August 8, 2011
Immigrant rights groups are criticizing the Obama administration for unilaterally pushing ahead with its Secure Communities program, a controversial federal immigration enforcement policy that requires local police to forward fingerprints of every person they arrest to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In recent months, the governors of Illinois, Massachusetts and New York announced they had pulled out of the program. But now officials from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are saying the program is not voluntary and that local governments cannot opt out of it. On Friday, ICE sent a letter to local and state governors terminating all existing agreements with jurisdictions over the program. ICE said the agreements were no longer "required to activate or operate Secure Communities."
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