According to public records, a record number of immigrants were
deported from the U.S. this year. In addition, this year marked the
pronounced expansion of the USCIS Secure Communities program, a program
aimed at identifying undocumented aliens imprisoned in the U.S.
According to ICE, nearly 400,000 undocumented aliens were deported in
2010. Of those, over 195,000 were convicted criminals. Much of this
increase came from the Secure Communities program, which uses biometric
data to compare the fingerprints of people imprisoned in local jails to
those in ICE and FBI databases. The Secure Communities program is
currently in place in 891 jails in 35 states across the U.S.
