It's back. Though Governor Andrew Cuomo tried to drop New York out of the Department of Homeland Security's controversial, creepily-named Secure Communities program last summer, officials say we'll be back in the game next week. According to Homeland Security the not-at-all flawed Secure Communities program, which weeds through local police fingerprint information sent to the FBI to find illegal immigrants and deport them, is mandatory.

The program already has returned to about half the state, including Nassau, Dutchess and Westchester counties. It'll return everywhere else on Tuesday. And Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which manages the program, is very pleased with itself. “Secure Communities has proven to be the single most valuable tool in allowing the agency to eliminate the ad hoc approach of the past and focus on criminal aliens and repeat immigration law violators,” a spokesman said in a statement. According to ICE the program has helped "remove more than 135,000 convicted criminal aliens including more than 49,000 convicted of major violent offenses like murder, rape and the sexual abuse of children."

At the same time many critics have pointed out it has pulled in a number of people with no criminal record, including low-level offenders and domestic violence victims. "We are very concerned about the Department of Homeland Security’s insistence on moving forward in light of the strong opposition against it,” said Jackie Esposito, director of Immigration Advocacy at the New York Immigration Coalition, told WNYC.

Technically, the program being reinstituted has been tweaked since Cuomo and others criticized it last year but only just ("According to its new policy, for example, the agency will take into its custody individuals arrested solely for minor traffic violations only if they are convicted."). And that has people like City Council Speaker Christine Quinn angry: "I am deeply troubled by and have always opposed the implementation of Secure Communities in New York City," she said. "I do not want this implemented and I oppose any government move to force New York City to abide by this unfair policy."

Meanwhile Cuomo's office says they are monitoring the situation and still object to the program, which is expected to be nationwide by 2013.