ImmigrationU.S. recalibrating Secure Communities

As more and more municipalities across the country refuse to hold undocumented immigrants in jail on behalf of DHS’ Secure Communities program, President Barack Obama is adopting a strategy to limit deportations to undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of violent crimes. The new strategy would help relieve political pressure on the White House as immigrant rights activists continue to label Obama as the “deporter in chief” for his administration’s aggressive enforcement of immigration laws.

Secure Communities began under the George W. Bush administration to coordinate enforcement of federal immigration laws with local communities. The FBI collects the fingerprints of individuals arrested by local and state police, to identify fugitives or individuals wanted in other jurisdictions. With Secure Communities, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials review the fingerprints against immigration databases to see whther arrested individuals are deportable.

Secure Communities requires that local law enforcement agencies hold detainees until an ICE agent arrives, but police chiefs say that the law has made undocumented immigrants less likely to report crimes when they have been victims or witnesses. “The immigrant community are the prey; they are not the predators,” said Ron Teachman, chief of police in South Bend, Indiana. “We need them to be the eyes and ears. They are exploited in their workplace, in their neighborhoods and in their own homes with domestic violence.”

The program has also strained local budgets as jails become overbooked with nonviolent criminals. Roughly 283,000 immigrants have been deported under the program between 2008 and April of this year, according to ICE. The new change will help local law enforcement focus more on dangerous criminals.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the number of municipalities cooperating with Secure Communities has grown from fourteen in 2008 to more than 3,000 today, but an increasing number of communities are refusing to cooperate. Several cities and counties in Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin have passed laws limiting cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration officials.

Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a non-profit which supports more restrictive immigration policies, called the backlash from states a threat to public safety. “To suggest that sheriffs can individually decide if they would comply with an ICE hold or not — it’s a broad threat to the constitutional framework under which immigration law exists,” Stein said.

House Republicans have made it clear they would reject any attempt to reform Secure Communities through rule changes until an immigration reform bill passes the House. In 2012, Obama bypassed Congress and ordered immigration officials to cease the deportation of undocumented young people, called Dreamers, who were brought into the country as children.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said that unilateral decisions by Obama to reduce deportations would further hobble efforts to convince House Republicans to pass a bipartisan immigration reform bill. “Until the president gives us some confidence that we can trust him to implement an immigration reform bill,” Boehner said, “we really don’t have much to talk about.”

Obama is driven by “the issues and concerns of families being separated” but is leaving the policy analysis to DHS chief Jeh Johnson, said White House press secretary Jay Carney. In a 15 May 2014 interview with PBSNewsHour, Johnson said Secure Communities needed a “fresh start.”