U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) controversial Secure
Communities program is now active in all 100 counties in North
Carolina, the program reported this week. North Carolina is now the
tenth state to implement the program; the Obama administration hopes to
have all 50 states enrolled in the Secure Communities program within
the next two years.
The Secure Communities program has been the source of much debate and
controversy. Supporters of the program believe it is necessary to
indentify and target criminal illegal aliens; immigration rights
advocates, however, believe that the program creates a deep level of
distrust between immigration communities and law enforcement.
The Secure Communities program enables local law enforcement to check
fingerprints of arrested individuals against the FBI criminal database
and ICE’s IDENT database to find out if the person is in the U.S.
legally or illegally. Undocumented persons are taken into custody by
ICE, who then works to deport those persons.
According to ICE, the Secure Communities program “improves and
modernizes the identification and removal of criminal aliens from the
United States.”
