San Francisco Wants Out of Security Communities Initiative

From CBS, Channel 5 San Francisco Affiliate:

San Francisco’s sheriff said Tuesday he was seeking to opt the city out of a federal program that uses the fingerprints of arrestees to check their immigration status.

Sheriff Michael Hennessey sent a letter to the California attorney general asking that the state Department of Justice not share the city’s fingerprint data with federal immigration authorities.

San Francisco is scheduled to begin participating in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s so-called Secure Communities program on June 1. Under the program, anyone arrested will have their fingerprints checked against a database used by ICE.

Hennessey said the program conflicts with a San Francisco policy that requires law enforcement to report only those born outside the U.S. who are booked for felonies. He said his department last year reported more than 2,000 arrestees suspected of felonies to ICE but that the new program would “widen the net excessively.”

Whether or to what extent San Francisco could opt out of the program was not immediately clear.

California ICE officials said the agency had an agreement with the state to check all fingerprints forwarded to the attorney general’s office. Jurisdictions could opt not to receive the results of the immigration status checks, but all fingerprint information would still be provided to ICE, said agency spokeswoman Lori Haley.

A spokeswoman for California Attorney General Jerry Brown said his office was looking over the letter Tuesday.

Hennessey’s announcement came as several San Francisco supervisors said they would introduce a resolution opposing the city’s participation in the Secure Communities program. They argued the program would hurt public safety by increasing distrust in the city’s large immigrant community toward law enforcement and compared it to Arizona’s tough new immigration law. Click here for the rest of the story.

bh