Several immigration advocacy organizations filed a lawsuit in April to demand ICE reply to their open records request about Secure Communities, which operates in 494 jurisdictions in 27 states and has more than $1 billion in funding behind it. Now ICE has responded by releasing 31 new documents related to the program. They show that about a quarter of the  people deported after being turned over to ICE at local jails had no criminal record. This contrasts the stated goal of the program to focus on high level offenders.

Watch our site for an update after a conference call with reporters this afternoon with representatives from the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and the Center for Constitutional Rights will be on the call.

In the meantime, visit our Library to read the documents – and help mark them up in our interactive PDF tool. For example, click here to see how you can collaboratively highlight or strikeout text, add notes and make comments within the document. The files into three categories: interoperability statistics, congressional reports and miscellaneous files.

The first category of documents detail the number of matches made in the Secure Communities databases. An Interoperability Statistics by Conviction report lists the total number of IDENT submissions since the program began in 2008 - 2,261,687 – as well as the total submissions for each participating county by Level 1 and 2/3. Maricopa County has the most submissions at 340,871, while Los Angeles has 258,235 and Harris County (Houston, TX) has 167,432. It also lists the corresponding number of detainers issued for each county and the number of removals that resulted. The June 2010 report shows IDENT/IAFIS produced 22,813 submissions in June, and total of 4,475 so-called “aliens” were removed from the country as a result. About a quarter – 1,081 – were charged with or convicted of a Level 1 offense.

The second category of released files – congressional reports – are updates from ICE about how it is spending funds allocated for Secure Communities. For example, the report for the First Quarter of Fiscal year 2009 details expanded Video Teleconferencing capabilities for the Department of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration Review, and the Criminal Alien Program (CAP); and the award of a major contract to support the Detention and Removal Operations Modernization Bed Space.

Among the documents in the third category – miscellaneous files – is a four-page list of Secure Communities Talking Points that appears to have been presented by ICE on January 12, 2010 to the Police Executive Research Forum. It notes proper investment is required to “ensure the entire criminal alien enforcement process performs in an efficient and effective manner so that we are able to accommodate the increased the number of criminal aliens being identified.”