Thread: Opting out of Secure Communities? Not so fast, ICE says

Opting out of Secure Communities? Not so fast, ICE official says

May 31, 2011 | 5:37 PM | By Leslie Berestein Rojas

The California Assembly voted last week to approve a bill that seeks to extricate the state from Secure Communities, a federal immigration enforcement program in which the fingerprints of people who land in local jails are checked against a database of immigration records.

The bill, which now moves to the state Senate, would allow California to renegotiate its contract with the Department of Homeland Security, letting local jurisdictions opt out of what is now a mandatory program or the state to opt out altogether.

But can this really happen? Not so fast, says a top Homeland Security official interviewed by KPCC’s Kitty Felde. From a story today:

John Morton, director of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, says local jurisdictions don’t have the power to pick and choose.

[b]“An individual state can’t come to the federal government and say, ‘We don’t want the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to share information or seek to prevent that information sharing.’ That is between federal departments.â€

Citizens of California must stand up for their rights, otherwise things will become worst.