A new anti-immigrant “pilot program” from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is taking root in Connecticut and is threatening to spread towards Atlanta and New York.

Thirty agents from the Federal Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) announced that the program aims to eliminate the right to post bond for foreigners detained under deportation proceedings.

The objective is to reduce the number of people who “are lost” during the investigation process in order to avoid being returned to their country.

Official figures indicate that in 2001, only 15 percent of the immigrants in deportation proceedings appeared before the court for their departure sentence. The new program in Hartford, Connecticut, has guaranteed the expulsion of 95 percent of those sentenced.

“Unfortunately, with this policy the DHS abandoned the ‘case by case’ analysis in favor of a policy of blind arrests that violates the basic procedural rights of the individual,” said Marshall Fitz, director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).

Fitz is one of the hundreds of activists and lawyers in the entire country that has denounced this regulation because it violates constitutional rights. But Homeland Security seems determined to stay the course.

“If the community of non-governmental organizations has better ideas, we are always open to listen,” said Doug Maurer on behalf of ICE in Atlanta.

The immigration official said that delays in the budget have slowed the expansion of the detention centers, a key part of the program.

“The Law section 236 c of the Immigration Act is brutal,” said Bryan Lonagan, lawyer from the Legal Aid Society in New York. “It denies a person the right to post bond, no matter what type of crime or how minor it is.”

The topic brought back memories of Jose Padilla, the Puerto Rican locked up since 2002 in a North Carolina base, accused of intent to terrorism in United States. He is being held without charges, without a trial and without the right to an attorney.