WASHINGTON - A group charged with reviewing the Department of Homeland Security's controversial effort to identify illegal immigrants is recommending that federal officials use the program to identify serious criminals and not people accused only of minor traffic offenses.
The group's report also recommends that DHS officials clarify "the goal and objectives of the Secure Communities … and accurately relay this information" to local jurisdictions where fingerprints collected at jails and sent to the FBI are then used to identify and detain illegal immigrants.
Critics of Secure Communities, including immigrant advocates and law enforcement, have said the program casts too wide a net in the search for illegal immigrants.
There have also been complaints that Secure Communities was initially pitched to local jurisdictions as optional, though in recent months Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton has said there is no way for local authorities to opt out of the program that allows fingerprints sent to the FBI to be compared to an immigration database.
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In August, Morton announced the agency was canceling previously signed agreements with states, saying state permission was not necessary.
In the report, the task force said eliminating traffic violators and misdemeanor offenders from the program, or starting deportation proceedings only for those convicted of a misdemeanor, "would discourage minor arrests undertaken only to channel noncitizens into the (immigration) system."
The task force also said that crime and domestic victims and witnesses "must not be subject to enforcement actions."
According to the report, the group was divided on whether to recommend that the program be suspended until the problems are resolved.
Last month, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said the department would launch a case-by-case review of the nearly 300,000 deportation cases already in the immigration court system and put an indefinite hold on most cases involving people with no criminal history. The effort would focus the department's resources on criminal immigrants and those who posed a public safety or national security threat, she said.
DHS spokesman Matt Chandler said the report, which he described as a draft, was being reviewed by the Homeland Security Advisory Council, an independent body that oversaw the task force.
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