VI. Omega Lending Key Support to ICE Secure Communities

Omega has just been awarded a Subcontract by Booz Allen Hamilton to provide subject mattter expertise to the ICE Secure Communities Program Management Office (PMO). The PMO support encompasses the coordination and implementation of processes to support a new, nationwide effort to improve public safety by identifying and removing criminal aliens.

In the FY 2008 DHS Appropriations Act, Congress tasked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to "improve and modernize efforts to identify aliens convicted of a crime, sentenced to imprisonment, and who may be deportable, and remove them from the United States once they are judged deportable.

ICE has responded to this Congressional mandate by formulating a plan to improve community safety by transforming the way the federal government cooperates with state and local law enforcement agencies to identify, detain and remove all criminal aliens held in custody. Secure Communities (SC) will revolutionize immigration enforcement by using technology to share information between law enforcement agencies and by applying risk-based methodologies to focus resources on assisting all local communities in order to remove all
high-risk criminal aliens.

Although ICE has made considerable progress over the past several years in identifying and removing criminal aliens through its Criminal Alien Program (CAP), a fundamental change in ICE's current approach is required to reach the goal of identifying and removing all aliens convicted of a crime. ICE currently screens 100 percent of all federal and state prisons, but has full coverage of only about 10 percent of the approximately 3,100 local jails throughout the United States. Leveraging emerging technologies that share law enforcement data between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, ICE is now able to expand coverage in a cost effective manner. Interoperability between the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI's) Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) and DHS' Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) will help ICE and local law enforcement officers positively identify criminal aliens in prisons and jails from a projected universe of 300,000 to 450,000 detained foreign nationals on an annual basis.

Omega will provide highly qualified staff to conduct outreach and training to ICE staff responsible for implementing the new technology and related procedures in ICE field offices around the country as well as their law enforcement agency partners. In addition, Omega will assist Booz Allen by providing qualified staff to support development of additional program strategies for SC upon request.

National deployment of interoperability is estimated to be a three-year process. Phase 1 of interoperability deployment, including approximately 50 localities, began in Octoer 2008 and will continue through February 2009. Subsequent phases will involve larger numbers of localities.

Omega will support interoperability deployment by conducting outreach and training to the
ICE field office staff who will be responsible for implementation in their areas, along with the local LEAs that arrest and charge criminal suspects. All Omega employees supporting this subcontract are specially qualified as former ICE agents with at least ten years service in federal law enforcement while many of the OSS assets were in top management positions
that oversaw national criminal alien initiatives."

OMEGA…THE LAST WORD IN HOMELAND SECURITY SUPPORT