With all the talk about federalism these days, the conflict between the states and Obama administration’s secure communities program has gone largely unnoticed.
Jurisdictions covered by Secure Communities forward the biometric information of anyone arrested by local law enforcement to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in order to determine whether they’re in the country legally. What that means is the program retains a number of the problems caused by Arizona’s draconian SB-1070 law: It incentivizes racial profiling, discourages undocumented immigrants from talking to police, and drives them further underground. Several immigrant-friendly states have tried to opt-out of the program, but DHS reversed itself months ago and said that the program wasn’t optional.
Then last Friday, as Julianne Hing explains, they announced that the original memorandum of understanding given to states that implied they could opt out was no longer in force. The memorandums stated, “This MOA will remain in effect from the date of signing until it is terminated by either party.” The feds explained they were just kidding.
“ICE has determined that an MOU is not required to activate or operate Secure Communities for any jurisdiction,” ICE director John Morton wrote in his letter to states’ governors.
“Once a state or local law enforcement agency voluntarily submits fingerprint data to the federal government, no agreement with the state is legally necessary for one part of the federal government to share it with another part.”
Basically, because local jurisdictions forward identifying information to the FBI, the government is saying they don’t need permission from the states to keep implementing the program, since the FBI can share the information with ICE. Since the program is administrative and not created by law, they can pretty much change the rules of how the program is run anytime they want.
The program is ostensibly meant to help DHS focus on its goal of targeting undocumented immigrants who are a threat to public safety, but only about 14 percent of the matches involve people convicted of high level offenses like murder. The vast majority are level 2 or 3 offenders, with 2 comprising those who have committed property crimes and 3 including people guilty of misdemeanors. At least a quarter, according to Renée Feltz and Stokely Baksh, haven’t been previously convicted of a crime.
