“It might delay the statewide implementation a little bit, but I think our position is we will continue to expand it when we are ready, where we are ready,’’ the official said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C.
Launched in 2008, the Secure Communities program runs the names and fingerprints of everyone arrested through federal immigration and criminal databases. The purpose is to ensure that offenders who are in this country illegally, especially violent criminals, are detained and deported. But the program has been highly controversial among immigrant advocates, who argue that it could be used against those whose offenses are minor, for example, being caught driving without a license.
Patrick, whose administration had pledged in December to sign the Secure Communities agreement this year, has said he agrees with the program’s goal of weeding out violent criminals but said yesterday that he was concerned that it is ensnaring others.
In rejecting it, Patrick followed the states of New York and Illinois. But his decision marks a rare difference with President Obama, his friend and political ally, and sets up a showdown with the federal government, as well as with Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston and Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis, who defended the Secure Communities program yesterday.
The program, now being used in 42 states, was adopted in Boston in 2006, when the federal government launched it as a pilot program. The city is the only Massachusetts jurisdiction in the program.
In a June 3 letter to US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Patrick’s public safety secretary, Mary E. Heffernan, said that more than half of those deported under Boston’s program were not criminals. About 1 in 4 of those deported had been convicted of a serious crime.
