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EL PASO COUNTY, COLO. -- A new controversial initiative went into effect Tuesday that the El Paso County Sheriff's Office believes will help get dangerous criminals off the street, but some say it will only lead to racial profiling.

It's called Secure Communities, and it allows local law enforcement to compare fingerprints among databases with the FBI, Department of Defense, Border Patrol and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

"Secure communities is really just a technology," El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa said. "Basically, fingerprints are collected around the U.S. by different entities and different fashions, and the FBI method is a roll print, and the Department of Defense, Border Patrol, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement always used a slap method, and the two were not searchable and comparable against one rolled print."

Maketa said before, the systems' incompatibility made it a lot more difficult to track down criminals.

"So really it boils down to it's a technology that allows a set of rolled prints to be compared against whatever is on file with DHS, DOD as well as the FBI, and that's one of the things that I think is real important to stress is that it's just a technology, but it's a huge technology, and I think it's a major step in the right direction of overcoming interoperability among systems that store criminal information," Maketa said.

As of Tuesday, everyone who is arrested in El Paso County will be fingerprinted and put into a database.

"The fingerprint doesn't lie, and it's gonna tell us who the people are that are in our custody, and that's gonna give us access once we've identified them to know at what level a threat they are to a community as well as to the nation," Maketa said.

Secure Communities has been in the works in Colorado for two years and is an initiative through the Department of Homeland Security to modernize the criminal alien identification process through biometrics.

"The benefit to the community and to our office in accomplishing our mission is the fact that right now a lot of what we do is based on intel from the individuals, the honor system," Maketa said. "This takes biometric information which is for the most part indisputable and provides us instant identification of individuals that we may not know their true identity."

Homeland Security officials said it supports public safety by strengthening efforts to identify and remove the most dangerous criminal aliens from the U.S.

"We read every day where somewhere in the United States an individual has multiple arrests, is here illegally, and commits another serious or heinous crime," Maketa said. "This is gonna close that gate, and it's gonna create a safety net and another level of protection and another level of intelligence that we haven't had access to in the past."

But some are concerned that Secure Communities is a dragnet system that will cause racial profiling.

"From all the data that has been released to date from the Department of Homeland Security, what we've seen is when local law enforcement agencies have access to the Secure Communities program it is much more likely that they will stop people for minor offenses, arrest them, and book them, so they can get their fingerprints in the system," Jessie Ulibarri, Public Policy Director of the ACLU of Colorado, said.

Maketa disagreed and said racial profiling is illegal, and the new system actually eliminates it. 

"This system uses your arrest to classify you as to whether your prints are gonna get submitted, so it really has no bearing on the decision making, and I would challenge them to claim that the old system wasn't based on independent decisions based on race, color, religious belief, because it was," Maketa said. "An officer had to develop reasonable suspicion based on very basic information. This eliminates all of that. Everybody is treated the same, everybody's fingerprints that are taken are submitted and compared so I think it really goes against their arguments and their argument didn't hold water to begin with."

Ulibarri said that while the system seems to eliminate racial profiling, it's just covering it up.

"The ACLU of Colorado has been opposed to the implementation of Secure Communities program since it was first considered a few years back, and we continue our opposition," Ulibarri said. "We see it as a dragnet program that really does incentivize racial profiling and makes our communities decidedly less safe."

He said in addition to the possibility of racial profiling, the program also puts more of a burden on local law enforcement.

"There are many concerns with Secure Communities, and one of the biggest is that this is an unfunded mandate of local law enforcement agencies to comply with enforcing our federal, civil immigration laws, when it's the responsibility of our local law enforcement to enforce our local criminal laws, and it puts a burden on local municipalities to enforce federal immigration law, to hold people at the request of ICE when that really isn't their role," Ulibarri said. "Their role should be protecting our community."

Ulibarri also said people will be less likely to report crime because of a fear of immigration implications, and that the program targets the wrong criminals.

"The way that this works currently is it creates a dragnet that targets anyone that contains any offense, and if that is an outstanding traffic ticket that's issued a warrant, that would flag that person for ICE," Ulibarri said. "Is that the person that should be the highest priority, or are there other higher priorities that ICE should be focusing on?"

Maketa said the new program isn't designed to target more criminals but instead to properly identify those in custody.

"This isn't about stopping people on the streets and collecting prints and running them through a system," Maketa said. "It's really only directed and focused on those individuals that are arrested on jailable offense, so it's a post-arrest process, and the fingerprints we currently take will simply rather than just being sent to the FBI, they'll be sent to DHS and compared against Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement."

Still Ulibarri said southern Colorado residents should keep a close eye on the program and remember there is a way to opt out.

"In Colorado we have the opportunity, and this is different than any other state, but the opportunity to really thoroughly investigate the impacts of Secure Communities on local government," Ulibarri said. "Colorado I think is the first state to include a provision that would allow local municipalities to opt out of the program if it creates an undue burden on the local municipality. I know in Colorado Springs there have been huge concerns about budgets, you know the reduction in transportation services, park maintenance, the fourth of July celebration, those types of things. To require a local law enforcement agency to to do the job of federal immigration enforcement comes with a price, a heavy, heavy price tag and I think the people of Colorado Springs need to recognize that if this becomes an undue burden there's an ability for folks to opt out."

The El Paso County Sheriff's Office has joined more than 500 agencies nationwide who participate in Secure Communities, but they are the first agency to do so in Colorado.
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Original story:

A rapidly expanding federal program that identifies illegal immigrants when they're arrested and fingerprinted is now operational in Denver and in El Paso and Arapahoe counties.

Colorado Department of Public Safety spokesman Lance Clem said Secure Communities was launched Tuesday in the three jurisdictions.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which operates the program, said last week Secure Communities is active in more than 1,000 jurisdictions in 38 states.

Secure Communities was launched in 2007. ICE says it hopes to have it in every jail in the country by 2013.

The program checks arrestee's fingerprints against federal databases to determine the person's legal status and arrest record.

Critics argue it creates an incentive for racial profiling.

Denver Mayor Bill Vidal calls it "worrisome" and said it should be monitored closely. However, El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa has been campaigning for the program for more than a year.