SAN FRANCISCO - In a letter sent today, Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. declined San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey's request to allow San Francisco to opt out of participating in Secure Communities, a national program that links the fingerprints of arrestees to a federal database maintained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that checks whether an arrestee is in this country illegally and has previously committed crimes. "I think this program serves both public safety and the interests of justice," Brown said. "ICE's program advances an important law enforcement function by identifying those individuals who are in the country illegally and who have a history of serious crimes or who have previously been deported."