To: President Donald Trump
President Obama: Stop Inhumane Detention and Deportation
We call on the President to fulfill part of his promise of a more humane and rational immigration system by: 1) ending the practice of placing people with non-criminal immigration infractions in prisons or prison-like facilities; 2) by ending the indiscriminate deportation of people with immigration infractions or visa irregularities that have citizen children or other citizen family members in the U.S., and; 3) by ending the Secure Communities and 287 g programs, which force local law enforcement to enforce or collaborate in the enforcement of immigration law.
Why is this important?
The Obama Administration has deported just under 400,000 people annually, nearly twice the number of immigrants deported on an annual basis by George W. Bush. Meanwhile, the President's Administration has failed to issue binding standards to improve inhumane deportation practices that separate families and regulations to address egregious conditions in immigration detention facilities, despite having promised that these regulations would be forthcoming.
In fact, the President has gone full steam ahead in implementing and executing some of the most troubling legacies of his predecessor, including programs that have been decried by police departments across the country for forcing local police to engage in enforcement of federal immigration law, engendering distrust between police and the communities they serve and creating a public safety issue as mixed status families become less and less likely to approach state actors for help.
President Obama has the power to make substantial changes to our system at any time. It's past time that he do so.