Thread: N.Y. severs ties to U.S. screening of immigrants

N.Y. severs ties to U.S. screening of immigrants

9:41 PM, Jun. 4, 2011
Written by
Laura Incalcaterra, Terence Corcoran and Leah Rae

Secure Communities
• The federal Secure Communities program began in 2008 and is scheduled to be fully in place by 2013.
• As of May 31, 42 percent of the nation had been activated into the program, including 31 of New York's 62 counties, among them Putnam, Rockland and Westchester.
• A total of 151,590 "convicted criminal aliens" had been arrested or booked into federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody nationwide and 77,160 had been removed from the U.S.

Despite Gov. Andrew Cuomo's decision to halt New York's participation in a controversial federal immigration program, non-violent illegal immigrants could still face deportation after encounters with police.

It's far from clear what will change now that the Secure Communities program — in which local law enforcement automatically shared information with the federal Department of Homeland Security — is suspended in New York. For now, immigrant advocates are hailing a shift away from an effort that was meant to target criminals but caught many others in the net.

"I think that it's very significant because it is an important community pushback," Rockland Immigration Coalition co-chair Gail Golden said. "It really is communities and law enforcement saying that programs like this really interfere with community policing."

Secure Communities was launched by the Bush administration in 2008 and the entire nation is scheduled to join by 2013.

Under the program, the fingerprints of everyone booked into a local or county jail are automatically sent to the Department of Homeland Security to be checked against prints on file with that agency.

Homeland Security checks to see if a person is in the country illegally or is a noncitizen with a criminal record, and can seek to deport that person. The agency's Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau, known as ICE, determines if deportation is warranted.

As of May 31, 42 percent of the nation had been activated into the program, including 31 of New York's 62 counties, among them Putnam, Rockland and Westchester.

Cuomo announced Wednesday that he had suspended New York's agreement with Homeland Security to participate in the program.

His decision followed a similar one last month by Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois.

Cuomo said the program had failed to meet its goals and posed serious consequences for witnesses, victims of crime and law enforcement. He halted New York's participation until a review was completed.

Homeland Security's inspector general is also reviewing the program.

The governor's counsel, Mylan L. Denerstein, discussed the concerns in a letter to John Sandweg, legal counsel to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.

"The heart of concern is that the program, conceived of as a method of targeting those who pose the greatest threat to our communities, is in fact having the opposite effect and compromising public safety by deterring witnesses to crime and others from working with law enforcement," Denerstein wrote.

When criminal suspects are booked in New York, their fingerprints are also sent to the FBI for criminal checks. The FBI then shares the fingerprints with Homeland Security.

In statements, both the FBI and ICE said the sharing would continue, and the FBI said it was mandated to provide the information under the USA Patriot Act, the Enhanced Border Security Act, and various appropriations bills.

There have been growing cries against Secure Communities, including protest rallies in the Lower Hudson Valley, as immigrant advocates, civil rights lawyers, and some elected officials and law enforcement officers raised concerns.

Critics have charged the program makes communities vulnerable to racial profiling, discourages victims of domestic violence and other crimes from contacting police and destroys trust between immigrant communities and police.

Susan Henner, an immigration attorney in White Plains, said police had gone so far as to ask car passengers for their immigration paperwork, something that did not happen before Secure Communities.

"To me it just feels like a lot of local law enforcement think that this is what they're supposed to be doing, and just sort of made their own rules and just call ICE all the time," Henner said.

"I feel like, with the most violent criminals, after they're convicted and they're in jail, that's the time to bring ICE into it, not before," Henner said.

Donald B. Smith, sheriff of Putnam County, the first New York county to sign onto Secure Communities, said the program was "an effective tool that enables police to find out quickly and accurately whether a person who is already under arrest for a state crime has also committed a serious immigration-related offense."

He rejected criticism about racial profiling because fingerprint checks are done for everyone arrested.

"For years, we on the local level have been ill-served by our federal leaders' failure to address the problems of illegal immigration," Smith said. "Now New Yorkers are not being properly served by our state governor, given his failure to support use of an effective law-enforcement tool in dealing with criminals."

Juan Pablo Ramirez, co-chair of the Rockland Immigration Coalition and president of the Jornaleros Humanitarian Project, a privately funded program for day laborers in Spring Valley, supported Cuomo's decision.
"When you think of New York, you think of Ellis Island. You think of the Statue of Liberty," Ramirez said. "There was no public discussion, no preparation for this."

The fact that fingerprints will still be forwarded to Homeland Security, leading to the continued deportations of people who have not committed violent crimes but are in the country illegally, underlines the need for immigration reform, he said.

"People say get in line," Ramirez said. "There is no line to get on. There is no clear path (to U.S. citizenship)."

Ed Kowalski of 9/11 Families for a Secure America Foundation, an organization that supports legal immigration, said Cuomo's decision will hurt public safety.

Kowalski got involved in the group after his niece, Elizabeth Butler, 17, of North Salem, was raped and murdered in 2005 by her ex-boyfriend, an illegal immigrant with a prior felony conviction for driving while intoxicated that made him subject to deportation.

"This program takes people who have already been arrested and runs them through a federal data base to ensure that people with a history of committing violent crimes are properly identified and deported," Kowalski said.

http://www.lohud.com/article/20110605/N ... ext%7CNews

Glad Gov. Cuomo's withdrawal from program to catch criminal illegal aliens will have little effect

Editorials

Saturday, June 4th 2011, 4:00 AM

Federal immigration officials say they're going to keep on screening New York's jailhouses for illegal immigrants who should be deported, despite Gov. Cuomo's symbolic pullout from the Secure Communities program. Good for the feds.

When people get in serious trouble with the law - and they're not supposed to be here in the first place - booting them is what Immigration and Customs Enforcement should be doing.

Cuomo suspended New York's participation in Secure Communities at the urging of advocates who say it sweeps up low-level offenders and people with no criminal convictions, and may scare immigrants away from cooperating with police.

But there's no way to enforce immigration laws that's going to make everyone happy. And this program is more sensible and effective than most.

Secure Communities piggybacks on the FBI's routine screening of fingerprints taken from criminal suspects. ICE runs a second check against a database of noncitizens. The agency deports about one in five of the illegal immigrants who turn up - prioritizing those with the worst histories or the most serious immigration violations.

All told, nationwide, the program has chucked out 77,000 criminal aliens, 28,000 of whom had committed aggravated felonies such as murder, rape, kidnapping or sexual abuse of children.

Thankfully, Cuomo's action changes nothing. While New York will not formally cooperate with Secure Communities, state police and other law enforcement agencies will continue sending fingerprints to the FBI, which will forward them to ICE.

America desperately needs comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for otherwise law-abiding undocumented residents. But practically and politically, reform must go hand in hand with tough enforcement. That's why former President George W. Bush was right to start Secure Communities, and why President Obama is right to aggressively follow through.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/201 ... z1OQUAkWoY