Feds to use fingerprints from NYPD arrests to round up illegal immigrants

Feds to use fingerprints from NYPD arrests to round up illegal immigrants
Over objections, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will activate Secure Communities program next week

By Glenn Blain AND Erica Pearson / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, May 11, 2012, 2:00 AM

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement will begin using fingerprints from NYPD arrests next week to round up illegal immigrants. The program is already running in Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk counties.

Over objections from Gov. Cuomo and city officials, the feds will begin using fingerprints from NYPD arrests next week to round up illegal immigrants, the Daily News has learned.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told the NYPD and other local police departments in New York that the controversial Secure Communities program will be activated Tuesday across the state.

The program is already running — feeding fingerprint information from local police to Homeland Security through the FBI — in Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk counties.

Last June, Cuomo unsuccessfully tried to pull New York from the program, which the feds initially characterized as voluntary.

Homeland Security officials now say it is mandatory.

ICE calls Secure Communities their “single most valuable tool

” to find and deport dangerous criminals.

Opponents, including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, say it sweeps up too many people charged with low-level offenses and makes immigrants afraid to report crimes or cooperate with cops.

“I am deeply troubled by

and have always opposed

the implementation of Secure Communities in New York City,” said Quinn.

“I do not want this implemented and I oppose any government move to force New York City to abide by this unfair policy.”

When he tried to pull the state from the program, Cuomo said it was undermining law enforcement.

He still objects to it, spokesman Rich Azzopardi said.

“We are monitoring the situation,” said Azzopardi.

Immigrant advocates were taken aback to learn Secure Communities is set to launch in the city.

“We are completely taken by surprise,” said Jacki Esposito of the New York Immigration Coalition.

The agency would not publicly confirm its activation plans.

“It is ICE’s long standing practice to only confirm Secure Communities activations after this enhanced federal information sharing capability is deployed in a jurisdiction,” said an ICE spokesman.

After criticism, ICE recently tweaked the program, vowing to wait to try to deport immigrants arrested for minor traffic offenses until after they are actually convicted — unless they have a prior record.

Secure Communities, which is also being activated statewide in Massachusetts, Arkansas and Wyoming next week, is slated to be up and running nationwide by 2013.

epearson@nydailynews.com

Read more: Feds to use fingerprints from NYPD arrests to round up illegal immigrants - NY Daily News

Welcome to Secure Communities New York. :cool:

Secure Communities Activated in New York, Despite Objections

Published May 11, 2012
Fox News Latino

New York – The New York City Police Department, along with other local police departments across the state, will activate the controversial federal Secure Communities program next week, despite objections from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other elected officials.

New York City joins the state's Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk counties in implementing the program, which feeds fingerprint information from local police departments to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through the FBI.

Gov. Cuomo withdrew New York from the program last June, saying that it failed to meet its goal to “deport serious felons.”

However despite initially characterizing the program as voluntary, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said last year that states could not opt-out of the program and that it must be implemented across the country by 2013.

I am deeply troubled by and have always opposed the implementation of Secure Communities in New York City.

- New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn


“Secure Communities has proven to be the single most valuable tool in allowing the agency to eliminate the ad hoc approach of the past and focus on criminal aliens and repeat immigration law violators,” an ICE spokesman said in a statement.

Both public officials and immigration rights activists have criticized the program and expressed disappointment in its implementation countrywide.

New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said that it will harm too many people charged with low-level offenses and make immigrants hesitant to cooperate with police or report crimes.

“I am deeply troubled by and have always opposed the implementation of Secure Communities in New York City,” said Quinn. “I do not want this implemented and I oppose any government move to force New York City to abide by this unfair policy.”

ICE states that the Secure Communities program has removed over 135,000 convicted criminal aliens including over 49,000 convicted of major violent offenses like murder, rape and child abuse.

Immigration rights activists also argue that the program disproportionately targets Latinos, giving rise to both ethnic and racial profiling among law enforcement agencies.

“We now know that Latinos are disproportionately arrested by ICE through Secure Communities, the program has an adverse impact on community policing, and states and localities around the country do not want it in their communities,” said Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition in a statement. “And yet the criticism goes unheeded by the administration. Simply put, the President and Secretary Napolitano must stop the rapid rollout of this fatally flawed program."

Along with New York, Secure Communities will also be activated in Massachusetts, Wyoming and Arkansas next week.

Secure Communities Activated in New York, Despite Objections | Fox News Latino

Wall Street Journal
May 11, 2012, 9:11 p.m. ET.

Fingerprints Program Stirs Wide Dissent .

By SUMATHI REDDY

A program that gives federal immigration officials access to the fingerprints of undocumented immigrants booked into local jails will start Tuesday across New York state despite staunch opposition from advocates and lawmakers, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

A law-enforcement official familiar with the program, called Secure Communities, confirmed that New York City and 30 other jurisdictions would join the 31 communities that already have the program in place. Suffolk, Nassau and Westchester counties, among others, have participated in Secure Communities for more than a year.

Asked about the program at a Friday news conference, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said "we prefer that they not do that here."

"The federal government's position is that it's required under the law and they're doing it," he continued. "We're obviously complying. They're taking it automatically, actually. It's a policy decision. I think there's merit on both sides….We're complying to the extent that we have to."

Secure Communities aims at identifying and deporting illegal immigrants who are convicted of crimes. But critics say it has resulted in the deportation of thousands of people who are accused of crimes but not convicted, and erodes the trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement.

Advocates and others argue that some immigrants may become hesitant to report crimes or act as witnesses, incorrectly believing they risk deportation just by speaking with police.

Already, the fingerprints of suspects in jail are sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Under the Secure Communities program, those fingerprints are also shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In an email, ICE spokesman Ross Feinstein said Secure Communities "has proven to be the single most valuable tool in allowing the agency to eliminate the ad hoc approach of the past and focus on criminal aliens and repeat immigration law violators."

"To date, Secure Communities has helped ICE remove more than 135,000 convicted criminal aliens, including more than 49,000 convicted of major violent offenses like murder, rape and the sexual abuse of children," he said.

The news of the program's launch startled lawmakers and immigration advocates who nearly a year ago hailed Mr. Cuomo's announcement that he was suspending the state's participation in Secure Communities. At the time, agreements signed with each state suggested that joining the program was voluntary.

Practically speaking, Mr. Cuomo's announcement did little. Although no new communities in New York have activated Secure Communities since then, those that were already using it continued to do so.

A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo said the office was monitoring the situation, first reported in the New York Daily News.

In August, a few months after Mr. Cuomo and other governors began threatening to opt out of the program, ICE Director John Morton sent a letter to governors terminating the agreements.

The agency describes Secure Communities as an information-sharing program between ICE and the FBI—rather than with local law enforcement—and therefore the federal government makes the decision on when and where to active it.

As of May 11, the program is active in 2,792 jurisdictions in 48 states and Puerto Rico. ICE expects to be nationwide by the end of 2013. Forty states have it statewide, including Connecticut and New Jersey. On Tuesday, Massachusetts, Wyoming and Arkansas will join New York with statewide rollouts.

Speaking on the radio Friday, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said there will be a rally on City Hall's steps on Monday to urge the federal government to refrain from forcing the city's hand.

She also said the police were being put in a "terrible position."

"It's just so counter to what New York is about as an immigrant city," she added. "And I'm real proud of our mayor and our governor, who have all spoken out…. The police can't disregard the law at the end of the day, but it's a terrible thing to put them in when they should be focusing on real crime."

Until now, New York City would comply with an ICE request to hold a prisoner on Rikers Island only if the person previously had been convicted of a crime, had an outstanding criminal warrant, was a defendant in a pending case, was a gang member or possible terrorist or had previously or currently faced a final deportation order.

"We wish they would have looked at the process we developed here, which strikes the right balance by protecting public safety and national security while ensuring we remain immigrant-friendly," John Feinblatt, chief policy adviser to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said in an email.

Immigration advocates are planning a rally at ICE headquarters on Monday, said Javier Valdes, co-executive director of Make the Road New York. Mr. Valdes said they felt "blindsided" by the news.

"We are very concerned that the Obama administration continues to implement a program in a state that has already said that we don't have to have a program such as this because of the negative impact it will have on the community," he said.

"We want to push back to let the federal government know that this is something they should take into consideration, the concerns of the state of New York," he added.

Karen Kaminsky, deputy executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said the group was investigating its options but were disappointed that the federal government was moving forward. "It not going after public-safety threats," she said. "It's kind of catching everyone in its snares and it's breaking up families."

—Sean Gardiner, Jacob Gershman and Michael Howard Saul contributed to this article.
Write to Sumathi Reddy at sumathi.reddy@wsj.com

Fingerprints Program Stirs Wide Dissent - WSJ.com

New York Times

Despite Opposition, Immigration Agency to Expand Fingerprint Program

By JULIA PRESTON
Published: May 11, 2012

Obama administration officials have announced that a contentious fingerprinting program to identify illegal immigrants will be extended across Massachusetts and New York next week, expanding federal enforcement efforts despite opposition from the governors and immigrant groups in those states.

In blunt e-mails sent Tuesday to officials and the police in the two states, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said the program, Secure Communities, would be activated “in all remaining jurisdictions” this Tuesday.

Last June, Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts declined to sign an agreement with the immigration agency to expand Secure Communities beyond a pilot program in the Boston area since 2006. Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York said he wanted to suspend the program, which had already been initiated in a number of counties.

Opponents argued that it was an overly wide dragnet that was deporting many illegal immigrants with no criminal histories who were arrested for minor offenses and that it encouraged racial profiling and eroded trust in law enforcement among immigrants.

Governors Patrick and Cuomo are Democrats and close allies of President Obama. They made the uncomfortable choice to challenge him on a centerpiece of his immigration policy because of pressure from immigrant and Latino organizations and some local law enforcement officials. The mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino, also a Democrat, became an especially outspoken critic.

The governors were caught in a tangle of confusion about states’ role in the program that officials from the immigration agency, known as ICE, have since acknowledged they created. After Secure Communities was formally started in 2008, ICE officials gave many states the understanding that participation was voluntary.

Last year, officials at the agency said they had determined that they did not require consent from states to start the program. Citing antiterrorism legislation that Congress passed in 2002, the officials canceled agreements they had signed in 40 states and said they would extend the program nationwide by 2013.

Under Secure Communities, fingerprints of anyone booked by the local or state police are sent through the F.B.I. to be checked in databases of the Department of Homeland Security which include immigration records. If there is a match, officials at the immigration agency decide whether to issue a detainer, asking the police to hold the person to be picked up by federal agents.

ICE officials said that they made changes to respond to state officials’ concerns and to focus the program on deporting serious criminals.

They said they revised the detainers to clarify that suspected illegal immigrants could be held for only 48 hours. They provided civil rights training for the police in places where the program was started, officials said.

A recent change in arrest procedures would decrease detentions of illegal immigrants stopped for speeding or driving without a license, the officials said.

“Secure Communities has proven to be the single most valuable tool in allowing the agency to eliminate the ad hoc approach of the past and focus on criminal aliens and repeat immigration law violators,” Barbara Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for ICE, said Friday.

ICE officials said they had spoken with officials in New York and Massachusetts, but did not consult on when to expand the program.

“At the end of the day, this is a federal program,” a Department of Homeland Security official said. “We have to make our own decisions based on our law enforcement operational needs.”

Both governors had measured reactions to the news that the administration had taken a politically fraught decision off their hands.

In New York, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo said he remained opposed to the program. “We are monitoring the situation,” the spokesman said.

In Massachusetts, after a young motorcyclist was killed last fall in an accident that the police said was caused by an illegal immigrant driving drunk, Governor Patrick came under fire from county sheriffs and state lawmakers for blocking the program.

On Thursday, Mr. Patrick minimized the practical effect of the program’s expansion, saying the state already shares arrest information with federal authorities. He said changes in the program had addressed some of his concerns.

But, he added, “It is very important to me that people not see this as a license to profile.”

In an interview Friday, Mayor Menino said he remained staunchly opposed. “It’s dangerous to target immigrants when you are trying to build a community,” he said. “The information gets put into a computer and sent to Washington and the wrong person gets deported.

“I want to make this city work,” he said, “and to have the feds come in and tell me you have to do this or to do that is just wrong.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/12/us...ss-and-ny.html

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