Connecticut 100% I.C.E. Secure Communities
One County was already a Secure Community and the other 7 will come online this week.
ICE to launch 'Secure Communities' this week; Connecticut likely to participate partially
Published: Monday, February 20, 2012
By Mary E. O’Leary, New Haven Register
NEW HAVEN – Immigration and Customs Enforcement has put Connecticut on notice that it will roll out Secure Communities on Wednesday, but the state is expected to only partially cooperate.
Secure Communities is a federal program begun in 2008 where the fingerprints of anyone arrested are not only shared with the FBI, but also given to ICE for review.
ICE in turn may send a 48-hour detainer request to local prisons to hold the undocumented individual. A detainer is not a warrant, but rather an administrative request that is not legally binding.
States and communities that are fighting the program have limited honoring detainers to serious criminals and are also asking that ICE reimburse them for their costs.
While the program was promulgated as applying to serious felons and those who threaten national security, studies have shown that more than one-quarter of the 142,090 deported had no criminal record, while another 31.2 percent had a misdemeanor conviction.
A press conference on the issue will be held today at noon at City Hall in New Haven, which along with Hartford has already asked the state to limit cooperation.
Michael Lawlor, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s liaison on criminal policy, said they would have a statement today on its plans.
He said the state is mindful of the negative impact the program has had elsewhere on immigrants cooperating with police when they are witnesses or victims of crime.
“Our first priority is maintaining trust between the immigrant community and law enforcement. Every victim and every witness should feel secure when cooperating with the police. The governor is working with state and local officials to find the right balance that lives up to this goal while at the same time preserving public safety,” said Andrew Doba, Malloy’s spokesman, when the issue came up last year.
New Haven in December held open a public hearing on a resolution to not participate in Secure Communities, except for serious offenders, so the recently elected Board of Aldermen could address the issue.
A study of Secure Communities undertaken by a task force appointed by the Department of Homeland Security was highly critical of it and said it should clarify that civil immigration law violators and those convicted or charged with minor offenses are not the priority.
Half of the members of task force recommended the program be scraped, while the rest wanted it reformed.
It further recommended that DHS use prosecutorial discretion in all its programs and strengthen accountability to prevent civil rights violations.
Lawlor said the government should follow the recommendations of its own task force.
New York, Illinois and Massachusetts have taken a stand against the program, as have several other law enforcement jurisdictions, including Chicago. As of late summer, Secure Communities had gone live in 1,508 out of an estimate 3,181 jurisdictions.
In late September, ICE said it was going to apply Secure Communities across Connecticut, but it held off when objections were raised to the program. Right now it is only operating in Fairfield County, which it started in 2010 under the previous governor.
An analysis by an immigration clinic at the Yale Law School found that through the end of this September, 71 percent of the 133 people who were deported from Fairfield County because of the program had no criminal record or were guilty of a misdemeanor. A total of 16 were convicted of the most serious offenses, defined as rape, homicides, kidnapping or major drug dealing.
ICE to launch 'Secure Communities' this week; Connecticut likely to participate partially- The Register Citizen
Secure Communities goes live amidst concerns
Secure Communities goes live amidst concerns
Updated: Monday, 20 Feb 2012, 12:28 PM EST
Published : Monday, 20 Feb 2012, 12:28 PM EST
New Haven, Conn. (WTNH) - In New Haven police and city leaders are sitting down to talk about the issues they're having with a federal program designed to track down illegal immigrants.
Mayor John DeStefano says residents are uncomfortable because they feel their neighborhoods are being targeted due to the ethnicity of the residents living there.
Mike Lawlor, Under Secretary for Criminal Justice Policy and Planning, today released the following statement on the Federal Department of Homeland Security's decision to activate their "Secure Communities" program statewide in Connecticut:
"While we are very mindful of the need to enhance public safety, there are legitimate concerns when it comes to the implementation of the Secure Communities program. Six months ago, when the Department of Homeland Security announced that Secure Communities was scheduled to go "live" statewide in Connecticut, Governor Malloy asked for and received a delay in the activation because of these concerns.
What this program does is it essentially converts local law enforcement officers into defacto agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE). The Governor shares the opinion of many police chiefs that this policy could lead to a situation where victims and witnesses in the immigrant community would be reluctant to cooperate with local and state law enforcement, something that would completely undermine the goals of this program.
The Governor has asked Department of Corrections Commissioner Leo Arnone to create an ongoing review of how this program is implemented and what the ramifications are, and see what if any corrective action is needed going forward. Decisions on how to respond to each request will be made on a case-by-case basis.
As the report itself says: 'DHS must ensure its immigration enforcement resources are focused on the removal of those who constitute our highest priorities, specifically individuals who pose a threat to public safety such as criminal aliens and national security threats, as well as repeat immigration law violators and recent border entrants. In fact, the expenditure of resources on cases that fall outside our enforcement priorities hinders our public safety mission by clogging immigration court dockets and diverting resources...'"
• [Read the report here]
ICE released the following statement about the meeting:
"Secure Communities promotes the agency's top enforcement priority of finding and removing those who are unlawfully present or otherwise removable and have criminal convictions by relying on an already-existing federal information-sharing program, consisting of the sharing of biometric data between two federal law enforcement agencies-DHS and the FBI. Once a state or local law enforcement agency submits fingerprint data to the federal government, no agreement with the state is legally necessary for one part of the federal government to share it with another part.
Secure Communities has demonstrated its effectiveness in transforming immigration enforcement to a focus on criminal offenders. In just two years, ICE has dramatically increased the removal of convicted criminals and reduced the number of non-criminal immigration violators removed. Approximately 94% of the total Secure Communities removals fall within ICE's civil enforcement priorities including convicted criminals, recent illegal border entrants and those who game the immigration system: immigration fugitives and repeat immigration law violators such as individuals who illegally re-enter the country after having been removed, a federal felony offense.
ICE has also announced enhancements to the Secure Communities program: ICE issued a new memorandum designed to assist ICE agents, officers, and attorneys in ensuring that our limited resources are expended on individuals who meet ICE's enforcement priorities by encouraging the exercise of discretion in appropriate cases that fall outside these priorities. Additionally, ICE and the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) have developed a new training program for state and local law enforcement agencies to provide more information for state and local law enforcement about how Secure Communities works, issued a new policy specifically designed to protect victims of domestic violence and other crime, and enhanced civil rights monitoring based on in-depth statistical analysis and a new civil rights complaint process. These measures will help guarantee that Secure Communities is operated in a manner that is fully consistent with all applicable civil rights and civil liberties laws and policies.
The Secure Communities program utilizes ICE's limited resources to prioritize the removal of persons arrested and booked on criminal charges in violation of state law.
ICE continues to work with its law enforcement partners across the country to responsibly and effectively implement this federal information sharing capability and plans to reach complete nationwide activation by the end of 2013."
The Secure Communities stats through Dec. 31 are posted online
Secure Communities goes live amidst concerns in New Haven | WTNH.com Connecticut