ICE REFUSES REQUESTS TO OPT OUT OF SECURE COMMUNITIES

ICE claims to have definitively decided not to allow individual counties to opt out of its Secure Communities Program. A number of counties including California’s San Francisco and Santa Clara counties as well as Virginia’s Arlington County and Washington D. C. have requested to opt out of the program following the decision of the state Attorneys General to enroll the state in the program.

A community that signs up for Secure Communities electronically provides all fingerprints of those arrested and booked to Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit (ICE).

Theoretically, according to ICE, it only uses the information to deport the most serious violators of our laws. But, the truth of the matter is that the program has been used to deport numerous individuals who have no record or who have only infraction or misdemeanor records.

Furthermore, according to San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessy the program scares people into not reporting crimes. For example a mother may not report her husband for domestic violence if she is afraid that the father of her children and her only means of support will be deported. The same reasoning may prevent an elder person from reporting a child who is abusing her or a neighborhood kid who is writing graffiti on the walls.