By Bryan Clapper, Guest Column

Editor&8217;s note: What Austin Daily Herald Managing Editor Bryan Clapper explains here applies to Freeborn County and Albert Lea the same as Mower County and Austin.

Twenty-one illegal immigrants captured in a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement sting last week were held for a short period of time in the Mower County Jail, but thanks to differences in state and federal law and secretive handiwork by federal officials, we will never know their identities.

The illegal aliens caught in this specific initiative were hiding in plain sight in Austin and were living and working among us. Following their deportation, they leave neighbors, friends and co-workers behind &8212; friends, co-workers and bosses who, according to the federal government, have no right to know where they&8217;ve gone or what happened to them.

Under federal law, the identities of these fugitives are protected.

Therefore, when we reported on their arrests, we were unable to get any information about them. The ICE gave us, via a press release, the identity of one of them.

&8220;Among those arrested was Jorge Ponce-Garcia, 31, a citizen of Mexico,&8221; the press release states. &8220;Ponce-Garcia has arrest records in California and Minnesota, and has criminal convictions for burglary, second-degree assault, providing false information to police, drunken driving, leaving the scene of an accident, and disorderly conduct.&8221;

Without the access to information about those arrested that would normally be available to the public if they were county arrests, it&8217;s impossible to know if Ponce-Garcia&8217;s record is typical of those arrested or atypical. We&8217;re left to guess.

To some, Ponce-Garcia will be held up as an example of what &8220;all of them&8221; must be like. To others, his record will be held up as an example of a worst-case scenario that the federal government is using in order to make it look as if they&8217;ve arrested 21 dangerous individuals when, perhaps, his record was exceptional. Without information, we have no way of guessing.

Thanks to the federal government, many will stereotype those arrested with no evidence to back their assumptions up.

My question is still, though, why is the information not public?

Here&8217;s where the tricky part comes in: Whenever a person is arrested and booked into any county jail, they are processed and documented. Their photographs are taken. Their fingerprints are taken. More importantly, their identity is revealed.

These illegal aliens were held in the Mower County Jail without being processed before being transported to the Twin Cities for processing there.

They were processed by ICE, and under their rules, the identities are not released publicly.

According to Tim Counts, a spokesman for ICE, identities of illegal aliens are not public because it is not assumed that they have committed any crime &8212; it&8217;s part of the privacy act that surrounds immigration status. However, these were fugitive illegals, meaning they had been ordered to leave the country and had not &8212; which is a crime.

I&8217;m not alleging anything improper was done by the Mower County Jail or by ICE. It is ICE&8217;s policy that I have a problem with.

Access to information is a right, not a privilege, and that right is being denied. When a government agency, especially a new one created to win political points, like ICE, is the sole bearer of its own news, it tends to only be good news. It tends to only favor the agency. It tends to protect the jobs of those employed by that agency.

Unlike city and county government and law enforcement, where statute requires that their operations be entirely open to public scrutiny (with only a handful of exceptions), ICE is able to operate in relative anonymity and with little oversight by the public. Despite being the largest investigative division within the Department of Homeland Security, employing some 15,000 people, ICE is relatively unknown, thanks in part to this veil of secrecy.

In essence, the federal government is telling the public that we have no right to know what one of the largest branches of government is up to.

Bryan Clapper&8217;s column appears Sundays in the Austin Daily Herald.