Finding The Illegals

Twin Falls County law enforcement  now has a new tool to help identify illegal aliens who have committed crimes.  The Secure Communities program will allow Twin Falls County to help the federal government identify criminal aliens who are being held in local jails.  The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement says the program also identifies criminal aliens in the state prison system.   The program uses fingerprints of inmates and compares them to scans of a federal immigration database.  This process singles out individuals who are in the country illegally so officials can then remove them from the US.  Several other counties in Idaho are also enrolled in the program which includes a total of 1265 jurisdictions throughout the US in 42 states.  The program has been in operation for about 30 months and during that time over 72,000 criminal aliens have been deported which includes over 26,000 of whom were convicted of serious felonies.