Database Errors and Immigration Enforcement by Local Police

Thousandsof times each year, police officers checking the name of an individual stoppedor detained against records in the nation’s main criminal database havereceived an initial “hit” for an immigration violation that, upon furtherinvestigation, the Department of Homeland Security could not confirm. These “false positives” have likely caused wrongful detentions and divertedscarce police resources from local public safety priorities, finds a report tobe released on Thursday by the Migration Policy Institute.

The study, based on government data, finds that from 2002 to 2004, when police queried names in the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database, the officer received erroneous immigration hits in almost 9,000 cases. The rate of false positives was 42% overall, and some individual law enforcement agencies had error rates as high as 90%.

“Theincredibly high number of false positives in the database means that policeresources, which are always stretched thin, are being wasted on detainingimmigrants and non-immigrants alike who haven’t done anything wrong,” said MPIPresident Demetrios Papademetriou.

The report,Blurring the Lines: A Profile of State and Local Police Enforcement ofImmigration Law Using the National Crime Information Center Database,2002-2004, uses data released by DHS in partial settlement of a Freedom ofInformation Act lawsuit.  The report provides the first glimpse of howimmigration data in the NCIC is being used, by which local law enforcementagencies, and against which immigrants.

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