Lawmaker insists DHS track stats on racial profiling in immigrant fingerprinting program

A House Democrat is demanding that the Homeland Security Department secretary order municipalities involved in a controversial DHS fingerprinting program to collect data on indicators of racial profiling.

The Secure Communities program requires the FBI to run fingerprints of aliens arrested by local police against Homeland Security's biometric immigrant database. During a House hearing Wednesday afternoon, a top DHS official said the program "absolutely" does not target people of dark skin color.

Gary Mead, an executive associate director at the DHS Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, said Secure Communities focuses on deporting violent criminals, fugitives, repeat immigration violators and recent border crossers.

But critics of the program, including officials from several states and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, say Secure Communities creates a rift between local police and immigrant neighborhoods. They argue the system extradites people booked on traffic and other minor violations, as well as innocents -- even domestic abuse victims -- who report crimes.

"Do you adhere to racial profiling?" Jackson Lee, who is black, asked during a House Judiciary Committee immigration panel hearing on the questionable value of Secure Communities. "Do you go and pick out brown people and others that may look like they should not be here?"

Mead strongly denied focusing on certain ethnic groups. "Where we get indications that there may be problems with how they are applying the program, investigations ensue," he said.

Between its inception in 2008 and November, 36 percent of the 111,400 convicts sent home through Secure Communities were murderers, rapists or other aggravated felons, Mead testified. That means the other 64 percent of deportees were convicted of lesser offenses.

Jackson Lee expressed doubts as to whether the program is truly fact-based. She asked why DHS officials refuse to mandate that "data collection with racial profiling-related indicators" by state and local enforcement be a precondition for participating in Secure Communities.

Saying, "we think they're doing [the right procedures] is one thing -- but mandating and determining whether there is racial profiling is another," she said. "I am going to make an official request that you should carry back to the leadership to answer why it is not mandated." Mead was not given a chance to respond.

Full committee chairman Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, on the other hand, asserted that Secure Communities spares too many illegal immigrants -- specifically criminals who go off to become repeat offenders.

House Republicans on Nov. 4 subpoenaed a list of criminal illegal immigrants that Homeland Security has declined to extradite, after months of waiting for the department to fulfill a written request. As of Thursday, the panel still had not received the data, a committee aide said. The FBI and Homeland Security apparently are at odds over which agency has responsibility for the criminal histories of undocumented immigrants.

DHS officials on Wednesday told Smith they are cooperating with the FBI to produce the materials. "We're working through how to provide information that is under the control of the FBI, and we are in communication with them on that," Mead said. "I'm confident we will supply the information you have requested."

Smith praised Mead for the "good news."