Secure CommunitiesMinnesota becomes twenty-seventh state to fully join Secure Communities
Last week Minnesota joined the controversial federal immigration program known as Secure Communities, while critics continue to blast the program; Minnesota is the twenty-seventh state fully to join the now mandatory program designed to share fingerprint information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
Demonstrators in St.Paul opposing Secure Communities program // Source: fightbacknews.org
Last week Minnesota joined the controversial federal immigration program known as Secure Communities, while critics continue to blast the program.
Minnesota is the twenty-seventh state fully to join the now mandatory program designed to share fingerprint information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Under Secure Communities, all fingerprints from individuals detained by local and state authorities are automatically scanned and sent to ICE to determine their immigration status.
The Minnesota Star Tribune reports that Sheriff Rich Stanek of Hennepin County welcomed the state’s full participation in the program and said he was confident that thousands of illegal and dangerous immigrants would now be identified by federal authorities and deported. In contrast critics of the program say it has been used as a tool to deport ordinary law-abiding immigrants and minor offenders, despite its original goal of deporting violent illegal immigrants. Local law enforcement officials have also stated that the program has strained ties with local immigrant communities.
Several states including California, Massachusetts, and Illinois have attempted to opt out of the program, but earlier this year DHS declared that Secure Communities would become a mandatory program and that all states must join by 2013.
According to an editorial by the Los Angeles Times, more than half of the 148,481 immigrants removed from the program’s inception in 2008 through October 2011 had either no criminal convictions or only minor ones. Of those deported, more than 3,000 were U.S. citizens that had been mistakenly removed.
In defense of the program, ICE officials have repeatedly stated that Secure Communities only targets violent immigrants charged with serious offenses.
“It’s the law, and we think it is very good policy, to focus our resources on people who are here unlawfully and also committing crimes,” saidJohn Morton, the head of ICE, in an interview with the New York Times.
