ICE Won't Let Local Police Opt Out of Assisting Federal Enforcement

Will U.S. local law enforcement be forced to participate in a program that critics say will put city police in the position of enforcing federal immigration law and, in the process, divert scarce resources from essential community policing, discourage immigrants from working with police to solve crimes and increase racial profiling?

Or is it a voluntary program?

Those are the questions being raised by civil rights advocacy groups in a federal court filing seeking an injunction requiring the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to turn over critical documents concerning the ability of communities to opt out of what they label "the massive deportation dragnet", the Secure Communities -- S-Comm -- program.

The groups seek to clarify ICE's statements, which they say have been "inconsistent and confusing". In August, ICE released a memo entitled "Setting the Record Straight" setting forth an opt-out policy, which involves submitting a request in writing and meeting with ICE officials.

Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, later confirmed that process to be accurate.

But subsequent communications to and from ICE have muddied the waters, making it less clear that there is any opt-out policy at all.

The Washington Post claims that opting out of Secure Communities "is not a realistic possibility, and never was". This question takes on significance because a number of municipal and country law enforcement agencies have made it clear that they do not wish to participate in S-Comm.

Sunita Patel, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), told IPS, "The misnamed Secure Communities program is the Department of Homeland Security's current scheme to rope local cops into immigration enforcement. Though branded as a race-blind way to arrest certain people, the numbers show it's actually a trap."

And Francis Boyle, a law professor at the University of Illinois, told IPS, "This is simply an exercise in racial profiling against Latinos."

On Aug. 10, the groups filing the new freedom of information suit -- CCR, the National Day Laborer Organising Network and the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law -- released internal government documents newly obtained through a lawsuit filed in a New York federal court in April.

According to advocates who have reviewed the documents, they reveal a pattern of dishonesty regarding the S-Comm program.

S-Comm, which currently operates in approximately 600 jurisdictions across the country, functions like the controversial 287(g) program and Arizona's SB1070, making state and local police central to the enforcement of federal immigration law.

The program automatically runs fingerprints through immigration databases for all people arrested and targets them for detention and deportation even if their criminal charges are minor, eventually dismissed, or the result of an unlawful arrest. The program links FBI criminal databases with civil immigration databases.

Several local jurisdictions have already asked to opt out, and were given a variety of responses. In May 2010, Sheriff Michael Hennessey of San Francisco requested an opt-out from ICE, but ICE directed him to California state officials. The California attorney general denied the sheriff's request and claimed that there was no opt-out option.

Arlington County, Virginia held a community forum in July to discuss opting out of the program, at which the chief of police stated that ICE had told him that there was no opt-out -- Secure Communities was federally mandated.

Others, including Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, the Santa Clara Board, and the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, all contacted ICE asking for information about the opt-out policies. None received an immediate response.