ImmigrationDHS implements new deportation scheme to replace Secure Communities

Last November, DHS chief Jeh Johnson halted Secure Communities, a federal program meant to focus deportation efforts on immigrants who broke laws after they entered the United States. The program 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 reviewed the fingerprints against immigration databases to see whether arrested individuals are deportable. Johnson referred to Secure Communities last year saying “its very name has become a symbol for general hostility toward the enforcement of our immigration laws.”

A Baltimore Sun analysis found that more than 40 percent of the immigrants deported from Maryland under Secure Communities had no prior criminal record. This led then-Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley to restrict the state’s cooperation with ICE on immigration detainers- requests that local jails hold illegal immigrants until ICE agents can pick them up. Around 250 jurisdictions now have limited cooperation with ICE’s requests. This has made it difficult for ICE agents to implement Secure Communities. “That was getting to be a bigger and bigger problem in terms of our ability to get at the criminals,” Johnson said last month, saying he was in the midst of a “road show” to sell mayors and governors on the new approach.

“The new enforcement program takes two to dance,” Johnson said.

After months of working to improve Secure Communities, the Obama administration recently announced the Priority Enforcement Program, under which jails will be asked to notify ICE agents when a deportable immigrant will be released — so agents can be waiting — instead of holding him or her in jail until ICE agents arrive. This new approach is a response to criticism of Secure Communities from local law enforcement units that said the program strained local budgets as jails became overbooked with nonviolent criminals.

DHS officials are touring the country to convince local law enforcement agencies to participate in the new program, but they are already facing backlash. “They presented it as a kinder and gentler way for ICE collaborate with local police,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, who met last week with ICE Director Sarah Saldana and Alejandro Mayorkas, deputy DHS secretary. “I told them it’s not kinder or gentler enough.”

Chris Newman, Legal Director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told the Sun that the root of the problem is that ICE continues to “mine the criminal justice system” to meet deportation targets. As ICE tries to meet those goals, Newman said, the agency will likely deport people convicted of less-serious offenses because many of the most serious criminals are serving long jail terms.

Since last October, local authorities have received 58,500 detainer requests from ICE. Most of the people targeted in those requests have not been convicted of serious crimes or aggravated felonies; according to ICE figures, only 16,384 of them have serious convictions, nearly 14,000 have been convicted only of misdemeanors, and more than 20,746 do not meet ICE’s definition of priority deportation. An agency spokeswoman has said some of the people who have not been convicted of serious crimes, have been accused of them. This, nevertheless, contradicts ICE’s assurance to communities that it aims to target only undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records.