Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (Photo: Flickr/The National Guard)

Former members of a task force on Secure Communities sent a letter this week to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano calling on her to suspend the immigration enforcement program.

The letter also expressed their concern that an Arizona law enforcement agency that has committed a “wide range of civil rights violations” still has access to Secure Communities.

Brittney Nystrom of the National Immigration Forum and Andrea Zuniga DiBitetto of the AFL-CIO write in the letter:

As former members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, Task Force on Secure Communities, we note with concern the multiple findings of racial profiling of Latinos and other civil rights violations by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on December 15.

The findings of a pattern and practice of racial profiling of Latinos in Maricopa County, Arizona, demonstrate that abuse can occur while the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is actively collaborating with enforcement agencies through both the 287(g) program and the Secure Communities program and through informal collaboration between DHS and law enforcement agencies.

“My understanding is that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is continuing to operate Secure Communities in Maricopa County despite the findings of discriminatory policing by that sheriffs department,” Nystrom tells The Florida Independent.

Secure Communities allows local law enforcement agencies to check the fingerprints of people they detain and match them up with federal immigration and criminal databases, with the stated goal of deporting undocumented immigrant criminals. All 67 Florida jurisdictions participate in Secure Communities.

Napolitano said in October that the termination of Secure Communities “would only weaken public safety, and move the immigration enforcement system back towards the ad hoc approach where non-criminal aliens are more likely to be removed than criminals.”

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.

Nystrom says that Homeland Security officials said they were “limiting” the Maricopa sheriff’s office’s “access to Secure Communities, but that in [her] thinking and Andrea’s thinking doesn’t go far enough to prevent someone who was picked up in a biased manner from being put into the deportation machine.”

The letter adds that the Secure Communities termination should also include Alabama, “where immigration enforcement laws that have been challenged as unconstitutional by the Department of Justice are in effect.”

Sheriff Joe Arpaio (Photo: Flickr/Gage Skidmore)

Homeland Security writes:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is troubled by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) findings of discriminatory policing practices within the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO). Discrimination undermines law enforcement and erodes the public trust. DHS will not be a party to such practices. Accordingly, and effective immediately, DHS is terminating MCSO’s 287(g) jail model agreement and is restricting the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office access to the Secure Communities program. DHS will utilize federal resources for the purpose of identifying and detaining those individuals who meet U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) immigration enforcement priorities. The Department will continue to enforce federal immigration laws in Maricopa County in smart, effective ways that focus our resources on criminal aliens, recent border crossers, repeat and egregious immigration law violators and employers who knowingly hire illegal labor.

A Department of Justice report released Thursday found that Arpaio, an advocate for controversial immigration enforcement and detention measures, has committed a “wide range of civil rights violations.”

The Department of Justice states that the ongoing civil rights investigation of the Arpaio’s office found “reasonable cause to believe that MCSO, under the leadership of Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio, has engaged in a pattern or practice of misconduct that violates the Constitution and federal law.”

“We are pleased the Department of Justice report compelled the Department of Homeland Security to take steps today that should have been taken years ago,” said Chris Newman, Legal Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network in a written statement.

The Network adds:

As the DOJ report implies, DHS was an accomplice in the rights violations caused by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. DHS enabled Sheriff Arpaio to conduct his reign of terror, and expansion of the Maricopa Sheriff’s approach led to SB 1070 and to the potential Arizonification of the country. Today, the Department of Justice again acted to clean up the mess caused by failed DHS policies that enlist local police into the business of enforcing unjust immigration laws. It is time for DHS to stop contributing to the civil rights crisis described in the DOJ report and end the programs that made Arpaio’s crimes possible.”

The National Immigration Forum writes that the “Justice Department findings confirm what the American public had already suspected: Sheriff Arpaio has been more concerned with headlines than the Constitution and the law,” adding that they “also hail Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s prompt termination of the MCSO’s 287g agreement, which delegates authority for immigration enforcement to local officials, and restriction of the MCSO’s access to the Secure Communities program.”

Immigrant advocates across the U.S. have denounced Secure Communities, a highly controversial federal immigration enforcement program critics say contributes to racial profiling, demanding that the Obama administration terminate the program immediately.

Photo: Sheriff Joe Arpaio (Flickr/Gage Skidmore)

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.

Napolitano said Secure Communities “got off to a bad start.”

“We did not explain clearly how it works and who is required to participate,” she said. “It has already helped accomplish a great deal toward ensuring that we use our enforcement resources where they do the most good.”

Over the summer, three state governors — in Illinois, New York and Massachusetts — announced they were suspending their participation in Secure Communities. Members of Congress have called on California Gov. Jerry Brown to suspend the state’s participation in Secure Communities.

U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told the Spanish-language La Opinion — an online news outlet — that deporting undocumented immigrants who have not committed a serious crime, something she accepted is happening with Secure Communities, is a waste of taxpayer money.

According to Napolitano, “Secure Communities hasn’t increased the number of individuals who are removed, but it has helped change the composition – helping ICE to dramatically increase the number of convicted criminals and egregious immigration law violators,” adding that, “despite the misleading commentary about this program, it has proven to be the single best tool at focusing our immigration enforcement resources on criminals and egregious immigration law violators.”

Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, responded to Secretary Napolitano’s speech today with the following statement:

We are happy to hear Secretary Napolitano mention S-Comm and “termination” in the same sentence. Despite the political spin and marketing campaign to defend a failed program, S-Comm has proven to be a disastrous policy for our nation and for our communities. It should be ended before it leads to the further Arizonification of the country.

Napolitano said termination of Secure Communities “would only weaken public safety, and move the immigration enforcement system back towards the ad hoc approach where non-criminal aliens are more likely to be removed than criminals.”

Napolitano said it is her department’s job “to listen and make adjustments consistent with our best law enforcement judgment. That’s why Secure Communities now has new training for state and local law enforcement, and additional steps are being taken to protect witnesses, domestic violence victims, and victims of other violent crime.”

The National Immigration Forum, ”a vocal and vehement critic of the Secure Communities program,” was invited by the Department of Homeland Security in July to participate in a task force “created in response to growing criticism and concern” about Secure Communities.

The Forum resigned from the advisory committee in September, stating that despite recommendations “that – if implemented – would improve the operation of the Secure Communities program and strengthen civil rights and civil liberties protections,” they “fell short of sound policy recommendations that would cure fundamental flaws in the program.”

Now, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is accusing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Janet Napolitano of engaging in preferential treatment by releasing Onyango Obama. On Fox News, King said that “We have to bring drunken ‘Uncle Omar’ in front of the House Judiciary Committee, drill down into this, and tell America what’s going on.”

The accusations of double standards come at a time when the administration has declared its intent to use its power of prosecutorial discretion to grant indefinite stays of deportation on many undocumented immigrants. King, House Judiciary Chair Lamar Smith (Texas) and other immigration-enforcement hawks in Congress are jumping on Onyango Obama as a way to paint deportation reform as an erosion of the rule of law.

They have also pointed to Zeituni Onyango, Obama’s aunt, who was living in the United States without authorization but was granted asylum in 2010. King says Zeituni’s asylum was a product of the “bleeding heart” of Napolitano, in spite of the fact that the order to grant Zeituni Onyango political asylum was issued by an immigration judge, not Napolitano herself.

Here’s video of King on Fox News accusing the Obama administration of double standards, via The Hill:

The news of Onyango Obama’s arrest comes two weeks after an announcement by the secretary of the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano that many immigrants without criminal records who are up for deportation will be allowed to indefinitely stay in the United States and apply for work permits. Which immigrants will be allowed to stay will be determined according to a list of criteria outlined in a prior memo by ICE director John Morton which advised prosecutors to exercise discretion when deciding whether to place someone in deportation proceedings.

Conservatives and Republican leaders have used the news of Onyango Obama’s arrest to denounce the new deportation policy, which many of its opponents have taken to calling “administrative amnesty” (although the policy does not offer legal status or a path to citizenship to undocumented immigrants, which would require an act of Congress).

Conservative media website Newsmax ran a story Monday about Onyango quoting three different Republican U.S. representatives, each of whom drew associations between Onyango Obama’s arrest and the administration’s deportation reform. One of the representatives quoted is Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a tea party movement leader and prominent opponent of any legalization of undocumented immigrants:

…King, who sits on the House immigration subcommittee, said the Onyango Obama case “raises a troubling list of questions about the potential for preferential treatment.

“It is yet another reason Congress should hold hearings to expose President Obama’s executive amnesty program,” he said. “With an existing deportation order, it is not surprising to learn that ‘Uncle Omar’ Obama told police officers that his first call would be to his nephew in the White House. Now that the executive branch has gotten into the business of undermining the rule of law, there is little question that anyone who is connected to the president, politically or otherwise, will have an advantage.”

The article also quotes Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), who called the arrest “the height of irony” and a potential “massive conflict of interest,” and Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas), who said, “This is one more example of where the president is in a position where he can give favorable treatment to his cronies, and in this case a relative … It’s one more step making us look like a Third World corrupt government where it’s all about who you know.”

National Review blogger Mark Krikorian, who is also the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, one of a family of restrictionist organizations founded by John Tanton, said of Onyango Obama’s arrest, “Now [President Obama] has two illegal-alien relatives,” referring to Zeituni Obama, Onyango Obama’s sister and Barack Obama’s aunt who applied for asylum in November 2008, the month her nephew was elected president.

Prominent conservative blogger Michelle Malkin echoed Krikorian, writing, “Entry into this country is no longer treated as a privilege, but an irrevocable right for every last griping Zeituni and reckless Omar.” (Omar is what Barack Obama called his uncle in his memoir.)

Cecilia Muñoz, White House director of intergovernmental affairs, wrote at the time of Napolitano’s announcement that the administration “will be reviewing the current deportation caseload to clear out low-priority cases on a case-by-case basis and make more room to deport people who have been convicted of crimes or pose a security risk. And they will take steps to keep low-priority cases out of the deportation pipeline in the first place.”

But as The Florida Independent reported last week, how the deportation reform will play out in practice is very uncertain at this time. Someone convicted of a DUI, which Onyango Obama is accused of, may or may not be a “low priority” case according to ICE’s definition.

The Associated Press reports that federal immigration officials will evaluate approximately 300,000 immigrants up for deportation on a case-by-case basis to identify which do not have criminal records and should be allowed to stay.

The news comes at a time when immigrants rights activists have mixed feelings on the Obama administration’s record on immigration policy. On the one hand, the administration has expressed support for comprehensive immigration reform in Congress, instructed its officials to exercise discretion in deporting immigrants and has initiated lawsuits against two states that have enacted strict enforcement-only immigration laws, Arizona and Alabama.

On the other hand, the administration deported a record number of people last year, about half of which had committed no crimes, and has pushed for states to implement Secure Communities, a biometric information-sharing program between local law enforcement and federal officials that would place any immigrant detained by the police at risk of deportation. A federal board of appeals within the U.S. Justice Department also recently issued a decision that would deny immigrants placed under warrantless arrest notification of their rights before being questioned by authorities.

Members of the administration and their Democratic allies have also expressed skepticism at piecemeal, non-comprehensive reform efforts, which have been repeatedly suggested by activists in an effort to circumvent a Congress that has stagnated on the immigration issue. In a speech to the Hispanic rights group the National Council of La Raza last month, President Obama appeared to reject an approach to immigration reform driven by the executive branch, telling a frustrated audience that he had to enforce the laws as written by Congress.

In a statement, U.S. Senate majority whip Dick Durbin, a sponsor and major proponent of the DREAM Act, praised Napolitano’s announcement for its potential effect on students who would qualify for legalization under the Act if it became law. “The Administration’s new process is a fair and just way to deal with an important group of immigrant students and I will closely monitor DHS to ensure it is fully implemented,” he said.

The promise of indefinite stay would not apply to anyone with a criminal record. A Pew Hispanic Center report estimates there were approximately 11.2 million undocumented immigrants residing within the United States in 2010.

The DREAM Act — reintroduced this year by Durbin — would grant people who entered the U.S. illegally before the age of 16 conditional permanent resident status for a period of six years, after which they would be eligible to become legal permanent residents if they obtain at least an associate-level college degree or serve in the military for two years. #

In his opening statement, DREAM Act opponent Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said he sympathized with DREAM Act-eligible youth who did not violate U.S. immigration law, but he said the bill offers eligibility to people convicted of misdemeanors such as driving under the influence, burglary and drug possession. Cornyn added that this version of the DREAM Act has weak anti-immigration fraud provisions. #

Durbin countered by saying that the bill is for youth with strong moral standings and that it provides up to five years in prison for immigration fraud. #

The opening statement from Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., summarized the three points later echoed by other supporters: #

1. The DREAM Act comports with the rule of law and accountability.
2. The DREAM Act clarifies a distinction between a young person who lives in another country, comes to the U.S. with a student visa and then has a path to citizenship, and a young undocumented immigrant raised and educated in the U.S. who has no such path. “This distinction makes no sense,” Schumer said.
3. The DREAM Act does not give legal status to all young people — only to those who stay out of trouble and obtain a higher degree or serve in the military.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who testified in favor of the DREAM Act, said passage is the smart thing to do for economic prosperity, military readiness and support for law enforcement efforts. #

Napolitano explained (.pdf) that the Department of Homeland Security has focused on identifying criminal aliens and border security. She said that the DREAM Act supports these priorities because it makes no sense to spend law enforcement dollars on youth who do not pose a public safety or national security threat. #

Referring to a recently issued Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo, Durbin asked Napolitano how Homeland Security would implement measures to make sure DREAM Act-eligible youth are not deported. Napolitano responded that her department is designing a process to identify people caught in the deportation process who are not removable. #

Napolitano responded to Durbin and Cornyn’s questions about people who have been accused or convicted of misdemeanors, saying that an ICE officer has to look at the totality of an applicant’s behavior. She said that the DREAM Act has stricter criteria than the regular naturalization process in how it deals with these cases. #

Dr. Clifford Stanley, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, testified that the Department of Defense strongly supports the DREAM Act, which would expand the pool of quality recruits for the armed forces. #

In his written statement (.pdf) Stanley said that about 2.1 million aliens currently in the U.S. would meet the age and residency requirements of the DREAM Act, but because of the stringent and numerous requirements, a much number would eventually apply and qualify for the DREAM Act’s conditional status. #

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke about the impact the DREAM Act would have on the U.S. economy, saying that without the DREAM Act, a generation will not develop its full potential. He also said that DREAM Act-eligible students would help fill many of the spots the U.S. will need in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.#

Duncan added in his written statement (.pdf) that passage of the DREAM Act supports economic prosperity, pointing to a UCLA study. #

Lt. Colonel Margaret Stock, a retired member of the U.S. Army Reserves and an immigration attorney, quoted the Council on Foreign Relations’ Independent Task Force on U.S. Immigration Policy (co-chaired by former Gov. Jeb Bush) when endorsing the DREAM Act: “The DREAM Act is no amnesty. It offers to young people who had no responsibility for their parents’ initial decision to bring them into the United States the opportunity to earn their way to remain here.” #

The last witness, Dr. Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, said in his statement (.pdf) that the current version of the DREAM Act has several problems. In his testimony, he highlighted four: #

1. Cost: With the two years of college required by the DREAM Act, the rise in undocumented students would increase costs at public schools for taxpayers.
2. Legalizing current undocumented immigrants would encourage more illegal migration. As potential solutions, he suggested strengthening E-Verify, Secure Communities and Section 287(g) immigration-enforcement programs.
3. The DREAM Act is an invitation to fraud. The current version of the bill does not have a clear list of required documents.
4. People convicted of certain misdemeanors would remain eligible for the DREAM Act.

The initiative is a move to ask Americans to help local law enforcement by keeping their eyes peeled for “suspicious activity,” DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and NBA Commissioner David Stern told press at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C. The emphasis toward civilian “suspicious activity reporting” has surged in recent years, but advertising campaigns and high-profile partnerships have really begun to take off.

In December, DHS joined forces with Wal-Mart, launching the ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ campaign initially in 230 Wal-Mart stores, with a target of 588 sites in 27 states. A short video plays at select checkout stations, telling shoppers to call local police if they see something suspicious. (The term “suspicious,” by the way, is rarely elaborated on or defined by DHS in campaign messages.)

Moving on to sports, DHS partnered with the NFL with its campaign at the Super Bowl in Dallas early this month. And now the NBA.

“We hope that this partnership will emphasize basically that security is a shared responsibility,” said NBA Commissioner David Stern at yesterday’s press event. “We think that sports is a terrific way to send messages, and to get people who go to events to focus on this very important message.”

Or maybe Napolitano is just a big sports fan.

“Our partnership with the NBA to bring the ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ campaign to professional basketball events throughout the nation is a vital part of our efforts to ensure the safety of players, employees and fans,” she told the press.

Inquiries have begun over how effective these campaigns are at protecting the country from terrorism. With sports fans and budget-conscious shoppers reporting “suspicious” activities every 10 minutes, does that help the security agencies or overwhelm the system?

David Rittgers, a legal policy analyst for the Cato Institute, said he thinks the national security agencies are overwhelmed with information.

“While there is value in getting a person on the street to be aware and report suspicious activities, you can also create too many false positives,” Rittgers said.

Rittgers said the Federal Bureau of Investigations receives about 700 messages a day, and the National Counterterrorism Center receives about 10,000 pieces of information daily. Clogging the system with even more reports of indiscriminate “suspicious activities” won’t necessarily bring these agencies closer to the information they need to prevent terrorist plots.

“People talk about connecting dots,” he said. “But it’s knowing which dots to connect that has value. …. The commitment to simply collect all the dots might not be as useful as a lot of people would propose.”

For example: “It’s not illegal to purchase a ski mask, it’s not illegal to purchase a gun, it’s not illegal to sit outside a bank. But it’s when you put those all together.”

The measure of success is still to be seen, but meanwhile the money is flowing.

“If You See Something, Say Something” are now being posted all over the country, according the DHS: on 9,000 federal buildings nationwide, at the Mall Of America, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, Amtrak, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and the general aviation industry.

DHS allocated $2.9 million for the campaign in 2009, but an official told CNSNews.com that the agency has only spent $500,000 on the campaign to date, saying it is focusing its efforts on partnerships –- outsourcing security, if you will. And while Napolitano told the network the campaign has resulted in the launch of several investigations, she said it’s still difficult to measure whether it will effectively deter would-be terrorists.

ICE removals are at a record high this year, but Republicans still accuse the Obama administration of lax enforcement. In their defense, administration officials have insisted their policies reflect a commitment to using resources to prioritize removal of the most dangerous undocumented immigrants. ICE Chief John Morton has said current funding allows for about 400,000 illegal immigrants to be deported each year. Republicans contend the administration never asked for more money.

“ICE has cited a lack of resources as one of the reasons for its prioritization of cases and for its selective enforcement,” Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Oct. 21 . “But to date, we have not seen any efforts by ICE, your Department, or the Administration to request an increase in ICE funding. … As a result, it appears that your Department is doing the very thing that we have raised concerns about in several letters – allowing illegal aliens to evade the law.”

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told TWI he thinks the House could try to give ICE more funding even if the agency does not request it. “When the administration asks for money for detention beds, I could see the House giving them more than they request,” he said.

Of course, any increase in funding in the current economic climate could be difficult, and it’s possible Republicans wouldn’t even go down this path given their statements on reducing spending. But if Republicans were able to find a way to pay for the bill, it is possible the White House would accept the funds, given insistence from ICE that it deports as many illegal immigrants as possible given its funding.

Three counties have fought to opt out of a fingerprint-sharing program. (San Diego Union-Tribune/ZUMApress.com)

Immigration and Customs Enforcement official David Venturella started off a meeting with San Francisco law enforcement leaders on Tuesday with an apology. ICE, he admitted, had given conflicting information about Secure Communities, a program that shares fingerprints taken for criminal background checks with federal immigration enforcement, and whether counties like San Francisco could opt out.

[Immigration1] The meeting was one of three held in the past week — with officials from Arlington, Va., on Nov. 5, and from Santa Clara, Calif., later on Tuesday — between ICE and communities that had voted to be removed from the program, claiming it could harm public safety and lead to fear of police among immigrants.

In all three, the message was the same: Venturella, the assistant director of Secure Communities, acknowledged there had been reports from ICE that the program was optional and that such meetings were the first step in opting out. But the counties could not withhold information from federal immigration authorities, he informed them.

“They flew all the way here just to basically say, ‘We’re going back on our word,’” said Angela Chan, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus who was briefed after the meeting Tuesday. “The whole entire thing is kind of a puppet show.”

The message on Secure Communities and whether or not counties could be removed from the program has changed multiple times in the last six months, as local officials in Arlington, San Francisco and Santa Clara sought to determine how they could opt out of sending fingerprints to immigration enforcement. Now, even after ICE held meetings with the three counties confirming that opting out is impossible, a coalition of civil rights groups is fighting to get more information on the program and how communities can avoid joining it.

The key, according to activists, will be a Dec. 6 hearing on an injunction filed against the Department of Homeland Security last month by the National Day Laborer Organization Network, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Cardozo School of Law. A court in New York will decide whether Homeland Security officials have to hand over documents demanded by the groups in February related to opting out.

With those documents, critics of the program hope to be able to prove what Venturella alluded to at the beginning of the San Francisco meeting: The agency has been misleading the public — albeit perhaps unintentionally — about how Secure Communities works and what it requires from local police forces that would rather not share fingerprints with immigration officials.

“What their public definition of ‘opting out’ is has changed based on what they think they can get away with,” Chan said.

Officials in 34 states have signed memorandums of understanding to participate in the program, which so far is voluntary at the state level. (Some governors, such as Democrats Deval Patrick in Massachusetts and Bill Ritter in Colorado, have delayed requests to sign into Secure Communities, while other states are slated to join the program in the next few years.) There was indication from ICE officials this summer that local participation was also optional, even in states where governors had agreed to participate.

“No jurisdiction will be activated if they oppose it,” Dan Cadman, an ICE regional coordinator for the program, wrote in a July 23 email to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. “There is no ambiguity on that point. We get it.”

On Aug. 17, ICE released a report called “Setting the Record Straight” that laid out specific steps for counties that wanted to opt out of Secure Communities. The steps were later reiterated in letters by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and an assistant attorney general.

But a sudden message shift on Secure Communities occurred in the beginning of October. Immigration officials began to say opting out was impossible. “We don’t consider Secure Communities an opt in/opt out program,” Napolitano said on Oct. 6. By Oct. 20, the report called “Setting the Record Straight” went missing from ICE’s website.

The options presented to Arlington, San Francisco and Santa Clara were far from what the counties expected when they voted to opt out. In a memo to Arlington County board members after her Nov. 5 meeting with ICE, County Manager Barbara Donellan clarified ICE’s definition of opting out of Secure Communities.

“All jurisdictions have the option of not receiving the results of ICE’s database inquiries. (This option is what ICE officials were referring to as the ‘opt out,’ for localities, and they acknowledged the confusion these statements have created),” she wrote.

For critics of the program, the new message that Secure Communities is mandatory is a major problem.

“If ICE for some reason decides not to follow through, I think we’re looking at possible massive deception,” Sarahi Uribe, lead organizer of an anti-Secure Communities coalition called the Uncover The Truth Campaign, told TWI in October.

But there is some hope for counties that don’t want to help immigration officials deport undocumented immigrants who are released without being charged with crimes. (In cases of domestic violence, for example, police sometimes arrest both parties until they can determine which person is the victim, a practice that has led to deportation proceedings for some abuse victims under Secure Communities.)

ICE officials said Tuesday that the holds they place on illegal immigrants detected under Secure Community are optional for local police — meaning law enforcement agencies could ignore detainer requests from ICE and release immigrants they do not charge with crimes, said Eileen Hirst, a spokeswoman for San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey who was at the meeting Tuesday.

“That’s the silver lining,” Chan said. “At least he didn’t go back on his word on that.”