Localities Warned on Fingerprinting
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 8, 2010

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Local governments cannot opt out of a federal program that checks the fingerprints of people who are arrested against a database to determine if they are illegal immigrants, the head of the immigration enforcement agency said Friday.

That is because the agreement is between the federal and state governments — not the local governments.

Officials in Arlington County, Va., Santa Clara County, Calif., and Washington, D.C., have voted to opt out of the Secure Communities program, saying participation could lead to racial profiling. San Francisco officials have tried to get out of the program, and several communities are debating whether they want to participate.

On Friday, John T. Morton, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency would meet with the localities, but in the end the agreement was with the state.

Suspects who are arrested for any offense from a traffic violation to a violent crime have long been fingerprinted, and those fingerprints are run through a federal criminal-background database maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. With Secure Communities, those fingerprints are automatically checked against immigration records to identify those who might be in the country illegally.

Since 2008, the program has been expanded to more than 650 jurisdictions in 32 states, with plans to incorporate every jurisdiction by 2013.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/us/09prints.html