California Senate passes "anti-Arizona" immigration bill

[eomer]

6. Misleading title - this bill is actually aimed at a federal program run by ICE called S-COM.

S-COM (Secure Communities but we prefer to use S-COM to avoid repeating the Orwellian official name) is a federal program that some local communities have been pushing back against. Using S-COM, federal immigration authorities (ICE) pressure local communities and local law enforcement around the country to engage in Arizona-style practices.

The result is to make communities less secure, not more, because it causes immigrant communities to fear local police and avoid contact with them when they would otherwise report crimes, be willing witnesses, and so on.

A few counties and cities have enacted measures to prevent their law enforcement from cooperating with ICE/S-COM. Now it seems that California is doing so at the state level. I'm involved, with and through the UU Congregation I'm a member of, with local immigrants' rights advocates who are fighting S-COM.

So let's be clear that it is a federal program run by the Executive Branch that is targeted by this bill. The offensive aspects of the program are "Arizona-style" but it isn't the Arizona law itself that this California law targets but rather the adoption of similar tactics by ICE at the federal level. So you may want to call or write to the White House and ask them to halt the Arizona-style S-COM federal program.

Here is the text of the California bill:
http://legiscan.com/gaits/text/187592

Note: the OP title is a quote so my beef is not with the OP but with the original article.