Earlier this week, San Diego County became the first county in California to receive biometric information regarding immigration status of inmates through the new Secure Communities program. The program, managed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), aims to ease the process by which the federal organization determines if an individual incarcerated in the U.S. is a removable criminal alien.

Under this new program, all individuals booked into the three largest jails in San Diego County will have their fingerprints checked against the Department of Homeland Security's biometric records for immigration records. If a fingerprint matches that of a Homeland Security record, the electronic system will notify both ICE and the jail site of the match. ICE will then evaluate the case to determine and verify the individual's immigration status and decide if additional actions should be taken after the individual completes their prison sentence.

According to ICE, the highest priority will be placed on aliens who pose the "greatest threat to public safety." These include individuals with prior convictions for major drug offenses, rape, robbery, murder and kidnapping.

"Secure Communities is an ICE initiative to more broadly manage and modernize the processes used to identify and ultimately remove dangerous criminal aliens from our communities," said David Venturella, Executive Director for ICE Secure Communities. "Our goal with this ICE effort is to use information sharing to prevent criminal aliens from being released back into the community, with little or no additional burden on our local law enforcement partners."