The District and Montgomery County will soon be part of a federal program that targets jailed illegal immigrants for deportation, despite ongoing objections from a D.C. councilman.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has let jurisdictions know it is now mandatory that they join Secure Communities, a program that runs inmates’ fingerprints through an immigration database. Earlier this month, ICE canceled agreements it had signed with individual jurisdictions, saying the agreements were confusing and gave the impression the program was optional. It’s not, and the remaining jurisdictions will be required to join Secure Communities by 2013.
ICE has already signed up half the country. Locally, only the District and Montgomery County have been holdouts, although inmates labeled by ICE for deportation have long been turned over by each jurisdiction anyway. All of Virginia joined the Secure Communities in June 2010 despite protests from Arlington County.
| Secure Communities national stats: |
| October 2008- June 2011: 86,616 criminal illegal immigrant removed by ICE |
| Of those: 31,395 were convicted for violent crimes like murder, rape and child sex abuse |
| ICE says it is increasingly focusing on violent criminals and expects the percentage of deported violent criminals to increase. |
On Sept. 27, Montgomery County will officially become part of Secure Communities, said Corrections Department Director Arthur Wallenstein.
“There’s nothing that we will do, differently, though,” he said.
An ICE spokeswoman said the program is focused on deporting illegal immigrants convicted of violent crimes. Secure Communities doesn’t require local police to enforce federal immigration laws. Instead, its attention is on illegal immigrants who are already jailed for other crimes.
The District signed onto the program in 2009, but the D.C. Council pushed the city into backing out, saying it would lead police to unfairly target the city’s immigrant community and disrupt efforts encouraging immigrants to report crimes to police. Mendelson led the charge, and he hasn’t given up.
“ICE is a federal program mired in legal and regulatory squabbles,” Mendelson wrote in a letter to the D.C. Department of Corrections on Monday. “The DOC needs to be prudent and limited in its participation.”
Mendelson did not respond to a request for comment.
Both D.C. and Montgomery County already send inmates’ fingerprints to the FBI, which then shares them with the ICE, officials said. In 2010, the D.C. jail held 185 inmates on warrants from ICE, according to data DOC provided to the council. Only 10 were released to ICE, and another 78 to the U.S. Marshals Service. More than 30 were put back on the streets. A DOC spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment.
Police union chief Kris Baumann questioned Mendelson’s objections.
“It is unfortunate that Phil Mendelson … would try to interfere in a federal program designed to make the District safer,” Baumann said. “Behaving irresponsibly has its consequences, and now the federal government has mandated the District will follow the law.”
