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Subject: Secure Communities, FBI CJIS Division and US VISIT Conference Call (Friday, August 27th)

Attachments: Individual_LEA_Deployments_08242010.doc; ORI_Validation_08252010.doc

To all Vested Parties,

The agenda for Friday’s (8/27) meeting is listed below.

1. What Opting Out of Secure Communities Means in 2013?

2. LEA Centric vs. Jurisdiction Deployment Approaches

3. ORI Validation Process

4. How to Get Cook County Activated?

Attached to this e-mail are two draft issue papers for agenda item #2 and #3. Each paper

identifies, provides background information, discussion points as well as a proposed

recommendation on each of the issues. These papers will be leveraged to help facilitate

discussion on each of these topics.

Please let us know if you have any questions on the papers or agenda topics prior to the meeting.

We look forward to seeing you on Friday.

Thanks,

(b)(6), (b)(7)(C)

Secure Communities

Immigration & Customs Enforcement

Chief, Deployment Branch

(b)(6), (b)(7)(C) - Desk

(b)(6), (b)(7)(C) - Mobile

Warning: This document is UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY (U//FOUO). It contains

information that may be exempt from public release under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552). It

is to be controlled, stored, handled, transmitted, distributed, and disposed of in accordance with DHS policy

relating to FOUO information and is not to be released to the public or other personnel who do not have a

valid "need-to-know" without prior approval of an authorized DHS official. No portion of this report should

be furnished to the media, either in written or verbal form.

12/31/2010

ICE FOIA 10-2674.0007537

 Originating Agency Identifier (ORI) Validation Process

Issue:

The current IDENT/IAFIS Interoperability deployment practice is to activate only the validated ORIs in a

particular jurisdiction. As the pace of activations has increased (there have been multiple weeks in FY

2010 with over 50 activations), so has the volume of ORIs requiring validation. This has at times created

delays in the activation of some counties to accommodate the completion of their ORI review by the State

Identification Bureau (SIB) or local Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). It also creates a heavy

coordination burden on the FBI CJIS, SIBs, local LEAs, and the Secure Communities (SC) PMO.

As part of our ongoing process improvement efforts, SC would like to propose a change to the activation

process. This change would be to eliminate the county by county ORI validation process, which is tied to

the Interoperability activation schedule, and instead rely on the FBI CJIS’ biannual ORI validation

process. This will streamline the activation process, reduce unnecessary communications, and help to

compress the time needed for activation.

Background:

When Interoperability activation is initially planned for a target jurisdiction, the FBI CJIS applies a

mutually agreed upon ORI selection criteria to produce the candidate list of ORIs to activate. The list

includes law enforcement ORIs and CRIs (Controlling Agency Identifiers) capable of submitting criminal

transactions, i.e. Criminal Answer Required (CAR) transactions and Criminal Print Ident (CPI) file

maintenance messages. The list is then sent to the appropriate SIB for review and, for certain states, to

local LEAs as well. In addition, US-VISIT reviews the ORI list to ensure that the agencies represented

are considered appropriate to US-VISIT’s mission. The entire process can take up to 6 weeks, thereby

limiting SC’s ability to move up activations when issues arise with pending activations. In addition, it

can sometimes take longer than 6 weeks if personnel are unavailable at the SIB and/or LEAs to review the

ORIS, such as with vacations or illness, thereby creating delays. Finally, the shear volume of ORIs to be

validated creates a significant and continuous coordination burden for all Interoperability partners.

Discussion:

It is the understanding of the Secure Communities (SC) PMO that ORI validation ensures that ORIs and

CRIs have not been retired and that the SIB is in agreement with the plan for Interoperability activation.

These goals will be briefly assessed in terms of their value to the activation process and alternative means

of accomplishing the goals.

Validating that an ORI is an active ORI makes sense, but may not add much value to the activation

process. It has been reported to the SC PMO that CJIS requests a complete ORI validation from the states

every other year. If an ORI or CRI were “activated” but had in reality been retired, there does not seem to

be much impact. Interoperability would receive no traffic from that ORI or CRI and the problem should

be discovered in the next biannual review. Even under the current process, there is no assurance that an

ORI or CRI will not be retired after Interoperability activation. If the biannual review process is a

successful, working process between CJIS and the SIBs, it makes sense to leverage its benefit to the

maximum extent possible.

One of the goals of FY 2010 was to conduct outreach to all SIBs. This has been accomplished, with the

exception of Alaska (because it does not currently have the capability to electronically submit fingerprints

to CJIS). For the states that have received outreach and signed an MOA with ICE, they understand the

SC initiative and have agreed in principle to the deployment of Interoperability within their state. The SC

PMO and CJIS collaborate with the SIBs on an ongoing basis, and there are many opportunities to

regularly inform the SIB of activation schedules within their state and to receive feedback. ORI

validation is probably the most cumbersome of these collaboration options, some being as simple as

ICE FOIA 10-2674.0007538

notification messages. The SIB can always raise any concerns they might have regarding pending

activations. In addition, since only CAR and CPI transactions are accepted through Interoperability, there

is no risk of non-criminal transactions being submitted through Interoperability, regardless of the ORIs or

CRIs activated. In summary, there does not appear to be adequate levels of risk or value to justify the

resources expended by CJIS, SIBs, LEAs, and SC on the current ORI validation process.

Recommendations:

SC recommends that the current CJIS/SIB biannual ORI review process be considered as an acceptable

alternative to our current Interoperability ORI validation process. Validating ORIs on a county by county

basis as a part of the ongoing Interoperability activation planning process is causing delays in activation.

SC requests that FBI-CJIS and US-VISIT combine SC Interoperability ORI validations with the CJIS

ORI maintenance schedule, to be conducted annually, thus alleviating redundancies. In essence, FBI

CJIS, US-VISIT and SIBs would re-validate the activated ORIs and validate all ORIs expected to be

activated in the coming year.

ICE FOIA 10-2674.0007539

 Individual LEA/ORI Deployment

Issue:

The current IDENT/IAFIS Interoperability deployment practice is to activate all of the validated ORIs in

a particular jurisdiction. However, some states, such as Washington and New York, are requesting to

activate one (or a few) LEAs (ORIs) at a time to accommodate specific needs (see below). To date,

FBI/CJIS position has been that activations will only occur if all ORI’s in a given jurisdiction are turned

on at the same time.

Background:

There are outstanding requests from State Identification Bureaus to deviate from the current practice of

deploying all ORI’s within a given jurisdiction at one time. Secure Communities believes that it is likely

that we will see additional requests in the future. The specifics of each request are outlined below:

 Washington: The State of Washington is requiring that each interested law enforcement agency

make a request to participate directly to the Chief of the Washington State Patrol (WSP) (currently

John Batiste). Potentially, this could create a situation where only some of the LEAs in a given

jurisdiction would wish to participate preventing full jurisdiction activation. WSP’s only role will be

to validate the ORIs of the requesting agency and share that information with ICE and the FBI.

 New York: New York State is also seeking a variant of the individual LEA deployment approach in

that all ORIs within a jurisdiction may be activated except when a law enforcement organization

expresses a desire to opt-out of Secure Communities. Additionally, NY DCJS is requiring that each

LEA agree to participate before being activated. In order to ensure that each organization is polled as

to its desires, New York Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), acting as the SIB, has

insisted on a regimen of outreach to all LEAs. As with Washington State, the potential exists for one

or two LEAs to prevent the majority of a jurisdiction from being able to activate.

 Minnesota: Minnesota does not want to sign the MOA and does not want to participate with ORI

validation for Interoperability. Minnesota may allow jurisdictions to be activated if SC and CJIS work

directly with each jurisdiction instead of the SIB. SC will agree to forego a signed MOA with

Minnesota. SC would like to work with CJIS on an acceptable deployment strategy (i.e. start with

state correctional facilities) and schedule a follow-up meeting with Minnesota to discuss moving

forward with deployments.

 Jurisdictions: Special jurisdictions such as Cook County, IL and New York City, NY may require

the phased activation of specific LEA ORIs to accommodate political sensitivities and other

considerations.

Discussion:

It can be argued that any special deployment issue that may arise will be eventually resolved when

FBI/CJIS activates Next Generation Identification (NGI) which, in essence, will activate IDENT/IAFIS

interoperability for all submitting agencies (all ORIs). However, by delaying the resolution until then, we

would also be delaying the identification of the most dangerous criminal aliens processed through these

non-deployed LEAs/States. It is also not SC’s desire to rely on NGI roll out as a panacea for reluctant

states and jurisdictions. Like any large system development project, NGI deployment timelines are

subject to change and the policies and processes surrounding its deployment are still under development.

What is more, a willingness to readily forego all available options to achieve IAFIS / IDENT

interoperability will inevitably make NGI rollout more challenging.

ICE FOIA 10-2674.0007540

A close examination of using an individual LEA deployment process suggests that there are both strong

pros and cons to deviating from the current arrangement.

The primary advantage of an individual LEA deployment methodology is that it permits a measured

approach and allows areas to accommodate their unique circumstances. This is especially true when it is

the state that is asking for this type of activation.

 In Washington, if IDENT/IAFIS Interoperability is activated one LEA at a time for those that request

to participate, we can at least move forward with activations without Washington signing the MOA.

If the decision is made not to allow individual LEA activation, it is unlikely that an MOA will be

signed nor that IDENT/IAFIS Interoperability will be deployed in Washington State until NGI is

released.

 In New York, this approach will allow continuing cooperation between ICE and the State. The

promise that we will explore this option has paved the way for slow progress toward activation of the

five boroughs of New York City and has shown New York that Secure Communities can be

implemented in a careful and thoughtful manner contrary to what has been asserted by some special

interest groups opposed to the initiative.

If we cannot activate LEA-by-LEA in these special cases, then we would be forced to wait until the

participation of every LEA within a jurisdiction has been verified before we activate that jurisdiction,

which will slow down the Interoperability activation process significantly and thereby delay the

identification of criminal aliens within our communities.

It is understood that this is a major change in the way that current ORI validation and activation normally

occur and is not the preferred approach. Additionally, it must be noted that if we only activate one LEA

at a time, we will potentially miss many CAR transactions/violent offenders in a jurisdiction. This is

because those LEAs which agree to activation in a particular jurisdiction may not be handling the

majority of arrests within the jurisdiction, or may not be the primary booking site such as a county jail. If

the primary arresting / booking LEA has not been activated, then the criminal aliens who are processed

through that organization will remain unknown to ICE unless or until they are sentenced to a state penal

institution and are identified by ERO CAP teams. Nonetheless, if the alternative is no activations within a

jurisdiction because 100% of the LEAs did not agree to participate, then LEA-specific activations appear

to be the lesser of the two evils.

Recommendation:

SC recommends that FBI/CJIS allow for the activation of individual LEA/ORIs on a case-by-case basis in

areas where: the SIB requests to activate in that manner, the SIB or jurisdiction can demonstrate special

circumstances (local ordinance in Cook County), or where such an approach is the only method by which

IDENT/IAFIS Interoperability can be deployed. This approach will allow flexibility to deal with unique

circumstances. Individual LEA activation would only be requested in situations with extenuating

circumstances or when such activation is prudent, desirable or requested by the SIB or State.

ICE FOIA 10-2674.0007541