Thread: 111,000 Criminal Aliens Identified by ICE in 2009

Secure Communities Initiative Identified More Than 111,000 Criminal Aliens in Its First Year

Release Date: November 12, 2009

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010


Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Assistant Secretary John Morton today announced that ICE’s Secure Communities initiative—a partnership with local law enforcement agencies that uses biometrics to identify and remove criminal aliens—identified more than 111,000 criminal aliens in local custody during its first year.

Secure Communities provides our local partners with an effective tool to identify and remove dangerous criminal aliens who pose a threat to public safety,â€

Thanks for letting them into our home /sarcasm off

So, I wonder how much this has cost the public? Combined with the other illegal alien lawlessness we put up with they must be costing us 50-100 billion every year. And then there are the indirect expenses, as well.

I don't know what it cost but if it identifies and and gets rid of criminal illegal aliens it is worth whatever it cost.

If anyone sees an article about the numbers from your city, county or state please share it with us here.

ICE nabs 111,000 criminal illegal aliens in one year
November 12, 12:57 PM
San Diego County Political Buzz Examiner
Kimberly Dvorak
1 comment

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) along with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the Secure Communities initiative nabbed more than 111,000 criminal illegal aliens since its inception one year ago.

The debut program is a partnership between ICE and local law enforcement agencies that uses biometrics to identify and remove criminal aliens.

Secure Communities operates jointly between DHS, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and participating law enforcement agencies to check the digital fingerprints of illegals arrested and booked into local level against DHS “biometrics-based immigration records in addition to FBI databases." This process allows ICE to take appropriate action to ensure that dangerous criminal aliens are not released back into communities.

The new law enforcement tool classifies illegal immigrants into three categories; level one crime includes murder, rape and kidnapping; level two and three include burglary and property type of crimes.

The first year of Secure Communities netted approximately 11,000 undocumented aliens with level one crimes, DHS also claims 1,900 of those criminals have already been deported.

“Secure Communities is one of the programs that enhance our efforts to keep the peace in the largest urban area in Texas,â€

News results for 111,000 criminal aliens
United Press International 111000 'criminal aliens' ID'd in nation‎ - 6 hours ago
About 10 percent of the 111000 so-called “criminal aliensâ€

Secure Communities is the program that the Obama Admin is pushing over the more effective 287(g) Program.

The kinder gentler DHS... They think less is best. What a mess! They only target "criminal" aliens even though all illegal aliens are criminals.

Aren't the Deportation numbers down again this year?

Dixie

August 13, 2009

Secure Communities

Secure Communities: Mission

Secure Communities: A Comprehensive Plan to Identify and Remove Criminal Aliens is a Department of Homeland Security initiative that improves public safety by implementing a comprehensive, integrated approach to identify and remove criminal aliens from the United States. The Secure Communities Program Management Office coordinates all ICE planning, operational, technical, and fiscal activities devoted to transforming, modernizing, and optimizing the criminal alien enforcement process. ICE plans to spend $1.4 billion of Congressional appropriations for criminal alien enforcement efforts in FY 2009.

Secure Communities: A Comprehensive plan to Identify and Remove Criminal Aliens is built on three pillars that address specific challenges.

The Challenge: Identify
Determining the identity, criminal history, and immigration status of suspected criminal aliens before they have been released from local law enforcement custody has been a long-standing challenge for ICE. Traditional document-based methods of identification are:

Labor-intensive and time-consuming
Limited by the accuracy of biographic information obtained from suspects who may use aliases and other false data
Complicated by the fact that criminal history records and immigration records reside in different, non-integrated systems

The Solution: Modernize Criminal Alien Identification
The Secure Communities strategy responds to the identification challenge by combining biometric identification technologies currently in use by the FBI and other parts of DHS in a new, powerful way.

The technology enables local Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) to initiate an integrated records check of criminal history and immigration status for individuals in their custody.

A single submission of fingerprints as part of the normal criminal arrest / booking process will automatically check both the Integrated Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division and the Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) of the Department of Homeland Security’s US-VISIT Program.

The LEA continues to be notified when there is a positive identification within IAFIS. Now, both ICE and the LEA are automatically notified in parallel when a match occurs in IDENT.

ICE evaluates each case to determine the individual’s immigration status and provides a timely response to local law enforcement partners—usually within a few hours.

The Challenge: Prioritize
Information about the total size, location, and characteristics of the criminal alien population is based on estimates. A lack of reliable data complicates planning and scaling operations to meet the challenge with limited resources.

The Solution: Prioritize Enforcement Actions
The Secure Communities strategy has adopted a risk-based approach to prioritizing enforcement actions in order to maximize the impact on public safety. By assessing the risk each criminal alien poses to the public, ICE focuses immigration enforcement on the most dangerous criminal aliens first.

The most dangerous criminal aliens are individuals who have been previously convicted of or who are currently charged with a Level 1 offense—national security, homicide, kidnapping, assault, robbery, sex offenses and narcotics crimes that carry a sentence of greater than one year.

By prioritizing immigration enforcement actions on the most dangerous criminals, ICE uses its resources judiciously. The Secure Communities plan enables ICE to strengthen public safety while reducing disruption to law-abiding immigrant families and communities.

The Challenge: Transform
Biometric identification is deploying to the approximately 30,000 local jails and booking locations throughout the nation. Even with prioritized deployment and enforcement actions focusing on the highest threats to community safety, the number of dangerous criminal aliens taken into ICE custody is increasing dramatically. Enhanced identification activity creates a commensurate need to accommodate criminal aliens via apprehension, processing, detention, and ultimately, removal from the United States.

The Solution: Transform ICE Business Processes and Systems
To accommodate the increased number of identified criminal aliens, ICE is working to optimize capacity by expanding detention bed space, augmenting transportation resources, and supplementing staff. Automated systems and a renewed focus on process efficiency will reduce the amount of time criminal aliens spend in ICE custody and increase the speed with which they are removed from the United States. ICE is investing in::

Video teleconferencing equipment to facilitate interviews and immigration hearings

Sophisticated computer systems to manage bed space and transportation reservations and utilization

Integrated case and detainee management systems that track an individual throughout the immigration enforcement lifecycle
These investments plus state-of-the-art tools that provide an integrated end-to-end picture of the criminal alien enforcement process strengthen ICE capabilities to:

Perform scenario-based needs analysis for detention beds, transportation, and staffing

Measure investment decisions and understand the risks, trade-offs, and system-wide impacts of specific actions
Optimize overall capacity and operating efficiency

Deployment Strategy

Beginning in October 2008, ICE prioritized deployment of biometric identification capability to high risk jurisdictions. Continued deployment plans project nationwide coverage by 2013. For current status and recent successes please visit the Secure Communities web page.

Last Modified: Thursday, August 13, 2009
U.S. Department of Homeland Security

http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/factsheets/s ... nities.htm

Secure Communities: 287(g) with lipstick?

By SCSJ - Posted on March 12th, 2009
Tagged: Criminal JusticeHuman RightsImmigrant RightsPress Clipping
Source:
Independent Weekly
Link:
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Conten ... d%3A273892

Publication Date: Friday, January 23, 2009

Community activists worry that "Secure Communities" program in Orange County, NC will lead to racial profiling.

Orange County's reputation as a welcoming place for immigrants, documented or undocumented, may be dented by the sheriff department's participation in the federal "Secure Communities" program.

At issue is whether Secure Communities significantly differs from the controversial federal 287(g) program.

The Orange County Board of Commissioners last night asked Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass to explain the county's participation, beginning this month, in Secure Communities. The pilot federal project grants the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation automatic access to the personal information of people arrested in Orange County.

The Commission heard Pendergrass' report, but took no action.

The program is intended to help federal authorities locate illegal immigrants who have also been charged with crimes unrelated to immigration, including traffic violations, Pendergrass said.

"The system is simply that, when you fingerprint someone, it goes through the system, and we get a correct identification of the individual," Pendergrass said, referring to the DHS and FBI databases. "The system does go through the right side of Homeland Security, but we do not—and they do not tell us—if someone we have fingerprinted is someone who is an alien."

Pendergrass insisted the program did not violate Orange County's 2007 resolution opposing participation in the federal 287(g) program, which marshals local law enforcement agencies to arrest and detain undocumented immigrants.

"I never know if somebody is wanted by immigration, because they don't tell me, and we have no way of knowing," he said. "We're not like Alamance County, and other counties, where they enter into an agreement—and they hold in the jail illegal aliens."

Instead, Pendergrass said, "If they call us and tell us, 'You have Joe Blow, and he's an alien,' that's their business, and we don't get involved. If he's there on charges, he has to have all his charges resolved in Orange before immigration can touch him. It's just a simple thing people have misunderstood."

Orange County Attorney Geoff Gledhill said at the meeting that he did not think Pendergrass' participation in the program violates the county resolution, but noted that Secure Communities relates to "certain provisions of section 287(g)."

However, the difference between the two programs is slim, said Marty Rosenbluth, staff attorney at the Southern Coalition for Justice. He told the Commissioners that Secure Communities "doesn't just violate the spirit and intent of this resolution, but it also violates the color of the law."

"The effect of joining Secure Communities is to give ICE unfettered access to immigration information about members of the Orange County community," he wrote in a letter to the board. "Once ICE has matched the fingerprints of a detainee in Orange County jail, it is up to ICE, not the sheriff, to decide whether or not ICE will take action against the person," the letter went on. According to ICE, once a person is identified through the Secure Communities program, "[r]esponses may include such actions as: placing the alien immediately in ICE custody to avoid release; conducting personal interviews to gather additional information from the alien; placing detainers; and issuing charging documents."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a division of the Department of Homeland Security.

While Pendergrass distinguished Orange County's immigration program from 287(g) participating counties such as Alamance, Wake and Mecklenburg, he said that soon, all of North Carolina would be reporting fingerprinting data to federal immigration authorities.

"By the end of the year, and maybe the first few months of 2010, the whole system in the state of North Carolina will be just like ours," he said.

Matt Saldaña, msaldana (at) indyweek (dot) com