Not Following Rules: Cities and States Refuse to Enforce Federal Immigration Regulations

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http://www.alternet.org/immigration/not-following-rules-cities-and-states-refuse-enforce-federal-immigration-regulations



Seven months ago, Santos Gutierrez and Victoriano Aguilar were driving to a store in Springfield, Mass, when they were pulled over by police.

“My husband and I have always liked to help other people and support when we are able,” Gutierrez said. “And so on the day that my husband was stopped, we were helping a neighbor who didn’t have a car go to the store and buy diapers.”

The police officer walked up to the car, but Aguilar, an undocumented immigrant, did not have a driver’s license. At the time, Gutierrez didn’t know that local law enforcement and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) worked together through a program called Secure Communities.

As a result, Aguilar was arrested and detained for five months at a county correctional center, where a judge overturned the traffic violations and ruled the stop was motivated by racial profiling. But after being released from the center, he was then turned over to ICE and has been jailed for the past two months awaiting deportation. ICE has rejected all of Gutierrez’s attempts to release Aguilar, who is her partner of 19 years and the father of their three children. He’s now in Louisiana in a slow-motion transit to Guatemala, the country they both left to come to the U.S. more than two decades ago.