New America Media, News Report, Posted: Oct 25, 2011

NEW YORK -- Yesterday Judge Shira Scheindlin ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to publicly disclose by Nov. 1 a previously withheld internal memo that advocates believe will shed light on the agency’s legal justification for turning Secure Communities into a mandatory immigration enforcement program.

The government had argued the memo was exempt from disclosure under the attorney-client and deliberative process privileges. The National Day Laborers Organizing Network, Center for Constitutional Rights, and Cardozo School of Law Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic, the plaintiffs in the case, argued the memo was improperly kept secret from the public in the midst of important policy decisions related to Secure Communities.

This summer, the governors of Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York formally rejected the Secure Communities program. In response, ICE announced that all of its Memorandum of Agreements with states were dissolved and that the program would be imposed unilaterally.