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January 04, 2011 08:59 PM UTC

Colorado Joins "Secure Communities"

  • 16 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

In an expected move, Gov. Bill Ritter announced today that, in response to recommendations from a study group he appointed in 2008 to look at “gaps” in state and federal immigration law, Colorado will join 35 other states in the federal government’s Secure Communities Initiative–essentially a program that loops the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s databases into the routine checks of all booked prisoners in the state. This is a system that is already supposed to be mandatory nationwide by 2013.

According to today’s release and fact sheet (after the jump), Ritter required an agreement changing the terms of the Secure Communties Initiative in Colorado, recognizing specific Colorado laws protecting domestic violence victims who might otherwise be deterred from reporting crime by the existence of such a system. Says Gov. Ritter, “My office has worked closely with stakeholders and the federal government over the past few months to address Colorado-specific concerns and modify the standard Secure Communities agreement. This means increased reporting, additional data reviews and greater transparency and accountability to ensure Secure Communities is implemented in Colorado in a balanced, fair and effective manner.”

Although this could be received with some controversy, you have to wonder if signing on to a federal initiative to enforce existing immigration laws–an initiative that would be mandatory in a couple of years anyway–might be enough to forestall that Arizona SB1070-style draconian immigration bill Colorado Republicans have vowed to introduce this year.

Or, if not forestall it, make it even more unnecessary and politically costly.

COLORADO TO JOIN SECURE COMMUNITIES INITIATIVE

Gov. Bill Ritter announced today that Colorado will join 35 other states in the Secure Communities initiative, which partners local, state and federal agencies nationwide to improve public safety, national security and crime-fighting.

Nearly 870 jurisdictions across the country are participating in the voluntary program established under the Bush administration in 2008 and expected to become mandatory nationally by 2013.  

The Secure Communities initiative is operated by the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security and Justice through the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The program electronically links participating local agencies to the federal government. It provides an electronic notification to the arresting and booking law enforcement agency of any arrestee who is known to be an alien or is a known threat to national security as well as if the arrestee has a previous arrest record. The program does not change the arrest or booking process in any other way.

“Secure Communities is an effective law enforcement tool that will fill a gap in state, local and federal enforcement and help us overcome well-recognized challenges in our public safety network,” Gov. Ritter said. “My office has worked closely with stakeholders and the federal government over the past few months to address Colorado-specific concerns and modify the standard Secure Communities agreement. This means increased reporting, additional data reviews and greater transparency and accountability to ensure Secure Communities is implemented in Colorado in a balanced, fair and effective manner.”

ICE will provide Colorado with quarterly reports and statistics so the state can assess how the program is working. The agreement also acknowledges the unique status of domestic violence victims and witnesses under Colorado law. “These Colorado-specific modifications have allowed us to contribute to the national dialogue to improve Secure Communities so it’s better for Colorado today and for the rest of the country when it becomes mandatory in two years,” Gov. Ritter said.

Colorado’s participation in Secure Communities is supported by the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police and County Sheriffs of Colorado. For more information about Secure Communities, click here to visit the ICE website.

# # #

Attachments:

Final ICE transmittal letter to Colorado, 12-15-10

Final Secure Communities Memorandum of Agreement

FACT SHEET: Secure Communities Initiative

Background

·        The Secure Communities initiative was launched by former President Bush in 2008. Harris County, Texas, was the first community to take part. The program enables participating local police agencies to run the fingerprints of those who are arrested and booked into county jail through federal databases to determine if a detainee is in the country illegally and if they have a previous arrest record.

·        Nearly 870 local jurisdictions and 35 states are now taking part in the program with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

·        Congress has appropriated $1.4 billion to ICE to expand criminal immigrant enforcement efforts, including expansion of Secure Communities. The program will be mandatory nationwide in 2013.

Secure Communities – How it Works

·        Secure Communities is built on three pillars that address the challenges of accurately identifying and successfully removing criminal immigrants from the U.S. by:

1.      Identifying criminal immigrants through modernized information sharing.

2.      Prioritizing enforcement actions to ensure apprehension and removal of dangerous criminal immigrants.

3.      Transforming enforcement processes and systems to achieve lasting results

·        Under Secure Communities, when a person is arrested and booked into county jail, their fingerprints will be sent through the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to the FBI Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Fingerprints submitted by CBI to the FBI will be simultaneously checked against both the FBI criminal history records and ICE’s immigration records.

·        If there is a “hit,” meaning that the arrested person is matched to a record indicating an immigration contact, an automated message will be returned to the local agency, CBI, and ICE. ICE, in partnership with the local agency, will evaluate each case to determine if enforcement action is needed and whether it has the resources to process the case.

·        If ICE wishes to proceed, it will issue a detainer on the individual. ICE and local law enforcement will give top priority to individuals who pose the greatest threat to Colorado public safety, such as those with prior convictions for major drug offenses, murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping.

·        While Secure Communities provides local police agencies with an electronic link to the FBI and ICE databases, local agencies have been able to make that link even without Secure Communities, manually via a phone call, although only searching names and not fingerprints.

Secure Communities in Colorado

·        Gov. Ritter appointed a working group in late 2008 to examine gaps in local-state-federal immigration enforcement.

·        Among the group’s recommendations: that Colorado take part in the Secure Communities initiative. The Colorado Department of Public Safety began exploring the program and communicating with ICE, and Governor Ritter’s office began soliciting statewide public input from a variety of stakeholders.

·        That input prompted Gov. Ritter to request Colorado-specific changes to the standard Secure Communities memorandum of understanding. As a result, Colorado will receive quarterly reports with data about how the program is being used, which will be reviewed by the Colorado Department of Public Safety. This means additional data and greater transparency and accountability.

·        The agreement with Colorado also acknowledges the unique status under state law of domestic violence victims and witnesses.

·        This is another example of Colorado’s pragmatic and common-sense approach to problem-solving, in this case by adjusting a responsible crime-fighting tool to meet Colorado’s specific needs.

·        Colorado’s participation in Secure Communities is supported by the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police and County Sheriffs of Colorado.

# # #

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16 thoughts on “Colorado Joins “Secure Communities””

  1. Just got this from the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.

    Governor Ritter to Sign on to Secure Communities Despite Widespread Opposition

    Legal, victim protection, faith, law enforcement, advocacy, and community groups remain opposed to the Secure Communities program because the proposed memorandum does not address the program’s flaws

    Denver, CO – Today, Governor Bill Ritter plans to sign a memorandum of agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to activate the flawed Secure Communities program in Colorado.  Secure Communities is a misguided immigration enforcement program that shares the biometric data of persons that are arrested and fingerprinted with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  In reality, the program functions as an overbroad immigration dragnet that undercuts community policing efforts, destroys families, and drives victims and witnesses of crime underground.

    Hans Meyer, Policy Director for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, explained, “The proposed modifications to the program do little, if anything, to limit the overbroad Arizona-style dragnet effect of Secure Communities or protect victims or witnesses of crime from being reported to ICE.   The only certain outcomes will be to destroy community policing efforts while failing to address the most insidious aspects of ICE’s secretive mass deportation program.”

    “Countless elected leaders, law enforcement, professional associations, and grassroots organizations throughout Colorado oppose the Secure Communities dragnet because it moves Colorado one step closer to the destructive policies of Arizona, where local law enforcement officers are used as de facto immigration agents.”

    Diego Hunt, President of the Colorado Hispanic Bar Association, commented, “The proposed memorandum does not address the inevitable harm the program will cause to the already tenuous relationship between law enforcement and the State’s Latino community  – a concern the CHBA and other organizations have previously raised with the Governor.”

    David Felice, Chief of Police in Durango, said: “Without substantive modifications to limit the scope of the program and ensure local control over participation, we are concerned that Secure Communities may have a negative effect on public safety in our community.”

    ‘Jazmin,’ an undocumented survivor of domestic abuse, said, “With a law like Secure Communities in place, I won’t call the police anymore – not just for a crime against me, but for a crime against anyone.  When I was a victim, I was more scared of the police than the person that I was reporting.”

    Denver City Councilman Paul Lopez added, “Without protections to limit the scope of the program and ensure local control over participation, Secure Communities may have a negative effect on public safety and unknown fiscal impacts to state and local governments.”

    Art Way, Racial Justice Organizer with the Colorado Progressive Coalition, said, “Unfortunately, due to the prejudicial aspect of the immigration debate, deportation programs such as Secure Communities can on occasion be fertile ground for impermissible factors such as race and nationality to permeate actions of law enforcement.”

    Chris Newman, Legal Director for the National Day Labor Organizing Network said, “”In the past, ICE has used secrecy and misrepresentation to induce states’ participation in the program.  Colorado’s MOA is so disappointing because Governor Ritter, a former prosecutor, appeared to be rising above difficult politics in an earnest effort get a good policy for the state. Instead, he appears to have capitulated to ICE’s pressure.”

    Organizer Judith Marquez from Rights for All People concluded, “The fact that Governor Ritter is signing on to Secure Communities is not just unfortunate, it’s irresponsible.  We call on the incoming Hickenlooper administration to immediately rescind this agreement until ICE is serious about addressing the flaws of the program.”

    ###


  2. Legislation would deny automatic citizenship to children of illegal immigrants  (AP)

    In a matter of weeks, Congress will go from trying to help young, illegal immigrants become legal to debating whether children born to parents who are in the country illegally should continue to enjoy automatic U.S. citizenship.

    Such a hardened approach – and the rhetoric certain to accompany it – should resonate with the GOP faithful who helped swing the House in Republicans’ favor. But it also could further hurt the GOP in its endeavor to grab a large enough share of the growing Latino vote to win the White House and the Senate majority in 2012.


    14 states may target birthright citizenship   By Liz Goodwin

    Arizona state Senator Russell Pearce will unveil the bill Jan. 5 in Washington, D.C., the Arizona Capital Times reports. The paper says lawmakers in Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and Utah have said they want to introduce similar legislation this year.

    Can Colorado be far behind?

    Pearce [AZ] goes on

    … argues that the “original intent” of the 14th Amendment was to grant citizenship to freed U.S. slaves, and that it was never meant to apply to the children of foreigners.

    Others have disagreed, including SCOTUS more than once.  However, from time to time parts of the Constitution should be modernized.

    1. Just saying. An amendment to keep human rights away from immigrants would hardly stand up in the annals of history next to voting rights for women and people of color…

      1. The birthright citizenship language of the 14th Amendment is plain, and I doubt even the conservative Justices on the Supreme Court could twist the wording to justify any legislation passed by the states or the Congress “clarifying” it.

        The politicians of the 19th century were not at all unfamiliar with the concept of immigration, and people from Canada and Mexico could still at the time cross into the United States of the day with their pregnant wives, giving birth to U.S. citizens thanks to the Amendment.

        Modernization isn’t needed – rationality is needed.

  3. By signing on to this initiative, Ritter nullifies at least one of the proposed Republican immigration bills coming this session.

    Hickenlooper will honor the decision, as he should, since he does not want to give fuel to the idea he ran a sanctuary city.

    Good political move by the outgoing Governor and good cover for the incoming Governor.

    Once again, Democrats show they understand the immigration issue better than the Republicans in this state.

    1. But I’m a cynical old SOB.

      I think that for Ritter to have done this in the last week of his administration, Hick had to have bought into it.

      And Ritter gets to take the heat from the base instead of Hick.

  4. They cite concerns among domestic abuse victims, community policing…

    But domestic abuse cases got a specific exemption that Ritter worked hard to obtain, and ICE is (theoretically) supposed to be concentrating on deporting convicted criminals.

    If the law goes in to nationwide effect in 2013 anyway, it’s probably better that Colorado gets the exemptions they need to properly protect the innocent and start it sooner in compensation.

      1. They’re doing fingerprint checks to see if they come up against hits in the ICE database, in addition to the normal checks they already run on arrested persons.

        If they’re in the ICE database, then they’ve already been flagged as illegal, right?  And that means they’ve run in to ICE before, either as legal immigrants whose visas expired, or as known illegal immigrants (quite possibly with judgments already against them).

        So, people are griping about a system that (1) will be Federally mandated within 2 years anyway, (2) has exceptions for domestic abuse situations, (3) allows local opt-out, and (4) runs against a database of fingerprints that match already known illegal immigrants.

        I’m all for hearing why this is such a horrible thing.  But as far as I can tell, this program only applies to arrested people already suspected of a crime, not “anyone the police may suspect as being illegal” a la Arizona, nor even “people hauled in to the police station for any reason whatsoever”.  And it doesn’t gather new immigration data, it merely correlates against “known illegals” databases.

              1. There are all kinds of reasons not to sign on to a Federal Statute, but so far as I can tell (and judging by the lack of responses refuting my position), this statute is not as bad as it’s being made out to be – and it’s better with the exemptions granted at Gov. Ritter’s request.

  5. From his press release —

    Continuing his push to bring real, meaningful reform to the nation’s broken immigration system, Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) issued the following statement today criticizing Governor Bill Ritter’s decision to allow Colorado to participate in the federal Secure Communities program, which uses fingerprints to check a person’s immigration status during jail bookings.

    “I am incredibly disappointed with Governor Ritter’s decision to sign a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and to bring the so-called Secure Communities program to Colorado.  Immigrant, law enforcement and domestic violence advocacy groups throughout our state have repeatedly expressed their deep reservations about the potential impact of the Program and its ability to meet its stated goals. . . .

    http://polis.house.gov/News/Do…

  6. http://www.coloradosenatenews….

    Today Republican Senators Ted Harvey and Steve King applauded Governor Ritter’s decision to join the Secure Communities program. “Secure Communities is an important step in combating illegal immigration and protecting public safety,” said Senator Harvey. “It means fewer illegal aliens with criminal histories and prior deportations will be recycled back into our communities.”

    The system allows local law enforcement to upload fingerprints of suspected illegal immigrants into Homeland Security databases to verify the suspect’s immigration status.

    “This system will give law enforcement the tools to protect public safety without increasing their budgets,” said Senator King.

    35 states across the nation are currently participating in the Secure Communities program. According to the Department of Homeland Security, “the fingerprints of everyone arrested and booked are not only checked against FBI criminal history records, but they are also checked against DHS immigration records. If fingerprints match DHS records, ICE determines if immigration enforcement action is required, considering the immigration status of the alien, the severity of the crime and the alien’s criminal history. Secure Communities also helps ICE maximize and prioritize its resources to ensure that the right people, processes and infrastructure are in place to accommodate the increased number of criminal aliens being identified and removed.”

    Learn more at http://www.ColoradoSenateNews.com.

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