Today's Jim Crow? Secure Communities Program Draws Protest, Praise in Arlington

In its fourth and final stop, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Task Force on Secure Communities held a meeting Wednesday in Arlington seeking input on how to improve the program.

What the task force got was a packed room on George Mason University's Ballston campus, a room full of people with stories.

More than 300 people attended, many as part of organizations like CASA de Maryland and the Arlington Coalition Against Secure Communities. Some shared stories of families separated by deportation and some praised the program as a tool to enforce immigration law.

Ofelia Calderón, a private immigration attorney in Arlington, talked about the 80 percent of her clients who are charged with misdemeanor offenses, like reckless driving or public drunkenness, or are not guilty of the crimes for which they were arrested but are detained nonetheless because of their immigration status.

Secure Communities "is not working the way you say it's working," Calderón said.

Some people called Secure Communities a violation of human rights, inhumane or racist. Others called it a "fine program." Some told the task force to ask the federal government to strengthen enforcement.

About halfway through the meeting, protest organizers requested that the task force resign, and staged a walk-out holding signs and chanting "End it, don't amend it" and "Obama, don't deport my mama."

The meeting continued, with personal stories often punctuated by shouted comments from the listening crowd.

"(These meetings) have given us insight into how this program affects people," Task Force Chairman Chuck Wexler said. "It's given us a chance to hear your stories, and they are very compelling."

The task force, assembled by the Obama administration in June, will present a report to the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Similar meetings have been held in Dallas, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Arlington County has tried to opt out of the program, saying that it would create division in the community and keep undocumented immigrants from reporting crimes. The Department of Homeland Security has said that opting out is not an option.

"The only way to opt out would be to stop sending fingerprints to the FBI," said Gary Mead, director of enforcement and removal operations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

The program, Mead said, boils down to information sharing between federal agencies. Fingerprints and identification are already sent to the FBI by local jurisdictions when a suspect is taken into police custody. The same information is, under the Secure Communities program, shared with ICE.

"I feel bad that we've done a poor job of getting the message out about how the program works," Mead said. "People have nothing to fear from reporting crimes. Police officers do not routinely arrest witnesses and victims of crimes. We do not have one documented case of deportation of a witness or victim."

ICE has prosecutorial discretion, Mead said, to deport only those who pose a threat to the community.

"At the core of these passionate concerns is a problem with immigrations laws," Mead said. "The administration, the secretary (of the department, Janet Napolitano), and ICE, we wholeheartedly agree that the laws have to be changed."