Obama's Hard Line

President Obama is tackling illegal immigration one inmate at a time. The administration will check the immigration status of every prisoner in local jails, a Bush-era policy that could result in a ten-fold increase in the immigrants flagged for deportation. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the effort, called "Secure Communities," was intended to crack down on immigrants who have committed crimes, rather than those who are law-abiding. The president has asked Congress for $200 million to fund the program, which will analyze prisoner's fingerprints and run them through FBI databases. Secure Communities will begin in October in 48 counties—but the administration aims to expand it to every jail in the country by 2012.