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.

The City of Orange Township is an ethnically, racially, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse community. This has been a source of our municipality’s strength. We are committed to ensuring that all our residents can live and pursue their livelihoods in peace and prosperity. Like many Americans, we are deeply concerned about how the new presidential administration will impact the lives of immigrants and their families, whether they will be forced to leave this country, and whether rights and protections afforded to them will suddenly be taken away. When local law enforcement voluntarily cooperates with, or works on behalf of, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), significant gaps in trust and cooperation grow between immigrant communities and the police. Some of these practices could expose the City of Orange to liability for violations of individuals’ constitutional rights. Undue collaboration between local law enforcement and ICE will make immigrants less likely to report crimes, act as witnesses in criminal investigations and prosecutions, and provide intelligence to law enforcement. The cooperation of the City of Orange’s immigrant communities is essential to prevent and solve crimes and maintain good public order, safety and security for the entire City. Community policing depends on trust with every community in Orange. Facilitating deportations will harm such efforts. A growing number of municipalities around the country are standing up to threats against privacy and liberties by taking meaningful steps to ensure that at-risk communities are safe, and that all residents’ rights are respected, so that their municipality may continue to thrive. Due to Orange’s limited resources, we see a clear need to foster the trust of and cooperation from, the public, including members of vulnerable communities. To effectuate these goals, we urge the City Council, the Mayor and the administration of the City to clarify its role in protecting all city residents’ privacy and rights.

Redmond is a hugely diverse city that benefits enormously from its immigrant population. Recent events can lead to huge swaths of our population feeling unsafe. As a school counselor, I have met with many students who are already feeling fear and shame due to recent events. A Welcoming City ordinance would send a clear message to them that we have their backs.

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.

California policy allows undocumented and immigrant patients to receive county and state health services. Under our new administration, undocumented people are targeted for deportation and arrest.

Students in Arizona have been demonstrating their power and declaring their outrage at the election results through student led walkouts at different schools throughout Maricopa County. Students at ASU Prep who participated in student walkouts on November 10 are being given detentions. The ASU Preparatory Academy Student Handbook for the years 2016-2017 does not outline a punishment for an unexcused absence (https://asuprep.asu.edu/sites/default/files/asu_prep_handbook.pdf). According to the Manual for Arizona Public School Students by the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, “school officials cannot punish you for missing school to participate in a political protest more harshly than they punish students for missing school for any other purpose” (p 8, http://www.acluaz.org/sites/default/files/documents/SRHFINAL.pdf). Sign this petition and tell the ASU Prep Director, Mr. Vermeer, and the Dean of students, Mr.Boyle, not to punish students who exercised their first amendment right by participating in the student walkouts last week. Also, call 602-496- 3109 and leave the following message for Mr. Vermeer and Mr. Boyle: Hello, my name is _______ I am a concerned community member. I believe it is a student’s right to protest and should not receive harsher punishment for missing class to join the walkouts last week. I believe it is a violation of their first amendment right. I want to ask Mr. Boyle and Mr. Vermeer to relieve students from detention or any other punishment given for participating in the student walk out.

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