County Deporting for No Good Reason?
A new report about Secure Communities (S-Comm)—an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency program that requires state and local law enforcement agencies to forward fingerprints of all arrestees to ICE—alleges that in Santa Barbara County, 68 of 118 deportations from January to April through the S-Comm program have been non-criminals, or people charged with lesser offenses such as driving without a license. S-Comm was designed to target the worst of the worst. A spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Department said local authorities only send fingerprints to ICE, and then ICE alerts them who should be detained.