Makes Too Much Sense

There's a new sheriff in town, and he's doing much more to get rid of undesirable illegal aliens than Arizona's S.B. 1070 ever will. Called Secure Communities, it's a Department of Homeland Security program that runs the fingerprints of anyone arrested for a crime through FBI and DHS databases. It "improves public safety by implementing a comprehensive, integrated approach to identify and remove criminal aliens from the United States." (Story link here).

Under the program, the fingerprints of everyone who is booked into jail for any crime are run against FBI criminal history records and Department of Homeland Security immigration records to determine who is in the country illegally and whether they've been arrested previously.

Since 2007, 467 jurisdictions in 26 states have joined. ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) has said it plans to have it in every jail in the country by 2013. Secure Communities is currently being phased into the places where the government sees as having the greatest need for it based on population estimates of illegal immigrants and crime statistics.

Since everyone arrested would be screened, the program could easily deport more people than Arizona's new law, said Sunita Patel, an attorney who filed a lawsuit in New York against the federal government on behalf of a group worried about the program. Patel said that because illegal immigrants could be referred to ICE at the point of arrest, even before a conviction, the program can create an incentive for profiling and create a pipeline to deport more people.

"It has the potential to revolutionize immigration enforcement," said Patel.

He says that like it's a bad thing.

Supporters of the program argue it is helping identify dangerous criminals that would otherwise go undetected. Since Oct. 27, 2008 through the end of May, almost 2.6 million people have been screened with Secure Communities. Of those, almost 35,000 were identified as illegal immigrants previously arrested or convicted for the most serious crimes, including murder and rape, ICE said Thursday. More than 205,000 who were identified as illegal immigrants had arrest records for less serious crimes.

So let's see - it identifies both illegal aliens AND dangerous criminals, at the same time. Sounds like a two-fer to me.

Carl Rusnok, an ICE spokesman, said Secure Communities is a way for law enforcement to identify illegal immigrants after their arrest at no additional cost to local jurisdictions. Butler County (Ohio) Sheriff Rick Jones agreed.

"We arrest these people anyway," he said. "All it does is help us deport people who shouldn't be here."

Rusnok said ICE created the program after Congress directed the agency to improve the way it identifies and deports illegal immigrants with criminal backgrounds. ICE has gotten $550 million for the program since 2008, Rusnok said.

Wow, a government program that actually delivers benefits. And at a mere $550M it's a bargain, at least as far as government programs go.

Of course the libs and other illegal immigrant apologists are apoplectic. One whiner states:

Rather than weed out incarcerated felons that could menace the public order, the program’s been targeting low-level misdemeanor offenders, including people who may be guilty of little more than running a stop sign or driving with a broken taillight.

First of all, the only people who get fingerprinted are those who are actually arrested and booked, not those getting traffic tickets. Second, even if they are not guilty of the particular crime for which they were arrested, they're guilty of being here illegally, which is a crime. So off they go. 

Win-win, unless you're a criminal, illegal alien, or liberal...