Sensible action on immigration enforcement

In government, sustaining an ineffective program is always imprudent. When money is tight, it's senseless. Yet, until Wednesday, 26 counties in Illinois were chained to a federal anti-illegal immigrant program that, by the government's own statistics, is far from meeting its goals.

The General Assembly was preparing to take up a workable proposal that would loosen those chains by allowing local law enforcement officials to set the terms of their participation in the Secure Communities program. But Gov. Pat Quinn made even that reasonable action unnecessary when he sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security announcing that Illinois was pulling out of the program.

Secure Communities provides a system of sharing fingerprints between local officials, the FBI and immigration agencies, aimed at catching and deporting people here illegally who have committed violent crimes. The U.S. lacks the resources to track all illegal immigrants, and by targeting the greatest threats, Secure Communities offered promise for removing the most dangerous and undesirable illegal immigrants. But the statistics have not reflected that goal. Quoting the government's own figures, Quinn pointed out that “less than 20 percent of those who have been deported from Illinois under the program have ever been convicted of a serious crime.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials were refusing to allow participating jurisdictions — including DuPage, Kane, Lake and McHenry counties — to opt out of the program, But Quinn's action not only bars any new counties from joining, it also orders participating counties to be deactivated.

At least in Kane and Lake counties, where sheriffs Pat Perez and Mark Curran, respectively, had been outspoken critics, the order will be welcome relief. The sheriffs had contended that their resources were being unnecessarily diverted away from serious crimes by ICE investigations and their jails unnecessarily crowded with immigrants being held for deportation.

The governor's office noted in a statement that Illinois would continue to work with ICE to facilitate the deportation of serious criminals, as well it should. But withdrawal from Secure Communities allows local counties again to determine for themselves how to marshal their limited crime-fighting resources.

Over two decades, millions of immigrants have crossed U.S. borders illegally, straining our schools, social services and health care system. But the time for looking at past mistakes has passed, and policies and programs going forward must be results-driven and cost-effective. All reasonable people support measures that would remove dangerous immigrants living here illegally, but the state's experience with Secure Communities did more to demonstrate the need for comprehensive federal immigration reform than to make the lives of Illinoisans safer.