Immigration lawyers protest fingerprinting program

EDWARD SIFUENTES esifuentes@nctimes.com
June 16, 2011 8:00 pm

Many immigration lawyers wore buttons in protest of the federal Secure Communities program at the American Immigration Lawyers Association conference in San Diego Thursday morning. Edward Sifuentes | esifuentes@nctimes.com.

The head of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, John Morton, said Thursday that he wants the agency to focus more on deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes rather than those whose only crime is simply being in the country illegally.

Focusing on criminals makes sense because the agency has limited resources and deporting every one of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. is nearly impossible, Morton said. He made the comments in front of a crowd of about 3,000 attorneys attending the annual American Immigration Lawyers Association conference in San Diego.

"The reality is that we do live in a world of very limited resources in terms of the task the agency is asked to pursue and as a result we must and we do prioritize our efforts," Morton said.

ICE is the federal government's main immigration investigation and enforcement agency. It has an annual budget of about $5.7 billion and about 20,000 employees.

Many of the lawyers in the audience wore buttons that said "Stop Secure Communities" with the word "shattering" written over the word "secure" as a form of protest against an ICE program that helps identify illegal immigrants booked into jails, including those here in San Diego County, by feeding their fingerprints into federal and crime databases. The buttons were handed out Thursday morning at the conference by an immigrant rights group called the North Carolina Immigrant Rights Project.

The Secure Communities program has been widely criticized by immigrant rights advocates and others because they say it catches mostly illegal immigrants who have not been convicted of any crimes.

Without mentioning the program directly, Morton said the agency is changing its efforts to deport more criminal illegal immigrants.

"Our goal is to enforce the immigration laws in a manner that best promotes national security and public safety," Morton said. "And that amounts, in practice, to convicted criminals, national security threats, recent border entrants and visa overstays, and those who game the system, absconders and illegal re-entrants."

The number of illegal immigrants deported over the last three years ---- from fiscal year 2007-08 to 2009-10 ---- increased from 369,221 to 392,862, Morton said. But the proportion of criminal illegal immigrants out of the total number of those deported increased from 31 percent to 50 percent in that same three-year time frame, he said.

David Leopold, the immediate past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said he was encouraged by Morton's comments but added the Secure Communities program needs further study and should target only criminal illegal immigrants.

"Our stated position is that the president ought to take a time-out," Leopold said. "If everybody gets arrested regardless of whether there is any wrongdoing, you are going to overburden the country and you are going to overburden the agency. We support the stated goal of going after hardened criminals."

San Diego County was one of the first counties in the nation to implement the program, starting in May 2009. The program links local jails to federal databases. Fingerprints taken from people booked into jail are matched against those federal databases to identify people who may be in the country illegally.

In San Diego County, the Sheriff's Department also allows ICE agents to interview inmates as an additional measure to make sure all illegal immigrants booked into jail are identified and deported.

From May 2009 to February 2011, ICE agents in San Diego County submitted about 226,000 sets of fingerprints, resulting in 7,458 people being deported. Of the total number deported, about 22 percent had no criminal convictions and 2,845, or 38 percent, had lower-level crimes, according to data released by the Department of Homeland Security.

Nationally, 1 in 4 people deported under the Secure Communities program has not been convicted of a crime, according to the data.

Morton said many of the people who did not have criminal convictions were illegal immigrants who had been ordered deported in the past but refused to leave or who had returned after being deported.

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