Marietta Daily Journal

Editorial: Secure Communities

Published: 05/21/2009 HERE

President Obama came into office perceived as “soft” on immigration reform; that is, in favor of relaxed quotas, a microscopically short path to amnesty and only modest improvements to border security.

So Tuesday’s announcement that his proposed budget includes $198 million for a program to check the fingerprints of every person booked into a jail in this country against the databases of the FBI and the office of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement caught both his detractors and supporters off guard. Especially since the program (Secure Communities) not only continues a Bush-era initiative, but increases its funding by a whopping 30 percent.

“We want to facilitate legal immigration and pursue enforcement against those who violate our country’s immigration laws,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano of Arizona.

Cobb already has in place a somewhat similar program – 287(g) – that reviews fingerprints of foreign-born inmates and trains local law enforcement officers for customs enforcement. The Secure Communities program is primarily a database check.

The Secure Communities program is valuable in that can “finger” those arrested a second time, and lead to deportation proceedings against those determined to be here illegally or to have already committed crimes here. More than 2,500 people have been deported since the program was put in place across the country in October.

Cobb’s leaders at the opposite ends of the immigration “reform” perspective were cautiously supportive of Obama’s plans, although Rich Pellegrino of the Cobb-Cherokee Immigrant Alliance said the move needs to be part of a broader reform.

“If you’re looking at just enforcement, it never works,” he said, seemingly ignoring the tough stand Mexico (and many other countries) have taken toward defending their own borders against those who would violate them. He also argued that tougher enforcement drives illegal immigrants “more underground … the opposite of what we’re trying to do.”

Meanwhile, D.A. King, head of the Marietta-based Dustin Inman Society, said Obama’s decision seemed OK at face value, but wondered if there is a hidden agenda behind it.

“If (Secure Communities) is intended to be a method of granting de facto amnesty to illegals who haven’t yet been arrested and jailed, it is merely a sleight-of-hand distraction.”

He noted that Obama is trying to cut the $400 million State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which reimburses local jails for housing illegal immigrants. That program sent $72,000 in Cobb’s direction last year.

The Secure Communities program is somewhat similar to the very controversial 287(g) program, which has resulted in 4,700 Cobb inmates being turned over to ICE since 2007, according to Sheriff Neil Warren. That’s 4,700 people, many of them hardened, multiple offenders, who are no longer on Cobb’s streets or living in our community. That in itself is ample reason to continue with 287(g) and to applaud the expansion of the Secure Communities program. And we hope it does not represent just a feint by the president toward stronger enforcement – to be followed by a veer toward open borders.