State To Get Access To Federal Data On Immigrants
State Makes Mover After Illegal Immigrant Accused Of Causing Fatal Wreck

POSTED: 11:31 am MDT July 18, 2009
UPDATED: 11:34 am MDT July 18, 2009


DENVER -- Colorado wants its local police officers to have access to federal immigration and criminal databases to more quickly identify illegal immigrants during jail bookings -- a plan advocacy groups say could trigger racial profiling.

Colorado plans to join the Secure Communities program run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It allows police to check fingerprints of people under arrest against FBI criminal history records and Department of Homeland Security immigration records.

ICE is notified of any matches -- and deportation priority is given to those charged with murder, rape, kidnapping and robbery.

Currently, Colorado police agencies don't have access to immigration records. They can notify ICE when they suspect someone is undocumented, and federal officials check their records and tell police whether that's the case.

Secure Communities operates in 70 jurisdictions in Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia. The Harris County Sheriff's Office in Houston was one of the first to test the program in February 2007, and ICE hopes to take it nationwide by 2013.

Immigrant advocates say it could give police a pretext to arrest suspected undocumented immigrants.

"We think the program is really problematic," said Joan Friedland, immigration policy director with the Los Angeles-based National Immigration Law Center. "It's a program that's just been announced through press releases and fact sheets on the ICE Web site. It doesn't have any regulation."

Carl Rusnok, an ICE spokesman, responded by saying that "there's no racial profiling involved because everyone is screened" by agencies participating in the program.

It's unclear how ICE will focus on deporting the most serious criminal suspects, said Cynthia Buiza, policy and advocacy director at the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. She called the program "deceptively benign" and questioned who will monitor Secure Communities to ensure there are no abuses.

Rusnok said that's up to ICE and local law enforcement and that ICE must report to Congress each quarter on the program.

ICE issues guidelines to participating agencies, but it's up to the states to oversee their police, Rusnok added.

Since October, 445,000 people have had their fingerprints screened under Secure Communities, and 56,300 have matched DHS databases, ICE said in a report released Tuesday. That includes more than 5,000 people previously convicted or arrested for crimes including murder, manslaughter, and rape, the agency said.

Denver could be the first Colorado jurisdiction to join Secure Communities sometime late this year. Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, El Paso, Jefferson and Larimer counties will follow.

Colorado expressed interest in the program after a Guatemalan man believed to be in the country illegally was accused of causing a wreck that killed two women in a truck and a 3-year-old boy at an ice cream shop in the Denver suburb of Aurora.

Police say Francis M. Hernandez, 24, had more than a dozen prior arrests in Colorado but stayed off immigration officials' radar because he used 12 aliases and two dates of birth. Months before the Sept. 4 accident, Hernandez was stopped in Aurora for speeding.

Hernandez pleaded not guilty. Trial is expected later this year.

Lone Tree Police Chief Stephen Hasler, a former president of the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police, said cases like Hernandez's add "more fuel to the fire" to the belief that the immigration enforcement system doesn't always work.

"I wouldn't say that was the one that drove the nail home, but it's certainly something that makes you go, 'Oh my God, how much longer are we going to allow this to go on?"' said Hasler, who urged Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter to have the state join Secure Communities. Colorado's county sheriffs association also supports the program.


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