In an attempt to reassess the validity of the nation’s crime labs, the Justice Department and the FBI have launched a sweeping review of thousands of criminal cases. The Justice Department will initially focus on 10,000 hair and fiber analyses, many of which are believed to have led to a wrongful conviction. According to the Washington Post, “the undertaking is the largest post-conviction review ever done by the FBI. It will include cases conducted by all FBI Laboratory hair and fiber examiners since at least 1985 and may reach earlier if records are available.”

The review follows an April panel of the National Academy of Science that urged Congress to overhaul the current crime lab system and the methodological standards of forensic evidence. The Post also reported on the issue in April, finding that flawed forensic evidence has likely led to widespread wrongful convictions of innocent people.

Both reports found that forensic examinations such as hair and fiber analyses were “subjective and lacked grounding in solid research and that the FBI lab lacked protocols to ensure that agent testimony was scientifically accurate.” The lack of standards for effective examinations and convictions has allowed forensic analysts to base their conclusions on very few matching characteristics. The Post reported that out of about 30 possible traits used to determine hair matches, analysts often based their conclusions on only 6 or 7 matching characteristics. In one case, an FBI scientist based his testimony — which landed a defendant 28 years in prison before being exonerated — on only three characteristics: “it was black, it was a human head hair, and it was from an African American.” A former Justice Department official said in support of the review that:

“These recent developments remind us of the profound questions about the validity of many forensic techniques that have been used over the course of many decades and underscore the need for continuing attention at every level to ensuring the scientific validity and accuracy of the forensic science that is used every day in our criminal justice system.”

The last time the FBI overhauled a standard forensic practice was in 2005, when it stopped using the chemical composition of bullets to draw conclusions on their manufacturers. While many details of how the newest review will be conducted remain unclear, it will include help from both the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Innocence Project, a group that seeks to exonerate people based on DNA testing.

– Nina Liss-Schultz

Our guest blogger is Sarah Jane Glynn, an economic policy analyst at the Center for American Progress.

Far too many eligible Latino children are going hungry without nutritional assistance, and as the House Agriculture Committee considers billions in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a House Republican’s amendment would make an already terrible situation significantly worse.

The House version of the Farm Bill includes more than $16 billion in cuts to SNAP, primarily by making it more difficult for needy Americans to receive benefits. This borders on insanity when more than 46 million citizens rely on nutrition assistance benefits to have enough to eat and when nearly 4 million households with children are unable to provide adequate food for those children.

An amendment introduced by Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL) would achieve some of these cuts by denying nutritional assistance to qualifying Americans if they live in a household with anyone who cannot prove they have authorization to live in the United States—even when those individuals are not seeking benefits for themselves.

This amendment is plainly directed at the children of undocumented immigrants. About a quarter of our nation’s children have immigrant parents, and out of all children of immigrants, more than 8 in 10 (86 percent) are U.S. citizens. Heartbreakingly, more than a quarter (26.2 percent) of Hispanic households experience food insecurity, a higher rate than any other racial or ethnic group. Under the proposed restriction, 4.5 million U.S. citizen children would lose their access to nutrition assistance benefits and over 80 percent of the children who would lose benefits under the proposed restriction are Latino.

The amendment would also affect native-born citizens who do not have birth certificates or passports. Approximately 11 million native-born Americans have neither a birth certificate nor passport, and people making less than $25,000 per year are nearly twice as likely to lack these forms of documentation than those with higher incomes. In total, about 3 million low-income citizens do not have a passport or birth certificate in their home.

This amendment is utterly unnecessary because of the way nutrition assistance eligibility is already determined. In order to qualify for benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, workers must meet eligibility criteria based on income and, in some cases, employment. An individual must already be a U.S. citizen or lawfully present noncitizen in addition to meeting the eligibility requirements. Undocumented immigrants are already barred from receiving assistance.

The legal status of household members who would not be receiving benefits is not currently required when an application is made for an eligible individual, though their income and assets are used in calculating eligibility. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, this is because:

Some applicants (typically eligible children in families where other adults are not eligible) cannot apply on their own. They depend on adult household members to secure assistance. States must be able to structure an application process that enables these members to apply for children without divulging information about their own immigration status.

Immigrant families, including those with citizen children, are already less likely to apply for nutrition assistance benefits than families where all members are native-born, even when they qualify. In 2008 only 51 percent of eligible noncitizens participated in the program and only 55 percent of qualifying citizen children living with noncitizen adults were enrolled. Nationally, 67 percent of all eligible individuals participate, along with 86 percent of all eligible children.

Forcing household members who would not be receiving nutrition assistance benefits to prove their legal status would be antithetical to the goals of the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program, which is to provide critical nutrition benefits to American citizens who might otherwise go hungry.

On Tuesday, the District of Columbia City Council unanimously approved a bill that will limit the circumstances under which local law enforcement is required to hold individuals at the request of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The effort undermines the federal Secure Communities program, which requires local law enforcement to share fingerprints with federal immigration officials. If an individual’s fingerprints show up in a Department of Homeland Security Database, ICE can ask local law enforcement to detain the individual for 48 hours so it can take the person into custody.

The D.C. decision comes at a time when cities around the country are taking a stand against harsh immigration laws like those seen in Arizona. Since cities cannot opt out of participating in Secure Communities, they are using a strategy of restricting detainment circumstances to fight against it:

“We want to be the anti-Arizona,” Sarahi Uribe, a D.C.-based organizer for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told The Huffington Post. “Our entire campaign to get cities to break ties with federal immigration enforcement is an effort to be the opposite of Arizona.”

Opponents of Secure Communities, which is under ICE, say the program has the same effects as SB 1070′s most damaging provisions, by potentially scaring undocumented immigrants away from working with police.[...]

The newly-approved law restricts the period in which immigrants will be held from 48 to 24 hours, requires that ICE pay the local costs of incarceration and specifies that those held on detainers must have been convicted of serious crimes.

The city of Chicago is on its way towards joining D.C. and easing federal immigration enforcement within city limits. Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) announced on Tuesday that he will also propose an ordinance that would restrict the circumstances in which local law enforcement can turn undocumented immigrants over to federal immigration authorities, noting that they would only be able to do so cases where the immigrants have serious criminal convictions or outstanding criminal warrants.

“If you have no criminal record, being part of a community is not a problem for you,” Mr. Emanuel said, speaking at a high school library in Little Village, a Latino neighborhood. “We want to welcome you to the city of Chicago.”

The mayor said the proposal was part of his goal to make Chicago the “most immigrant-friendly city in the country.”

D.C. and Chicago are not the only places where officials are fighting back against harsh immigration laws. Last week, California state senators approved the Trust Act, which is designed protect undocumented immigrants and push back against Secure Communities. The bill, awaiting action in the Assembly, would prevent local law enforcement officials from referring a detainee to ICE unless the person detained has been convicted of a violent or serious felony.

–Alex Brown