Officers here have a new high-tech tool to identify people in the country illegally or legally — at least those convicted of serious crimes.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is cross-referencing biometric information — digital fingerprints — of people booked into the Warren County Jail with its list of what the Department of Homeland Security calls “criminal aliens.”

“This system will not only let us know if the person being booked in is a convicted felon from some other jurisdiction in the United States, but it will also tell us if they are in the Department of Homeland Security’s system,” said Sheriff Martin Pace.

“Enhancing public safety is at the core of ICE’s mission. Our goal is to use biometric information sharing to remove criminal aliens, preventing them from being released back into the community, with little or no additional burden on our law enforcement partners,” said David Venturella, executive director for the Secure Communities initiative.

Pace said there is no local cost.

Routinely, law enforcement agencies have fingerprinted detainees and sent those fingerprints, formerly on cards, to the FBI, Pace said. Prints were filed and compared with other known prints.

The digital or Automated Fingerprint Identification System, a computerized system to transmit fingerprints, is about 10 years old and cross-checks local detainees with FBI lists. It went online at the Warren County Jail Tuesday.

The expansion adds fingerprint records of only immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes, not those who have overstayed visas or with other infractions, but it has had an effect.

One aspect is that the software alerts ICE if a person has re-entered the United States illegally after being deported, the sheriff said. 

“We would have no way of knowing that,” Pace said.

Since ICE began using the system in October 2008, immigration officers have deported more than 9,800 criminal aliens convicted of crimes including murder, rape and kidnapping and more than 24,800 criminal aliens convicted of offenses including burglary and serious property crimes.

Warren County is one of 467 jurisdictions in 26 states using the data-sharing system, which is expected to be nationwide by 2013.