We were pleasantly surprised to see Gov. Bill Ritter, in the waning days of his administration, sign Colorado on to a federal program that conducts immigration status checks on people booked into local jails.
Secure Communities has been controversial, particularly with immigration rights advocates, but we believe it is a sound approach to the vexing problem of illegal immigrants who repeatedly commit crimes.
The vehement objections include concerns about racial profiling and the creation of an illegal-immigration dragnet. Given the noise, we thought Ritter might punt and leave the issue for the next governor.
However, we were glad to see Ritter, a career prosecutor before his term in the governor’s mansion, put his criminal justice expertise to use in forging an agreement with the feds.
The program works like this: When someone is arrested and fingerprinted, a local law enforcement agency sends those fingerprints to the FBI for a criminal background check. That is standard operating procedure, with or without Secure Communities.
With Secure Communities, federal authorities also run the fingerprints through Department of Homeland Security immigration records to determine a person’s immigration status.
If a person is determined to be in the country illegally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement decides whether deportation is in order, given the severity of the crime and the suspect’s criminal history.
As you might imagine, the more dangerous the person is deemed to be, the more likely that person will be a priority for immigration enforcement action.
Immigration rights groups have worried about pretextual arrests, meaning local police arresting immigrants on a pretext so as to have their status checked. They also have voiced concerns that relations between immigrants and local law enforcement will deteriorate because immigrants will come to view local police as an arm of immigration authorities.
We understand their concerns, but we don’t think they should supersede the priority of identifying and removing dangerous illegal immigrants from the country.
The only way locals could opt out would be by refusing to access the FBI database to check a suspect’s history, which would be foolish. The entire country doesn’t yet have the program only because the feds need time to address technical database issues on a state-by-state basis.
With Ritter’s action Tuesday, Colorado joins 35 other states in the Secure Communities program, which will be mandatory by 2013 anyway.
Politically, Ritter did incoming Gov. John Hickenlooper a huge favor by taking the heat for the decision rather than leaving it to his fellow Democrat.
But more importantly, Colorado will be a safer place because of the governor’s decision to join Secure Communities.
