LA City Council considers allowing local police to opt out of Secure Communities immigration program

The Los Angeles City Council Tuesday jumps into the debate over deportation. The Council considers a resolution that urges the federal government to allow local police to opt out of its Secure Communities program.

Under that program, when police check the FBI’s national database to see if an arrestee is wanted in another jurisdiction, the federal Department of Homeland Security also automatically checks to see if immigration authorities want that person.

Councilman Bernard Parks, a former LAPD chief, said the program makes officers look like federal agents – and immigrants feel less confident about cooperating and reporting crimes.

“It has to do with the chilling effect that you place on a community," Parks said.

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He said L.A. has worked hard to improve relationships with immigrant communities. In the late 1970s, the City Council approved Special Order 40, which prohibits police from stopping people solely to ask about their immigration status.

"This city we have taken 30 years to work through these problems," Parks said.

Federal authorities say Secure Communities has helped them catch and deport thousands of violent undocumented immigrants.

Parks says nearly half of the 12,000 people the program has deported from L.A. County during a recent year-and-a-half period had no convictions or had committed misdemeanors.

Conservatives have praised Secure Communities as an effective way to deport undocumented immigrants – whether they've committed a crime in the U.S. or not.