Thread: 24,000 criminal illegal aliens ID-ed in AZ.

111,000 criminal migrants ID'd through ICE program

Year-old program aims to deport worst offenders

by Daniel González - Nov. 13, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic .

The first year of a new federal program that lets local police run the fingerprints of crime suspects through immigration databases identified more than 24,000 criminal immigrants in Arizona, the government said Thursday.
Nationwide, more than 111,000 criminal immigrants were identified through the program, which for the first time allows authorities to search federal immigration records as well as FBI criminal databases as part of an effort to remove violent immigrants from the country.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials hailed the program as helping make communities safer by identifying immigrants charged with or convicted of crimes and then deporting them if they are here illegally and even if they are here legally but have committed a serious crime. The government fingerprints all legal immigrants.

As a result of the program, launched in October 2008, 16,526 foreign-born criminals have been deported, including 4,941 from Arizona, according to ICE.

The program is primarily aimed at deporting the most dangerous criminals. Since its inception, 1,911 immigrants charged with or convicted of crimes such as murder, rape and kidnapping have been deported, 534 of whom were identified in Arizona, ICE officials said.

"It enables ICE to identify and remove more criminal aliens, and those are the individuals that pose more threat to our communities," said Vincent Picard, a spokesman for ICE in Phoenix.

Local police departments have complained for years about not having access to immigration databases when they arrest someone they suspect of being in the country illegally, said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. She ran the former Immigration and Naturalization Service during the Clinton administration.

The new program gives them a uniform way of checking the immigration status of all crime suspects and therefore helps prevent criminal immigrants "from slipping through their fingers," she said.

Dubbed Secure Communities, the program is part of the federal government's stepped-up efforts to recruit the help of local law-enforcement officials to identify immigrants, both legal and illegal, who commit crimes in the United States.

Congress has devoted $1.4 billion to help ICE crack down on immigrants who commit crimes.

The program is in addition to ICE's controversial 287(g) program, which allows local police and jail officials to double as immigration agents and enforce immigration laws, usually the responsibility of the federal government.

The 287(g) program has come under fire from immigrant-rights advocates who say it leads to racial profiling by police who use their enhanced powers to target Latinos in search of illegal immigrants.

In October, ICE stripped Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio of his agency's authority to arrest illegal immigrants under the 287(g) program amid a federal civil-rights investigation into allegations that deputies use profiling to look for illegal immigrants during crime sweeps.

Some immigrant-rights advocates worry that the new program could also lead to civil-rights abuses like racial profiling if police officers arrest people for minor infractions just to check their immigration status, Meissner said.

The program allows police officers to run the fingerprints of crime suspects they arrest through the Department of Homeland Security's biometric database and then contact ICE if they come across an illegal immigrant. ICE then decides whether to respond, with dangerous criminals given the highest priority, Picard said.

Of the 24,252 criminal immigrants in Arizona identified through the program this year, 2,852 are facing deportation on top of the 4,941 already removed from the country, Picard said. In many of the other cases, ICE took no action because the charges were for minor crimes.

Background checks allow police to more easily confirm someone's immigration status and identity because many illegal immigrants use aliases and forged documents.

In the past, police had access only to the FBI's criminal databases, which tell police whether people arrested are wanted for other crimes but usually do not list immigration status.

The Secure Communities program is used in 11 states by 95 jurisdictions.

Florida identified 34,600 criminal immigrants during the first year, the most of any state. Arizona was second.

Arizona was among the first states to see Secure Communities implemented. Maricopa, Yuma, Yavapai and Pinal counties have signed up.

Arizona's early participation in the program, along with its proximity to the border, accounted for the high number of dangerous criminals identified through the program, Picard said.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... ogram.html

Imagine what these numbers would be if just half of our country was actually enforcing the laws!!!

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