Dear RWG Members and Partners,
Rights Working Group has completed a draft report for the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process on the persistence of profiling based on race, ethnicity, religion and national origin. You have likely seen much of the substance of this document in the report we jointly sent (with the ACLU) to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination last summer. The UPR report is a condensed version (only 10 pages) of last summer’s report with some updates and it provides another opportunity to raise the issues of concern.
We wrote the UPR report in consultation with partner organizations and members of our coalition. You can find the draft report attached to this email and our recommendations pasted at the bottom of this message. We welcome your organization’s formal endorsement of this report. Organizations can endorse any number of UPR cluster reports drafted by partner organizations. If your group would like to endorse RWG’s report on racial profiling, please email me with the full name of your organization by noon EST on Friday, April 16th, 2010.
The UPR is a human rights mechanism established in 2006, allowing the United Nations Human Rights Council to review member states of the U.N. on compliance with their human rights obligations. The U.N.’s first review of the U.S. is scheduled to take place on November 26, 2010. As part of this process, “stakeholder” or civil society/non-governmental groups like ours are given an opportunity to submit reports for consideration by the Human Rights Council’s Working Group on the UPR. You can learn more about the UPR here: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBODIES/UPR/Pages/UPRMain.aspx
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. The President should issue an executive order prohibiting racial profiling by federal officers and banning law enforcement practices that disproportionately target people for investigation and enforcement based on race, ethnicity, religion or national origin.
2. The Department of Justice should revise its June 2003 guidance on racial profiling to eliminate the loopholes created for national security and border searches, to include religion and national origin as protected classes, to apply the guidance to state and local law enforcement agencies, and to make it enforceable in a court of law.
3. The 2002 DOJ Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) “inherent authority” memo that reversed historical trends to keep state and local law enforcement out of federal civil immigration work should be rescinded and OLC should issue a new memo clarifying that state and local law enforcement agents may not enforce federal immigration laws absent formal authority granted to them by the federal government.
4. The Department of Homeland Security should terminate the 287(g) program and all other federal immigration enforcement programs that rely on state and local criminal justice systems, including the Secure Communities Initiative and the Criminal Alien Program.
5. The federal government should terminate the NSEERS program and repeal related regulations. Individuals who did not comply with NSEERS due to lack of knowledge or fear should not lose eligibility for, or be denied, a specific relief or benefit. Similarly, the federal government should provide relief to individuals who were deported for lack of compliance with NSEERS but otherwise had an avenue for relief.
6. The Obama Administration should urge Congress to introduce and pass meaningful federal legislation prohibiting racial profiling.
Best Regards,
Aadika Singh
