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    AL: Secure Communities program 'very successful'

    By Lisa RogersTimes Staff Writer
    Published: Monday, July 4, 2011 at 7:49 p.m.

    Published: Monday, July 4, 2011 at 7:49 p.m.


    Through the Secure Communities program, each person booked in to the Etowah County jail is screened to make sure he or she is in the United States legally. That might seem a little extreme, but it’s a way to ensure each person is checked and that the process is a fair one, Sheriff Todd Entrekin said.

    Etowah and DeKalb counties are two of 13 in the state that in April began participating in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s program that targets illegal immigrants.

    The Etowah County Sheriff’s Office has used the Immigration and Nationality Act, commonly called the 287(g) program, since 2008.

    The 287(g) is similar to Secure Communities, but Secure Communities is “under an umbrella that addresses all issues,” said Scott Hassell, chief deputy of corrections at the jail.

    “It takes what was a good program and makes it as close to foolproof as it can be,” Hassell said.

    Secure Communities is a partnership among the FBI, Alabama Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Custom Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, Hassell said.

    “It gives the smallest county in the state of Alabama the same capability as the largest city in the nation,” Hassell said.

    The program in Etowah County is run by employees at the jail and is a way to share fingerprints of people booked in at the jail, Hassell said. Fingerprints are scanned, the results are sent to the FBI and the ABI and the information is shared.

    Hassell said the program only will identify someone who already has been determined to be in the U.S. illegally.

    “Someone who is here illegally, but has never been in trouble before, will not show up in this system,” Hassell said. “It is aimed at the persons who keep coming to the U.S. illegally and committing crimes on our streets. It just does it in a more practical way.”

    Since the program has been operational, it has been “very successful,” Hassell said.

    “It doesn’t look at the color of your skin or the accent of your voice,” he said. “It looks at clear, objective data.”

    It sometimes can be easy to profile a particular nationality, Hassell said, and Secure Communities takes some of that away.

    “It’s not perfect, but it is the closest thing we can get to perfect,” he said.

    Secure Communities is making an even bigger impact in DeKalb County.

    The DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office had not been operating under the 287(g) program, and checking the status of someone’s citizenship was more difficult than in Etowah County, Sheriff Jimmy Harris said.

    The program helps U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement identify illegal immigrants who are being held in state prisons and local jails by comparing the inmate’s fingerprints to those in federal immigration databases, Harris said.

    “This program is different in that previously, if there were issues regarding an arrestee’s citizenship status, we had to contact ICE authorities in Gadsden and schedule a time for one of their agents to come up and interview each potential illegal individual before a detainer could be placed on them,” he said. “This system makes this process unnecessary in situations where the individual has been previously arrested. We use a biometric scanner to take fingerprints, and with this system the prints are automatically checked against the Department of Homeland Security’s biometric database. If an individual has been previously identified as illegal, our booking department will receive a phone call within an hour authorizing a detainer (being) placed on the individual.”

    The program is especially helpful in targeting repeat offenders — “the dangerous criminal aliens who come into our community and commit crimes, are deported and then continue to come back,” as Harris described them.

    “Arrestees often use aliases and give false identifying information, which can make determining their immigration status more difficult,” he said. “This technology makes the identification process much more efficient because the biometric data is almost impossible to forge.”

    Harris said ICE is transforming the way local and state law enforcement agencies work with the federal government on immigration issues.

    “This technology is really going to streamline the identification, detention and deportation process for the criminal illegals that we need to have removed from our communities,” he said.

    The Secure Communities program has been used in 41 states since 2008. It is expected to be in use nationwide by 2013.

    Secure Communities program ‘very successful’ | GadsdenTimes.com
    Last edited by Jean; 01-25-2012 at 01:04 AM. Reason: faulty transfer from 1.0
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