Editor's note: The memo was actually dated June 2010. Another memo was removed from the new ICE website.
"This program is revolutionary"
Sheriff Bud E. Cox
Davis County, Utah
ICE has revamped its website, and one of the first things I noticed was a new cheat sheet called, "What Others Are Saying... About Secure Communities."
The guide features 11 testimonials, most of them appear to be from old press statements. They include comments from Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Jena Baker McNeill at The Heritage Foundation.
It also has comments from several sheriffs, who's officers act as ICE's "force multipliers." This one caught my eye:
"Secure Communities is about information sharing and will reduce allegations of racial and ethnic profiling. This is not a random sampling of fingerprints submitted by officers on the street. The fingerprints of every person arrested and booked into the Leon County Jail will be checked against immigration records. [...] The use of Secure Communities means criminal aliens can no longer hide behind a long list of aliases." - Sheriff Larry Campbell Leon County Sheriff's Office, Florida
Sheriff Campbell is right that biometric information usually identifies people accurately. But this doesn't keep police from racially profiling people and arresting them on charges that later get dropped but still feed them into detention.
This is the second time in recent weeks that ICE flanked itself with sheriffs to tout Secure Communities. When DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano announced on Oct. 6 that the program had contributed to a record high 392,000 deportations, she did so with Sh. Leroy Baca of Los Angeles, CA and Sh. Adrian Garcia of Harris County, TX- who is the first Latino to hold this position and the son of Mexican immigrants. Each lawman shared his glowing review of the program.
Secure Communities is active in 685 jurisdictions in 33 states.
This post originally appeared on DeportationNation.org.