Immigrants-rights activists contend that the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement's Secure Communities initiative contains a number of the same flaws as Arizona's SB 1070. Secure Communities is a program in which participating jurisdictions have local police forward biometric identifying information of people they arrest to ICE, which then targets them for removal. Just to give you an idea of the program's scale, it operates in 632 jurisdictions in 32 states, including every county along the border.
The Center for Constitutional Rights argues that the program turns local police into immigration enforcement officers, while ICE contends that's inaccurate because the police themselves do little extra work when participating in the program. While CCR says that like SB 1070, the program incentivizes racial profiling because the police know anyone they arrest will have their information forwarded to ICE, the government says they have "not received any formal complaints or allegations of racial profiling." While CCR has previously cited the Department of Homeland Security's own numbers to show most of those deported have no criminal record or were suspected of minor offenses, ICE recently issued a response taking issue with CCR's numbers, saying they were out of date. In their response to CCR, ICE touted an increase in the percentage of undocumented in detention who had criminal records (emphasis original):
In just one year (from June 2009 to June 2010), the criminal alien population in detention has increased from 47 to 57 percent of the total alien population in detention. Additionally, during the same timeframe criminal alien removals have increased from 34 to 50 percent of the total aliens removed.
One of CCR's other complaints, that participating jurisdictions aren't allowed to opt out, was recently resolved with ICE saying that it's possible for them to do so. Renée Feltz and Stokely Baksh report that that's exactly what's happening, with Arlington County, Virginia, and Santa Clara County, California, already voting unanimously to opt out:
The vote was welcomed by elated cheers from immigrant activists and union members who'd gathered to support it.
“We had a big victory today,” said Margaret Huang, Executive Director for the Rights Working Group. “They took a strong position and made it clear that if the federal government expects to cooperate with local jurisdictions, they actually have to go through consultation and and discussion about programs before they are imposed on that local jurisdiction.”
Until now, only Washington D.C. had passed an opt-out resolution. Local officials in all three areas have expressed concern that the program had been activated without their approval.
Arlington and Santa Clara are very liberal counties, so we'll see how many other jurisdictions decide to opt out of the program. There are other efforts opt out in states like New York and Pennsylvania, with the governors of Colorado and Washington considering doing so at the state level.
