San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessy requested that San Francisco opt out of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Secure Communities Program.

Secure Communities is a program under which the fingerprints of everyone arrested in a community are provided to ICE. However under San Francisco’s Sanctuary City ordinance only those immigrants who are charged with felonies, found to have a previous felony or ICE contact in their criminal history are reported. Initially ICE promised that only those charged with felonies would be subject to deportation.

As a study quoted in the New York Times shows nationwide twenty-six per cent of those deported under the program do not have criminal records. In some places the percentage is higher. In Maricopa County, Arizona the percentage is fifty-four per cent and in Travis County Texas it is eighty-two percent. By ICE’s own records seventy-nine percent of those deported either had no criminal record or convictions for minor offenses.

Prior to the June 8th implementation of Secure Communities in San Francisco, ICE and California Attorney General Jerry Brown told Hennessy that there was no way to opt out of the program. But in response to statistics showing that many of the people deported are innocent or are guilty of only minor offenses and ICE has agreed to make the plan voluntary. They have agreed to meet with Hennessy to discuss the city’s objections to the program. As Hennessy has pointed out in the past many immigrants are intimidated by the program and refuse to report criminal activity due to fear of deportation. A wife may not report domestic violence, for example if she knows that her husband may be deported. She want medical help for herself and treatment for her husband but she does not want him to be deported where he will not be able to support her and have contact with their children.