New America Media, News Report, Elena Shore,
Hundreds of internal emails between federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement staff reveal that ICE sent confusing messages to California officials about whether counties could opt out of the Secure Communities program, which provides federal immigration authorities with the fingerprints of anyone arrested.
Advocates claim that the documents, obtained through a public-records request filed by immigration and civil rights groups, suggest ICE may have led counties to believe that they could opt out of a program that is, in fact, mandatory.
During much of last year, a number of Bay Area counties expressed doubts about the Secure Communities program. Critics say the program, which is designed to detect high-risk individuals who are in the country illegally, frequently leads to the deportation of immigrants who have deep ties in local communities and pose no danger.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution asking to be removed from the program in May 2010. Four months later, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors also voted to opt out. The declassified documents indicate that officials from other Bay Area counties — including Marin, Sonoma and San Mateo — also had misgivings.
Marin County’s Juvenile Probation Office was “quite agitated about the program being ‘forced’ on them,” according to a May 25, 2010 email from a sender whose name was redacted.
San Mateo County requested clarification of how to opt out of the program. But ICE did not provide consistent guidance about what that meant, the emails show.
Sonoma County representatives said they were “upset” about receiving confusing information from ICE, according a May 26, 2010 email, also from an unidentified sender.
An unidentified sender with the Secure Communities program wrote in a May 10, 2010 email to Rachel Canty, who was then the program’s chief of staff, that information provided to Santa Clara County was approved by phone: “I remembered that it wasn’t in writing…which give’s [sic] them plausible deniability if this Santa Clara thing goes south.”
Within a two-week period, ICE officials gave two different interpretations of what it meant to opt out.
In a May 17, 2010 email, David Venturella, assistant director of the Secure Communities program, wrote that opting out meant ICE would not share data gleaned through the program with San Francisco: “I think we need to say we will honor SFR’s [San Francisco Region] desire not to participate in this info sharing initiative. This means the immigration information maintained by ICE will not be shared with SFR law enforcement authorities…To the outside, it looks like we are asking for local LEAs [Law Enforcement Agencies] to share their data with us when in reality it is us sharing our data with the locals in an automated way. It is a nuanced way of saying the same thing but allowing us to move forward and the local to say they are declining our offer. Am I making any sense?”
A May 25, 2010 email from Randi Greenberg, an ICE official, summarized a different definition of “opt out.” According to Secure Communities Deputy Director Marc Rapp, Greenberg wrote, opting out meant that arrestees’ fingerprints would not be sent to immigration authorities: “Deputy Director Rapp explained that if any SC [Secure Communities] partner (ICE, California Dept of Justice or CJIS) received word from the local law enforcement agency that they did not want to participate in SC (meaning, their prints will not be sent from CJIS [the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Service] and onto DHS [Department of Homeland Security] for a check against IDENT) that they just had to let someone know via email or phone.”
The emails were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Cardozo Immigrant Justice Clinic.
Chris Newman, legal director of the NDLON, charged that ICE’s communication “centered on deliberately misleading California officials” about whether Secure Communities was optional for counties and what it meant to opt out.
“To say ICE misled elected officials in California is an understatement,” Newman said. “It is now clear there was a pattern of deception, and the only question that remains is for the administration: Who knew ICE was lying, and when did they know it?”
“At the moment, let’s face it,” Newman said, ICE “looks like a rogue law enforcement agency.”
In response to claims that the mixed messages were a deliberate strategy, ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said in an e-mail that “Secure Communities is not voluntary and never has been.”
“Unfortunately, this was not communicated as clearly as it should have been to state and local jurisdictions when the program began,” Kice wrote. “Thanks to outreach with local jurisdictions and members of congress, we have since made the parameters of the program clear to all stakeholders involved.”
State and local authorities are required to submit the fingerprints to the feds, Kice said. “In that sense, a state or local jurisdiction may not ‘opt out’ of Secure Communities.”
“A jurisdiction may, however, choose not to receive the identifications that result from processing the fingerprints through DHS’s biometric system,” she said. “A jurisdiction’s decision not to receive this information does not affect whether the local ICE field office in that jurisdiction will or will not take enforcement action based on those identifications. In that sense alone, jurisdictions may ‘opt out’ of only this limited aspect of Secure Communities.”
In addition, local governments have some flexibility with the timeline for implementing the program.
“Should a jurisdiction not wish to activate on its scheduled date in the Secure Communities deployment plan, ICE will gladly work with them to address any concerns and determine appropriate next steps,” Kice said.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, whose office reviewed the internal emails, said in a written statement: “It is unfortunately clear that the Department was dishonest with Members of Congress, including me, as well as with local communities and states.”
“It is unacceptable,” Lofgren said, “for any agency to engage in this type of dishonesty, knowingly misleading the public and Members of Congress while trying to maintain ‘plausible deniability.’ One question that must be answered is whether the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement were the victims or perpetrators of this deceit. Additionally, for DHS to believe that it knows better than local law enforcement what is best for local law enforcement is both arrogant and stupid.”
Lofgren is calling for an investigation into whether Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and John Morton knew about the “dishonesty.”
All California counties are currently participating in the Secure Communities program. The program was launched as a pilot program under George W. Bush, but it wasn’t until 2009, under the Obama administration, that the program started to expand rapidly, La Opinión reports. Secure Communities is currently being used in 1,211 jurisdictions in 41 states. ICE expects that by 2013, the program will be fully operational across the country.
A bill introduced by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano would allow local governments to opt out of Secure Communities. The legislation, called the Transparency and Responsibility Using State Tools, or TRUST, Act, is scheduled to be heard in the Assembly Public Safety Committee Tuesday morning.
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