Secure Communities facts for kids
Secure Communities is a program that helps different police groups share information. It connects local police with federal agencies. The program's main goal was to check if everyone taken into custody by local police in the U.S. had the right to be in the country.
How Secure Communities Works
When police take someone's fingerprints, they usually send them to the FBI. With Secure Communities, these fingerprints were also sent to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The DHS has a big database of fingerprints.
If someone's fingerprints matched a record in the DHS database, then another agency called ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) could ask local police to hold that person. This request could mean holding the person for up to 48 hours. Or, ICE could ask to be told when the person was going to be released.
Changes to the Program
Between July 2015 and January 2017, Secure Communities was replaced by a different program. This new program was called the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP). The idea behind PEP was to focus on people who had committed serious crimes.
On January 25, 2017, former President Donald Trump brought back Secure Communities. He signed an order that said areas not following the program could face penalties. This order also meant that immigration checks would include more people, not just those who had committed serious crimes.
Later, on January 20, 2021, President Joe Biden stopped the order that brought back Secure Communities.
