Tell Governor Gregoire to let Washington State Opt Out of Secure Communities

Tell Governor Gregoire to let Washington State Opt Out of Secure Communities

The Issue

Washington state has been the first locality to decline signing an agreement with ICE on Secure Communities, a program that would allow the fingerprints of individuals taken by local law enforcement to be checked against the national immigration database.

The national program has a number of major flaws: fiscal burdens on local governments and law enforcement, detention of legal permanent residents and U.S. citizens, criminalization immigrants with minor crimes such as traffic violations, increased racial profiling, and wrongful deportation.

Affirm to Governor Gregoire that the Washington State Patrol is right and to allow Washington State to opt-out of the Secure Communities program.

Photo credit: Feetin2Worlds Blog

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Erin PangilinanPetition StarterErin Jerri Malonzo Pangilinan graduated with a BA from UC Berkeley as an Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies double major with honors and is an active member of the Berkeley Asian American Pacific Islander Alumni Association. She continues to write as a news correspondent for Philippine News for five years, and has published news and poetry in Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves: A Contemporary Anthology of Asian American Women's Poetry, {m}aganda magazine, and hardboiled asian american newsmagazine.
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This petition had 86 supporters

The Issue

Washington state has been the first locality to decline signing an agreement with ICE on Secure Communities, a program that would allow the fingerprints of individuals taken by local law enforcement to be checked against the national immigration database.

The national program has a number of major flaws: fiscal burdens on local governments and law enforcement, detention of legal permanent residents and U.S. citizens, criminalization immigrants with minor crimes such as traffic violations, increased racial profiling, and wrongful deportation.

Affirm to Governor Gregoire that the Washington State Patrol is right and to allow Washington State to opt-out of the Secure Communities program.

Photo credit: Feetin2Worlds Blog

avatar of the starter
Erin PangilinanPetition StarterErin Jerri Malonzo Pangilinan graduated with a BA from UC Berkeley as an Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies double major with honors and is an active member of the Berkeley Asian American Pacific Islander Alumni Association. She continues to write as a news correspondent for Philippine News for five years, and has published news and poetry in Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves: A Contemporary Anthology of Asian American Women's Poetry, {m}aganda magazine, and hardboiled asian american newsmagazine.
Media inquiries

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Petition created on December 3, 2010