The highest priority of any law enforcement agency is to protect the safety and security of the communities it serves.
ICE prioritizes the removal of public safety and national security threats, those who have violated our nation’s immigration laws, including those who have failed to comply with a final order of removal, and those who have engaged in fraud/willful misrepresentation in connection with official government matters.
Secure Communities is a simple and common sense way to carry out ICE's enforcement priorities for those aliens detained in the custody of another law enforcement agency (LEA). It uses a federal information-sharing partnership between DHS and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that helps to identify in-custody aliens without imposing new or additional requirements on state and local law enforcement. For decades, local jurisdictions have shared the fingerprints of individuals arrested and/or booked into custody with the FBI to see if those individuals have a criminal record and outstanding warrants. Under Secure Communities, the FBI automatically sends the fingerprints to DHS to check against its immigration databases. If these checks reveal that an individual is unlawfully present in the United States or otherwise removable, ICE takes enforcement action – prioritizing the removal of individuals who present the most significant threats to public safety as determined by the severity of their crime, their criminal history, and risk to public safety – as well as those who have violated the nation’s immigration laws.
The federal government, not the state or local law enforcement agency, determines what immigration enforcement action, if any, is appropriate.
Only federal DHS officers make immigration enforcement decisions, and they do so only after an individual is arrested for a criminal violation of local, state, or federal law, separate and apart from any violations of immigration law.
The Basics
ICE completed full implementation of Secure Communities to all 3,181 jurisdictions within 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. Territories on January 22, 2013. While the biometric interoperability has remained constant since full implementation was achieved, ICE’s operational posture under Secure Communities was temporarily suspended by DHS policy from November 20, 2014, through January 25, 2017.
Since its reactivation on January 25, 2017 through the end of Fiscal Year (FY) 2017, as a result of Executive Order No. 13768, entitled Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States, more than 43,300 convicted criminal aliens have been removed as a result of Secure Communities.
How Does Secure Communities Work?
Through the aforementioned Executive Order, DHS has been provided clear and common-sense priorities for immigration enforcement focused on the faithful execution of the immigration laws of the United States, as passed by the Congress. Secure Communities will utilize all available data systems and Criminal Alien Program resources to identify and take enforcement actions (to include the lodging of detainers) against criminal and other priority aliens while they are in the custody of another law enforcement or correctional agency. This will prevent their release back into the community, and thus stop the cycle of recidivism perpetrated by many of these criminal and immigration offenders.
Secure Communities had a long and successful history prior to its suspension as indicated above. In fact, from its inception in 2008 through FY14 and since its reactivation on January 25, 2017 through the end of FY 2017, Secure Communities interoperability led to the removal of over 363,400 criminal aliens from the U.S.