GCIS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: Secure Communities Program Uses Biometrics to Target Illegal Immigrants

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: Emergency Management

01March2011 8:53pmEST

GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE:  As of last week, any person arrested and fingerprinted in California will now undergo an automatic immigration check.

California became the ninth state in which each county has activated Secure Communities, a fingerprint data-sharing program between local law enforcement offices and federal immigration enforcement agencies. Other states with complete activation include Texas, West Virginia, Florida, Arizona, Delaware, Virginia, Wisconsin and New Mexico.

Secure Communities is a program between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Justice that automatically sends name and fingerprint information submitted through a federal file-sharing system, where it’s checked against both the FBI criminal history records and biometrics-based immigration records in the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Automated Biometric Identification System.

If fingerprints match DHS records, ICE determines if immigration enforcement action is required, considering the immigration status of the alien, the severity of the crime and the person's criminal history. Priority is placed on aliens convicted of serious crimes, such as major drug offenses, murder, rape and kidnapping.

ICE estimates that 1 million individuals arrested by law enforcement each year are not U.S. citizens. Across the country, 1,033 jurisdictions in 38 states have activated the ICE system, which has resulted in the arrest of more than 59,000 convicted criminal illegal immigrants. By 2013, ICE plans to be fully rolled out nationwide.

“What we’re seeing here is ICE receiving leads and taking the appropriate enforcement action in almost real time as that information is coming in,” said Marc Rapp, acting assistant director for Secure Communities. “There is no instance where some individuals are having their identities queried and others are not. It happens across the board, thereby eliminating the potential for racial profiling.” (read full report)

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