Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter scaled back cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration-enforcement efforts in April 2014, accusing agents of aggressively targeting for deportation persons living in the country illegally who otherwise led law-abiding lives.
Then he got a visit from Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. And a follow-up phone call. And more calls from DHS officials. Their pitch: Support a new DHS program that aims to work with cities to deport immigrants who commit serious crimes and pose a national security threat — but take action against virtually no one else.
Nutter, who won praise from immigrant rights groups for his stand against the federal government, hasn’t agreed. He lauded Johnson in a recent interview but said the city is “articulating areas of concern we have with regard to the new program.”
His hesitance speaks to the promise — and the perils — of an intensive outreach effort being undertaken by Johnson, who runs the third-largest Cabinet department. The man charged with keeping the homeland safe is trying to repair DHS’s frayed relationship with cities and police departments at a time of divisive national debate over the nation’s 11.3 million people living in the country illegally.
The problems stem from a revolt against DHS’s enforcement of immigration laws. Johnson in November scrapped Secure Communities, a program under which DHS asked police to hold immigrants it wanted to deport for up to 48 hours after their scheduled release from custody. More than 350 communities had ended or dialed back their participation, citing legal and civil liberties concerns.
Now, DHS is encountering similar challenges as it rolls out the replacement — the Priority Enforcement Program, which began July 2. Immigrant groups are blasting the program, under which DHS will still coordinate with police to deport immigrants but will mostly seek to be notified before they are released from custody, rather than having immigrants held beyond their scheduled release.
“Secure Communities needed to be fixed because it was inhibiting our ability to get at the criminals,” Johnson recently told the House Judiciary Committee, adding that he thinks PEP “resolves the legal and political controversy.”
The new program is part of a broader shift in DHS’s priorities in which the department has been narrowing enforcement efforts to three groups of people living in the country illegally: convicted criminals, terrorism threats or those who recently crossed the southwest border.
