-The Associated Press, December 14, 2011 by E.J. Tamara
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/15/aclu_citizens_jailed_under_us_immigration_program_2/

In October, a study by the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law &Social Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, found that ICE arrested more than 3,600 U.S. citizens through Secure Communities between April 2008 and April 2011.

-Los Angeles Times, December 15, 2011 by Paloma Esquivel
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1215-detained-citizens-20111214,0,3469916.story

Although the exact number of U.S. citizens detained on immigration holds is not known, a study published earlier this year by researchers at UC Berkeley found that citizens made up 1.6% of Secure Communities cases analyzed.

-The Daily Journal, December 28, 2011 by Robert Iafolla
http://bit.ly/zbY0ew (registration required)

The Berkeley report analyzed data from Secure Communities, a program that feeds illegal immigrants arrested by local law enforcement to ICE, and argued that it encourages racial profiling, splits up families and snares people that it shouldn’t.

-Queens Chronicle, December 29, 2011 by Cory Bennett and Rebecca Ellis
http://bit.ly/vYgHLw

It is difficult to estimate how many children follow deported parents, though Aarti Kohli, director of immigration policy at the University of California Berkeley Law School, found that if both parents are deported, the children follow if they are younger than teenagers. If one parent is deported, families frequently separate, with the non-deported parent staying with the children.

Contra Costa Times, December 3, 2011 by Matt O’Brien
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_19464451

About 11 percent of all Secure Communities deportations are voluntary,
according to UC Berkeley Law School’s Warren Institute. Latino immigrants are the most affected by Secure Communities. Although they make up 77 percent of the nation’s illegal immigrant population, they account for 93 percent of the people arrested through Secure Communities. The institute said its figures, culled from public records requests, were disturbing and raised questions about the fairness of the program.

-The New York Times, October 18, 2011 by Julia Preston
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/us/latinos-said-to-bear-weight-of-deportation-program.html?_r=2

“If Secure Communities was working properly,” the report said, a match under the program “should never result in the apprehension” of a citizen.

-KQED News, October 19, 2011 Host Tara Siler
http://www.kqed.org/a/kqednews/RN201110191730/a

“The unauthorized population in this country: 77% are Latinos, 13% Hatians, 6% from Europe and Canada.  In our sample, 93% of the people identified for deportation were Latino…. We recommend the government consider suspending this program until they fix clearly the problems that we have outlined.”

-Santa Cruz Sentinel, October 19, 2011 by Jason Hoppin
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_19149446

“When we found this, we were quite disturbed because we didn’t expect to see U.S. citizens in the sample,” said Aarti Kohli, director of immigration policy at the Warren Institute.

-The Denver Post, October 20, 2011 by Nancy Lofholm
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_19152289

“We think Secure Communities should be suspended until they address the problems,” said Aarti Kohli, director of immigration policy at the University of California Berkeley School of Law’s Warren Institute.

-Hispanically Speaking News, October 21, 2011 by HS News Staff
http://bit.ly/trEzvH

“The government’s own data has consistently shown that most of the people impacted by this program have no criminal record or are low-level offenders.  To lock these people up in detention centers without access to attorneys or an opportunity to see a judge is undemocratic,” said Kohli.

-The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 24, 2011 by Michael Matza
http://articles.philly.com/2011-10-24/news/30316728_1_bob-dane-deportation-numbers-illegal-immigration

The report, “Secure Communities by the Numbers,” concluded that many immigrants “are pushed rapidly through the system, without appropriate checks or opportunities to challenge their detention and/or deportation.”

Public Radio International, September 16, 2011 by Amy Isackson
http://bit.ly/ohqFld

Aarti Kohli, Director of Immigration Policy at the UC Berkeley’s Boalt Law School, says the policy has the potential to affect only a small minority of the undocumented immigrants in the US.  “We’re talking 300,000 people, not the estimated 11 million who are in the country. You don’t actually get legalized. You just don’t get deported.”

The Daily Californian, September 15, 2011 by Sara Khan
http://www.dailycal.org/2011/09/15/panel-of-experts-offers-views-from-respective-fields/

“What California did this year is pretty amazing,” she said. “It’s the leader in the country. The legislature passed AB 130 which Gov. Brown has signed—this is a major step.”

Firstpost, August 19, 2011 by Bernice Yeung
http://bit.ly/p54Md3

“It’s common these days for legal permanent residents”—or green card holders—”with criminal convictions to be placed in deportation proceedings,” said Aarti Kohli, director of immigration policy at UC Berkeley School of Law’s Warren Institute. “It used to be that if you are a green card holder, you had almost all of the same benefits, rights, and protections that a US citizen has. These days, a legal permanent resident is a misnomer. You are not permanent; you are placed in a precarious position, and even low-level offences land you in deportation proceedings.”

KQED-FM, May 31, 2011 by Erika Kelly
http://www.kqed.org/a/kqednews/RN201105311730/a

“The way Secure Communities normally works is that someone’s brought into the jail, their fingerprints are taken and then checked against immigration databases. If there’s anything that raises ICE’s suspicions within those databases, they ask the local sheriffs or police departments to detain this person…. One of the main objections is that the vast majority of people who are actually being detained and sent to ICE are low-level offenders, and not murderers, rapists, criminals, terrorists, which is what the federal government had said the program was in place for.”

San Francisco Bay Guardian, May 10, 2011 by Sarah Phelan
http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2011/05/10/legal-scholars-weigh-secure-communities

Kohli observed that given the economic crisis, cooperating with the feds’ controversial “Secure Communities” program also becomes a question of priorities…. noting that state and local governments facing restraints in terms of jail space and resources. “So, does it make us safer to lock up low-level offenders, people who we would otherwise never dream of locking up, particularly in the face of constraints at the state and local levels?”

The Huffington Post, January 10, 2011 by Elise Foley
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/10/heroic-giffords-intern-co_n_806999.html?ir=College

“If you are a witness for a crime, the officer would have a lawful reason to approach you, and if they had any reason to suspect you might be an alien, they could ask,” Aarti Kohli … told HuffPost. “The big question is what is reasonable suspicion.”

-The Christian Science Monitor, August 3, 2010 by Daniel B. Wood
http://bit.ly/agjFQv

Republican politics play a role too, says Aarti Kohli, Director of Immigration Policy at the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute…. “The data is clear that [Gov. Jan] Brewer’s job approval ratings did jump compared to when she was struggling before SB 1070 was signed,” says Ms. Kohli.

-The Washington Independent, August 9, 2010 by Elise Foley
http://bit.ly/9eWU7I
“It’s kind of like the opposite of Arizona: They don’t want to be engaged in the process of policing immigration,” explains Aarti Kohli, director of immigration policy at Berkeley Law School’s Warren Institute. “It’s a communication to their communities that, ‘We don’t want to talk on the federal functions of immigration enforcement, we’re going to focus on our local functions.’”

KALW, Your Call, July 29, 2010 Host Rose Aguilar
http://bit.ly/dtfnVu

These laws are going to have a real impact on policing. In these communities, immigrants are not going to be willing to trust law enforcement because they know that part of law enforcement’s mandate is to try and root out undocumented immigrants. And so if you’ve got a crime and you’ve got a witness, who might be lawful themselves, but they’re living with someone who’s undocumented, they may be unwilling to come forward as witness.

The Washington Independent, July 23, 2010 by Elise Foley
http://washingtonindependent.com/92374/kyl-pushes-for-expansion-of-operation-streamline

Aarti Kohli, immigration policy director at Berkeley Law’s Warren Institute, told me Operation Streamline should be reevaluated, not expanded. “It’s being used to spend large amounts [to criminally prosecute] the lowest level of offender,” she said. “The big question about Operation Streamline is whether it’s really effective.”

St. Petersburg News, PolitiFact.com, June 25, 2010 by Jan Brewer
http://bit.ly/dD56XC

Kohli and others draw a clear distinction with Brewer’s suggestion that the majority of illegal border crossers are “drug mules.” “If caught along the southwest border, the vast majority of migrants are prosecuted in federal district court, often 70 at a time, for misdemeanor illegal entry,” Kohli said. “If they are caught smuggling drugs, they would not be prosecuted” in this way.

KALW-FM Crosscurrents, May 5, 2010 by Jude Joffe-Block
http://bit.ly/bBmBdZ

“We feel like these programs are having an impact on policing. And immigrant communities as a result are becoming increasingly distrustful of police, and that is not a good phenomenon in terms of creating a safer community for everyone. If an immigrant is not willing to be a witness because they are afraid to interact with police, that doesn’t create a safer community.”

-Los Angeles Times, April 1, 2010 by Teresa Watanabe
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-deport1-2010apr01,0,3720769,print.story

“It is a travesty that this is happening without any judicial discretion,” said Aarti Kohli, director of immigration policy for Berkeley Law School’s Warren Institute. “We’re not saying you can’t deport people. We’re saying there should be a fair judicial process that takes into account the impact on their children.”

-Futurity.org, April 12, 2010 by Claudia Morain
http://futurity.org/society-culture/deportation-hurts-young-u-s-citizens/

“As Congress considers immigration reform, it’s time to focus on how the current system tears apart families and threatens the health and education of tens of thousands of children,” says Aarti Kohli.

“The rights to health and education are firmly entrenched in international human rights law, and nearly every major human rights treaty recognizes the need for special protection of children,” says Laurel Fletcher…. “The U.S. should consider revising its policy to mirror European human rights standards, which permit judges to balance a nation’s security interest with the best interests of the child when considering deporting a parent.”

Mother Jones, March/April 2010 by Adam Weinstein
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/texas-racist-laws-drinking-while-brown

“They were clearly choosing to bring more Hispanics into jail,” says Aarti Kohli, coauthor of the Berkeley study. But the feds and local officials hailed the PI sweeps as a victory. Immigration “is expanding this program, saying, ‘Isn’t this great?’” Kohli says. “But the question they’re not asking is: How are these people getting put into jail?”

San Francisco Chronicle, October 7, 2009 by Aarti Kohli and Antonia Hernandez
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/07/EDF01A1TI1.DTL

The report supports what advocates in cities nationwide have been saying for a long time: These enforcement programs result in rampant racial profiling by local police.

-The Dallas Morning News, September 17, 2009 by Brandon Formby
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/091709dnmetirvingcap.3d5e574.html

“We wanted just do a pure investigation of the data,” Kohli said. “When we did it, it was kind of amazing. If you look at the chart, you see how the spike happened.”

-The Dallas Morning News, September 24, 2009 by Brandon Formby
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-profiling_24met.ART.Central.Edition1.4bf3bd4.html

“We didn’t create the data,” she said. “We are an academic institution, and our reputation rests on our ability to do unbiased research. Why would we risk that?”