Secure Communities, if Implemented, Saves Lives

By Joe Guzzardi
November 7, 2011

In Orleans County, New York, last week, political correctness may have cost the life of Kathleen Byham, a 45-year old stabbed multiple times in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Charged with the crime is Luis Rodriguez-Flamenco, a Honduran illegal alien.

During their investigation, authorities discovered that Rodriguez-Flamenco has several pseudonyms and had been arrested on child endangerment two months ago after he punched a 15-year-old girl in the face. At that time he was known as Roberto Rivera Vega. After the accused made bail, reduced from $25,000 to $2,000, he was released.

In 2008, using another false name, Rodriguez-Flamenco was convicted of burglary in Valdosta, Georgia. Rodriguez-Flamenco had phony identification which had helped him get his job in Georgia. Here, in a single story, is an example of why ICE should vigorously enforce the federal Secure Communities program. Secure Communities runs the fingerprints of everyone who is booked into jail against FBI criminal history records and Department of Homeland Security immigration records to determine who is in the country illegally and whether they’ve been arrested before. This is a simple, common sense solution to get illegal aliens who may post threats to innocent citizens off the streets and out of the country.

But excessive immigration advocacy combined with a political correctness mentality has stymied Secure Communities in various states including New York. In June, New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced that his state would no longer participate. Cuomo asserted that the program might create civil rights abuses.

These are the generalities that are constantly leveled against Secure Communities—it might lead to civil rights violations, it could cause racial profiling, it would keep immigrant neighborhoods from cooperating with the police regarding other criminal actions. ICE, it should be noted, has a long standing policy of not taking action against victims or non-cooperative witnesses.

Might…could…would—all manufactured controversies created by the pro-immigration lobby and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that has no interest in law enforcement, even when it comes to something as basic as checking the immigration status of someone already in jail. Even though Secure Communities helped deport 115,000 arrested aliens during the he last two and a half years, the opposition to enforcement, against even the 1.9 million criminal aliens identified by ICE as removable, is fierce.

In Massachusetts, Governor Deval Patrick refused to allow his state to participate; in Illinois Governor Patrick Quinn halted Secure Communities implementation reportedly at the Mexican consulate’s urging. The New York State Working Group Against Deportation published a “Tool Kit for Action” against Secure Communities which advises that “We should not say it is OK to deport dangerous or violent criminals…”

Helping the anti-Secure Communities faction is ICE itself. As a federal program, ICE has the authority and the mandate to implement Secure Communities throughout the nation. Instead, it has forbidden the local field office staff from public comment and banned individual police or sheriff departments from joining if the state government prefers sanctuary status. Even more incredibly, Secure Communities refuses to release statistics or case histories on foreign criminals that would demonstrate how effective the program is.

This passionate, senseless defense of criminal aliens is political correctness gone crazy. Adding to the Byham tragedy, Orleans County signed up for Secure Communities on February 8, nine months before she was murdered. Yet Police Chief Jose Avila claimed incredulously that he had no knowledge of Secure Communities. District Attorney Joe Cardone declined to comment to a local news agency.

Left unanswered is the most important question: “Could Secure Communities have saved Kathleen Byham’s life?” Assuming it was carried out as originally designed, there’s a good chance it would have.

Joe Guzzardi has written editorial columns, mostly about immigration and related social issues, since 1986. He is a Senior Writing Fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) and his columns are syndicated in various U.S. newspapers and websites. Contact him at [email protected].