Federal Panel Believes Deportation Law Is Helping Raise Crime

It’s easy for supporters of deportation laws to argue that we need to get illegal immigrants out of our country, however a federal panel that has been reviewing a federal mandate has found that an already existing program could lead to “greater levels of crime.”

The panel was investigating the “Secure Communities” program which has a major goal of providing immigration officials with police-obtained fingerprints so they can deport serious criminals. Instead the panel has found that the program was being used to crack down on non-criminals and people who had committed only minor crimes.

In the report the federal reviews panel found that:

“If residents do not trust their local police, they are less willing to step forward as witnesses to or victims of crime.”

While they do not specifically call for an end to the secure communities plan, they do urge law enforcement agencies to properly enact the goal of the system and target those people “who pose a danger to national security or a risk to public safety.”

Even with the warning to go after only hardened criminals the panels response drew controversy of it’s own when one former head of the Sacramento police resigned from the panel and said of the committees warning, “I don’t think it went far enough.”

Several union members also resigned from the panel following what they called a lack of warning about the serious oversights within the study.

Do you believe that such programs should be more closely monitored to avoid creating a system of fear in our country?