Secure Communities is a data-sharing program that relies on coordination between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. The program was designed to "check the immigration status of every single person arrested by local police anywhere in the country". As part of the program, fingerprints that are taken upon arrest, which are traditionally forwarded to the FBI, are then also forwarded to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) . If these finger prints match the DHS's Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT), then the ICE district office decides whether or not to issue a detainer request which can include requesting that the person be detained for up to 48 hours (I-247D), or a request for ICE to be notified upon their release (I-247N).

Between July 2015 and January 2017, Secure Communities was replaced by the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP). The goal of PEP was to "target resources toward detaining and deporting individuals convicted of significant criminal offenses."

On January 25, 2017, President Donald Trump signed executive order 13768 re-instituting Secure Communities (see section 10), indicating that it would penalize jurisdictions that did not comply with the program, and re-expanded immigration enforcement priorities to include even those not convicted of serious criminal offenses.

On January 20, 2021, President Joe Biden revoked EO 13768.

Currently the ICE indicates that the web page ice.gov/secure-communities is "archived and not reflective of current practice"

Secure Communities relied on integrated databases and partnerships with local and state jailers to build domestic deportation capacity. The goals, as outlined in a 2009 report to Congress, are to: "1. IDENTIFY criminal aliens through modernized information sharing; 2. PRIORITIZE enforcement actions to ensure apprehension and removal of dangerous criminal aliens; and 3. TRANSFORM criminal alien enforcement processes and systems to achieve lasting results."

John Morton of Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE called Secure Communities "the future of immigration enforcement" because it "focuses our resources on identifying and removing the most serious criminal offenders first and foremost."

Concerns were raised for misrepresenting who was being targeted and what was expected of law enforcement partners. Secure Communities was created administratively, not by congressional mandate and, throughout its implementation, no regulations were promulgated to govern the program's implementation.^{[citation needed]}