It just makes immigrants easy crime victims and endangers the wider community - besides being inherently unfair. If you were a witness to a crime, say a homicide, do you think you would come forward if it meant endangering your immigration status?

I can at least understand the idea that if an undocumented alien is convicted of a crime law enforcement might find repatriation more expedient than sentencing and appeals here. But sharing data about someone, anyone, involved in an ongoing criminal investigation is just bad policing - again besides being unfair.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.

Brendan, the policy in the memo you cite -- if I'm reading it and the Times article correctly -- mostly wouldn't be changed by Philly's participating in the very questionable 287(g) program because, I think, under the agreement, the police forward to Immigration info on those who have been booked for committing a crime, but not those who have called to report a crime or those who are victims of crimes.

Still, this is highly problematic because those who are booked have not necessarily committed a crime, and there's the VERY big issue that the wrong people can get booked when police act before language issues are resolved.

According to the Times article, the program is designed to identify criminal fugitives but also, obviously, the undocumented people behind bars.

Right now, policies created by Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano, and supported by Senate Immigration Subcommittee Chair Chuck Schumer, crack down on enforcement

Mr. Schumer has called on Democrats to show that they are are serious about immigration enforcement and is even asking them to stop using the term “undocumented” to refer to immigrants who are here illegally.

These policies include improving and expanding the E-Verify program, where employers check hirees, as well as the improved, expanded 287(g). With a more technologically savvy and better organized Homeland Security running what are basically Bush programs, arrests are actually up, a situation that immigration law professor Michael A. Olivas rightfully characterizes in the Times as "The worst of all worlds."

Why the continuation of the Bush policies by the better than Bush Obama crew?

According to Napolitano and Schumer, they're gearing up for the long-talked-about Immigration policy overhaul.

Ms. Napolitano and other administration officials argue that no-nonsense immigration enforcement is necessary to persuade American voters to accept legislation that would give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, a measure they say Mr. Obama still hopes to advance late this year or early next.

In the short-term, this might provide context for some of Napolitano's policy decisions.

However, the civil rights questions raised by 287(g), complicated as they are, have to be sorted out one by one, I reckon.

Immigration reform will eventually mean the whole system goes legit -- all of it.

Reform that works, that finally offers a pathway to citizenship and a workable, legal, above-board worker program likely comes with the cost of tough enforcement afterward.

Politically, we have to expect a new system that makes it easier for people to come here and settle here, and that offers some kind of amnesty, is going to require that those who come here outside the new system will get caught and some will, however briefly, be detained.

Morton's comments likely don't contradict Napolitano's. Napolitano's Homeland Security is simply putting more people in the system because they're better at catching people in violation of the law.

Even with more alternatives to detention, catching the undocumented is going to go on, and with greater efficiency.

Gupta's comments, which express a wariness about the administration's overhaul of the immigration detention system, not -- I think it's worth noting -- Obama's overall reform of immigration, seem right on target.

She's right. Regarding the detention system, there have to be enforceable rules. But an overhaul is, as the article states elsewhere, being worked on:

Reviewing and redesigning all facilities, programs and standards will be the task of a new Office of Detention Policy and Planning, he said. Dora Schriro, special adviser to Ms. Napolitano, will become the director, assisted by two experts on detention management and medical care. The agency will also form two advisory boards of community groups and immigrant advocates, one focusing on detention policies and practices, the other on detainee health care.

I get your frustration with their rejecting the earlier petition for rules.

Hopefully that's because the new system will include such rules. If not, and until then, they deserve criticism, even while they're improving the conditions of detainees.

It's a fluid situation.

But I doubt whatever we end up with regarding detention in general, or the Immigration system as a whole, is going to come without tough enforcement.