The District announced it was joining Secure Communities in November, but has yet to bring the system online, the Washington Examiner has learned.
“The IT requirements/logistics needed to be carefully crafted and properly addressed to ensure the reliable and accurate transfer of information between MPD, the FBI and DHS-ICE,” District police spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump said in an e-mail. ICE confirmed it is working with the District to put in place the program that checks the fingerprints of every inmate against an immigration database.
But while the District has taken months to hammer out the fine details since announcing it was joining Secure Communities, Loudoun County — which is announcing its participation in the program on Tuesday — has been using the program since the beginning of this month, a spokesman said.
D.C. police, Crump said, “are not in the business of inquiring about the residency status of any of the people we serve and is not in the business of enforcing civil immigration laws.”
She added: “Even the proposed Secure Communities, when initiated, merely allows the FBI to forward the fingerprints of adult arrestees to DHS-ICE via their interoperable databases. It is important to note that the program will not change the way any of our members carry out their duties or provide police services.”
