Thread: Fingerprints may indicate immigration status

Fingerprints may indicate immigration status
Franklin County can compare offenders with U.S. database
Wednesday, January 27, 2010 3:09 AM
By Jeb Phillips

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Franklin County, Ohio law-enforcement agencies can now check offenders' fingerprints against a national database to help federal authorities find immigrants who are illegal or undocumented.

The initiative, called Secure Communities, began in Franklin and Cuyahoga counties last week and will spread to the rest of the state by 2013, said Khaalid Walls, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Secure Communities already was in 15 states, mostly coastal and border areas, before arriving in Ohio. The initiative began in fall 2008 in North Carolina and Texas.

"It's a positive thing," said Chief Deputy Steve Martin of the Franklin County sheriff's office. "We have been sending this information to the FBI for ages, and now we are able to send it to (the Department of Homeland Security), too."

The FBI uses fingerprints to see whether someone arrested in Franklin County is wanted for a crime in another part of the country. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency under the Department of Homeland Security, now will be able to use those same fingerprints to help determine a person's immigration status, federal officials say.

People seeking to become permanent residents or U.S. citizens are fingerprinted as part of the application process. Most other foreign residents legally in the United States are fingerprinted when they apply for a visa or enter the country.

If an offender's fingerprints match some in the national database, that might prove the person is here legally, Walls said. If the offender isn't part of the database, that might alert federal officials to investigate further.

Illegal immigrants scheduled for deportation are fingerprinted, too. So a match with the database can alert authorities to someone who has fled deportation, Walls said.

Federal authorities are most interested in illegal immigrants who commit the worst crimes, such as homicide or rape, he said. But some immigrant-advocacy groups worry that Secure Communities will encourage police agencies to arrest a person on minor charges for the primary purpose of checking an immigration status.

Joan Friedland, immigration-policy director at the National Immigration Law Center in Washington, said a related concern is that illegal immigrants won't report some crimes for fear that they will be arrested and put through a status check.

Secure Communities is available to any Franklin County law-enforcement agency that has electronic booking capabilities. But because the sheriff's office operates the county's jails, it will have much of the responsibility for sending the information to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

This reporting is essentially the same as reporting information to the FBI, so it doesn't create any additional work for the sheriff's office, Martin said.

jeb.phillips@dispatch.com

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Joan Friedland, immigration-policy director at the National Immigration Law Center in Washington, said a related concern is that illegal immigrants won't report some crimes for fear that they will be arrested and put through a status check.

Good, I hope they worry every day of their lives that they might be deported. I don't wish harm on anyone but I want the illegal community to be very, very uncomfortable.