WBEZ | Latinos

Legislators warn residents of compromises on immigration reform

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 10:23:00 -0500

Senator Dick Durbin and Congressman Luis Gutierrez Thursday warned that a senate immigration reform bill in the works might not address all of the problems facing residents living illegally in the United States.

They spoke to residents of the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Little Village in Chicago. They shared their optimism about a proposal from the team of bipartisan senators scheduled to come out next week. It offers a path to citizenship.

Senator Durbin said his ideal comprehensive package will be trimmed during negotiations at the nation's capital. The fundamentals, however, aren't up for debate.

“We said to everybody, every senator walking into that room, before you sit down, you have to commit,” Durbin said. “That when this is over, these people will have the opportunity to become legal and then become citizens, and they say ‘yes.’”

But in a recent New York Times editorial co-authored with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Gutierrez also expressed concern about farm workers and the possibility of a guest-worker program.

According to news reports, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO have agreed on a work visa program that requires companies to pay immigrant workers fair wages.

Gutierrez hinted during a small gathering with constituents on Thursday that any proposal written by members in his chamber needs to addresses those issues.

The gathering took place at Enlace Chicago, a local community organization. Students and their parents shared their stories and asked both Durbin and Gutierrez to keep their concerns in mind.

Karen Canales is a current senior at Social Justice High School. She said President Obama’s recent Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program does not really give her the opportunities she needs to move forward in her career.

“The derefer action doesn’t guarantee any FAFSA, any government loans for me to continue my education,” Canales said.

Justina Alfaro is also a senior from Farragut Career Academy. She said eight years ago her dad was deported back to Mexico for not having a driver’s license. She said she hopes the new immigration proposals will focus on reuniting families.

“ I was 11 years old when I saw that my dad was being arrested,” she said. “It’s been difficult for my family and for me because he was the support of the house.”

Senator Durbin said if an agreement on immigration reform is reached, the bill will go to the Judiciary committee to start an amendment process. Meanwhile, Gutierrez said a House bill could be coming soon after the Senate’s proposal.

Some undocumented immigrants fear applying for Illinois licenses

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 05:39:00 -0600

When Illinois' top political leaders touted a proposal to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses, it was painted as public safety measure and had the backing of immigrant rights advocates, who deemed it a positive step in the fight for immigration reform.

But the idea has run into some resistance among illegal immigrants themselves.

For many of Illinois' estimated 250,000 undocumented residents of driving age, volunteering an address, photograph and birth certificate to a state database seems like a risk, possibly more than driving without a license.

"They will have my record, maybe one day they (authorities) will just stop me," said 19-year-old Faviola Villagomez, who was brought illegally to the U.S. from Mexico as a child. The Chicago college student said she'd be hesitant to apply because it could make her and her six siblings — none of whom are citizens — more easily identifiable for deportation.

Mistrust of authorities in immigrant circles is not a new phenomenon, but the proposal expected to come up for a vote before lawmakers next month has reignited concerns and could potentially affect how many would apply if it becomes law.

Immigrant rights advocates acknowledge the problem, even as they support the measure and gear up for community outreach.

"There is a distrust," said Cristobal Cavazos a leader of Immigrant Solidarity DuPage. "People are concerned."

The proposal sailed through the state Senate with little opposition and could be called for a vote in the House as early as Jan. 7. Gov. Pat Quinn has already said that he'll sign it if it gets to his desk.

A key sponsor, state Rep. Edward Acevedo, dismissed the concerns of some illegal immigrants, saying their fears were unfounded. The Chicago Democrat said the bill is a matter of public safety, not immigration reform. Making sure drivers know the rules of the road and are insured would reduce accidents and keep insurance costs from rising.

"This is not about helping illegal immigrants here in this country," he said. "This is about helping protect our citizens here in Illinois."

If it becomes law, Illinois would join New Mexico and Washington in allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. Utah issues permits and a handful of other states are considering proposals.

Under the Illinois proposal, the licenses would be modeled after the state's temporary visitor driver's licenses. They're granted to non-citizens with legal status, such as foreign-born college students. The licenses are granted for three years instead of four, require a photograph and cost the applicant $30.

Anyone who applies would have to take the driver's exam — which requires an insured vehicle — and the written exam, and supply identification documents such as a birth certificate. The cards couldn't be used as identification and would look different than a regular license.

That worries the Rev. Jose Landaverde, one of Chicago's most vocal immigrant rights activists, who cautiously supports the legislation. He said the distinction could make immigrants a target, particularly in suburban and rural areas. Chicago is a sanctuary city where police aren't allowed to ask about immigration status.

"We will see what happens," he said.

Backers of the legislation disagree, saying that licenses aren't a way to help federal immigration authorities. For one, the licenses would look like those of other groups in the country legally.

The state's largest immigrant advocacy group, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said they'd do community outreach to encourage applying. The group has called the proposal a step forward for immigration reform.

While similar proposals have been floated in Illinois before, this plan gained momentum last month at a high-profile news conference just days after Republicans suffered devastating Election Day losses. Gov. Pat Quinn, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and two Republicans, former Gov. Jim Edgar and Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka, were among those who came out in favor.

The GOP blamed its defeats partially on failing to reach out to minorities and a lack of leadership on immigration reform, something ICIRR groups capitalized on. They say any legislation that addresses illegal immigrants resonates with minorities and immigrants who are citizens, both growing voting blocs.

"Members of both parties have seen this is a practical common sense approach of dealing with the reality of undocumented living in our state," said Lawrence Benito, head of IICIRR. "There isn't political will or enough money to deport 11 million people who are undocumented in this country. We need to address immigration laws at the federal level."

Not all illegal immigrants would be hesitant to apply. Mayra Sarabia, 37, said it would make her life easier.

She's been living in the country illegally since 1992 when she crossed the Mexican border. Her three children are U.S. citizens and she says every time she drives, it's a risk. She said she would rather rely on public transportation for her two-hour commute each way to work in the suburbs from Chicago, where she lives.

"I definitely need a driver's license, it's the fear of every day getting out of the house, and wondering, 'Am I coming back?'" she said. "We are all in the system. If you have a car, you're in the system. I have a bank account, I am in the system. The government knows where I live. ... If they want to deport everyone in the system, then they'll do it."

Illinois Appellate Court welcomes first elected Latino Justice

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 10:16:00 -0600

The Illinois Appellate Court welcomed its first ever Latino elected to the bench this week.

Jesse Reyes won a seat to the Illinois Appellate Court last March after serving more than a decade as a Cook County Circuit Court Judge. He was sworn in Monday afternoon in Chicago.

“I’m so proud of the opportunity that I have been given by the voters to serve as Justice of the Illinois Appellate Court,” Reyes said. “And I’m going to work my hardest to make all of them proud of me.”

In 2008, Reyes served as the first Latino president of the Illinois Judges Association and became the first Latino to win a county-wide judicial election in Cook County.

Federico Rodriguez heads the Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois. Rodriguez said Latinos represent 5 percent of the estimated 400 judges in Cook County.

Rodriguez said even with Reyes’ election, the number of judges isn’t reflective of the county’s 24 percent Latino population.

“Jesse Reyes election is significant because we can see that a name like Reyes is electable where it wouldn’t have been so before,” Rodriguez said. “So, it’s a good thing, from our perspective. There’s still a lot more work needs to be done.”

Reyes is proud of breaking these barriers, but said race shouldn’t be the only focus.

“I was elected on my record, I was elected on my 14 years as a trial court judge with a diverse experience,” Reyes said.

Reyes said he hopes community outreach will inspire young people to pursue a career in the justice system.

“I’m going to make sure that we bring together the Illinois Appellate court and the community,” he said. “Not only the Hispanic community, but all minority communities together.”

Iowa Republican tries to kick Latinos off voter rolls

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 08:00:00 -0500

Thirty-one U.S. states currently have laws in place that require voters to show some sort of ID at the polls — almost all passed in the last three years by GOP state legislatures and enforced by Republican secretaries of state.

Almost to a fault, the laws are designed to disenfranchise African-American voters (I know, I know, everybody says “minority” but what they mean is black urban voters of all ages).

Iowa appeared to top the list in recent months as the 32nd state with new and restrictive voting laws, but with a twist: With more than 93 percent of the state population reported as white and blacks registering only 3 percent, GOP Secretary of State Matt Schultz aimed his directive at Iowa's Latinos.

Hispanics are only five percent of the population in Iowa but they’re suddenly crucial. Since the 2008 elections, in which they overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama, Latino voter rolls have increased from 30,000 to more than 50,000 in the state.

And with Obama and Mitt Romney in a dead heat in Iowa, those votes can't be ignored.

So what did Schultz do? Well, first he decided he had an emergency on his hands — a real, honest to God emergency. Then he compared names on voter rolls to a state transportation database and determined he had 3,582 illegal registrants. How this comparison revealed that is, so far, Schultz's secret.

He said he feared those 3,582 non-citizens would try to vote in November's election. (And in Iowa that actually means September 27, when both in-person and mail-in voting begins.)

Then Schultz created two new voting rules using an emergency administrative process which allowed the exclusion of public hearings or community input of any kind.

One of the rules would have challenged the voting rights of persons who appear on government databases as non-citizens. The second rule would have supposedly made it easier to report alleged voter fraud.

Schultz armed himself with two letters to send to these individuals in order to get them to prove their citizenship. They can be found at the bottom of this link to a story in the Des Moines Register, and they’re pretty special.

The first letter Schultz planned to send to those 3,582 suspected non-citizens lists four types of IDs to prove citizenship, none of which are a voter ID card, a social security card, or a state ID.

The second letter is a reminder that just happens to include this sentence: Please note that voter registration fraud is a Class "D" felony in the state of Iowa. Because that’s not too intimidating.

Last Friday, District Court Judge Mary Pat Gunderson — a Republican judge with a long history in Iowa GOP circles — responded to a suit against Schultz filed by the Iowa's ACLU and the state’s League of United Latin American Citizens by issuing an injunction that prohibits Schultz from enforcing his rules.

Gunderson said Schultz had plenty of time to follow procedure for community input and that the emergency procedures hadn't been necessary. She didn't throw the rules out per se, but she set them aside until after the election.

Schultz, who won his post in a squeaker just one year ago, is now threatening to sue to get access to a federal data base to crosscheck those 3,582 votes anyway.

With the presidential race so close, those votes could really make the difference.

This is the second in an occasional series. In the next few weeks, I'll be looking at how Latinos — the so-called swing vote in this year's presidential election — play in each of the states where the race is within a few percentage points. Read part one in the series here.

Romney takes a swipe at Latinos in 'secret video'

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 09:40:00 -0500

Monday, while Mitt Romney was trying to smooth talk Latinos at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, his campaign released a new video celebrating October as Hispanic Heritage Month.

The video features a laid back Mitt taking about Latino contributions to the U.S., with clips showing baseball great Roberto Clemente and salsa queen Celia Cruz among many others. It doesn’t address a single issue, doesn’t say one word about what Romney will do for Hispanics, and doesn’t tout a previous record with Latinos — which makes it quite similar to the chamber of commerce speech.

During that speech Romney merely declared, “I am convinced that the Republican Party is the rightful home of Hispanic Americans.” Then, instead of Clemente and Cruz and the others from the video, he listed Republican Latino leaders, such as New Mexico Gov. Susana Martínez, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Senate candidate Ted Cruz. No policy proposals, no record to talk about and the vaguest outline of intent on immigration.

You might remember Romney’s Latino platform during the primaries: He said no to the DREAM Act, declared Arizona’s SB 1070 “a model” for the country and proposed solving immigration issues with "self-deportation," a proposal that amounts to making life here so hideous for Latinos that they go back to their countries of origin. But since he won his party’s nomination, Romney has barely talked about Latinos or mentioned what he'll do with the roughly 12 million undocumented workers in this country.

At the Republican convention in Tampa, Romney avoided Latino issues — especially immigration policy — like the plague, a strategy supported by Hispanic Republicans such as former Florida Sen. Mel Martínez and Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (perhaps unsurprisingly, both Cubans who don't think much beyond their Cuban-American base).

Republican convention speakers all took their turns in the spotlight but no one actually talked Latino policy — least of all Latino GOPers like Susana Martínez, Rubio and Cruz, who spouted triumphalist patriotic narratives about immigrants and neglected to mention that their party’s platform actually uses the term “illegal alien" to discuss today’s undocumented and says they "pose great risk to the safety and sovereignty of the United States."

In the effort to avoid today's undesirable Latinos by forging a likeable immigrant past, even Romney twisted his own heritage around for immigrant roots. "My dad had been born in Mexico and his family had to leave during the Mexican revolution," Romney said, making it sound like his father was Mexican instead of a white American Mormon living in a polygamous colony of ex pats. "I grew up with stories of his family being fed by the U.S. government as war refugees.” (That second part — the one about being fed by the government — what that really means is that the Romneys accepted food stamps and other federal aid.)

Then Monday, while Romney was hanging out at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and his handlers were hanging their new feel good Latino video on YouTube, another video was released, a so-called "secret video" never meant to be aired.

In it, Romney talks to a friendly audience at a private fundraiser about Obama’s supporters being deadbeats who don’t pay taxes, don’t take responsibility for themselves and depend on government assistance. Late Monday night, Romney held a press conference and stood by what he said.

In the video, Romney didn’t talk about immigration, or education, or, frankly, the economy and unemployment and how it might effect Latinos either. But he did address Hispanics by saying this: "My dad, as you probably, know was the governor of Michigan and was the head of a car company. But he was born in Mexico... and, uh, had he been born of, uh, Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot at winning this ... I mean I say that jokingly, but it would be helpful to be Latino."

Pretty funny, eh?

Elgin Latinos: Big in number but not in representation

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 05:00:00 -0500

The latest census numbers tell a surprising story of how the racial makeup of Chicago’s suburbs has changed over the past 20 years. In many places, Latinos now outnumber whites. West suburban Elgin is one of those places. But as the population in Elgin has taken off, Latino representation at all levels of local government has not kept up.

“Just look at this stuff, the ethnicities represented here,” said Gil Feliciano, standing in the lobby of Elgin’s Gail Borden Library. On a summer afternoon, the lobby is filled with children of all backgrounds: white, black, Hispanic, Asian. It’s common to see them dragging their parents across the main floor to the children’s room in the back.

Feliciano was born and raised here in Elgin. His parents came from Puerto Rico. Feliciano was also Elgin’s Hispanic Outreach Coordinator for ten years. He was the glue that connected Elgin’s Latinos with city functions.

“A gentleman one time came to see me,” recounted Feliciano. “When I approached him at the counter, he throws down two photographs, both of his porch. One where his porch is a disaster, and one where his porch looks gorgeous.” The renovation had been the man’s own handiwork, Feliciano said. “I go, ‘Well, that’s wonderful work.’ And he goes, ‘Well, not according to you guys.’”

The man showed Feliciano a letter he had received from Elgin’s Historic Preservation Department. It said all his work either had to be undone or changed because it didn’t comply with department guidelines. Feliciano says he had to walk lots of immigrant residents, like this man, through those kinds of confusions. Often, they didn’t know the rules, or they didn’t understand them. Feliciano was the one who’d explain to them that even if they owned the house, the city still had a say in whether, or how, they could modify and occupy it.

One thing that could have helped? Having Latinos help to craft those policies in Elgin. Feliciano said when he started his job in 1997, Latinos weren’t in elected positions, they weren’t in upper management, and they weren’t on most city boards and commissions.

“We knew that things needed to change,” said Feliciano, “especially if we were interested in having a reasonable reflection of the community.”

Behind the library, across the river, the Metra train shuttles people between this suburb of stately Victorian homes and Chicago. More than two centuries ago, it was railroad labor opportunities that brought the earliest Mexican immigrants to western suburbs like Elgin. Puerto Rican women came, too, to work as housemaids.

But the numbers really started climbing about 20 years ago. In 1990, Elgin’s population was 19 percent Latino. In 2010 , that had grown to nearly 44 percent. That was a huge change over just 20 years, but during that span, Elgin managed to gain only one Latino city council member: Juan Figueroa.

“We were lacking representation in the school boards, library, township, city council,” recalls Figueroa.

Figueroa took office just a couple of years into Gil Feliciano’s time at city hall. And slowly the two of them started doing what they could to draw Latinos into the city’s affairs. Figueroa put Latinos on boards and commissions. They formed a political action team to register Latino voters. Figueroa says they were building momentum in the community, but then it started falling apart.

“There was a small group of people that thought it was time perhaps to have a city council (member) from a different ethnic group,” said Figueroa, “in this case the Mexican community.”

Figueroa is Puerto Rican in a city where most Latinos are of Mexican origin. In 2008, that was suddenly a problem for Figueroa. He found himself running for reelection along with two Latinas of Mexican descent. None of them won.

Even though they weren’t all running for the same office, Figueroa believes the three Latino candidates split the vote. He says rivalry among Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and other Latin Americans is one reason that, though they make up nearly half of Elgin’s population, Latinos today have zero seats on the city council.

Figueroa believes what they need is one charismatic leader. “It will take a person that can unite the community again, that can bring the groups together,” Figueroa said, “that can heal some of the bad experiences, the issues, the conflict. All those things that have not allowed us just to be together, as we used to.”

Allert Brown-Gort has studied Latino political involvement in Chicago’s suburbs. He says there may be another reason Elgin’s Latinos haven’t organized behind candidates and causes - and ironically, it’s the same reason they moved there in the first place.

“The Chicago metropolitan region is really quite friendly to immigrants,” said Brown-Gort, “so as immigrants don’t feel particularly threatened maybe that does not mobilize them.”

For the most part, this has been true throughout Chicago’s suburbs, and Brown-Gort says you can see that from an important switch in immigration patterns that started a few years ago. It used to be that immigrants would first come to Chicago, then move to suburbs when they were more established. Brown-Gort says in 2005 that changed. Now, Chicago’s suburbs have become the first stops - the gateway communities for immigrants.

That’s been true for Elgin, and as old-time residents observed the changes over the last two decades, some were uncomfortable with the city’s new demographics. Dianha Ortega-Ehreth felt that tension when she was house-shopping there in 2004.

“Our realtor told us that we should be careful moving to the Elgin area because of all the Hispanics that are taking over the city,” recalled Ortega-Ehreth. “To which I responded, ‘That’s great, I want to be around more people like me.’ And I don’t think he knew I was Hispanic.”

But on the whole, Ortega-Ehreth and many other Latinos say they feel welcome in Elgin. They mutter thanks that things haven’t gone the way of their neighbor to the north. Carpentersville, 50 percent Latino, created tensions years ago when it considered policies to drive undocumented immigrants away.

Instead, many in Elgin hope their city will turn out more like Aurora, to the south. There, Latinos make up 40 percent of the population and hold positions across local government. They focus on the same issues that matter to Latinos in Elgin - and that matter to most people: jobs, education, public safety.

Elgin’s city elections come in 2013. That’s the next chance to see whether Latinos will be at the table, helping to shape Elgin’s future.

Marla Caceres shares lessons she learned from Trayvon Martin

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 08:00:00 -0500

We probably don't have to introduce the story of Trayvon Martin; rarely does one story start so small and get catipulted to a level where the President of the United States feels he must make a comment.

"If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” President Obama said last week. “And I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this.”

The death of black youth Trayvon Martin in the hands of George Zimmerman hispanic man, has inflamed the nation over the issue of race in the public sphere. But it made hispanic comedian Marla Caceres question the role race plays in her own life. In this story, she recalls not realizing (until recently) that she was in an "interracial marriage with her white husband" and emplores us to not "rush to make Zimmerman any more or less guilty because he's Hispanic." Read an excerpt or listen:

"As soon as it came out that Trayvon Martin's shooter, George Zimmerman, is half-Hispanic, the racial undertones of the story shifted. The New York Times came under some criticism for initially describing Zimmerman as a “white Hispanic,” with some people believing that the term “white” in this case is unecessary and might reflect some sort of hidden agenda. Bernie Goldberg, a Fox News analyst, called this description a “charicature of a liberal media.”

And then, pundits and regular folks making comments on the Internet alike said things like 'Everybody, relax – this was obviously not a racially motivated crime, because Zimmerman is half-Hispanic, and, as a minority, he is incapable of racism.'

This aspect of the Trayvon story speaks to something I've known my whole but I am just getting around to understanding: Race, for Latinos, is a sticky and complicated thing. We're one ethnic group, with a shared language and culture, but there are many different racial identities within that. And the experience of being a white Hispanic in this country, like me, is different than the experience of being a black Hispanic. And, sadly, being part of this diverse minority group, and having friends and family and neighbors of different colors that you share this deep cultural connection with – that doesn't automatically keep you from being a little bit – or, possibly in the case of Zimmerman – a lot racist."

The Paper Machete is a weekly live magazine at the Horseshoe in North Center. It's always at 3 p.m., it's always on Saturday, and it's always free. Get all your The Paper Machete Radio Magazine needs filled here, or download the podcast from iTunes here.

Report finds Chicago Latinos boost economy

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 12:00:00 -0600

A new report out Wednesday says Chicago's Latino population is making significant economic contributions. Juan Carlos Guzman is the report's lead author from Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies. He says debates on immigration have fueled a perception that Latinos are a drain on the economy. So the study wanted in part to measure how big that drain was - specifically on Chicago.

But Guzman said he found the opposite is true. He said, "actually there is not a drain, that actually they are contributing more than what they take."

He said Latinos give $1.2 billion more in tax revenues to the Chicago area economy than they use in government services. Guzman says that calculation includes undocumented workers, as well, as they based their studies off U.S. Census figures which do not discriminate based on citizenship.

The report also finds more Latino's are settling in Chicago's suburbs and doing better than their city counterparts. Suburban Latino kids have a better chance of graduating high school, their parents are more likely to own a home, and families have better access to health insurance.

Quinn hits back against immigration checks

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 22:06:00 -0500

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn is trying to throw another wrench into a key immigration-enforcement program of President Obama’s administration, saying it ensnares too many people and erodes trust in local police.

An August 18 letter from the governor’s office to John Morton, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, hints about a possible legal challenge and asks the federal agency to contact all 26 Illinois counties that have agreed to participate in the program, called Secure Communities, to confirm they still want to take part.

“This is the least that ICE can do,” says the letter, signed by John Schomberg, Quinn’s general counsel. “These counties signed up, along with the state, for a Secure Communities that is far different from the program” ICE first presented.

The Obama administration says the program helps focus immigration enforcement on repeat immigration violators and dangerous criminals, such as murderers and kidnappers.

ICE reports that Secure Communities has led to the deportation of more than 86,000 convicted criminals. Data from the agency show that about half of those immigrants were convicted of misdemeanors, not felonies.

The program has led to the deportation of another 34,000 people not convicted of any crime. Voicing concerns about them, Quinn withdrew Illinois from Secure Communities in May. New York and Massachusetts followed with similar steps.

But an August 5 letter from Morton to governors says states no longer have any choice and that Secure Communities will extend to all local law-enforcement jurisdictions in the United States by 2013. An addendum to the letter describes changes in the program. Those include the elimination of a state role in conveying data for the fingerprints.

"These counties signed up, along with the state, for a Secure Communities that is far different from the program"

--John Schomberg, Quinn’s general counsel

Mark Fleming, an attorney with the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center, says ICE could end up in court if Secure Communities lacks the consent of the local jurisdictions. “The governor’s office may be laying the groundwork for a legal challenge,” Fleming says.

Fleming points to 1990s rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court affirming that the 10th Amendment bars Congress from compelling state and local governments to administer federal regulations.

Asked whether Illinois officials are cooking up a lawsuit, a Quinn spokeswoman refers to Schomberg’s letter, which says the governor’s office “will continue to monitor and evaluate” Secure Communities and “consider all of the state’s options.”

ICE representatives did not respond to WBEZ requests for comment on whether Secure Communities violates the 10th Amendment.

The Obama administration lately has downplayed agreements through which it first brought state and local governments into the federal initiative. “We wanted to work with the locals and let them know about the program,” says Jon Gurule, an ICE official who helped set up Secure Communities.

“But, from the operational side, it’s federal information sharing between two federal agencies,” Gurule adds, referring to ICE and the FBI. “And it’s congressionally mandated.”

If ICE checks in with the Illinois counties, as the Illinois letter asks, the federal agency would find some with second thoughts about joining Secure Communities. “If they honor the governor’s request, I would not want to partake in it,” says Patrick Perez, sheriff of west suburban Kane County, part of the program since 2009.

“The program has not turned out to be what it was supposed to be,” Perez says, pointing to the deportation of non-criminals. “People in the Hispanic community have become very reticent to contact police if they’re victims of crime because they’re fearful that . . . they will be deported.”

The federal initiative also has defenders. “My life has been destroyed by all of this cheap, foreign scab labor,” says a 56-year-old network engineer in Chicago, blaming immigrants for his unemployment and asking that his name not be published because he’s job hunting. “Whether it’s illegal aliens or foreign legal workers, they’re hurting American citizens.”

“Secure Communities removes the criminals,” he says, “and that’s a start.”

Republicans sue over Illinois legislative remap

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:11:00 -0500

Top Illinois Republicans have sued to invalidate the state's new legislative district map drawn by Democrats.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court, House Republican leader Tom Cross and Senate Republican leader Christine Radogno contend the map shortchanges blacks and Latinos and dilutes the voting strength of Republicans.

Democrats were in charge of the redistricting process because they control both the Legislature and the governor's office. Gov. Pat Quinn has signed the map into law.

Democrats have defended the map, but it's gotten mixed reviews from community groups. Some praised it for adequately reflecting the state's growing Latino population, while others say it could go further and also better maximize the black voting population in some districts.

The map could be redrawn if the lawsuit is successful.