Change in Command for the Commander in Chief

Throughout American history, immigrants have been an easy scapegoat and the target of fear-mongering during our hardest times, from economic recession to war. Since September 11th, the government’s assault on the rights of immigrants has not only failed to strengthen our capacity to respond to national security threats; it has eroded our confidence in elected officials to safeguard the fundamental values of fairness and due process for all.

Arizona has been called the Selma of immigration rights, in large part because our local Sheriff has made a name for himself by conducting so-called “crime suppression sweeps” in areas where Latinos work and live, making traffic stops so that he can interrogate them about their immigration status - a practice that we have alleged in a federal lawsuit amounts to racial profiling. He has also conducted armed workplace raids under the guise of investigating the business owners, arrested crime victims and immigrants held by coyotes, and detained them in a county jail system whose conditions were so bad a judge recently declared them unconstitutional. But the Sheriff (along with 62 other law enforcement agencies) has an MOU with the enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security. These MOUs were part of a flawed Bush Administration effort to deputize the same police officers that patrol our neighborhoods and schools to act as immigration agents. That means that a new Administration, one that is willing to take an honest look at how Homeland Security’s enforcement programs are working, could make a vast difference in cities and towns across the country who have been torn apart by the immigration debate.

Obama has tapped our Governor, Janet Napolitano, to lead the Department of Homeland Security. Though it will be a loss to the state (she has held the line on some of the most vicious legislative proposals), I am hopeful that she will bring a fundamentally different approach to one of the most pressing issues of this generation. The new Administration will have plenty to do, from reviewing the harmful impact of raids and local enforcement efforts to instituting detention standards, to restoring our faith in the legal system that determines whether a refugee will be deported to a country that tortures or a worker will be separated from her family. But so long as we continue to chip away at the constitutional rights of this vulnerable group, all of our rights are in jeopardy. We must get started on Day 1.