Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Reshapes Its Immigration Enforcement Program

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A controversial federal program that deputizes state and local law enforcement agents to catch illegal immigrants is expanding under the Obama administration, despite changes announced this summer intended to curb alleged racial profiling and other police abuses.

Omar C. Jadwat, staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, cited a report last month by the University of California at Berkeley School of Law as evidence that the administration's shift to jail checks would encourage some local police to arrest and book more minorities so their immigration status could be determined once they were behind bars. That study found that police in Irving, Tex., working with a separate ICE program, increased arrests of Hispanics for minor offenses by nearly 150 percent between April and September 2007.

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