The Union Leader reports that New Hampshire officials intend to cooperate with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in their effort to piggyback on the work of local law enforcement.
The initiative, eerily named “Secure Communities,” would check the fingerprints of everyone who is arrested against federal immigration databases. In the case of a match, the ICE is notified and the agency uses its discretion to decide how to respond.
The ICE says that its priority is the removal of convicted felons, but, according to ICE data, 28% of the 49,638 people deported between October 2009 and September 2010 as a result of Secure Communities were convicted of no crime whatsoever. Many others were charged only with misdemeanors. According to the Immigration Policy Center, “Examinations of ICE’s Secure Communities statistics reveals that those identified by Secure Communities include large numbers of individuals with no criminal history, individuals charged with (but not convicted of) crimes, and legal immigrants with prior convictions that make them deportable.”
The program currently operates in 1,315 counties in 42 states, and the ICE plans to have a Secure Communities presence in every state by the end of 2011, with total coverage by 2013. Yet they’ve already been rebuffed by state officials in Washington, D.C., Illinois, Minnesota, Washington, New York, and, just recently, in Massachusetts.
The Pew Research Center estimates that New Hampshire is home to 10 or 20 thousand undocumented immigrants, and the Immigration Policy Center estimates that they pay about $5 million dollars in state taxes every year. So when will New Hampshire join the opposition?
Learn more about the impact of Secure Communities at the Immigration Policy Center, Deportation Nation, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the New York Times.
