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Immigration Officials Admit to Misleading States and Cities About Secure Communities

Posted November 10, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.
Categories: Federal Immigration Policy

On Tuesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement admitted that it had misled states and cities when it said earlier this year that cities could opt out of the immigration enforcement program Secure Communities, even if the state government had agreed to enter the program.

Secure Communities is a program where fingerprints taken by state and local police are shared with immigration officials. The problem is that many of the people fingerprinted are never charged with or convicted of any crime.

In fact, in many cases – I would estimate in the thousands per year – the person fingerprinted may be the victim of a crime. Arrests of crime victims often occur when the police come upon a victim of domestic violence or a robbery fighting back against a perpetrator. The police, unsure as to who is at fault, sometimes arrest both parties and later free the victim.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials enticed states to sign Secure Communities agreements by offering assurances that local police forces could decide whether or not participating in the program endangered domestic violence victims or otherwise compromised good community policing practices.

For example, soon after New York State signed a Secure Communities agreement, ICE regional coordinator Dan Cadman sent an e-mail to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services with reassurances about the program, according to a report in The Washington Independent, “No jurisdiction will be activated if they oppose it,” Cadman wrote. “There is no ambiguity on that point. We get it.”

Yesterday, The Washington Independent reported that an immigration official admitted that ICE had given contradictory information about the program to municipalities across the nation:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement official David Venturella started off a meeting with San Francisco law enforcement leaders on Tuesday with an apology. ICE, he admitted, had given conflicting information about Secure Communities, a program that shares fingerprints taken for criminal background checks with federal immigration enforcement, and whether counties like San Francisco could opt out.

According to The Washington Independent:

Venturella, the assistant director of Secure Communities, acknowledged there had been reports from ICE that the program was optional and that such meetings were the first step in opting out. But the counties could not withhold information from federal immigration authorities, he informed them.

“They flew all the way here just to basically say, ‘We’re going back on our word,’” said Angela Chan, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus who was briefed after the meeting Tuesday. “The whole entire thing is kind of a puppet show.”

The key, according to activists, will be a Dec. 6 hearing on an injunction filed against the Department of Homeland Security last month by the National Day Laborer Organization Network, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Cardozo School of Law. A court in New York will decide whether Homeland Security officials have to hand over documents demanded by the groups in February related to opting out.

With those documents, critics of the program hope to be able to prove what Venturella alluded to at the beginning of the San Francisco meeting: The agency has been misleading the public — albeit perhaps unintentionally — about how Secure Communities works and what it requires from local police forces that would rather not share fingerprints with immigration officials.

Even without in-depth discovery, there is a paper trail of misrepresentation about Secure Communities. The Washington Independent gives this example:

On Aug. 17, ICE released a report called “Setting the Record Straight” that laid out specific steps for counties that wanted to opt out of Secure Communities. The steps were later reiterated in letters by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and an assistant attorney general.

But a sudden message shift on Secure Communities occurred in the beginning of October. Immigration officials began to say opting out was impossible. “We don’t consider Secure Communities an opt in/opt out program,” Napolitano said on Oct. 6. By Oct. 20, the report called “Setting the Record Straight” went missing from ICE’s website.

Tags : ice, immigration enforcement, secure communities, the washington independent

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