Thread: TX-County jailers adding immigration checks to booking proce

County jailers adding immigration checks to booking process
Thursday January 28, 2010

The immigration status of everyone booked into the McLennan County Jail is being checked against a federal database designed to identify and possibly deport illegal immigrants.

Local law enforcement officials said officers will not ask about a crime suspect’s immigration status when making an arrest.

But once suspects are booked into jail, their fingerprints are matched against not only the FBI’s criminal database but also an immigration database run by the Department of Homeland Security.

The program, known as Secure Communities, was created to rid communities nationwide of “dangerous criminal aliens,â€

Yesterday's local newspaper for Columbus, OH stated this same program is now being used in Franklin and Cuyahoga counties. These two counties have Columbus, OH (our capital) and Cleveland within their jurisdiction.

I think Cincinnati is using a 287g program. So our largest three cities, which are polluted with illegal aliens, are covered. I'm glad it's orchestrated by the Sheriff's dept. They take in a larger geographical area than the cities. The city of Columbus is a sanctuary for illegals

More info at this LINK:
http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/factsheets/s ... nities.htm

The Challenge: Identify
Determining the identity, criminal history, and immigration status of suspected criminal aliens before they have been released from local law enforcement custody has been a long-standing challenge for ICE. Traditional document-based methods of identification are:

Labor-intensive and time-consuming
Limited by the accuracy of biographic information obtained from suspects who may use aliases and other false data
Complicated by the fact that criminal history records and immigration records reside in different, non-integrated systems

The Solution: Modernize Criminal Alien Identification
The Secure Communities strategy responds to the identification challenge by combining biometric identification technologies currently in use by the FBI and other parts of DHS in a new, powerful way.

The technology enables local Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) to initiate an integrated records check of criminal history and immigration status for individuals in their custody.

A single submission of fingerprints as part of the normal criminal arrest / booking process will automatically check both the Integrated Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division and the Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) of the Department of Homeland Security’s US-VISIT Program.

The LEA continues to be notified when there is a positive identification within IAFIS. Now, both ICE and the LEA are automatically notified in parallel when a match occurs in IDENT.

ICE evaluates each case to determine the individual’s immigration status and provides a timely response to local law enforcement partners—usually within a few hours.

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ICE will still not have the manpower and resources to deport every illegal alien, but I hope they are all reported. The longer their "rap sheet" the greater the odds are, they will be deported.

ICE repeatedly states they will prioritaize the baddest, of the bad. So, your illegal alien, drunk driver may simply be released.

It's still GOOD news, that this program is funded and expanding.