December 5, 2021
Councilor Valerie Abbott Mayor Randall Woodfin
Councilor President Wardine Alexander City of Birmingham
Councilor Carol Clarke 710 20th Street North
Councilor J.T. Moore Birmingham, AL 35203
Councilor Darrell O’Quinn
Councilor Pro Tem Crystal Smitherman
Councilor LaTonya Tate
Councilor Hunter Wlliams
Councilor Clinton Woods
Birmingham City Hall—Third Floor
Office of the City Council
710 North 20th Street
Birmingham, AL 35203
Re: A contract between the City of Birmingham and ICE is an insult to Birmingham’s
immigrants
Dear City Councilors and Mayor Woodfin,
We are a coalition of community organizations and residents committed to promoting the
dignity and well-being of all persons residing in the City of Birmingham. We are writing about an
urgent matter of public safety. We want to express our strong opposition to the proposed ordinance
submitted by the Mayor’s office that would authorize an Interlocal Cooperation Agreement
between the City of Birmingham and United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(“ICE”) to allow our local police officers to act as federal ICE agents.1 Although the renewal of
this contract is being marketed as a means to combat violent crime, in actuality, this ordinance and
contract would give Birmingham police officers the power to act as immigration enforcement
officers and to arrest Birmingham residents under the authority of ICE.
We are living in an era where the relationship between the police and communities of color
is being rightfully scrutinized. The citizens of Birmingham were at the forefront of the civil rights
1
See “Memorandum of Understanding between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland
Security Investigations and Birmingham Police Department regarding the designation of Birmingham
Police Department employees as Customs Officers (Excepted),” attached.
1
movement when they stood up against Bull Connor and his oppressive police tactics, and this is a
perfect opportunity to live up to that legacy. Further entangling our local police force with ICE
would have extremely harmful effects on many Birmingham residents. This ordinance, if passed,
would ultimately make Birmingham residents less safe from violence and crime, perpetrators less
likely to be held accountable, and our police force less effective in protecting our community.
Turning our police officers into de facto ICE agents will disintegrate any trust that has been
carefully developed with our communities, resulting in a far more dangerous city for Black and
Brown people. We ask you sincerely: what value does this proposed ordinance and corresponding
ICE contract actually hold when our local police force already has the full authority to investigate
and take action with respect to all crimes under Alabama law, including human trafficking, child
exploitation, and other violent crimes? We do not need to deputize our local police force as ICE
agents in order to reduce crime and protect our residents. Our police officers already have legal
authority to investigate crime and enforce our laws. Complicity with ICE will harm the most
vulnerable of Birmingham’s residents that are already disproportionately funneled into the jail-to-
deportation system.2 Further collusion with ICE will incentivize our police to further target black
and brown people in ICE’s pursuit of federal arrests3 and asset seizures. Residents who already
mistrust ICE will now reasonably fear any interactions with our local police force.
All residents, regardless of nationality and ethnicity, must feel safe calling the police when
they are the victim or witness to a crime. However, if our police force becomes an ICE force, then
victims and witnesses of human trafficking, domestic violence, and other crimes will not come
forward.4 Victims will suffer in silence, witnesses will be too afraid to cooperate with our local
police, and the perpetrators of crime will more likely to escape accountability. Our immigrant
communities are aware of formal and informal collusion between the Birmingham Police
Department and federal immigration enforcement agencies. Deepening this troubling complicity
will further erode the tenuous trust that currently exists between our local police and our immigrant
residents.
Further, this proposed collusion with ICE will decrease the transparency and accountability
of our police department. There are no accountability measures built into this plan for ICE
collusion. Handing over power of oversight to a rogue federal agency will make our police answer
to ICE rather than our community. The ICE contract explicitly requires deputized police officers
2
According to BJS data from 2015, Black people are more likely to be subject to traffic and street stops
than their white counterparts. See ELIZABETH DAVIS, ANTHONY WHYDE & LYNN LANGTON, US DEP’T.
OF JUST., CONTACTS BETWEEN POLICE AND PUBLIC, 2015, at 4 tbl.3 (2018),
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpp15.pdf. See, e.g, Shamira Ibrahim, Ousman Darboe Could Be
Deported Any Day. His Story is a Common One for Black Immigrants, VOX (Feb. 5, 2020),
https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/9/30/20875821/black-immigrants-school-prison-deportation-
pipeline
3
In recent years there has been a massive increase in the prosecution of immigration crimes in federal
court. See MARK MOTIVANS, U.S. DEP’T OF JUST., IMMIGRATION, CITIZENS, AND THE FEDERAL JUSTICE
SYSTEM, 1998-2018, at 1 fig. 1 (2019), https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/icfjs9818.pdf
4
See Reva Dhingra, et al., “When local police cooperate with ICE, Latino communities under-report
crime. Here’s the data,” Washington Post, February 5, 2021,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/05/when-local-police-cooperate-with-ice-latino-
communities-under-report-crime-heres-data/
2
to follow ICE directives and instructions. From years of experience we know the devastating
effects of ICE presence in our communities. We have seen ICE inflict physical and psychological
violence on our families, friends, and neighbors. We have seen ICE agents breaking laws with
impunity. We have seen unscrupulous employers use the threat of ICE as a means to steal hard-
earned wages and retaliate against worker organizing. We have seen hard-working families—the
same ones that are celebrated as essential to the fabric of our society—torn apart.
Across the country, contractual involvement between local police and ICE has led to racial
profiling, civil rights violations, isolation of immigrant communities, and family separations.5
Some cities and counties have suffered considerable financial harm as a consequence of working
with ICE.6 More and more cities are choosing to stop colluding with ICE altogether. In recent
years, municipalities in states such as Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, and Virginia
have wisely ended their contracts with ICE.7 We must not jeopardize Birmingham’s financial
stability by entering into a risky ICE contract.
You, our elected leaders, are responsible for promoting the safety and well-being of all our
city’s residents, and disentangling our city from its current collusion with ICE will do just that.
Our local police force is responsible for protecting our residents. Keeping our police focused and
accountable to our communities, rather than having them do ICE’s job and following ICE’s
directives, will help our police keep us safe. As a coalition of community organizations, we implore
you to allow us to further educate you on the dangers of this proposed ordinance and ICE contract.
The Mayor’s office is pushing this ordinance through the City Council without an
opportunity for meaningful vetting and debate. The Mayor’s office has not engaged with the
immigrant and minority communities who would be most impacted by this ordinance. On the
contrary, the manner in which this issue has been handled has lacked transparency at every stage.
It seems that the Mayor’s office blindsided the public, and the City Council itself, in its attempts
to quietly add this item to the City Council’s agenda. Then, it bypassed the Public Safety
Committee meeting where local immigrants’ rights leaders were promised a chance to voice our
concerns.
On Tuesday morning the City Council will vote on this ordinance, and our coalition still
has not had the opportunity to meaningfully discuss our understandable concerns. At the very least
we deserve a chance to be heard and included in the discussion. We respectfully ask that the City
Council vote down this ordinance. Nothing about us without us.
5
See Debbie Cenziper, et al., “Under Trump, ICE aggressively recruited sheriffs as partners to question
and detain undocumented immigrants,” Washington Post, November 23, 2021,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/trump-ice-sheriffs-immigrants-
287g/?itid=ap_debbiecenziper. See Immigrant Legal Resource Center, https://www.ilrc.org/national-map-
287g-agreements
6
Courts have held Clackamas County, Oregon liable for $30,100, and Salt Lake County, Utah liable for
$75,000 as the result of constitutional violations in the course of local law enforcement collusion with
ICE. See Miranda-Olivares v. Clackamas Cnty., No. 12-02317, 2014 WL 1414305, at *10 (D. Or. Apr.11,
2014); Uroza v. Salt Lake Cnty., No.11- 713, 2013 WL 653968, at *5-6 (D. Ut. Feb. 21, 2013).
7
See https://www.ilrc.org/local-enforcement-map for a map of jurisdictions that have limited local
entanglement with ICE. ICE agents are the nation’s interior immigration enforcers.
3
Sincerely,
Adelante Alabama Worker Center
Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice
Beloved Community Church
Birmingham DSA
Birmingham Mutual Aid
Cell A65
Dynamite Hill-Smithfield Community Land Trust
Greater Birmingham Ministries
Saint Junia United Methodist Church
SWEET Alabama
