Sanctuary States Defy Federal Immigration Laws

Sanctuary States Defy Federal Immigration Laws

Friday, 20 May 2011 10:02 AM
By James Walsh

Immigrant advocates and some Democratic officeholders are worsening the nation’s current immigration chaos by pitting the unconstitutional sanctuary movement against federal immigration laws and a federal initiative known as the Secure Communities Program (SCP).

Introduced as a pilot program in March 2008 by the George W. Bush administration, the SCP is administered by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) section of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The DHS worked with the FBI to design the program as a tool to improve public safety by transforming the way that criminal aliens are identified and deported.

SCP requires that, at the time of arrest and booking, all persons are to be fingerprinted and all prints forwarded for comparison against the FBI database, known as the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) and the ICE database, IDENT. To date, the program has protected citizens from thousands of criminal aliens.

By October 2010, states and local governments with large Hispanic and/or “blueâ€