Associated Press
More woes plague post-9/11 security

SAN DIEGO — San Diego County authorities will soon be able to use fingerprints to check the immigration status of suspects in county jails, federal officials announced Tuesday.

The "Secure Communities" program allows officials access to both federal criminal and immigration records when they take suspects' fingerprints during the booking process, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

It will be implemented Wednesday in Dallas County in Texas and Wake County in North Carolina. By February it will expand to about 45 counties across the country, including San Diego County.

David Venturella, an ICE director involved in the program, said the goal is to identify criminals for deportation. He said local authorities will notify ICE if fingerprints match those of a non-U.S. citizen, but federal agents would decide whether someone is deportable.

The program gives local authorities access to the FBI's criminal database and the Department of Homeland Security's database, which contains immigration information.

Congress has provided ICE with $350 million for the program but additional money would be needed, said Julie Myers, assistant secretary of homeland security.

"I think this is one of the programs that has the most potential to really revolutionize law enforcement in terms of identifying criminal aliens," Myers said.

Immigration advocates were already lining up against the program. Pedro Rios of the American Friends Service Committee, which assists immigrants in San Diego, said that not all suspects are ultimately charged with crimes or have criminal records.

"It is quite distressing because it creates a larger dragnet for people who might be charged with some sort of minor infraction that places them in jail," Rios told the Union-Tribune in San Diego.

Immigration advocates see a potential for problems in letting local law enforcement access records on immigration, in which violations are considered civil and not criminal, said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. Noorani also worries about what could happen if inaccurate or outdated information is in the database.

"If we're relying on bad data to enforce the law, people are going to be swept up who are not criminals," he said.