ICE wants to receive tips about suspicious or criminal activities

Wed, 2011-06-22 09:52 AM
By: Jacob Goodwin

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE, is seeking permission to gather tips from the public about suspicious or criminal activities, and expects to receive more than 184,000 such tips during the course of the coming year.

This initiative comes at the same time ICE is under some political pressure for pursuing its Secure Communities program, which asks state and local law enforcement to share biometric data with the FBI (and, in turn, with DHS and ICE) about individuals they have arrested and locked up. Three states, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York, have publicly indicated they are reluctant to cooperate with the Secure Communities program.

Even so, ICE announced in a notice posted in the Federal Register on June 22 that it anticipates receiving about 66,000 responses on a form made available by its Homeland Security Investigations unit. In addition, it expects to receive another 118,000 reports of suspicious activities on a tip line it will maintain, and about 20 tips of potential smuggling of bulk cash on a separate tip form.

“DHS/ICE is implementing multiple tools for tip reporting to allow the public and law enforcement partners to report tip information regarding crimes within the jurisdiction of DHS,â€