Trivia night gets serious: Campaign promotes resistance to federal immigration program
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NORTHAMPTON - "Which immigration program aimed at identifying immigrants who are serious criminals stores biometric data, like fingerprints, on people who are arrested?"
On cue, Jeopardy music emanating from a small tape recorder filled the room. Jeff Napolitano, the man holding the tape recorder and the director of the American Friends Service Committee of Western Massachusetts, began to dance. The seven or so trivia teams gathered at the Yellow Sofa on Main Street began talking among themselves in hurried, hushed tones.
And then their time was up. The seven or so teams raised their sheets and displayed their answer to the judges. Many had the question right.
Their answer? The Secure Communities program. The tally man recorded 200 points, the question's worth, next to the names of the teams who had answered correctly.
But while Wednesday night's "Civil Rights Trivia" was aimed at being fun and educational, it also had a more serious purpose.
The Preserving our Civil Rights campaign, the organizers of the trivia event, announced that a resolution urging the city not to participate in the Secure Communities program would be put to a vote at the next City Council Meeting on Aug. 18. The measure has won the support of Council President David Narkewicz and Northampton Police Chief Russell Sienkiewicz, they said.
"Secure Communities is a program that breaks up communities. It does exactly the opposite of what it says," Napolitano said. "It makes people afraid to call the police and it increases surveillance over the population."
The federally administered program has become increasingly controversial. Last month, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, whose city piloted the program in 2006, threatened to withdraw Boston from the program. Soon thereafter, the Springfield City Council passed a resolution urging the mayor of that city, Domenic Sarno, to also reject the measure. It has also drawn criticism from Gov. Deval Patrick, who has said he will not allow the state police to participate in the program.
Advocates argue that it is essential to stemming the flow of illegal immigration. Opponents say it leads to increased racial profiling and creates a lack of trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement.
Under the program, individuals who are arrested by local and state police are fingerprinted, information which is then sent along to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI, in turn, sends that information along to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to check if the individual is in the country illegally or can be removed for a criminal conviction, according to the ICE website.
The program has won strong backing from the Obama administration and it is unclear if municipalities and states could even opt out of the program. Federal officials have said it would go into effect nationwide by 2013 irrespective of opposition from states or municipalities.
In Northampton, the Preserving our Civil Rights campaign, a coalition of local advocacy groups, has taken up opposition to the program.
The resolution that will go before the City Council later this month will ask the city to refuse future participation in the program, said Emma Roderick, of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, one of the organizations involved in the campaign.
"Secure Communities is supposed to catch the most dangerous criminals," Roderick said. "But in reality, the majority of people deported are non-violent offenders and many of them are not offenders at all."
Campaign members had organized the trivia night to help educate residents about civil rights issues like Secure Communities, she said.
"We wanted to put together a forum that puts the information in a new way that was fun," she said.
