The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to broaden its Secure Communities program nationwide by 2013, according to a DHS release. Administered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the largest investigative agency within DHS, Secure Communities aims to identify and possibly remove illegal immigrants with criminal histories from the United States.

The program, which began in October 2008, was expanded on Aug. 10, to all 25 counties that line the Southwest border of the United States In the past 18 months, the program has grown from covering 14 U.S. jurisdictions to 544.

Mario Alberto-Lopez (R) waits to be unshackled by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents before being led to the Mexican border and released from custody on May 25.

Under Secure Communities (S-Comm), when an individual is arrested, his or her fingerprints are recorded with a biometric scanner, and all available information about the arrestee is sent to ICE. The agency then checks immigration records and criminal databases for information on the individual, and if a criminal conviction and illegal immigration are found, the person can be deported.

According to the DHS, the program is meant for “identifying and removing convicted criminal aliens who pose a public safety threat to American communities.”

A key concern about S-Comm is that it will encourage racial profiling, and that individuals who are not convicted of crimes will be deported. “Preliminary data confirms that some jurisdictions, such as Maricopa County, Arizona, have abnormally high rates of noncriminal S-Comm deportations,” says a report from several rights groups, including the National Day Laborer Organization Network.

Small Percentage Deported

To date, the program has identified more than 262,900 illegal immigrants convicted of crimes, and more than 34,600 of them were removed from the United States. According to the DHS, more than 9,800 of the individuals removed were convicted of “major violent or drug offenses.”

Although ICE is screening a large number of individuals through S-Comm, only a small percentage of them are being removed, according to Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Vaughan said that after speaking with ICE agents and local law enforcement officers, she has not seen any evidence of racial profiling through S-Comm.

Since the system runs a check on immigration status automatically, police officers will no longer need to make the determination themselves of whether or not to check an individual’s immigration status.

The DHS has a goal to identify 95 percent of those within the illegal immigrant population who have criminal histories by using biometric scanners. The agency hopes to accomplish this sometime beyond 2011, according to a 2009 DHS report. The 2009 goal was to identify 30 percent of the population, and the 2010 goal is to identify 60 percent.

The information will give ICE “data needed to analyze the size, characteristics, and geographic distribution of the criminal alien population across the country; these results will inform future strategic decisions,” says the report.

According to Vaughan, S-Comm could affect not only individuals who are illegal immigrants, but also those on legal visas or green cards who did not disclose criminal convictions. Since it uses biometric scans, it can also catch individuals who try to give an alias.

Border Security

Under S-Comm, close to 10 percent of individuals arrested nationwide could be subjected to deportation, according to Vaughan.

Still, the chances of the program being implemented to its full potential remains unlikely. According to a 2009 DHS report on S-Comm, “The size of the alien population subject to immigration enforcement actions exceeds ICE’s current capacity. Due to these resource constraints, ICE is limited to conducting enforcement actions only against a subset of potential subjects.”

S-Comm is part of the DHS border security operations, which has seen a major increase over the past year.

The expansion of S-Comm was announced just three days before President Barack Obama signed the Southwest Border Security Bill into law, which will provide $600 million to combat the Mexican drug cartels and secure the border.

A portion of the funds, earmarked for illegal immigration, will be focused “where we think the best efforts ought to be,” DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said during an Aug. 13, press conference.

She added, “And that is making sure we are removing from our country criminal aliens, felony fugitives, gang members who are also in our country illegally, particularly once they’ve served their sentences.”

An ongoing concern among the immigrant population is how border security affects them. According to University of Illinois professor Anthony Sisneros, the effects of border security operations tend to spill over into the entire Mexican immigrant population, ranging from racism to deportation of illegal immigrants who do not have criminal histories.

Sisneros said issues of immigration reform and border security are “complicated by the drug war on the border.” He added that “it is a concern that there is a particular focus on Mexican immigrants.”

“No one is against fighting drugs and engaging on the drug war on the border, but it gets mixed up, and it gets thrown into the pot of discussion on immigration reform,” he said.

There are so many terrorist drills lately with many more planned over the coming months, you’d think the Department of Homeland Security was preparing for something BIG.  If this were the Bush years we would be on Red Alert and the fear volume would be cranked up to 11. To their credit, the Mainstream Media is still trying to sell fear bundled as white-racist-homegrown-Tea Party-terrorists, but no one’s buying it anymore.

The public remained relatively unfazed by the heavily propagandized attacks of the Christmas Underwear Bomber, Joseph Stack, and the Pentagon shooter.  After all that, their only prize was installing some full body scanners to make Michael Chertoff (former head of DHS) a rich man.  The Elite will need to do much better than that to elicit the necessary terror on the public that will be required to push through their immediate draconian agenda now well publicized:

1. Enforce austerity measures via Cap and Trade taxes spurred by Gulf oil disaster
2. Eliminate free Internet under the guise of Net Neutrality and Cyber Security
3. Continue bankster rape and pillage of middle America with consent of Congress
4. Round up citizens (without Miranda rights) who question the government
5. Track the public with Biometric National ID cards under the cover of immigration reform
6. Continue population control plan

And of course they will continue the endlessly escalating preemptive wars for profit and resources led by the poster-boy of peace himself Nobel Laureate Barack Obama.  To quote David Icke, all of these measures are creeping up on us in a “Totalitarian Tip Toe.”  However, the public is fast becoming hip to the agenda in droves and the Elite know it.  Obama’s numbers are in the tank, the secretive Bilderberg meetings are now fully exposed, all while independent alternative news now crushes the MSM.  Therefore, it would seem that they must up the ante with a massive event of some kind.

[Read More Via:ActivistPost]

Austin Texas – The federal government may soon send unmanned aircraft to scour West Texas and the state’s coastal waters in an effort to boost border security, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a letter to the governor sent Friday.

Perry had formally requested the assistance a week ago. The need also was underscored in a phone call that Democratic nominee Bill White had with Napolitano on Thursday.

Homeland Security has six drones and is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to get the necessary clearance to begin flying over Texas, Napolitano wrote.

Before operations start, ground control stations, pilots, sensor operators and maintenance support have to be allocated. She said that the governor would be kept apprised of the progress.

“This is encouraging news, and we are hopeful that this technology and additional federal resources will be deployed to Texas as soon as possible,” said Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger.

Perry has complained that the federal government has not done enough to secure the border, especially in light of escalating drug violence in Mexico border towns.

The U.S. Homeland Security Department has announced that it will release harmless gases and dye tracers into Boston’s subway system next week to study the circulation of airborne contaminants through public transit networks in the event of a biological or chemical attack.

The planned study, which will examine how both smoke and airborne toxins move throughout the transit system, is expected to assist experts in developing future chemical-agent monitoring while also providing guidance for future improvements in air-purification systems, evacuation plans and emergency-response protocols for transportation systems.

“This study is one of many efforts the department is undertaking across the country to inform our emergency response planning in preparation for chemical or biological terrorist attacks,” Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security Secretary, said in a statement.

The airborne contaminants study will run from December 5 through December 11. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority will oversee the study, which will be conducted in more than 20 below-ground subway stations and trains throughout Boston.

“This project – combining the resources and expertise of scientists from around the world – will refine best practices for responding to the release of toxic gas or chemicals in public transportation systems,” Tara O’Toole, Homeland Security Undersecretary, said in a recent statement.

October 29 – President Obama today signed into law a Homeland Security appropriations bill that grants the Department of Defense (DOD) the authority to continue suppressing photos of prisoner abuse. The amendment, which would allow the DOD to exempt photos from the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA), is aimed at photos ordered released by a federal appeals court as part of an American Civil Liberties Union FOIA lawsuit for photos and other records related to detainee abuse in U.S. custody overseas, although it would apply to other photos in government custody as well. Earlier this month, the ACLU sent a letter to Secretary Robert Gates urging him not to exercise the authority to suppress the photos in their case, stating that the photos “are of critical relevance to an ongoing national debate about accountability.”

“We are disappointed that the president has signed a law giving the Defense Department the authority to hide evidence of its own misconduct, and we hope the defense secretary will not take advantage of that authority by suppressing photos related to the abuse of prisoners,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. “Secretary Gates should be guided by the importance of transparency to the democratic process, the extraordinary importance of these photos to the ongoing debate about the treatment of prisoners and the likelihood that the suppression of these photos would ultimately be far more damaging to national security than their disclosure. The last administration’s decision to endorse torture undermined the United States’ moral authority and compromised its security. A failure to fully confront the abuses of the last administration will only compound these harms.”

Another provision contained in the new law allows the transfer of detainees from Guantánamo Bay to the U.S. for prosecution.

“This law allows the administration to transfer prisoners to the U.S. for criminal trials in the federal courts, and the administration should now do exactly that,” said Jaffer. “The military commissions at Guantánamo are not just unlawful but unnecessary. The federal courts are fully capable of prosecuting terrorism suspects while protecting both national security interests and fundamental due process. It’s time to shut down Guantánamo, transfer the military commissions trials to federal courts that uphold the rule of law, and transfer prisoners whom the administration does not intend to charge to countries where they won’t be in danger of being tortured. Indefinite detention without charge or trial undermines the most basic values of justice and fairness.”

The full text of the ACLU’s letter to Secretary of Defense Gates is below and available online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/41309res20091020.html

More information about the ACLU’s FOIA litigation is at: www.aclu.org/accountability