Nearly 1,000 illegal immigrants with serious criminal convictions and thousands more in the country illegally have been identified in Florida thanks to a new program that allows local law enforcement agencies to check arrestees' immigration status.
Launched this year, the program permits local police departments in the Sunshine State-and nationwide-to compare booking fingerprints against two separate federal databases operated by the Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's immigration division.
Previously, local law enforcement agencies could only compare fingerprints to the Justice Department's database. Under a new program called Secure Communities they can also use the immigration fingerprints and the access has greatly enhanced local officials' ability to identify and deport criminal aliens.
Nine Florida counties use the updated system, which provides biometrics based immigration history information about inmates. When a locally run fingerprint matches one in the Homeland Security biometric system, an automated process notifies Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the county jail that submitted the fingerprint.
When the illegal alien offenders complete their prison terms, immigration officials deport them. In the past, criminals were simply released after completing their sentence and many committed more crimes, including murder, rape, child molestation and drunken driving.
Besides Florida, many states have effectively used Secure Communities to identify dangerous criminals-mostly violent gang members-in the U.S. illegally. Immigration authorities plan to make the program available to all 1,200 of the nation's state and federal prisons and more than 3,000 local jails in the next few years.
New program enhances identifying and deporting criminal aliens in nine Florida counties
Criminal and immigration records check of all detainees to be more effective
MIAMI - Nine Florida counties - Charlotte, Clay, Collier, Duval, Hillsborough, Marion, Miami Dade, St. John's, and St. Lucie counties - have been added to the growing list of law enforcement agencies to receive biometrics-based immigration history information about inmates via the new Secure Communities program.
Secure Communities, which is administered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), streamlines the process for ICE to determine if an arrested individual is a removable criminal alien.
Under the program, everyone booked into these county jails has their fingerprints screened in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) immigration databases. Prior to the advent of Secure Communities, as part of the standard booking process, these fingerprints were only checked for criminal history information in the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) biometric system.
If any fingerprints match those of someone in DHS's biometric system, the new automated process notifies ICE and the jail that submitted the fingerprints. ICE evaluates each case to determine the individual's immigration status and takes appropriate enforcement action after offenders complete their prison terms. Top priority is given to aliens who pose the greatest threat to public safety, such as those with prior convictions for major drug offenses, murder, rape, robbery, and kidnapping.
"Secure Communities is an ICE initiative to more broadly manage and modernize the processes used to identify and ultimately remove dangerous criminal aliens from our communities," said Executive Director for ICE Secure Communities David Venturella. "Our goal with this ICE effort is to use information sharing to prevent criminal aliens from being released back into the community, with little or no additional burden on our local law enforcement partners."
Secure Communities enhances the ongoing joint efforts between Florida sheriff offices and ICE to identify criminal aliens in local jails, and process them for deportation. Duval and Marion counties joined Secure Communities Program last January. Charlotte, Clay, Collier, Hillsborough, Miami Dade, St. John's, and St. Lucie counties joined in February. Eventually, with DOJ and other DHS component collaboration, ICE plans to expand this capability to all state and local law enforcement agencies throughout the nation. More than 60 counties nationwide are currently participating in Secure Communities.
Secure Communities is part of DHS's comprehensive plan to distribute technology that links local law enforcement agencies to both FBI and DHS biometric systems. DHS's US-VISIT Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) holds biometrics-based immigration records, while the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) contains biometrics-based criminal records.
"US-VISIT is proud to support the Secure Communities program, helping provide decision makers with comprehensive, reliable information when and where they need it," said US-VISIT Director Robert Mocny. "By enhancing the interoperability of DHS's and the FBI's biometric systems, we are able to give federal, state and local decision makers information that helps them better protect our communities and our nation."
"Under this plan, ICE will be utilizing FBI system enhancements that allow improved information sharing at the state and local law enforcement level based on positive identification of incarcerated criminal aliens," said FBI Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Acting Assistant Director Jerome M. Pender. "Additionally, ICE and the FBI are working together to take advantage of the strong relationships already forged between the FBI and state and local law enforcement necessary to assist ICE in achieving its goals."
Secure Communities is a key facet of ICE's enforcement priority to identify, locate and remove criminal aliens, building on the success of the agency's Criminal Alien Program. In fiscal year 2008, ICE identified more than 221,000 potentially removable aliens incarcerated nationwide. This fiscal year, the agency anticipates spending more than $1 billion on such efforts, which in addition to Secure Communities, also includes expanding the agency's Criminal Alien Program and Fugitive Operations Program.
More information about ICE's Secure Communities effort is available at http://www.ice.gov/.
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