D.C. to help U.S. identify illegal immigrants in jail

Federal program checks fingerprints of local crime suspects

D.C. police will be the next department to take part in a federal program whose ultimate aim is to check the immigration status of every person booked into a local jail, homeland security officials announced Thursday.

The program, known as Secure Communities, matches inmates' fingerprints against a federal database so that federal authorities can identify and possibly remove deportable illegal immigrants before they are released from custody.

Similar checks are done at all 1,200 federal and state prisons. But authorities have lacked the ability to do them across the nation's 3,100 local jails.

The Bush administration launched the program as a pilot project in October 2008, and it is being expanded under President Obama as part of an effort to focus enforcement on illegal immigrants who commit crimes, rather than those who otherwise obey the law.

"We're excited," said Kevin Palmer, a D.C. police spokesman. "It's going to enable our officers to have real-time information about the individuals they have in custody and to help facilitate the removal of dangerous felons from our communities."

Fairfax County is one of 95 jurisdictions that participate in Secure Communities, which differs from a national program that deputizes local police to question suspects about their immigration status. Several county police departments in Northern Virginia and Maryland participate in that program.

Similarly, Montgomery County police provide immigration authorities with the name of anyone arrested for a violent crime or handgun violation.

The checks conducted through Secure Communities are automatic. Fingerprints of suspects arrested by local authorities, already run through the FBI's criminal database, are also matched against an immigration database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. The system does not flag illegal immigrants who have not been fingerprinted.

Homeland Security officials announced Thursday that the program had identified in its first year more than 111,000 criminal illegal immigrants in local custody. More than 11,000 were convicted of serious crimes such as murder, rape, and kidnapping. About 1,900 of those immigrants have been removed from the United States.

Richard Rocha, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency planned to remove the remainder after they have completed their sentences.

Immigrant advocates have expressed concern that Secure Communities will ensnare many illegal immigrants who are convicted only of minor crimes or of nothing at all.