Rajagopalan: Deportation net cast too wide

Kavitha Rajagopalan is the author of "Muslims of Metropolis: The Stories of Three Immigrant Families in the West."

This month, New York and Massachusetts joined Illinois and California in announcing that they are backing out of the Secure Communities program, which runs fingerprints from local arrests through federal immigration databases to look for illegal immigrants with criminal records.

But according to the Department of Homeland Security, states can't legally "opt out" of the program. As a standard practice, local law enforcement officials already share fingerprints with the FBI, which in turn shares them with immigration enforcement authorities. Immigration enforcement decisions proceed with or without the permission of local law enforcement. States don't implement the program -- it is implemented for them, and it's already in effect in some 1,800 jurisdictions in 43 states. The program is expected to be nationwide by 2013.

Secure Communities purports to search for repeat illegal immigrant offenders or those charged with major crimes. In practice, most people deported under the program have had no criminal record at all and were picked up on minor offenses, like speeding. Only 28,000 of the 85,000 "criminals" slated for deportation were actually in custody for level 1 aggravated felonies, like rape or murder. This kind of implementation has helped drive a wedge between law enforcement agencies and some of the communities they serve.

In response to criticism, the Obama administration has announced new measures to cut down on racial profiling and refocus on the original target population: major criminals who are illegally hiding in plain sight in the United States. Certainly, efforts to cut back on racial profiling should be applauded, and violent criminals here illegally should by all means face deportation. But these reforms are too little too late.

Even if the administration says it will shift the program's focus back to serious criminals, we've already wasted thousands of hours of legal resources deporting people who pose no threat to this country. And in doing so, we have made illegal immigrants a national target. It seems that some people, both inside and outside of the administration, have been comfortable with three years of mass deportations -- whether drug dealers, gangsters or not. All told, some 800,000 illegal immigrants have been deported under President Barack Obama.

The Secure Communities program not only rendered fugitive thousands of people guilty of breaking no other law than being in the United States illegally -- a civil offense -- it made the assessment of immigration status a priority in combating crime and violence in America today.

There are some 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, the overwhelming majority of whom lead productive lives -- harvesting our crops, caring for our families and building promising careers. One of these is Pulitzer Prize winner Jose Antonio Vargas, whose remarkable confession in The New York Times this week drew national attention. Like Vargas, thousands of illegal immigrants were brought here as children.

Since Secure Communities was introduced, several states have declared open season on illegal immigrants. Arizona's efforts have garnered the most attention, but anti-immigration bills have recently passed in Georgia and South Carolina, and an aggressive bill was proposed in Alabama this month. But until we make more of an effort to understand who illegal immigrants are and why so many have remained on a near-permanent basis here, we won't succeed in lowering their ranks.

Rather than deporting 800,000 illegal immigrants, it would have made more sense to ask who we actually want and need here -- and whether finding a way to make them legal might be a better option.