Immigration agency applies new biometric sharing technology - Macomb County Sheriff Mark A. Hackel

By Gordon Wilczynski, Macomb Daily Staff Writer

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for the first time began using a new biometric information-sharing capability in Macomb County that helps federal immigration officials identify aliens — in the United States both lawfully and unlawfully — who are arrested by local police agencies.

Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel said the capability is part of Secure Communities, ICE's initiative to improve and modernize the identification and removal of criminal aliens from the United States.

In the past, fingerprint-based biometric records of individuals charged with a crime were checked for criminal history using the Department of Justice's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

Now, Hackel said, through enhanced information-sharing between the departments of Homeland Security and Justice, fingerprint information submitted through the state to the FBI will be automatically checked against both the FBI's criminal history records in AIFIS and the biometrics-based immigration records in DHS's Automated Biometric Identification System.

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