I wanted to like NY State Governor David Paterson. I really did, but his lackluster job was just topped with bitter icing thanks to his signing of a “new” Secure Communities agreement that does nothing more than draw pretty flowers around barbed wire and shackles.

For the past few months, various organizations and politicians have been asking Paterson to pull New York State out of Secure Communities, the program which automatically sends the fingerprints collected by local police departments to I.C.E. What outgoing Governor Paterson did instead was sign a new pact which allegedly adds language, according to the NYT that:

…explains the enforcement priorities of the Department of Homeland Security and clarifying that the agency will focus on deportable immigrants considered a threat to public safety and national security, as well as those who have been convicted of crimes or have illegally re-entered the United States after being deported.

I read and reviewed the revised Memorandum of Understanding signed on 12/28/2010 by Sean M. Byrne, Acting Commissioner for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. No where in the MOA does it state prioritizing the deportation of “criminal” immigrants. Rather, ICE states it will base its’ decision to start removal proceedings on “available resources”.

According to the official press release from the Governor’s office :

Under the new agreement, signed December 28, it is clear that convicted felons, and not individuals whose only offense is remaining in the country illegally, are the target of Secure Communities. The agreement also makes clear that aliens with misdemeanor convictions and pose no discrete threat to national security are not the focus of Secure Communities; rather, their purpose is to “identify, detain and remove from the United States aliens who… have been previously deported and who illegally [re-]entered the country, or who are subject to removal because they pose a homeland security concern or threat to the public safety.”

I have read the “new” agreement and do not see this clearly spelled out anywhere.

The problem with the “new” agreement, which is being spun to repeat the talking points of the Department of Homeland Security who have said that the focus of Secure Communities is “dangerous undocumented immigrants” or “bad” undocumented immigrants, if you will, is that we have already seen in the last year as the program has spread there is no uniform definition of what “criminal” means or when exactly fingerprints get sent to la migra. Are fingerprints sent when someone is arrested or convicted? Arrested for what, turnstile jumping because they couldn’t afford the latest MTA fare hike and were just trying to get to work?

We know that so far 25%, a full quarter of the human beings deported under Secure Communities were not convicted of ANY crime. So what mechanisms are to be put in place to make this version of Secure Communities different?
According to the Homeland Security as per the NYT, none. According to my reading of the modified MOU, none.

Homeland Security officials said the agreement, however, did not alter the mechanisms of the Secure Communities program or hinder putting it into effect.

It also does not preclude immigration officials from detaining and deporting immigrants without criminal histories.

Under the program, the fingerprints of everyone booked into a local or county jail will be sent to the Homeland Security Department and compared with prints in the agency’s databases. If officials discover that a suspect is in the country illegally, or is a noncitizen with a criminal record, they may seek to deport him.

Federal officials said a state could refuse to cooperate, but it would lose access to criminal databases of other states and the federal government, hampering crime-fighting efforts.

I contacted Governor Paterson’s office and anxiously await their response but in the meantime, I would have to agree with what local organizations are saying.

“Sadly, this new agreement is simply a reformulation of the flawed original that dramatically widened ICE’s deportation dragnet,” stated Michelle Fei of the Immigrant Defense Project. “New York officials are still letting themselves get hoodwinked by ICE if they think this version is any improvement. We hope Governor-Elect Cuomo will do more to recognize that immigrants who have gone through the criminal justice system should not face deportation as an unfair second punishment.”