Donald Trump just announced executive action that threatens any city that seeks to protect immigrant residents from his deportation machine. What he’s trying to do is roll back the leaps forward we’ve made in recent years but we won’t let him. In 2017, it’s the efforts to defend Black lives and protect migrant rights that make our cities safer, not Trump’s extra enforcement promises. To keep us safe, we need to evolve our local policies to make our cities real sanctuaries for all residents, not cancel them because of the illegitimate President's latest actions. That means a commitment to separating police from federal immigration enforcement AND addressing the policing that funnels Black and other residents to jail and places criminal charges on immigrant residents, making them a target for ICE agents. Tell our mayor and city council to stand up to Trump and take action that doesn't just symbolically defend immigrants, but transforms our city's policies to stop targeting us for imprisonment, risk of removal, and state violence at the hands of police and aggressive immigration agents. The illegitimate President's threats should be cause to embolden our city leaders, not an excuse to abandon our potential progress.

Donald Trump just announced executive action that threatens any city that seeks to protect immigrant residents from his deportation machine. What he’s trying to do is roll back the leaps forward we’ve made in recent years but we won’t let him. In 2017, it’s the efforts to defend Black lives and protect migrant rights that make our cities safer, not Trump’s extra enforcement promises. To keep us safe, we need to evolve our local policies to make our cities real sanctuaries for all residents, not cancel them because of the illegitimate President's latest actions. That means a commitment to separating police from federal immigration enforcement AND addressing the policing that funnels Black and other residents to jail and places criminal charges on immigrant residents, making them a target for ICE agents. Tell our mayor and city council to stand up to Trump and take action that doesn't just symbolically defend immigrants, but transforms our city's policies to stop targeting us for imprisonment, risk of removal, and state violence at the hands of police and aggressive immigration agents. The illegitimate President's threats should be cause to embolden our city leaders, not an excuse to abandon our potential progress.

The Chicago Police Department uses, maintains, publishes, and shares a list of names designated as potential gang members, which we call the “Gang Database.” It is a list of all suspected gang members in the City of Chicago. As of May 2018, there are over 128,000 adults in the Gang Database and between 28,000 and 68,000 juveniles. Of the over 128,000 adults in the Gang Database, 70 percent are Black, 25 percent are Latinx, and less than 5 percent are white. This means that 95 percent of the people in the Gang Database are Black or Latinx. In fact, according to the analysis by the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Gang Database includes approximately 11 % of Chicago’s Black population, 4 % of its Latino population, and only 0.6 % of its white population. Individuals who are labeled gang members by CPD officers are not provided any due process protections, including notice or an opportunity to contest the gang designation. And once an individual is included in the Gang Database, he is in the database forever—there are no mechanisms by which he can request to be removed, nor does the CPD conduct any internal audits to guarantee that the information in the Database is accurate. CPD shares its Gang Database with numerous third party causing significant known and unknown harm to class members, including deprivations of employment, licensures, bond, immigration relief, deportation and detention, and more.

Chicago has a history of over-policing and criminalization, which has led to Chicago residents being killed, incarcerated, and put in deportation proceedings regardless of the police-ICE collaboration. And, under unprecedented attacks against our communities from the federal government, the City of Chicago must also change. In order to keep communities safe, the City of Chicago must protections and relationships with people of color. It is a reality that in our city Black immigrants are disproportionately affected by criminalization and also needs immigration protections that do not exclude people with criminal records. In order to effectively respond to these threats, Cities must both provide undocumented and other non-citizen residents effective protections and safeguards from immigration enforcement, while also reducing the over-policing and criminalization of immigrant communities, Black people, and other people of color, that leads to mass incarceration and deportation. The two demands, to move the recommendations to change the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) contract and amend the Welcoming City Ordinance is being supported by a coalition of local organizations, including Organized Communities Against Deportations, Black Youth Project 100, Arab American Action Network, Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Chicago, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, Centro de Trabajadores Unidos - Immigrant Worker Project, Chicago Community and Worker’s Rights, Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America, Community Activism Law Alliance, ENLACE Chicago, Hana Center, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Latino Policy Forum, Latino Union of Chicago, Mujeres Latinas en Acción, PASO- West Suburban Action Project, and the Southwest Organizing Project, along with Mijente.

In recent months, the President and a bipartisan coalition have spearheaded a conversation on the need to reform a criminal justice system that acts as the new Jim Crow. The efforts say we have strayed from being a “nation of second chances.” The Democratic candidates have promised to address the mass incarceration that discriminates against Black and Latino communities and sentences people to cruel and lengthy punishment. But during the same time period immigration policy has actually moved in the opposite direction, widening the categories of convictions that place people in the crosshairs for detention, deportation and falsely claiming to focus on “felons not families.” For non-citizens and undocumented people, it doesn’t just impact people’s time in courts and jail. Instead of being able to reintegrate into their communities, contact with the criminal justice system can mean the double punishment of doing time and then being transferred to a second sentence in detention and eventually deported. With the Party expected to draft a platform that addresses both mass incarceration and promotes immigration reform, the platform committee has an opportunity and responsibility to ensure that someone’s experience with the one doesn’t result in unjust exclusion from the other. In Georgia, Juan has a felony conviction on his record for driving without a license. In Arizona, Noemi has a felony conviction for working to be able to afford to apply for DACA, the deportation relief program for immigrant youth. Right now, Jose Juan is in sanctuary in a church on Chicago’s Southside because ICE refuses to evaluate his case beyond a felony DUI he received years ago, a felony only because he did not have a driver’s license at the time. Instead of stigmatizing immigrants who have previous contact with the criminal justice system and putting them in further jeopardy, drop the box from immigration reform policies and make sure that everyone who calls the US home has access to the papers that make it official. Read more: Huffington Post: Nation of Second Chances or Double Standards http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tania-unzueta/a-nation-of-second-chance_b_9934394.html Are Criminal Justice Policies and Immigration Reform at Odds? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marisa-franco/are-criminal-justice-reforms-and-immigration-policy-at-odds_b_8361768.html A Price to High: Families Torn Apart by Deportations for Drug Offenses https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/06/16/price-too-high/us-families-torn-apart-deportations-drug-offenses