al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Zubaydah and another top al-Qaida leader. Tapes of those interrogations were destroyed, in part, the Bush administration said, to protect the identities of the government questioners at a time the Justice Department was debating whether or not the tactics used during the interrogations were legal.
Former CIA director Michael Hayden acknowledged that waterboarding _ simulated drowning _ was used on three suspects, including two whose interrogations were recorded.
John Durham, a senior career prosecutor in Connecticut, is leading the criminal investigation, out of Virginia, and had asked that he be given until the end of February to wrap up his work before requests for information in the civil lawsuit were dealt with.
Durham's spokesman, Tom Carson, had no immediate comment.
___
Associated Press Writers Pamela Hess, Philip Elliott and Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.
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