Secure Communities

What It Means

Secure Communities is an interoperability program administered by ICE that leverages the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS/Next Generation Identification) to automatically share biometric data from every person booked into a participating jail with DHS's IDENT/HART database. When a match indicates the person may be removable, ICE is notified and may issue an administrative detainer (Form I-247A) requesting that the local jail hold the individual for up to 48 hours beyond their scheduled release to allow ICE to take custody. The program was first piloted in Harris County, Texas in 2008 and expanded nationwide by January 2013. It was suspended and replaced by the Priority Enforcement Program in 2014 under the Obama administration's Johnson memorandum, reinstated in 2017 under the Trump administration's Executive Order 13768, and substantially deprioritized again under 2021 and 2022 DHS civil enforcement priorities memos. Detainer compliance is voluntary, and numerous federal court decisions (Miranda-Olivares v. Clackamas County, Morales v. Chadbourn, Galarza v. Szalczyk) have held that jails detaining individuals solely on an ICE detainer without independent probable cause risk Fourth Amendment liability. Many jurisdictions (California's TRUST Act, Illinois' TRUST Act, New York City, Cook County, and others) have enacted "sanctuary" policies limiting cooperation with detainers. Secure Communities has generated over 700,000 removals from 2008 to 2015 by DHS's own accounting, and it remains the backbone of interior immigration enforcement via the jail-to-deportation pipeline regardless of branding changes.

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