Secure Communities pits local police against feds

Washington, Agency
Representatives of cities like Arlington, Virginia; Santa Clara and San Francisco, California; and Washington are promising to do battle to rid themselves of involvement in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's controversial Secure Communities program.

The Department of Homeland Security insists that Secure Communities will improve public safety by identifying and deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said last week that the program, a collaboration between immigration agents and local police, will be expanded to the entire United States in 2013.

Under the program, law enforcement will collect and then share fingerprints and other biometric data on all detainees with federal authorities, who later will check their names against an FBI database.

But the program has raised anxieties among the U.S. immigrant community, which - in the xenophobic climate that prevails in the country - is already showing reluctance to cooperate with the police to report crimes.

It has also aroused the anger of police in several cities and counties, who complain that they already have enough work to do without having to perform immigration-related tasks.

Immigrant defense groups have joined the national debate on the issue and say that, paradoxically, Secure Communities has caused racial discrimination and diverted the meager resources of the counties - who do not receive a cent from the federal government - to hunt down immigrants who are not a real danger to public safety.

If securing the cooperation of immigrants weren't already difficult, it will be even harder if they feel that the police are acting as an arm of the ICE, and the fight against crime should not be mixed up with efforts to deport undocumented people, they say.

Thus, cities like Arlington, Santa Clara, San Francisco and Washington want to leave the federal program, but Napolitano has made clear that they cannot do so.

"We don't consider Secure Communities an opt in/opt out program," she said last week, contradicting earlier statements from DHS.

Sarahi Uribe, who heads the "Uncover The Truth Behind ICE and Police Collaborations" campaign, has promised that activists will continue "demanding transparency and accountability" in the conduct of the Secure Communities program.

Walter Tejada, a member of the Arlington County Board, said that the contradictory messages from the DHS do not change the intention of the authorities in his Virginia county to continue their efforts to end their participation in Secure Communities.

San Francisco County Sheriff Michael Hennessey said that, after the Nov. 2 elections, he will ask for a meeting with top ICE officials and the California state Attorney General's Office to start the process of pulling out of the program.

But observers say that will be difficult, if not impossible, because the program is in force thanks to an agreement between the DHS and the Justice Department.

Currently, local police send fingerprints on every arrested person to state authorities, who - in turn - send them to the FBI, which can share that information with ICE without local jurisdictions learning of it or giving their consent.

If the goal is to improve public safety, the solution is clear: the government should, on one hand, reform the program to avoid the arrest of immigrants who don't have criminal records and, on the other hand, provide funds so that local jurisdictions can perform the immigration tasks that, in any case, are the responsibility of the federal authorities.