In the ongoing race against the Red Queen to halt illegal immigration into the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security is expanding a program designed to streamline the identification of illegal immigrants in the criminal justice system in order to deport them. But this time, it's personal. We’re talking biometrics personal.
No longer the sole domain of the FBI, fingerprints are now being left all over the federal government. That is, they’re being used at Homeland Security, Justice, State, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Customs and Border Protection — DHS, DOJ, DOS, ICE and CBP, if you’re acronym-inclined. For good measure, TSA, the USCG, the USCIS, and even DoD are on board too. All of these government agencies have had access to a national fingerprint database of apprehended aliens since 2003.
Now, local law enforcement agencies are getting their own paws on the prints.
According to a new plan called Secure Communities, the Lumpkin County Sheriff's Office, in addition to the other approximately 30,000 local jails and booking locations nationwide, will be able to check a suspected illegal immigrant's fingerprints against a national database. The database, dubbed IDENT, is maintained by the Department of Homeland Security and will be integrated with the FBI's fingerprint registry by the year 2012.
Championed by the Executive Director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Secure Communities program (how's that for a title), one David Venturella, the fingerprint system has already been test-implemented at 48 sites across the country. That comprises a total of 2,100 booking locations, beginning in Houston in October 2008.
Since then, it has enjoyed what could reasonably be called “success,” as strange a concept as that might seem. According to Venturella's statement to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, the program has resulted in “the identification of over 12,000 criminal aliens,” including 862 “dangerous criminals.” Over half of these aliens have been removed already or are in the process of being removed, with the others awaiting the results of removal proceedings.
Secure Communities, however, is not without its drawbacks. In fiscal year 2009 alone, its projected budget is $1.4 billion. That's a lot of money, bailouts notwithstanding. “It's a very expensive program,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy for the Center for Immigration Studies, in the Washington Post.
In addition to its expense, there is the obvious drawback that illegal immigrants must be apprehended first before they can be fingerprinted. This means that aliens identified by the Secure Communities program will be, at the very least, second-time offenders.
Venturella acknowledges that, but says that the time and resources saved by using the IDENT fingerprint database will allow ICE to “effectively allocate its resources to ensure that ICE agents are able to conduct interviews of the other individuals whose data is not in law enforcement or immigration databases.”
Criticism has come from some hilarious corners, including from Amnesty International, which if you believe the Washington Post, argues that the program represents a step in “criminalizing” illegal immigration. I'll just let that one sink in for a while.
In all, Secure Communities is a positive step, but by no means a silver bullet, to ending illegal immigration, especially in light of the alternatives. I mean, a giant wall didn't even work for rabbits in Australia. Let's be serious here.
On the trail
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