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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

500-Plus Organizations Demand End to Local Immigration Enforcement

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Thursday, August 27, 2009   

PHOENIX - More than 500 local and national immigrant and civil rights organizations are demanding that the Obama administration end a controversial program allowing state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws. The groups have signed a letter to the President charging that the "287-g" program has resulted in serious civil and human rights abuses.

In Maricopa County, community organizer Carlos Garcia with the Macehualli day labor center claims racial profiling by the sheriff has been well-documented.

"There's been reports on it, and there's been videos, and the evidence has been there. There's been congressional hearings. There's a Department of Justice investigation on Joe Arpaio and racial profiling, so we know it exists here in Maricopa County."

Sheriff Arpaio has denied that his deputies engage in racial profiling and insists he is only enforcing the law. The immigrant advocates will release details of their letter at a news conference this morning at the federal courthouse in downtown Phoenix.

Garcia says the "287-g" agreements also endanger public safety because fewer officers are available to investigate serious crimes.

"You have officers concentrating on people who are just here working, people who are just out driving around with a broken tail light or something."

The letter to the President says crime victims and witnesses become reluctant to contact police because of the program - making all communities less safe.

Garcia says it's an impossible situation to have 12 million to 15 million people in the country without knowing who they are, so the real solution is comprehensive immigration reform.

"Reform would give the folks already here working - that have families here, that have children who are U.S. citizens - the opportunity to a process to become documented in this country."

Garcia says the goal is to bring people out of the shadows and allow them to become a vibrant part of our community.



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