A new immigration enforcement program from the federal government effectively could eliminate Prince William County’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, experts say.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning to make the program, known as Secure Communities, available to all 1,200 of the country’s state and federal prisons and 3,100 local jails by the end of 2012.
Fairfax County recently became the first jurisdiction in Virginia to begin using the program. Under Secure Communities, local officers scan the fingerprints of individuals arrested, which are run through government databases.
Prince William’s program, a partnership with ICE known as 287(g), deputizes local officials to enforce some federal immigration laws.
But if Secure Communities becomes more widely used, it would be “very difficult to see” how the county’s crackdown could produce different results, said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at New York University’s School of Law. The 287(g) program “and Secure Communities seem to be operating on parallel tracks without anyone coordinating the two.” The Migration Policy Institute is a nonpartisan think tank that studies and analyzes migration policies.
“Given that many of the 287(g) agreements that operate in jails already allow local correctional officers to check the immigration status of prison inmates, it is possible that Secure Communities will either make redundant or subsume those agreements,” Chishti and Claire Bergeron wrote in a recent article.
ICE officials say the programs work together.
“The two programs complement each other and … have different implementations,” said ICE spokesman Richard Rocha.
Prince William Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart, R-at large, said he did not believe the two were redundant, arguing that the 287(g) program allowed county police officers to participate in the deportation process.
“Just because a community identifies an illegal immigrant” doesn’t mean the person will get deported, he said.
Local, state and federal governments have worked together on immigration enforcement since the early 20th century, said Alan Kraut, who specializes in immigration history at American University.
“It’s obviously a good thing if you get drug dealers and you get violent criminals [with the program],” he said. “It’s just a question of how it’s enforced … and that’s why it has to be watched and scrutinized carefully.”
ICE will spend $1.4 billion on criminal alien enforcement in fiscal 2009, which ends Sept. 30, according to David Venturella, executive director of Secure Communities.
Secure Communities at a glance
» Uses fingerprint identification technology currently being used by the FBI and parts of the Department of Homeland Security.
» A single submission of fingerprints as part of the normal arrest and booking process automatically will check them against the FBI’s database and Homeland Securities’ US-VISIT program.
» When there is a fingerprint match in both systems, ICE and the local law enforcement agency are notified.
» ICE focuses on the most dangerous criminal aliens, those who have been convicted or are charged with an offense including national security, homicide, kidnapping, assault, robbery, sex and narcotics crimes that carry a sentence of greater than one year.
Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
