Fingerprints yield deportations

WASHINGTON – Immigration officials now have access to the fingerprints of every inmate booked into jail in all 25 U.S. counties along the Mexican border, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Tuesday, touting the program as a way of identifying and deporting “criminal aliens.”

Napolitano’s announcement came as immigrant rights activists criticized the fingerprinting program, known as Secure Communities, after obtaining documents showing that more than one-quarter of those deported under its auspices had no criminal records.

The program “essentially co-opts police into doing the job of the federal government,” said Sunita Patel of the Center for Constitutional Rights, one of several groups that forced the disclosure of documents through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

That charge is baseless, DHS officials said. Secure Communities gives Immigration and Customs Enforcement the ability to check the fingerprints of those arrested against a database that will show whether they have ever been deported or otherwise had contact with immigration agents.

If ICE determines that the person is in the country illegally, federal agents can institute deportation proceedings. Records show that happens in some cases, but not all.

“The Secure Communities initiative reflects ICE’s ongoing commitment to smart, tough enforcement strategies that help ensure the apprehension of dangerous criminal aliens,” ICE Director John Morton said. “Expediting removals decreases the amount of time these individuals spend in ICE custody – saving taxpayers money and strengthening public safety.”

By some estimates, as many as 1 million illegal immigrants now living in the U.S. have committed crimes, Morton has said. ICE often is unaware of them, even when they are in jail or prison.

Overall, ICE expects to remove 400,000 illegal immigrants this year, a record. Although ICE says it focuses on deporting criminals, it continues to expel non-criminals. That practice has drawn criticism from immigration rights advocates. But other critics say ICE is not tough enough.

In the first 10 months of fiscal year 2010, 142,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records were deported, ICE says, one-third more than in the same period of the prior year. About 50,000 non-criminals were removed.

Non-criminals also can include those who have failed to show up for deportation hearings, those who recently crossed the border illegally or those who re-entered the country after deportation, ICE spokesman Richard Rocha said.