Where ICE Already Has Direct Lines To Law-Enforcement Databases With Alien Data

In the immediate aftermath of President Trump's victory in November, numerous liberal mayors and police chiefs across the country affirmed their commitment to making their cities sanctuaries for unauthorized immigrants [illegal aliens]...

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) documents show that for years, law enforcement in hundreds of jurisdictions nationwide, including major sanctuary cities like Seattle, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, are feeding information into regional databases that can be combed through by ICE. When ICE needs information on residents for raids or criminal investigations, these regional databases can give ICE crucial information, like phone numbers, addresses, and comments about individuals' scars, marks and tattoos that may have not made it into federal records. Such locally-specific information can be helpful for ICE agents, especially in sanctuary cities where ICE often conducts immigrant [illegal alien] raids in lieu of formal cooperation with local authorities.

Local and federal law enforcement leaders argue that such data is crucial in carrying out criminal investigations that pose national security or public-safety threats. But while this access to local data is generally supposed to be used for law enforcement purposes, immigrants' rights activists [illegal alien activists] worry such data sharing channels could harm immigrant communities, especially as the president casts a wider net in his illegal immigration crackdown...

Where ICE can mine local law enforcement databases

Since at least 2011, ICE officials have been able to search for information from nearly a thousand law enforcement agencies across the country, authorized by formal agreements struck between ICE and regional law enforcement groups...

While other DHS agencies can also access these local law enforcement databases, past reports suggest that ICE is the primary department accessing this information. According to a 2011 DHS report, for example, between August 2010 and February 2011, ICE conducted 77 percent of all DHS agency searches of local law enforcement databases...