New ‘Secure Communities’ agreement

Three days before leaving office, Governor David A. Paterson signed a new Secure Communities agreement.
“This new agreement balances the homeland security and civil liberties issues that have surrounded the Secure Communities initiative,” Paterson said.
In May, Paterson signed an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) approving Secure Communities, also referred to as “S-Comm.” The program would allow any person arrested by police to have their fingerprints automatically run through an immigration database.
The new agreement makes it clear that the removal of convicted felons, and not individuals whose only offense is remaining in the country illegally, is the main objective of the Secure Communities program. Paterson noted that although protecting the civil rights of immigrants was important to him, acknowledging that New York is a prime target for terrorism was imperative.
Pro-immigration groups who rallied in early December to urge Governor Paterson to rescind the previous S-Comm agreement are still skeptical of the new agreement.
“We are very appreciative of all the work Governor Paterson did to sign the new agreement,” said Angela Fernandez, Executive Director of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights (NMCIR). “However, upon further reading we realize the agreement is still very problematic because fingerprints are still checked with ICE’s databases upon point of arrest.”
Fernandez doesn’t believe many changes were actually made to the agreement. In the new agreement ICE defined aggravated felonies as a priority for deportation.
“Aggravated felonies still include a whole host of misdemeanors, such as graffiti and similar offenses,” Fernandez said. “While ICE might say in their MOA that they are prioritizing the types of convictions that will pull an immigrants into deportation their on the ground practices are actually on a larger scale.”
The Department of Homeland Security has set a deportation quota for 2011 of 408,000. In 2010, 78 percent of those deported by ICE (under S-Comm) where charged or convicted of low level offenses classified by ICE as non-criminals.
“If there’s a quota to be met, I’m led to believe that Secure Communities will be used to meet it. It creates a drag net effect to deport as many people as possible,” she said.