Napolitano defends Secure Communities immigration strategy

[alp227]

Source: The Washington Independent

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano delivered a speech today at American University about border security, immigration enforcement and her department’s controversial Secure Communities program.

Napolitano called Secure Communities “a program that helps ICE identify those who have been arrested by state and local law enforcement for non-immigration state or local crimes, who are also in the country unlawfully. It bestows no additional authorities onto local law enforcement and only identifies those who have been booked into jails. Literally, in jails.”

Opponents of Secure Communities have repeatedly called on the Obama administration to end the fingerprint-sharing program because immigrants who have committed no crime are being detained and deported, leaving behind U.S.-born children and families that, in many cases, will struggle to make ends meet.

Jonathan Fried of We Count!, a South Florida worker and immigrant advocacy organization, said during an event in August that in Miami-Dade County, as of May 2011, close to 60 percent of undocumented immigrants who have been detained under Secure Communities have not committed a crime.

Read more: http://washingtonindependent.com/113140/napolitano-defends-secure-communities-immigration-strategy

[EFerrari]

1. What a crock. They really must think we're stupid. n/t