DENVER – The federal government is rapidly expanding a program to identify illegal immigrants using fingerprints from arrests, drawing opposition from local authorities and advocates who argue the initiative amounts to an excessive dragnet.
The program has gotten less attention than Arizona’s new immigration law, but it may end up having a bigger impact because of its potential to round up and deport so many immigrants nationwide.
The San Francisco sheriff wanted nothing to do with the program, and the City Council in Washington, D.C., blocked use of the fingerprint plan in the nation’s capital. Colorado is the latest to debate the program, called Secure Communities, and immigrant groups have begun to speak up, telling the governor in a letter last week that the initiative will make crime victims reluctant to cooperate with police “due to fear of being drawn into the immigration regime.”
Under the program, the fingerprints of everyone who is booked into jail for any crime are run against FBI criminal history records and Department of Homeland Security immigration records to determine who is in the country illegally and whether they’ve been arrested previously. Most jurisdictions are not included in the program, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been expanding the initiative.
AND FINGERPRINTING!
COLORADO, please do not start using this sort of system. There is a major reason why D.C. and San Francisco have denied the same measures… we are humans.. not freaking cattle to be identified whenever someone from the government wants to check… because that is what fingerprinting will lead to. If we want government to offer us amazing benefits (like health care) they are naturally going to think that something like this could also get passed. It is called government meddling and it seems to be happening more and more everyday COUGH::ARIZONA::COUGH.
HOWEVER, please note, this is not something on any statewide level. This is the federal government trying to use fingerprinting during ‘extreme’ cases of violence and such. Basically, if you are bad, and you are here illegally, this system will identify that ‘apparently’. I say ‘apparently’ because just like with Arizona’s law, this is most likely going to lead to racial profiling, and excessive use of fingerprinting because it appears that the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT doesn’t know what they have crossed the line!
Illegal In America 