New Haven Independent

Wishnie is a clinical professor of law at Yale Law School who has represented dozens of workers arrested in New Haven in 2006 in immigration raids. Click here and here for some past stories. He spoke in an interview in his office about the similarities and differences between this administration and its predecessor. “What has been frustrating and intensely disappointing,” he said, “is that the Obama administration has continued many of the Bush administration programs and practices.”

He said it’s true that officials from ICE — the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — are focusing more now on employers who hire undocumented workers rather than on arresting the workers themselves. But Wishnie said under Obama there’s been an intensification of involvement of state and local police in routine immigration enforcement.

“The Department of Homeland Security does not need Congressional reform to dramatically alter many of the Bush administration practices that worked such misery on so many millions of families and communities throughout the country,” he added

Following is a transcript of the interview, originally conducted for the radio show “Between The Lines”:

MW: Apart from Congressional reform, there is enormous power over immigration policy and practice within the executive branch. The Department of Homeland Security does not need Congressional reform to dramatically alter many of the Bush administration practices that worked such misery on so many millions of families and communities throughout the country.

And what has been frustrating and intensely disappointing, I think, is that the Obama administration has continued many of the Bush administration programs and practices. And it’s no excuse to say Congress hasn’t acted, because we’re not talking about those things that require statutory reform. We’re talking about day to day enforcement and detention decisions; decisions within the tens of thousand of rotten cases that the Obama administration inherited from the Bush administration but which it continues to prosecute. In all of these areas, this administration has refused to alter or soften so many of the Bush administration policies that Obama criticized as a candidate.

BTL: One thing that I thought had changed is toward the end of Bush’s two terms, there were a lot of major workplace raids where hundreds of undocumented workers were arrested, and obviously the brunt of law enforcement fell on the workers, not on the employers, and I thought Obama was shifting that. There haven’t been any big workplace raids since he took office. What about prosecuting employers?

MW: That’s an important point, and I don’t want to be misunderstood. There have been some positive changes from the past administration. One of those is the early statements by new Obama administration leaders in the Department of Homeland Security that they would target employers rather than employees, and shift away from many of the workplace raids they were doing. A second example is a very recent announcement by John Morton, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that the former quota system for fugitive operations teams has been abolished. These quotas sent agents out looking to make their numbers each year, and I think was a contributing factor to some of the most aggressive enforcement. But on the whole, there’s been far more continuity than change.

And in fact, for most changes, there’s been a reciprocal intensification somewhere else. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I think on the whole, total arrests and deportations are higher for the first six months of this year than they were in a comparable period in the Bush administration. Some of it has shifted. So, for instance, there’s a little less work site raids; on the other hand there’s an intensification of involvement of state and local police in routine immigration enforcement, and so the administration has been very keen to expand 287g agreements, the Secure Communities Initiative, which is resulting, I think, in terrible consequences for local communities around the country.

BTL: I’ve heard stories from different parts of the country where that has been true, where local law enforcement has gotten involved in immigration issues and arrests. Is that something that any local law enforcement agency needs approval of the federal government to do that?

MW: Congress laid down clear guidance in the statutes passed in 1996. The statute requires that any state, local, or tribal, I believe, police agency that wishes to do civil immigration enforcement must execute a written agreement with the federal government. Its officers must be trained by federal immigration agents - immigration law is complicated stuff. And they must be supervised, ultimately, be federal immigration agents. And absent those things - written agreement, training, supervision and so on - they lack immigration enforcement powers.

BTL: Mike Wishnie, due to the economic situation now, the number of people crossing the border from Mexico has diminished significantly, because there are so many fewer jobs here. What impact do you think that might have on prioritizing immigration reform?

MW: Times of economic distress have often fit with the rise of nativist and anti-immigrant movements in this country where people have felt their job might be threatened by the presence of a foreign citizen. On the other hand, the labor movement today is much more sophisticated today than it was 20 years ago about the reality of human migration and that to resist some of those realities is ultimately counter-productive to the goal of protecting U.S. workers. What I mean concretely by that is today you see many of the largest labor unions saying it’s important for the protection of U.S. workers that all workers be brought into the mainstream of the union movement and the mainstream of labor and employment law, and if we have a shadow population of millions of people who are out of status and afraid to stand up for their labor rights, that pulls us all down.