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.”