Quarter of Secure Communities Deportees Are Not Criminals

Drew Joseph writes for the San Francisco Chronicle:

More than one-fourth of illegal immigrants deported from the United States under a federal program that supporters touted as a way to identify and deport dangerous criminals were not convicted of crimes, according to government reports released Tuesday.

In California, 26 percent – 3,875 out of 14,823 – of those deported as part of the program from May 2009 to the end of June were not criminals, while 4,128 were convicted of the most serious crimes, the reports from the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement showed.

Critics of the program said the numbers demonstrate that it has failed to reach the most serious criminal immigrants, while at the same time instilling fear of local law enforcement officers among immigrant communities.

Secure Communities requires states to forward the fingerprints of people who are booked into jails to federal immigration officials so that agents can check the prints against their databases. If there is a match, local authorities must hold the person until federal authorities come for him or her.

The program has been rolled out to almost half of California’s communities and was implemented in San Francisco on June 8.

Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who along with the Board of Supervisors opposed the program, said in a conference call Tuesday that federal agents have picked up people in San Francisco whose charges were dropped after their arrest. Click here for the rest of the piece.

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