In the last week there have been some developments in the nationwide push against the Obama administration’s mass deportation program, Secure Communities.

Documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the Cardozo Law School Immigration Justice Clinic show that the controversial Secure Communities deportation program (S-Comm), designed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to target people for deportation, is also a key component of a little-known FBI project to accumulate a massive store of personal biometric information on citizens and non-citizens alike.

According to the documents, S-Comm is only the first of a number of biometric interoperability systems being brought online by the FBI’s ˜Next Generation Identification (NGI) project. NGI will expand the FBI’s existing fingerprint database to add iris scans, palm prints, and facial recognition information for a wide range of people.

This shouldn’t be surprising, as the FBI has a long history of collecting information on those it considers most dangerous, which usually just happens to be often people of color and immigrant communities and their leaders. What is done with this information ranges from the harmless to the downright destructive as seen with the infamous COINTELPRO program that began in the 1950′s and more recently the attack on Los Angeles activist Carlos Montes.

The connection between the FBI and it’s influence on deciding the voluntary nature of Secure Communities hasn’t been easy decipher thanks to the Department of Homeland Security withholding documents concerning whether and how localities may “opt-out” or limit participation participation in the program. Yesterday, Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of the Southern District of New York ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) to produce further information providing clarifying information about the mandatory nature of the controversial Secure Communities program.