In a Homeland Security (DHS) brief released last Monday, the Obama administration indicated that it would begin shutting down the highly controversial 287(g) program that authorized local police officers to act as immigration agents.

Under the program, local police officers in more than 60 local agencies throughout the US received training from federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the identification and detention of suspected illegal aliens. The DHS officials state that 287(g) program will undergo a $17 million dollar budget reduction and more attention will be given to “more consistent, efficient, and cost effective” programs such as the Secure Communities (S-Comm) program. This will begin by “discontinuing the least productive 287(g) task force agreements in those jurisdictions where Secure Communities is already in place and will suspend consideration of any requests for new 287(g) task forces.”

The suspension of 287(g) has certainly been well received by critics of the racial profiling, unlawful stops, arrests, and detentions that this program facilitated. However, this victory is short-lived, since S-Comm (and other programs like it) remain in place, contributing to the erosion of trust in local officials. Ali Noorani, Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum Action Fund, stated that these new developments, “though constructive, did not adequately address the problems that make Secure Communities counterproductive to effective local policing and public safety.”

Even defenders of the 287(g) program, such as Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, have expressed disapproval towards the Secure Communities program arguing that the DHS is placing “politics ahead of public safety.” Vaughan also adds:

The problem for ICE is that while they may feel that they get political brownie points for this kind of gesture, in reality what the anti-enforcement groups want is for them to end 287(g) and Secure Communities, not curtail (them)…So it’s futile — they end up making everyone on both sides angry.

While this gesture by the DHS may be a good step forward, it does little to satisfy the concerns of civil rights activists, which include pervasive biometric data collection extending beyond immigrants to include all Americans. “The Department of Homeland Security is basically saying that it’s confident enough in S-Comm’s ability to help it meet its enforcement and deportation goals. 287(g) may be being phased out, but aggressive enforcement at the local level is not going away anytime soon.”

At a recent event hosted by the Harvard Law School, constitutional law scholar and BORDC advisory board member Bruce Fein joined consumer activist and five-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader to discuss the mounting attacks against constitutionalism in the United States and the misguided policies of the Obama administration.

Bruce Fein stated that we are currently experiencing a constitutional crisis that, regrettably, is tolerated by far too many. He observed that the presidency as an institution has evolved in recent years in ways that present significant threats to the American tradition of constitutionalism.

First, the presidency has usurped the power to declare war in violation of Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution which entrusts that power solely in Congress. Presidents Bush and Obama declared war against Iraq and Libya respectively without first obtaining congressional approval. Mr. Fein pointed out that as a result, it is now wrongly assumed that the president alone can make the decision to engage in military action against Iran.

Second, the presidency has failed to comply with its constitutional obligation to faithfully execute the laws as required under Article 2. President Obama declared that waterboarding constitutes torture, a crime under US law. Although President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have openly admitted that they authorized the use of waterboarding in the interrogation of terrorism suspects, President Obama has refused to prosecute anyone who used torture in the previous administration. Though President Obama may have been motivated by political reasons, Mr. Fein explained that such a decision is not a constitutional option. Rather, it is a flagrant violation of his duty to faithfully execute the laws.

Third, the presidency now claims under the recently enacted NDAA the power to indefinitely detain without trial Americans accused of terrorism-related activities in violation of our right to due process.

Mr. Fein stated:

It is not an option in a democracy to be a spectator to politics because it is a collective endeavor. We the people are sovereign and we control our destiny. That means that we have a moral obligation to use our eyes and ears to check government abuses because even if it doesn’t affect you it can affect your neighbor.

• 2/21, Washington Post, Appeals court rules that families cannot sue in US courts over Guantanamo detainee suicides
• 2/21, Bill Ong Hing, Huffington Post, Lessons to Remember From Japanese Internment
• 2/21, T.J. Buonomo, TruthOut, Dark Knight: Former Vice President Cheney in the Global War on Terror
• 2/21, Sahar Aziz, Guardian (UK), Racial profiling by law enforcement is poisoning Muslim Americans’ trust
• 2/20, Aurelia Fierros, Examiner.com, DHS: Cutting 287(g) to favor Secure Communities
• 2/19, Andrew Bacevich, AlterNet, The 3 Stages of the “War on Terror”: From Shock and Awe to Assassinations
• 2/17, Susie Cagle, TruthOut, When Oakland Is Under Attack, What Do We Do?

Last week, a bill attempting to halt the spread of E-Verify in Washington state was unsuccessful in getting enough votes to pass the state House. Though the measure failed, the effort illustrates that the protection of civil liberties transcends partisanship, as supporters of this proposal included farmers, immigrant groups, labor, and religious organizations. And as The News Tribune points out, “it’s not all that often that immigrant advocacy groups and farmers are on the same side of a proposed bill.”

E-Verify, a federal internet database available to employers to check the immigration status of employees, has been denounced by individuals of all ideological perspectives because it raises constitutional concerns. Last year, the Tea Party spoke out against the controversial program’s impact on civil liberties and the potential for a national identification system. OneAmerica, the largest immigrant advocacy group in the state, has cautioned that such a program results in racial profiling and discrimination.

Regarding the transpartisan nature of this issue, Mike Gempler of the Washington Growers League observes,

Sometimes you find common ground and it makes all the sense in the world to join forces in trying to win your battle.

While Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill are unable to agree on much of anything these days, such alliances at the local level demonstrate that groups across the ideological spectrum can coalesce around a single issue to effect meaningful change. The Bill of Rights Defense Committee has long supported an ideologically and ethnically diverse movement to protect the Constitution and defend civil liberties. We salute this Washington-based coalition for overcoming political differences to limit electronic databases.

It has been well documented that the New York Police Department unfairly targets Muslims and other communities of color in its policing practices. Just last week, classified documents exposed the NYPD for baselessly surveilling mosques in New York. But recent developments show that the NYPD has expanded its program of religious profiling to monitor Muslim students all across the Northeast.

According to The Associated Press, which broke the story on Saturday, the NYPD has been monitoring college students affiliated with Muslim student associations for several years now. Police documents show that NYPD officers routinely surveilled students at Yale, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Syracuse, New York University, Clarkson University, Rutgers, and several SUNY institutions.

In one instance, a police officer went undercover on a whitewater rafting trip to monitor members of the Muslim Student Association at City College of New York. The report details, “In addition to the regularly scheduled events (Rafting), the group prayed at least four times a day, and much of the conversation was spent discussing Islam and was religious in nature.”

Surely the NYPD does not need to carry out a covert operation to know that praying five times a day is a core tradition of Islam. Just as many Americans are pulled over by cops for “driving while black,” we might have to add “rafting while Muslim” to the list of activities worthy of police scrutiny.

While NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly claims that these acts of surveillance occur only when officers have legitimate leads about suspected criminal activity, there was no mention of wrongdoing committed by the students on the rafting trip.

Other documents prove that the NYPD is taking action based solely on a desire to track people of a certain demographic. One report reveals that NYPD officers met with an Erie County Sheriff’s Department official, in which they planned “to act as listening posts” among Somali professors and students at SUNY-Buffalo simply because “it would be worthwhile to further analyze that population.”

In addition to secret missions, the NYPD also monitors Muslim students’ activities online. Adeela Khan, a student at the University of Buffalo, found her name in a police report after forwarding an email about an Islamic conference in Toronto, which featured several prominent Muslim scholars. Documents show further surveillance of Muslim student associations at NYU and Rutgers because they similarly advertised seminars and events.

Many of these students are the best and brightest this country has to offer, yet they have been treated as criminals purely because of their religion. Such blatant religious and ethnic profiling severely threatens the civil liberties and civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

While talking to a group of constituent students, New York Congressman Chris Gibson (R) defended the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), citing Section 1021(e), which says that:

“Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect the existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.”

Gibson’s reliance on Section 1021(e) highlights a major problem: “existing law or authorities” could be construed to include unconstitutional extensions of executive authority whose legality has never been successfully challenged.

Examples include José Padilla’s unlawful detention suit and the assassination of US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki.  Representative Gibson admitted that it is inappropriate for the president to order the assassination of a US citizen without judicial oversight, but did not acknowledge that prior abuses of executive authority are immortalized by the NDAA.  John Knefel describes his conversation with the Congressman at Salon.com:

Gibson rested his defense of his claim that the NDAA doesn’t significantly alter U.S. citizens’ civil liberties on Section 1021(e), which states, “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States”

This section has already received substantial scrutiny online, which I won’t restate here, but sitting in Gibson’s office, he did his best to present this passage as proof-positive that all this anti-NDAA activism was much ado about nothing. He repeated it several times for us: “‘Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law.’ It’s right there in the bill, this doesn’t change anything.”

“But I think critics would say ‘existing law’ is part of the problem,” I interjected. I cited the assassination of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki as the most troubling example of existing law, and that a case like Hamdi – which eventually ruled that the law required Hamdi to be granted habeas rights – is overshadowed by the president’s decision on al-Awlaki. If the president claims the power to assassinate a U.S. citizen without due process and in complete secrecy, then he also has the power to indefinitely detain citizens.

“I have to concede the point on al-Awlaki,” Gibson responded. He went on to say the al-Awlaki situation wasn’t handled well. He said there should have been some sort of judicial overview, something like a public defender, which could be selected by a group like the ACLU, to offer a defense in cases like this. Gibson believes al-Awlaki was engaged in war against the United States, but he readily admitted that that wasn’t enough; the government needs to prove those kinds of accusations.

See Shahid Buttar’s analysis of this and other concerns related to the passage of the NDAA:

[P]residents have already asserted the authority to detain US civilians in military custody. Just ask Jose Padilla. Another red herring emerges in section [1022](b)(1): “The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.” That’s a welcome change from earlier versions of the NDAA, but it doesn’t constrain the discretionary authority to detain US citizens created separately (by section [1021]).

For more information on how to fight against the unconstitutional power grated by the NDAA, take action: download and review the model resolution we’ve developed for city councils, sign up for campaign updates, and add your campaign to our national directory for grassroots activists seeking local allies.

Need to research a human rights issue? The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has made your task significantly less daunting, by launching a re-vamped version of its Universal Human Rights Index database. The Universal Human Rights Index (UHRI)  facilitates access to documents containing information on Human Rights around the world.

The new interface has expanded search options, which enable the user to search by keywords, rights, countries, United Nations bodies, and by affected persons. While these documents have always been available, they have previously been difficult to search, locate, and compile due to the sheer number of reports. Now, the UHRI provides user-friendly, one-stop shopping for researching human rights.

But what exactly does this mean? For one, the UHRI offers information on human rights issues all over the world, allowing for a more globalized perspective on issues. Human rights violations can be clustered thematically rather than just geographically. For example, one can filter a search by “Right of Self-Determination,” or “Racial Discrimination.” Such a holistic perspective compels users to think about the bigger picture. The question: “How does this issue affect me, my state, my country?” instead becomes: “how does this issue affect human beings?”

Furthermore, the UHRI offers a greater degree of transparency. As stated on the site: “With a few clicks searchers can view the assessments of UN bodies and mechanism on the status of implementation of human rights in any particular situation. This renders the existing vast amount of UN information on human rights even more transparent and accessible.” Such increased transparency could prove an important step towards holding those responsible for human rights violations accountable for their crimes.

• 2/17, Chad Cain, Daily Hampshire Gazette (MA), Northampton City Council lodges protest over defense act
• 2/17, Heidi Voight, WWLP 22 News, Northampton “opts out” of federal law
• 2/17, Michael Boldin, Tenth Amendment Center, Seven and Counting. Two More Cities Reject NDAA
• 2/17, Michelle Dupler, Tri-City Herald, Report from Walla Walla’s Whitman College criticizes Secure Communities program
• 2/17, Marcos Restrepo, Florida Independent , Homeland Security budget includes money for ‘nationwide deployment’ of Secure Communities
• 2/17, Lolita C. Baldo, Boston Globe, Experts urge stronger online regulation bill
• 2/16, Adam Klasfeld, Courthouse News Service, Stop-and-Frisk Protesters Get April Trial Date

The Coalition for a Safe Berkeley in Northern California is urging its city council to review several proposed agreements between the Berkeley Police Department and police agencies of other jurisdictions — like Oakland, or the University of California – that have recently violated the civil rights and liberties of their residents.  At a hearing this Tuesday night, the coalition shared its concerns, prompting coverage by the nightly ABC news, which made the hearing the subject of its lead story:

Late last year, the coalition succeeded in postponing the renewal of the city’s mutual aid agreements — pacts between law enforcement agencies to aid one another when need be — with the University of California and Oakland police departments after incidents of police brutality at Occupy Oakland and Occupy Cal in the fall.  The Berkley coalition is arguing for aid agreements that provide safeguards, so that Berkeley police won’t help other law enforcement agencies in abusing the civil rights of their neighbors.

“We want to engage in mutual aid that respects civil liberties,” said Berkeley City Councilor Jesse Arreguin. “We don’t necessarily want our police to automatically respond, but very seriously evaluate whether we should respond and how we respond.”

The reforms to the agreements have brought together many members of the community who were disturbed by the response towards Occupy Oakland, and are looking to ensure Berkeley law enforcement will not engage in similar activities.

“The things that I saw there,” testified Francis Grinnon, of Veterans for Peace, “in terms of abuse of police authority, are not the things that members of the armed forces went into the service to defend and protect the constitution.”

The work of the Coalition for a Safe Berkeley is an example of the grassroots organizing efforts happening around the country in response to the federal government’s rising reliance on local law enforcement agencies to aid in the corrosion of civil rights. From Asheville, North Carolina, to San Francisco, California, residents are reclaiming their rights through local reforms.

Through BORDC’s Local Civil Rights Restoration Campaign, people in any city or town can work to restore their constitutional rights that have been carved away at in the past ten years of fear mongering and inexcusable government abuses.  For instance, the Berkeley coalition is also seeking further measures to protect civil liberties and civil rights, including provisions that would: prohibit constitutionally protected and private information from being sent to government fusion centers; end the police department’s participation in certain aspects of Secure Communities (S-COMM), by prohibiting the practice of holding suspected undocumented immigrants in local jails at the request of Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE); and achieve greater transparency into potential profiling, by documenting the racial impact of police activities.

The Coalition for a Safe Berkeley is advised by BORDC, and includes many of the city’s human rights and civil liberties organizations, including the Berkeley Peace & Justice Commission, the NAACP, National Lawyers Guild, East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, CAIR-SF, Asian Law Caucus, National Network of Immigrant & Refugee Rights, and others.

Last night, the Northampton, MA City Council voted unanimously to pass a resolution condemning the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act. Northampton is the third city on the east coast to do so, and the first in Massachusetts.

As the public comment period began, the room quickly filled up with Northampton residents wearing stickers that read: “I oppose Indefinite Detention — I stand with the Preserving our Civil Rights Campaign.” One after another, residents spoke out in favor of the resolution.

“President Obama is not going to wake up tomorrow and shred the NDAA just because Northampton said he should,” said Emily Odgers, a sixteen year old member of the Northampton Human Rights Commission, and BORDC Patriot award winner, who helped to author the resolution. “But someone has to stand up. Someone has to say something.”

Bill Newman, an attorney with the Western Massachusetts law office of the American Civil Liberties Union, agreed. Demonstrating the absurdity of the NDAA’s essentially limitless powers, he told the Council, “I don’t want to seem too passionate when I talk about this.  I could, after all, start to appear belligerent, and end up indefinitely detained.”  The indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA give the federal government the power to detain anyone, including Americans apprehended within the US, accused (even if never proven) of participation in a “belligerent act.”

After the close of the public comment period, Councilors voiced their support for the resolution. One by one, they expressed pride in Northampton — and in the Human Rights Commission, which unanimously agreed to sponsor the resolution and bring it to the Council — for making this statement.

“Silence is complicity. We cannot afford to be silent,” said Bill Dwight, the President of the City Council.

The resolution was drafted by the Preserving our Civil Rights Campaign, which was also responsible for Northampton’s decision to opt out of Secure Communities last fall.  The coalition consists of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, the American Friends Service Committee of Western Massachusetts, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

Northampton’s resolution reflects the latest crest in a nationwide grassroots wave to restore due process in the wake of the NDAA’s passage.  Several towns and counties around the country have already passed resolutions, and several more — as well as resolutions at the state level — are in progress. Your local government could be the next one to take a stand against indefinite detention. Join the campaign today, and let your neighbors, your town, your state, and our federal government know that We the People care about constitutional rights, including due process and the right to trial.