Turmoil is growing between the California state legislature and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement over immigration laws.
ICE’s Secure Communities program requires local law enforcement to send detainees’ fingerprints to immigration authorities and to hold them on behalf of ICE if they are identified as candidates for deportation.
The state legislature objects; it is close to passing a law instructing local law enforcement to disregard some instructions to detain prisoners longer (the details are not yet finalized). Under this law, California counties would be able to rejoin the program on a voluntary basis.
The opposition has been met with an uproar from ICE authorities, which have called these measures violations of federal law.
An international campus like USC should address the topic of immigration. More important, however, is the need to respect peoples’ rights.
Though stances on immigration vary throughout the USC community, the validity of this program can’t be a part of that discussion until we address the violation of human rights, as well as the harm to law enforcement and the community.
The law puts people who have been convicted of nothing worse than low-level crimes in danger of being detained beyond the lawful time — or, even worse, of being deported on the suspicion of a more serious offense.
To subject all detainees, without exception, to an inter-departmental background check makes mistakes unavoidable.
Read More: Immigration law compromises human rights, safety
