Three counties plan to meet with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the next two weeks to discuss  how they can opt-out of Secure Communities. But officials say they have no idea what to expect. “I urgently need more information about Secure Communities for my November 8, 2010, meeting with ICE… so I can adequately represent the interests of my constituents,” said San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey. Hennessey’s plea came in a statement used... Read More

Here is an interesting footnote in the ongoing debate over whether local jurisdictions can opt-out of Secure Communities once their state has entered into an agreement with ICE: Many of the Memorandums of Agreement (MOA) include a paragraph that clarifies how the state can terminate the contract. This is the paragraph in the MOA signed by ICE and New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS): Right after this paragraph on page 6, comes a description of how to suspend... Read More

ICE’s internal watchdog has released the latest in its series of special reports on the 287(g) program that empowers local police to enforce immigration laws. The AP’s story on the report from the Office of the Inspector General focused on missing funds used to send ICE inspectors to review participating law enforcement agencies, and cited this part of the review: “We made numerous requests for specific program funding data, and received varying explanations... Read More

ICE announced today that every local law enforcement agency in Arizona and West Virginia is now sharing arrest data with immigration agents through the Secure Communities program. The move is likely to help the Obama administration top its record of 392,000 deportations in FY 2010. Seven out of fifteen counties in Arizona have been enrolled in the program since the state first opted-in on Dec. 23, 2008, most of them along the US-Mexico border. By October this year they had already... Read More

Women in front of NY City Hall call for an end to local police collaboration with ICE. (Photo: Andalusa Knoll/Renée Feltz) This week Make the Road NY renewed its push to remove ICE agents from the Riker’s Island Jail where agents check inmate’s immigration status through the Criminal Alien Program (CAP), calling on Mayor Bloomberg to end it “with the stroke of a pen.” In a rally on Tuesday at City Hall, many speakers also raised the specter of a new collaboration... Read More

An ICE memo on how to opt-out of Secure Communities is no longer online. Elise Foley got a tip that it “mysteriously disappeared” from the re-vamped ICE website. We thought it was worth looking at a few recent documents where various ICE officials explained how to make an opt-out request. It isn’t clear if ICE will follow its instructions when it starts to meet with counties that have requested to opt-out. Two meetings are scheduled after the Nov. 2 election.... Read More

When a single-mother of three got into a car accident while driving without a license in Hayward, California, she met a fate common to undocumented immigrants. “A police officer told me he needed to take me to the police department where my fingerprints would be taken, said the woman, who shared her story with Deportation Nation by way of Somos Mayfair, but asked to remain anonymous. While she was at the jail, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents saw her... Read More

ICE's revamped website, www.ice.gov. Editor’s note: The memo was actually dated June 2010. Another memo was removed from the new ICE website. “This program is revolutionary” Sheriff Bud E. Cox Davis County, Utah ICE has revamped its website, and one of the first things we noticed was a new cheat sheet called, “What Others Are Saying… About Secure Communities.” The guide features 11 testimonials, most of them appear to be from old press statements.... Read More

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced today that ICE had the “highest number of removals in our nation’s history” during Fiscal Year 2010 – up to 392,000. During a press conference about the record-breaking results from Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement (ICE), she noted that “a major part of the reason for this increase has been the expansion of Secure Communities.” Someone in the audience pinned down... Read More

A non-partisan research center recently accused the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) of withholding data about a “controversial aspect of a key responsibility of the federal government: what is it doing and not doing to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.” Their experience is all too familiar. “ICE turned down more than half of what we asked for and gave us no reason,” said Susan Long, co-director of Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse... Read More

This month’s edition of WBAI’s War on Immigrants Report featured several interviews about Secure Communities and its activation soon – or possibly already – in New York. The show is co-hosted by Donald Anthonyson of Families for Freedom and Adem Carroll of the Muslim Consultative Network. Guests included NY City Councilmember Jumaane D. Williams of the 45th District of Brooklyn, Angela Fernandez, executive director of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for... Read More

The Washington Post‘s Shankar Vedantam has a story today titled, “Local jurisdictions find they can’t opt out of federal immigration enforcement program,” in which an anonymous senior ICE official is quoted as saying: “Secure Communities is not based on state or local cooperation in federal law enforcement. The program’s foundation is information sharing between FBI and ICE. State and local law enforcement agencies are going to continue to... Read More