CHANNEL: Immigration

The mayor, police chief and Common Council of Danbury, Conn., are foolish to push an official police partnership with ICE – without knowing the specifics of the deal – says publisher Eliette Matos of El Canillita.

Laws should be enforced for immigrants who commit crimes, but the new partnership between Danbury, Conn., police and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is not the answer, says Celia Bacelar, publisher of the Tribuna. (**EM PORTUGUES**)

The head of a Latino nonprofit in Rhode Island says Gov. Carcieri's executive order against illegal immigration incompetently addresses the state's budget deficit and blames non-legal immigrants.

In February, Danbury, Conn., approved the 287(g) ICE program that allows police to enforce immigration law.  To date, a community task force has not been created to review the ICE-police partnership.  Meanwhile, recent police arrests show that cops can crack down on crime without the new ICE program, writes the publisher of the Tribuna newspaper.

The country's largest work-site immigration raid recently occurred in Iowa.  The feds approved plea agreements within days to deport workers, breaking up families and threatening the community with economic disaster.  "How could [the feds] do all this without virtually any national media attention?" asks Ben Harris in the Jewish Journal.

Erik Camayd-Freixas was a court interpreter for immigrants arrested at the biggest worksite immigration raid in U.S. history. The workers were criminally charged with "aggravated identity theft" and "Social Security fraud" - "charges they did not understand. And, frankly, neither did I," he writes for New America Media

An immigration group claimed in a report that undocumented immigration has declined due partially to increased enforcement.  Critics argue that "faulty logic," not hard data, supported that conclusion, says Wendy Feliz Sefsaf of New America Media.

Chinese immigrant Hiu Lui Ng died of cancer that had worsened during his ICE detainment in Rhode Island.  By the time a judge ordered hospital care for Ng, it was too late -- he died days later.  Cases like Ng's prompt Kyle de Beausset to ask, "What have we become?" in his commentary for New America Media.

The new Indian Americans of Lexington (Mass.) group is a bustling social and civic network for the town's 700 Indians. One member recalls when he was the lone (and lonely) Indian in town in 1970.

Wilson Hernandez, VP of the Ecuadorian Civic Center of Greater Danbury, and Danbury (Conn.) Councilor Tom Saadi disgree on a proposed city partnership with ICE that would allow their police to act as immigration agents.

The details of what the partnership's Memorandum of Understanding would spell out have yet to be revealed.