California Watch

Police in two more California counties have joined an expanding federal program to identify and deport criminals who are in the country illegally or have committed crimes that makes them subject to deportation, immigration officials announced yesterday.

With the addition of San Joaquin and Stanislaus, 10 of the state's 58 counties have access to the database-driven program, dubbed Secure Communities, and run by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. The program gives police agencies that use electronic booking machines to scan fingerprints of arrestees and inmates to access federal crime and immigration databases.

The other participating state counties are mostly in Southern and Central California, including Los Angeles, Ventura, San Diego, Imperial, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo. The other Northern California counties are Solano and Sacramento counties. Meanwhile, some counties, like San Francisco, which has a local "sanctuary" ordinance on its books, just aren't interested in joining up.

State and local law enforcement agencies can simultaneously check linked FBI and federal immigration databases to screen a person’s criminal history and immigration record. If there is a fingerprint match, the system immediately notifies immigration officials. Local law enforcement must give ICE officials 48-hour notice before releasing an immigrant who has a match in both systems. ICE determines the appropriate action. In the worst cases ICE officials will move to deport dangerous offenders while for some nonviolent offenders they may try to get them to depart the U.S. voluntarily.

The idea behind Secure Communities, which Congress appropriated $1.4 billion for in fiscal year 2009, is that the program will revolutionize how the government finds and identifies criminals who may be subject to deportation. ICE says the agency’s priority is to remove the most dangerous criminals — those who have committed crimes such as murder, rape or kidnapping — from the United States.

Los Angeles County, for instance, joined the program in late Aug. 2009. In the first two months Secure Communities was used there, law enforcement agencies made 78,895 submissions, resulting in 8,717 matches. Of those individuals found to have an immigration record, more than 1,100 were level 1 offenders, according to ICE officials.

ICE, which expects to go nationwide with the program by 2013, launched the initiative selectively around the country in Oct. 2008. From Oct. 27, 2008 through December 31, 2009, Secure Communities nationwide received more than 1.3 million submissions, according to an ICE official. Those submissions resulted in 155,521 matches, including 14,796 aliens who had been charged with or convicted of serious criminal offenses. Statewide figures were not immediately available.

But Secure Communities has also raised some controversy and concern, including errors in databases. For instance, of the 155,521 matches, 9,053, or about 6 percent, were U.S. citizens mistakenly matched, according to an ICE official. (The Dallas Morning News reported in November that there were about 119,000 matches, and 5,900, or just about 5 percent, people were U.S. citizens.)

Another potential issue is the housing of illegal immigrants in state prisons and jails. Although the Obama Administration allocated about $330,000 in its 2011 budget request to reimburse states for incarcerating illegal immigrants, that amount is no where near what's spent to house illegal immigrant inmates in state prisons and jails.

The state expects to pay about a $1 billion this year to jail about 19,000 illegal immigrants, according to the Los Angeles Times. Of the $330 million, administered by the federal Justice Department's State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), about $90 million will go to California.

In response, Gov. Schwarzenegger floated the idea of exporting illegal immigrant inmates to Mexico, as California's prisons are already overcrowded.The state Prison Industry Board also recently decided that it would no longer allow convicted illegal immigrants to receive job training.

The White House's Office of Management and Budget has determined that because SCAAP reimbursements don't deter crime by illegal immigrants and the program has not shown results, among other reasons, the program should be terminated.

ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said that the Secure Communities program would not financially burden state and local jails with holding more illegal immigrants. It is ICE's responsibility to house the illegal immigrant after the individual is released by local law enforcement, she said.

"As long as a criminal alien remains in local custody on criminal charges...we do not pre-empt that process," Kice wrote in an email. "If a potentially deportable criminal alien is slated for release by local authorities even though the criminal case has not been concluded, we will typically execute the detainer and initiate the removal process."

But Jim Denney, executive director of the California State Sheriff's Association, questions where ICE is going to hold such criminal aliens. He points to the state's overcrowded county jails. More than 30 counties in the state are already under court or self-imposed population caps, which require jails to release inmates to make room for new ones coming through the door, Denney said.

ICE has discussed building new detention facilities, and even begun the bidding process for a new facility in the Los Angeles area, but has faced delays.