Thread: 5 additional Texas counties become part of new ID program

I.C.E. News Release

June 16, 2009

5 additional Texas counties become part of new program to enhance identification and removal of criminal aliens

Criminal and immigration records of all sheriff's office inmates to be checked

LAREDO, Texas - Five south Texas county sheriffs' offices - Bexar, Willacy, Dimmitt, Webb, and Zapata - have been added to the growing list of law enforcement agencies to receive biometrics-based immigration history information about inmates via the new Secure Communities program.

Secure Communities, which is administered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), streamlines the process for ICE to determine if an arrested individual is a removable criminal alien.

Under the program, everyone booked into these county jails has their fingerprints screened in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) immigration databases. Prior to the advent of Secure Communities, as part of the standard booking process, these fingerprints were only checked for criminal history information in the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) biometric system.
If any fingerprints match those of someone in DHS's biometric system, the new automated process notifies ICE and the jail that submitted the fingerprints. ICE evaluates each case to determine the individual's immigration status and takes appropriate enforcement action after offenders complete their prison terms. Top priority is given to aliens who pose the greatest threat to public safety, such as those with prior convictions for major drug offenses, murder, rape, robbery, and kidnapping.

"Secure Communities is an ICE initiative to more broadly manage and modernize the processes used to identify and ultimately remove dangerous criminal aliens from our communities," said Executive Director for ICE Secure Communities David Venturella. "Our goal with this ICE effort is to use information sharing to prevent criminal aliens from being released back into the community, with little or no additional burden on our local law enforcement partners."
"The Webb County Sheriff's Department has been working side-by-side with ICE for many years in an effort to identify criminal aliens booked into our detention facilities," said Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar. "This new technology will enhance our partnership and bolster our commitment to keeping our communities safe."

"This is a win-win situation both for the community and law enforcement," said Bexar County Sheriff Amadeo Ortiz. "We will be able to identify illegal immigrants who commit crimes in Bexar County and get them in the process for deportation, and it does not require additional funds or manpower from us."
Secure Communities enhances the ongoing joint efforts between our south Texas county sheriff offices and ICE to identify criminal aliens in their jails, and process them for deportation. Eventually, with DOJ and other DHS component collaboration, ICE plans to expand this capability to all state and local law enforcement agencies throughout the nation. More than 50 counties nationwide are currently participating in Secure Communities.

Secure Communities is part of DHS's comprehensive plan to distribute technology that links local law enforcement agencies to both FBI and DHS biometric systems. DHS's US-VISIT Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) holds biometrics-based immigration records, while the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) contains biometrics-based criminal records.

"US-VISIT is proud to support the Secure Communities program, helping provide decision makers with comprehensive, reliable information when and where they need it," said US-VISIT Director Robert Mocny. "By enhancing the interoperability of DHS's and the FBI's biometric systems, we are able to give federal, state and local decision makers information that helps them better protect our communities and our nation."

"Under this plan, ICE will be utilizing FBI system enhancements that allow improved information sharing at the state and local law enforcement level based on positive identification of incarcerated criminal aliens," said FBI Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Acting Assistant Director Jerome M. Pender. "Additionally, ICE and the FBI are working together to take advantage of the strong relationships already forged between the FBI and state and local law enforcement necessary to assist ICE in achieving its goals."

Secure Communities is a key facet of ICE's enforcement priority to identify, locate and remove criminal aliens, building on the success of the agency's Criminal Alien Program. In fiscal year 2008, ICE identified more than 221,000 potentially removable aliens incarcerated nationwide. This fiscal year, the agency anticipates spending more than $1 billion on such efforts, which in addition to Secure Communities, also includes expanding the agency's Criminal Alien Program and Fugitive Operations Program.

More information about ICE's Secure Communities effort is available at www.ice.gov.

-- ICE --

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was established in March 2003 as the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security. ICE is comprised of five integrated divisions that form a 21st century law enforcement agency with broad responsibilities for a number of key homeland security priorities.

Last Modified: Tuesday, June 16, 2009

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/0906/090616laredo.htm

There are 254 counties in Texas.

It's a smoke and mirrors program that is virtually worthless. That's how and why it is so easy to implement in jurisdictions that are full of OBLers.

Originally Posted by JohnPershing

It's a smoke and mirrors program that is virtually worthless. That's how and why it is so easy to implement in jurisdictions that are full of OBLers.

"From October 27, 2008, through April 12, 2009, more than 2,000 of the highest-priority criminal aliens have been identified and more than 2,500 criminal aliens have been removed from the United States as a result of biometric identification."

What is Secure Communities?

Secure Communities:

A Comprehensive Plan to Identify and Remove Criminal Aliens

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.

Congress has allocated $1.4 billion for ICE criminal alien enforcement in 2009.

Secure Communities: A Comprehensive plan to Identify and Remove Criminal Aliens is built on three pillars that each 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 the biographic information obtained from the suspect
•Complicated by use of aliases and other false biographic data
Complicating this challenge is the fact that criminal history records and immigration records are held by different, non-integrated systems.

The Solution: Modernize Criminal Alien Identification

The Secure Communities plan responds to the identification challenge by using biometric identification technologies currently in use by the FBI and other parts of DHS, and combines them 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 automatically will 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 Homeland Security’s United States Visitor and Immigration Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) program.

When there is a fingerprint match in both systems, ICE and the local Law Enforcement Agency that encountered the individual are automatically notified, in parallel.

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. Secure Communities is committed to responding around the clock, corresponding to the real-time needs of its local law enforcement partners.

The Challenge: Prioritize

Information on the total size, locations, 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 plan 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, from apprehension through removal from the United States, 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.

Facts:

•The incarcerated criminal alien population in the U.S. is estimated at between 300,000 & 450,000

•From October 27, 2008, through April 12, 2009, more than 2,000 of the highest-priority criminal aliens have been identified and more than 2,500 criminal aliens have been removed from the United States as a result of biometric identification.

The Challenge: Transform

Biometric identification is deploying to the approximately 30,000 local jails and booking stations 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 an increased number of criminal aliens through apprehension, processing, detention, and ultimately, removal from the United States.

The Solution: Transform ICE Business Processes and Systems

To accommodate the increased number of criminal aliens, ICE is taking a mission-centric approach to optimize capacity — detention bed space, transportation resources to facilitate detainee transfers, and professionally trained staff to work the cases. 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
•Understand the risks, trade-offs, and system-wide impacts of specific actions
•Support and measure investment decisions
•Optimize overall capacity and operating efficiency
Progress to Date

ICE is rapidly deploying biometric identification capability across the country with national coverage expected by 2012. For current information on deployment status, metrics, and recent successes please visit the Secure Communities web page.

Last Modified: Tuesday, May 26, 2009

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