Yakima County has become the first county in the state to implement a controversial new federal program designed to identify illegal immigrants accused of breaking criminal laws — and it won't be the last.

Twelve other counties — Lewis, Franklin, Garfield, Gray's Harbor, Pacific, Island, Benton, Walla Walla, Skagit, Douglas, Adams and Kittitas — plan to roll out the Secure Communities program in the upcoming months.

Secure Communities, run by the Department of Homeland Security through its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division, is designed to snag illegal immigrants accused of crimes and repeat immigration violators.

Under the program, the fingerprints of every person booked into county jail are run through a Department of Homeland Security database. If an inmate has been previously fingerprinted by Immigration, the databases will find a "match."

ICE then asks the local jail facility to hold the inmate until ICE agents can interview the person and decide on what action to take.

Depending on the circumstances, including whether the person had been previously deported, has family ties and his or her length of stay in the U.S., ICE will give the individual the option of deportation or voluntary return to his or her native country.

Because immigration proceedings are independent of the state criminal-justice system, illegal immigrants can be removed from jail before their criminal case is complete.

"If you're an illegal immigrant and are a criminal on top of that, you shouldn't be here," said Yakima County Sheriff Ken Irwin. "The people here are just sick and tired of crime and gang problems. Whatever can be done to get more criminals out of the area, the better."

Irwin, a former president of the Washington State Sheriffs' Association, said counties are in a bind because illegal immigration is a federal issue, but local communities are the ones feeling the effects.

"About six months ago, we heard about Secure Communities and I thought, 'Wow, the federal government is final stepping up under pressure to start addressing the illegal immigration problem,' " Irwin said.

Secure Communities has come under fire from immigrant-rights groups, which worry that the program will cost counties money, lead to racial profiling and disrupt immigrant community trust in law enforcement. Some fear the potential of deportation could hinder reports of domestic violence and other crimes.

In November, Washington turned down ICE's request to implement Secure Communities throughout the state, instead allowing the sheriff of each county to decide if their community wanted the program. Until Yakima activated the program last week, Washington was one of only six states in the country that was not using Secure Communities.

So far, King, Snohomish and Pierce counties have not opted into Secure Communities.

Currently, ICE gives counties the option of participating in the program, but every county jail in the nation will be required to implement the program by 2013.

The program began in 2008 under President George W. Bush as an outgrowth of the Criminal Alien Program, which identifies and removes illegal immigrants convicted of crimes and incarcerated in federal, state and local prisons and jails.

Secure Communities is now a big part of the Obama administration's immigration plan to target criminals who are in the country illegally. It has expanded to 44 states and 1,300 counties since it began three years ago, according to ICE's website.

"Since 9/11, we've seen an increased interest in who should and shouldn't be here," said Scott Johnson, sheriff of Pacific County, who requested to be a part of Secure Communities two months ago. "[Secure Communities] gives us another tool in the toolbox to identify someone who won't give us their identity."

Jails already routinely fingerprint everyone they book and sends those prints to the FBI's national database. Under Secure Communities, ICE accesses the FBI database, checking them against its own databases for matches. "Nobody's going to be deported without going before a judge and a hearing to say whether they belong here," Johnson said. "Immigration and Customs is not going to come into our jail, take someone and just deport them."

At the end of April, more than 77,000 illegal immigrants convicted of crimes were deported as a result of Secure Communities, according to ICE.

Jorge L. Barón, executive director of Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, an advocacy group that provides legal service for low-income immigrants, is an outspoken critic of Secure Communities. He worries that the program entangles local law enforcement with immigration enforcement, with immigrant communities taking the hit.

"When people see someone in the community arrested for something like trespassing and then see that person end up in immigration custody, it looks like local law enforcement has become immigration enforcement," said Barón. "And that undermines the trust of immigrant communities in being able to come forward to local law enforcement. It eliminates any level of trust."

ICE has said that Secure Communities will not cost the counties any additional money, but Barón worries that costs will add up now that local jails must house inmates accused of minor criminal offenses until ICE agents retrieve them.

"It doesn't make sense for the counties to be subsidizing immigration-enforcement activity," said Barón.

But Kevin Hanson, Lewis County jail administrator, welcomes the Secure Communities program, saying that it would streamline the county's standard immigration procedures, with ICE agents occasionally coming to the jails. Secure Communities will go live in Lewis County next month.

"All this does is connect the agencies," said Hanson. "I don't suspect that there's going to be a whole lot more people who are detained because of this."

Hanson dismissed concerns that Secure Communities would lead to racial profiling, saying that it was in fact "the reverse of racial profiling" because everybody's fingerprints are run through the system.

Amy Harris: 206-464-2212 or aharris@seattletimes.com

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