Alexandra Pineros-Shields

n a time of national anti-immigrant rhetoric, and evidence of racial profiling by law enforcement, why would Governor Charlie Baker volunteer to participate in a program that racially profiles immigrants and destroys families through deportation? The new policy allows State Police to cooperate with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain and deport people in State Police custody. It purports to bring State Police practices in line with the problematic federal "Priority Enforcement Program," a new iteration of "Secure Communities" that was so widely criticized it had to be scraped and re-named as PEP. Even former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, who ran Secure Communities, urged her home state, California, to opt out of voluntary collaboration with ICE. If Napolitano, who initiated this type of policy while governor of Arizona, acknowledges the failure of these programs, why would Massachusetts take on the costs of implementing a policy that racially profiles black and Latino immigrants?