ImmigrationNew deportation approach targets convicted criminals, threats to national security

Last Thursday, President Barack Obama announced the end of Secure Communities as part of his immigration reform strategy. The program was designed to identify deportable undocumented immigrants who had committed crimes, by allowing federal immigration agents to access fingerprint records collected at local jails. In many cases, agents requested local law enforcement officials to hold inmates beyond their jail terms until they could be transferred to federal custody.

According to the Los Angeles Times, for many immigration advocates, Secure Communities symbolized what was wrong with U.S. immigration enforcement strategy. The program fostered immigrants’ mistrust of law enforcement and resulted in the deportations of people who were arrested for minor crimes like traffic violations. In one case, Maria 
Bolaños, a 28-year-old undocumented immigrant from El Salvador living in 
Prince
George’s
County,
Maryland, was placed in deportation proceedings after she called the police for help in a domestic violence dispute.

In a memo sent last Thursday from DHS chief Jeh Johnson to top Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, Johnson said the program had been weakened by critics. “The reality is the program has attracted a great deal of criticism, is widely misunderstood, and is embroiled in litigation,” Johnson wrote. “Its very name has become a symbol for general hostility toward the enforcement of our immigration laws.”

Obama has announced a new initiative — the Priority Enforcement Program — to target only undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of certain serious crimes or who pose danger to national security. Federal agents will continue to access local fingerprint records and, in some cases, ask jail officials to hold inmates until they can be picked up by immigration officials.

Hundreds of local and state law enforcement agencies have complained about Secure Communities because it requires them to hold some inmates beyond the length of their sentences. In recent months, communities across the country have passed laws banning law enforcement cooperation with ICE hold requests. California passed the Trust Act, which barred counties from cooperating with ICE except when the inmates in question had been convicted of serious crimes. The new initiative will require ICE officials to specify before making a hold request that a selected inmate has a removal order against him or her or is likely deportable.

Immigration advocates, while pleased with Obama’s new plan to end Secure Communities, are unsure what the new initiative will mean for broader immigration reform. “I think there’s finally recognition that the Secure Communities experiment was a failure, and that the program became a Frankenstein,” said Chris Newman, an attorney for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.