Unsure on Secure Communities?

Gene Davis, DDN Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 7, 2010


The opposition is heating up to a program that would crack down on illegal immigrants by fingerprinting all inmates and then using that information to verify their residential status.

But supporters of the program maintain that the so-called Secure Communities initiative would live up to its name by making the state safer.

The Secure Communities initiative takes the fingerprints of everyone booked into jail for any crime and then runs the prints against FBI criminal history records and Homeland Security immigration records. The purpose is to determine who is in the country legally. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is in the process of expanding the federal program and is seeking Colorado’s participation.

Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC) held a press conference Friday to lay out their opposition to the initiative. Featured in the press conference was Keith Ikeda, chief of police of Basalt.

Ikeda argued that the Secure Communities initiative would erode the public trust between law enforcement and certain groups in the community He worries that the initiative would cause people who were worried about their immigration status to flee the scene during a basic accident or traffic stop, which would hurt law enforcement officers’ ability to maintain safety on the roads. He also believes certain members of the community would not report instances of cases like child abuse, domestic violence or fraud because they would fear that talking to police could cause their immigration status to be checked.

“We operate on public trust,â€