Last night, state Assemblyman Greg Ball convened a forum on drunken driving and the hiring and housing of illegal immigrants.  The meeting comes more than a month after a mother and daugther were struck and killed by suspected drunken driver, who police say is unlicensed and undocumented.

During the meeting, Ball presented a list of plans to crackdown on drinking and driving, as well as ways to make it harder for contractors and landlords to hire and house illegal immigrants. Some of these ideas included installing an ignition lock in the vehicles of first-time DWI offenders and creating a law in Putnam County making it illegal to hire people off the streets.

He also suggested making English the official language in Putnam County.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. John Hall, D-Dover Plains, has invited officers from 53 law enforcement agencies throughout five counties to participate in a training session with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in order to foster better working relationships between federal and local officials.

Ball is running against Hall in 2010.

To read more about Ball’s meeting written by my colleague, Michael Risinit, go here. To read more about Hall’s upcoming training session, check it out here.

I’ve been spending time in Brewster, which is an intense little microcosm of the nation’s angst over illegal immigration. Emotions are still running very high over the June 8 drunk-driving tragedy, and there’s an ongoing argument over whether the crime has anything to do with the immigration issue overall.

There was one evening last week that seemed to bring out the whole assortment of problems and tensions that have divided Brewster — and the surrounding town of Southeast — for years.

In the village proper, there was a meeting of the Brewster police community affairs program, which helps to educate the Spanish-speaking population (though mostly men) about traffic laws, local ordinances, culture clashes, etc. It happens twice a month at La Guadalupana restaurant, and lately, it’s been standing room only.

Officer Alex Mancone led a discussion that centered on the New York Vehicle & Traffic laws. He and Officer Sal Ardisi went into detail about not only the dangers of drunk driving, but the consequences of driving without a license. The usual question came up: If you can’t get a license (lacking the documents to do so) and can’t drive, how do you work and feed your family? (The questioner said his boss could not pick him up for work every day.) The officers replied that those laws were above them, and that their job is simply to enforce the laws equally. They urged them to intervene if they saw anyone getting behind the wheel intoxicated. They also tried to assure the Latino men that they, as a group, were not being targeted.

At the same time there was a hearing at Southeast Town Hall, where the town board hosted a public forum in response to the June 8 crash.  There was a panel of police and code enforcement officers talking about drunk driving and illegal immigration.

There was discussion of a proposed new law that would require all contractors doing business in town to use the E-Verify system to check their workers’ status, and to show proof at checkpoints and work sites. (Click here for today’s story.)

Reporter Marcela Rojas recorded some of the public comments:

Joe Mack of Southeast said he takes the 4:33 a.m. train to the city each morning and that there are always illegal aliens passed out on the tracks and urinating in the elevators. He said the problem must be addressed.
“Call it racial profiling,” Mack said in response to hecklers. “But something’s got to be done.”
Ana Lopez of Southeast said the accident was a result of the person driving drunk, not because of his immigration status. She said more should be done to control drunk driving.
“You can deport us all and you will still have this disease,” said Lopez, a case manager with the Westchester Hispanic Coalition.

(Pat Young also wrote about the meeting — and its focus on illegal immigration and Latinos — on the Long Island Wins blog, here.)

Back at the meeting in Brewster, Aura Acevedo had shown up for the first time, one of two women in the crowd. She was a property owner in the neighborhood, and was fed up with men crowding the streets and making comments at women passing by. She also said she recognized that the day laborers were needed for their work, and wasn’t their enemy.

The problem, she said, is that the people in Brewster “just talk and talk,” rather than coming together to work on solutions. Mancone said he was glad she had attended. “It’s a step forward,” he said. “We gotta try. We gotta start.”

(Photos: Frank Becerra/The Journal News)

A new study by the Benjamin Cardozo Law School’s Immigration Justice Clinic at Yeshiva University examines “an established pattern of misconduct by ICE agents in the New York and New Jersey field offices” during home raids over the last two years.

The report documents the widespread practice by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement of conducting predawn raids in search of a particular target, then arresting others on civil immigration violations. (One such raid occurred in Mount Kisco in 2007. This report focuses on hundreds of arrests in New Jersey and Long Island.) Further, the report accuses ICE of violating constitutional rights through illegal searches and seizures.

The “administrative warrants” used by ICE in such raids do not allow agents to breach doors, according to  ICE manuals. They must obtain consent to enter and to interview and detain others encountered at the address, IF they have a reasonable suspicion of unlawful presence, says the report. The exception is when agents have reason to suspect that someone at the premises presents a danger.

According to the report:

The records from New Jersey show that most gave consent for agents to enter the home, but the researchers saw signs that the officers might be fudging that question in their reports.

About two-thirds of arrests were “collateral” and not the initial target of the raid. And the collaterals were more likely than the targets to be Latino — leading to questions about profiling.

The Cardozo clinic had earlier shown that the raids tied in with shifting priorities under the Bush administration. In 2006, ICE’s arrest quotas for so-called fugitive operations teams changed from 125 a year to 1,000. And whereas 75 percent of arrests were supposed to be criminals, that changed, too. Teams are not given an incentive to spend time gathering intelligents on the criminal targets.

By focusing on the easier to locate civil immigration violators, instead of the harder to locate dangerous targets, ICE agents were able to make more arrests in puruit of their new arrest expectations. Unfortunately, the increased arrest numbers come at a significant cost, not only in terms of the constitutional violations occurring during home raids, but also because the focus on collateral arrests has caused a significant decrease in ICE’s efficiency at capturing their purported priority targets: dangerous criminals and terrorists.

The men and women of I.C.E. are sworn to uphold the laws of our nation. We do so professionally, humanely and with an acute awareness with the impact enforcement has on the individuals we encounter. While I.C.E. prioritizes our efforts by targeting fugitives who have demonstrated a threat to national security or public safety, we have a clear mandate to pursue all immigration fugitives.

We just received this release from Congressman John Hall, announcing two training sessions by ICE on how local law enforcement agencies can work with the feds. This appears to follow up on the confusion over a drunk driving suspect who was released on bail in Putnam, despite his questionable immigration status. (The man was taken into ICE custody after returning to Brewster court, pleading guilty and agreeing to pay a fine.)

I have a feeling Putnam will have something to say about the statement that “Over the past nine months, Putnam County has contacted ICE to check on the status of a detained criminal only two times.” I’m also trying to check the info, which may refer to the use of ICE’s 24-hour Law Enforcement Support Center.

(Update: Yes, Rep. Hall’s office confirmed that their numbers refer to calls made to the LESC in Vermont. So they would not include calls made directly by Putnam County to the regional ICE offices.)

Here’s the text of the release:

***

With recent events highlighting the need for better working relationships between federal and local enforcement agencies, U.S. Rep. John Hall (D-Dover Plains) is hosting 2 local training sessions that will help facilitate their communications. Hall is bringing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to the Hudson Valley for training sessions with local police on August 4. These training sessions are designed to inform local law enforcement officials how to work most effectively with ICE regarding detention and deportation. ICE is the primary federal agency charged with detaining and deporting criminals who are found to be in the United States illegally.

“Providing our local police with information about how to most effectively and efficiently work with the federal agency in charge of immigration enforcement will enhance their ability to keep our neighborhoods safe and secure,” stated Congressman Hall. “I want to make sure that local law enforcement has all the tools they need at their disposal. These training sessions will present our local law enforcement community with the different ways ICE can help them when they have detained a criminal who is potentially not in our country legally. If a local law enforcement officer calls ICE to check the immigration status of a detained suspect, ICE can typically confirm the immigration status in less than an hour.”

Different Hudson Valley counties are using ICE’s services at an uneven rate. Over the past nine months, Putnam County has contacted ICE to check on the status of a detained criminal only two times. Dutchess County has called ten times, while Orange County has checked 142 times, Rockland County 235 times, and Westchester County has checked on 589 suspects.

The training sessions will be held on Tuesday, August 4 in Goshen and in Carmel.

It appears that federal enforcement efforts have been stepped up against undocumented drunk drivers.

Since the June 8 crash in Brewster that claimed the lives of a mother and daughter at the hands of a suspected drunk driver who police say is unlicensed and in the country illegally, there have been a deluge of DWI arrests in Putnam County involving illegal immigrants. It seems as though immigration is called with more frequency on these cases.

Here’s one such story I wrote for today’s paper and online. As I was writing it yesterday, the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office reported another drunken driving arrest of an Ecuadorian man living in Danbury. A federal detainer warrant was also placed on him.

The Senate immigration subcommittee is about to hear testimony on improving the nation’s “employment verification system.” You can watch it here at 2:15 p.m.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer, the subcommittee chairman, has called for a new system to check the immigration status — and identity — of an employee.

The current I-9 forms are seen as inadequate because of the use of fraudulent documents. The online E-Verify system is faulted for inaccuracies and for not detecting when someone is using another person’s documents. The answer, Schumer says, is to revamp the system with biometric information.

If you’re an employer wondering what could be in store, or anyone interested in the issue, read this analysis by the Migration Policy Institute.

The Town of Southeast in Putnam County is considering a law that would require contractors — from pool installers to domestic workers — to obtain a new local license and provide proof of their workers’ immigration status at work sites, checkpoints or any other “reasonable time and location.”

Each contractor (not just those hired by the town) would have to use the online E-Verify system, according to a draft of the law. It calls for a licensing fee of $400 a year, plus a $10,000 bond.

The plan comes from Supervisor Michael Rights and Councilman Dwight Yee, who said the aim is to prevent illegal hiring off the streets. How to enforce such a law? That was one concern raised a meeting last night. Penalties are a minimum $2,500 fine for the first offense, double that amount for a second, and for a third: forfeiture of the offender’s vehicle, its contents and the remainder of the bond. The plan is summarized in this notice for a hearing planned for July 23:

Here’s a video of a great panel discussion about the terminology used in immigration coverage. (Click here to watch.) It was hosted by the International Center for Journalists Monday in Washington, D.C. The questions raised are all very familiar. Should journalists use words like “undocumented immigrant” or opt for “illegal immigrant” or “illegal alien”? When is it relevant to point out or inquire about someone’s legal status? Do newspapers have a policy on any of this? Should they?

Emily Bazar of USA Today is the moderator, and she’s joined on either side by Lisa Navarrete of the National Council of La Raza and Rosemary Jenks of NumbersUSA.

The Journal News, like most newspapers, has no strict policy on which terms to use. The generally accepted Associated Press Stylebook indicates a preference for the term “illegal immigrant,” though the National Association of Hispanic Journalists is critical of that term and rejects “illegal” as a noun. The word “undocumented” is often scorned as a euphemism, but I often use it because it’s more specific. Same goes for “unauthorized.” I can’t imagine using the term “alien” unless I were talking someone who’s not from planet Earth. “Alien” has a specific and useful meaning in government documents, but journalists tend to avoid bureaucratic jargon in favor or commonly used language.

The panel discussion goes over some finer points and misunderstandings. An “alien” can be here legally, it’s worth noting. So can a  “criminal alien” – defined as a noncitizen who commits a crime. A lawyer points out that, technically, only an immigration judge can decide if someone is an illegal immigrant. And the distinction is not black and white. Being here without authorization is a civil violation. Crossing the border without inspection is a misdemeanor, and re-entering the country after deportation is a felony.

Navarrete makes one more argument against labeling someone as illegal: If you park by a fire hydrant, that doesn’t make you illegal, even though you violated the law.

The discussion then ventures into the even more thorny question of when legal status is relevant to a news article, particularly in stories about crime. Here’s another discussion on that question, which will not go away anytime soon.

Maybe it’s a sign of the times that a lawyer setting up shop in Ossining will greet his new neighbors with two seminars: one a primer on immigration law, the other a talk on “What To Do… And What Not To Do, When Stopped Or Questioned By Members Of Local, State Or Federal Law Enforcement.”

Or maybe it’s just a sign of what the lawyer, Joseph Turco, is all about. An activist with a background in civil rights law, he says he wants to empower members of his community. He has worked as an election observer in Liberia and a lobbyist for the ACLU in Nevada, and has returned to Westchester to set up an office at One Station Plaza in Ossining. Because the loft space reminded him of an art gallery, he’s planning exhibits there, too. “This is going to be the funnest law firm you ever saw,” he said.

The first seminar is tomorrow with immigration attorney Kira Repetto, and the second is Aug. 1. For more info: (914) 432-5810.

Canada is now requiring Mexican visitors to apply for a temporary visa before arriving. The change is described as a way to deal with a spike in refugee claims from visiting Mexicans over the last few years and with a growing number of immigration violations.

The same requirement is being made of the Czech Republic, prompting the Czechs to recall their ambassador to Canada, reports the Globe and Mail.

Most refugee claims in Canada, about a quarter of them, are coming from Mexicans, the government says, but only 11 percent of the applications are accepted. Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney said:

The visa process will allow us to assess who is coming to Canada as a legitimate visitor and who might be trying to use the refugee system to jump the immigration queue. It is not fair for those who have been waiting patiently to come to Canada, sometimes for years, when others succeed in bypassing our immigration system.