Earlier this month, Deportation Nation reported that ICE terminated contracts with states for the controversial Secure Communities program.  As a result, the immigration debate has once again boiled over. This week the Obama Administration announced new guidelines to unclog the immigration courts by allowing low-priority immigrant offenders to remain in the country and apply for... Read More

ICE says it has decided to “terminate” contracts with states for its increasingly unpopular Secure Communities program. But that doesn’t mean the data-sharing enforcement program will stop. The announcement came in a letter to state governors that seeks to “clarify an issue that has been the subject of substantial confusion” as ICE continues its plan... Read More

New documents released Wednesday assert that ICE’s controversial Secure Communities program is just a small part of a bigger effort by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to create the “world’s largest crime-fighting computer database of biometric information, including fingerprints, palm prints, iris patterns and face images” called Next Generation Identification... Read More

We added an infographic to our multimedia section. It explains how the Secure Communities program works, the technical process beyond the computer, and provides ICE’s most recent submission/deportation statistics.  It’s also been cross-posted on Colorlines.com. Feel free to repost this infographic. We simply request that you credit Deportation Nation and link to our... Read More

Many of the released ICE documents were heavily redacted. Newly released records reveal how federal authorities kept altering their stance on whether local police are required to share arrest data with immigration agents, even if they ask not to. “Keeping you in the loop as we progress with always changing policy as it relates to [Secure Communities],” reads a May 2010... Read More

As part of our Share Your Story project we are launching “In Detention,” a blog of letters from a 27-year-old college graduate who ran a small construction clean-up company in Arizona until he was stopped by police for a traffic infraction in late summer of 2010. After Yogi (not his real name) was arrested and fingerprinted his information was shared with Immigration... Read More

Since it began in the final months of the Bush administration, Secure Communities has quickly spread. Thirty-four states now use the program to share arrest data from local law enforcement agencies with federal immigration agents. That leaves more than a dozen hold-outs. Last week Washington’s State Patrol declined to sign an agreement with Immigration and Custom’s... Read More