Ed Davis, our city’s police commissioner, isn’t in the habit of asking for my advice. But I’m going to offer some anyway.

You shouldn’t threaten to get out of Secure Communities, the federal program that claims to weed out criminals who are in the country illegally. You should withdraw from it. Like tomorrow, and that’s only because today is a holiday.

A story in the Sunday Globe by Maria Sacchetti detailed three cases in which illegal immigrants faced deportation after minor traffic incidents. The most shocking involved a young Brazilian woman named Lizandra DeMoura, who was arrested in Charlestown for driving without a license. Of course, someone who is here illegally can’t get a license.

But deportation seems like overkill. Even anti-immigration zealots admit that people like DeMoura are not the targets of this policy. The idea was to rid the country of serious criminals, not people who roll through a stop sign and have never been in trouble before.