What if we decided to melt ICE?

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is the deportation machine that takes about 400,000 undocumented people out of the country each year. That’s the quota they have, and the quota they make. Forget all about deporting the “bad guys” long touted by the Obama administration. They deport the people they can get their hands on. In fact, they have deported lots of American citizens—but hey, they were brown people, and who noticed?

In the last few years ICE’s job has been made easier by two factors. One is that the people they pick up at the border and never really let in have been included in the count. The other is a program called “Secured Communities” or SCOMM. The way SCOMM works is that everyone who is taken into custody by every police department or sheriff’s office in the country is fingerprinted or identified, and the identification is then turned over to Homeland Security for a determination. If the person is undocumented, ICE places a hold on the release of the person in custody. Once ICE places a hold (or “detainer”), the police agency holds the person up to 48 hours for ICE to come and pick him or her up.

The federal government is generally thought of as being pretty inefficient, but for this they have become quite effective and really fast; they can determine at least probable status within minutes.

The jails of the country have been turned into massive conveyor belts that feed the deportation machine. There are some problems with this concept, beyond the obvious damage to people who have done little wrong, and the tearing apart of families. One is that any community that has a deep fear of the police simply stops cooperating with the police. They don’t call when a crime has been committed and seek direct retribution instead. They don’t testify in court. Police work grinds to a halt in some communities, making it less safe for everyone in that community and outside of it as well.

The other problem is a bit more esoteric. Keep in mind that simply being undocumented is not a crime, it is a civil matter. And Constitutional rights protect everyone, not just citizens. So, there is that pesky ol’ U.S. Constitution that comes into play. A recent Federal Court case in Oregon says, in its simplest form, “you can’t hold someone in custody just because someone else asks you to.” This led the head of an Oregon association of sheriffs to make one of the most interesting statements I have ever heard from law enforcement. He said: “We’re going to stop violating people’s constitutional rights, that’s for sure.”

Last year the California Legislature passed the TRUST Act. TRUST is, of course, one of those clever acronyms, and the basic import of it is that, effective January 1, 2014, people can no longer be held for ICE as a consequence of a minor violation. The stated intent is to build up community trust.

This, together with the Oregon case, led many sheriff’s departments to stop cooperating with ICE. The conveyor belt to the deportation machine is shutting down.  Fools Mission has been working with a group called The San Mateo Coalition for Immigrant Rights. A month ago we obtained a promise from the San Mateo County Sheriff, Greg Munks, to stop cooperating with ICE, at least for the most part. We have seen beneficial consequences already.

But in a way, ICE agents are a bit like drug dealers. Clean them out of one neighborhood and they just set up shop in another. You can suppress them, but you can’t eradicate them. They still have that quota. ICE agents have been raiding houses, checking papers, and taking people into custody for deportation.

WHAT IF we decided to set up a sort of Neighborhood Watch to observe the conduct of ICE agents and warn people in the communities they are visiting? What if we set up an “ICE Tracker” website or smartphone app and let people post to it? Sure, there would be false postings, but people could correct them, much as people correct false information in Wikipedia.

This could bring people together—computer geeks (many of whom are very concerned about immigration themselves) y la communidad. It could be a consciousness raiser for everyone. In the process, people in communities could become educated as to the actual constitutional rights that they have. What if it eventually evolved into a sort of electronic “neighborhood watch” and dealt with other questionable activities as well?

Interfering with the lawful operations of peace officers is not legal. You and I can’t simply step in between the police, or ICE agents, and people they are taking into custody. Even if it was legal, it would be stupid. But we can legally talk about police. We can even post our observations online.

We could make it sufficiently difficult for ICE agents to make their quotas here that they might want to go elsewhere. Create enough sunshine and light and we might start to melt ICE.