Asm. Ammiano will outline next steps on key legislation to challenge failed S-Comm program as Bay Area Catholic community joins movement to stop separation of families

San Francisco - San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer will lead an interfaith gathering of several hundred congregants and community members to call on California Governor Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris to reform the state’s participation in the deeply flawed “Secure Communities” or S-Comm deportation program.

The event comes as Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-SF) prepares to introduce a revised version of the TRUST Act (AB 1081) later this spring. The bill seeks to restore the trust between immigrants and local police which S-Comm has undermined and to ease the program’s burden on local governments.

• When: Saturday, January 28, 2012
• Time: 2:00 PM
• Where: St. Mary’s Cathedral, 1111 Gough Street, San Francisco
• Who:
  • Assemblymember Tom Ammiano
  • San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer
  • San Francisco Bishop William Justice

• Many hundreds of congregants and community members from San Francisco and surrounding areas, organized by the San Francisco Organizing Project (SFOP) and PICO-California. Attendance is expected to exceed 1,000 people.

Background: As deportations under the controversial “Secure” Communities program continue to climb, faith leaders and elected officials are expressing increasingly grave concern that the program is undermining public safety, operating without transparency or local oversight, and hurting local families.

“We respectfully call for leadership, wisdom, and acts of justice from Governor Brown and Attorney General Harris. Our hearts break at the painful stories of unjust deportations pouring in from our congregations. California can do better. We hope the Governor and Attorney General will forge a new path to restore fairness to a broken and out-of-balance system,” said San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s most recent statistics reveal deportations under the program reached a grim new threshold late last year: As of November 30, S-Comm had deported over 60,000 Californians, about 7 in 10 of whom had no convictions or were arrested for issues as minor as selling food without a permit.

Moreover, in October, a report by UC Berkeley’s Warren Institute estimated that nationwide, some 3,600 US Citizens were apprehended by ICE due to S-Comm between the program’s start and April of 2011. The report also found S-Comm was disproportionately targeting Latinos.

Under the program, the fingerprints of everyone arrested – even survivors of domestic violence arrested with their abusers – are sent to ICE, which then pressures local governments to hold immigrant community members in jail for extra time at local expense so they can be picked up for deportation.

Contact: Quintin Mecke, 415-557-3013