Secure Communities Coming to Your State Whether You Want It Or Not

For the uninitiated Secure Communities is a federal program designed to identify criminal illegal immigrants who are already in the prison system and assist the federal government in removing them from the United States.

N.C. Aizenman of The Washington Post has a good summary of the program here.

Although controversy over civil liberties issues has surrounded similar efforts, the Fairfax program, Secure Communities, has had a lower profile. It automatically checks the digital fingerprints of anyone processed at the jail against immigration databases maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. If someone is found to be an illegal immigrant whom officials want to deport, an officer of DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, calls the jail's booking desk within an hour to place a "detainer" on the person.

Some states have tried to opt out of using Secure Communities, but are finding that the program once thought to be voluntary is now mandatory. Shankar Vedantam of the Washington Post has more in his article Local jurisdictions find they can't opt out of federal immigration enforcement program:

The Obama administration is making it virtually impossible for Arlington County, the District and other jurisdictions to refuse to participate in a controversial immigration enforcement program that uses fingerprints gathered by local law enforcement agencies to identify illegal immigrants.

Secure Communities is already up and running in 32 states but is set to go nationwide:

Secure Communities, which operates in 32 states and will soon be running nationwide, relies on the fingerprints collected by local authorities when a person is charged with anything from a traffic violation to murder. The fingerprints are sent to state police, and then to the FBI, for criminal background checks.

The voluntary nature of the program is a nuanced issue at this point as there is some debate over where  federal jurisdiction begins and what rights states have in utilizing the program:

A senior ICE official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the involuntary nature of the program, said:

"Secure Communities is not based on state or local cooperation in federal law enforcement. The program's foundation is information sharing between FBI and ICE. State and local law enforcement agencies are going to continue to fingerprint people and those fingerprints are forwarded to FBI for criminal checks. ICE will take immigration action appropriately."

In fact the only way a state could opt out of the program would be to deny the FBI fingerprints of incarcerated immigrants:

The only way a local jurisdiction could opt out of the program is if a state refused to send fingerprints to the FBI. Since police and prosecutors need to know the criminal histories of people they arrest, it is not realistic for states to withhold fingerprints from the FBI - which means it is impossible to withhold them from ICE.