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According to ICE Assistant Secretary, John Morton, ICE will create an Office of Detention Policy and Planning (ODPP) effective immediately. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said:
"This change marks an important step in our ongoing efforts to enforce immigration laws smartly and effectively. We are improving detention center management to prioritize health, safety and uniformity among our facilities while ensuring security, efficiency and fiscal responsibility."
What's planned, in fact, is more centralized control and better ways to track, process, incarcerate, and/or deport growing numbers of undocumented immigrants - not treat them humanely as international law and DHS/ICE regulations stipulate.
The Obama administration has expanded and intensified the same harsh Bush administration policies, and ICE's August 6 announcement signifies nothing more than a cosmetic repackaging of a broken system.
In May, the Obama administration asked Congress for a 30% funding increase to expand the controversial Bush administration Secure Communities program (begun in December 2007) to identify, arrest, incarcerate, and deport undocumented immigrants, mostly Latinos from Mexico and Central America.
In declaring "zero tolerance" for undocumented immigrants, he'll also keep building the $8 billion virtual border fence, planned for hundreds of miles, and will continue the same harsh Bush administration policies.
On August 4, the Immigrant Solidarity Nework said that despite early pledges that he'd moderate them, Obama "is pursuing an aggressive strategy for an illegal-immigration crackdown that relies significantly on programs started by his predecessor."
They call for "no-nonsense immigration enforcement" followed later in the year or early next year by immigration legislation to create a new bracero program, among other harsh measures, that immigrant rights group oppose. They also include extensive employee paperwork audits, an expanded (and much criticized) program to verify worker immigration status, and greater cooperation between federal and local authorities while rejecting proposals for legally binding rules regarding detention center conditions. Non-binding Bush administration ones still followed hold no one accountable and let detainees be treated harshly under a system described above.
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