This essay was written by one of five people arrested at the Move the Game protest in Minneapolis on August 11, 2010. The protest confronted a meeting of Major League Baseball (MLB) team owners and league Commissioner Bud Selig, demanding that they move the 2011 All Star game out of Arizona unless the anti-immigrant law SB1070 is repealed. The essay focuses on part of the arrestees’ jail experience, bringing to light this largely hidden site of large numbers of immigrant deportations.
What city were you born in?
8/12/2010
Minneapolis, MN - Expecting to hear a question about country of origin, I was thrown off. On August 11th, 5 of us had been arrested during a "Move the Game" protest organized by The Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAc) and their Boycott Arizona Minnesota Campaign (BAM!) demanding that the 2011 All-Star Game be moved out of Arizona unless the state repeals it's racist, anti-immigrant law, SB1070. Arrested for attempting to present a 110,000 signature petition to MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, during an MLB owners meeting at a downtown Minneapolis hotel, we prepared to refuse to state our birthplace during the booking process in jail, since that question that is used to determine whether someone might be an undocumented immigrant. ICE can then interview people and put them into deportation proceedings.
Given the nature of our initial protest for immigrant rights and our personal political beliefs, we had decided not to answer that question.
I asked if it was necessary to answer that question and was met with a forceful threat that if we did not answer we would be unable to complete the booking process and be returned to the holding cell. That is exactly how the system is arranged. Clerks and deputies shoot off questions at you in order to catch you off guard. It is extraordinarily easy to be lost in the process, and that is used to their advantage.
If these questions were purely used for identification purposes it would be one thing, but files of those who are undocumented are flagged, opening them up to questioning by ICE and the possibility of deportation. Three of us who had not been charged refused to answer any question that inquired about place of birth. We were each held in solitary confinement for varied amounts of time until we agreed to go through with the booking process.
My 12 hours in custody and 6 hours in solitary confinement is nothing compared to the years of separation that families face when a loved one is deported. I do not kid myself that my night and the nights of my fellow protesters in jail will by itself greatly impact the system, but I believe in this movement, in the strong organizers in our communities, and hope to use our story to further the fight for immigrant rights. What happens in jails is largely invisible to the outside world. Yet it is precisely this process of asking a seemingly innocent question about city of birth during the booking process (before people have even been convicted of a crime), that has contributed to the skyrocketing of deportation over the past year under the "Criminal Alien Program". By telling our story, I hope to shed some light on this largely invisible source of deportations and tearing apart of families, so we can organize to stop it.
Molly Glasgow is a member of the Minnesota Immigrant Righs Action Committee (MIRAc).
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Background on the "Criminal Alien Program"
Here's some more background on the "Criminal Alien Program" that's referred to in this article.
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2010/02/the-criminal-alien-...
The Criminal Alien Program ICE's Biggest and Least Understood Enforcement Program
The Criminal Alien Program (CAP)--a program administered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)--is designed to screen inmates in prisons and jails, identify deportable non-citizens, and place them into deportation proceedings. However, in the years since CAP was initiated, there have been concerns about whether or not ICE is actually targeting immigrants with serious criminal records.
Today, the Immigration Policy Center releases a new Special Report, The Criminal Alien Program: Immigration Enforcement in Travis County Texas by Andrea Guttin, Esq., which provides a history and analysis of ICE's problematic enforcement program, as well as a case study of CAP implementation in Travis County, Texas. While ICE claims that CAP's focus is "dangerous criminal aliens," the data show that legal as well as unauthorized immigrants with a wide range of criminal history--or no criminal history at all--are being identified for deportation. Other concerns surrounding the CAP include racial profiling, pre-textual arrests, immigrant distrust of local police, underreporting of domestic violence and finally, misuse of immigrant detainers--which are being used by CAP and other immigration enforcement programs (such as Secure Communities).
The CAP report shows that:
• CAP is the program responsible 48% of all deportable immigrants identified by ICE in FY 2009-more than the 287(g) program, Fugitive Operations, and the Office of Field Operations combined.
• A large percentage of immigrants apprehended under CAP are not criminals at all. An October 2009 DHS report found that 57 percent of immigrants identified through the CAP program in FY 2009 had no criminal convictions, up from 53 percent in FY 2008.
• In Travis County, a majority of immigrants placed under detainer were arrested for a misdemeanor as their most serious charge. In 2008, 58 percent of the detainers were placed on those charged with misdemeanors-up from 38 percent in 2007 and 34 percent in 2006.
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