Feds buck Quinn, order cooperation in deportation program

I don't understand how unreasonable this is for many:

The federal government is requiring Illinois police to report illegal immigrants who are arrested on any charge from public intoxication to murder, in spite of Gov. Pat Quinn’s  opposition.

On Friday, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, canceled contracts with the 39 states participating in Secure Communities — a program in which local and state law enforcement officials share fingerprints with the federal government.

 

ICE, the investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, did not cancel the contracts to end the program, but rather to assert that ICE doesn't need a state's permission, in this case via a contract, to operate the deportation program.

 

“ICE continues to work with its law enforcement partners across the country to responsibly and effectively implement this federal information sharing capability,” ICE Director John Morton said in a news release.

...

The federal program, created under Republican President George W. Bush, was engineered to deport illegal immigrants who've been convicted of a felony or at least three misdemeanors in the same year in the United States or a previous crime in their home country. 

 

Local police departments sent the fingerprints of anyone arrested and fingerprinted for any reason to the state police and FBI. ICE then can access the fingerprints through the FBI and check them against several ICE databases of illegal and legal immigrants.

 

When ICE discovers a fingerprint linked to an illegal immigrant, it looks at that person’s immigration status and criminal history, among other things, to determine whether to deport him.

 

The program does not cost the states any extra funding, according to ICE.

Some aspects of the immigration issue for those who advocate in favor are understandable. Do you really want to break up families? Do you really want to send home those who are here to find a jobs (even if those jobs are essentially under the radar)?

At the same time what's the problem with sending home those who have committed crimes? I don't see that as unreasonable and those who want to even oppose that are simply unreasonable!

Via CapFax which by the way as always has a very active commenting section. In fact, one commenter compared one person's wish to enforce the laws on their books with wishing to maintain Jim Crow laws.

That is like WTF??? right there. Another commenter noted there are no Jim Crow laws today. Although yeah people did enforce Jim Crow laws and also had no wish to change them in any way. But how is this an argument to not allow federal authorities to deport those illegal immigrants who have committed crimes?