Feds release more illegal alien criminals into the population

Feds release more illegal alien criminals into the population

By John Haywardon Mon, 12 May 2014

One of the more outrageous performances during the Obama Administration’s Shutdown Theater was the release of criminal illegal aliens – including hard-core types with violent offenses – as part of the effort to terrorize America into submission.  When Immigration and Customs Enforcement ran into stiff blowback for the release, they said the Administration’s rhetoric about how it all tied into the government shutdown was just a scare tactic, and it was actually the sort of thing they do all the time, because they lack the facilities to incarcerate criminal aliens.

According to a report at the Washington Times, it looks like there was something to that defense… God help us all.

Immigration officials knowingly released dozens of murderers back into the U.S. in 2013, according to Obama administration statistics detailing all of the criminal convictions of the more than 36,000 immigrants released from custody last year.

The numbers show that the criminals released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had amassed more than 15,000 drunken-driving convictions, 1,317 domestic violence convictions, 727 sex crimes convictions and even four that the statistics listed as “treason, sabotage.”

In other words, they released four suspected… terrorists?

The immigrants were in deportation proceedings, meaning ICE was trying to remove them from the country and could have held them in detention, but released them anyway, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, which obtained the numbers and published a report Monday morning. The Washington Times also obtained the statistics.

Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the center, said the numbers undercut the Obama administration’s own argument that it’s trying to keep its enforcement efforts targeted at dangerous criminals.

“We keep hearing from the administration that they are focused like a laser on enforcement against the worst of the worst, convicted criminals, as their top priority. On the other hand, they are releasing, at a rate of about 100 a day, aliens from their custody with criminal convictions, and many of them are serious criminal convictions,” she said.

The report includes a breakdown of the offenses attributed to the released illegals:

The 36,007 criminal aliens counted in the data had more than 87,000 convictions among them: 9,187 convictions for what ICE labeled “dangerous drugs,” 2,691 assault convictions, 1,724 weapons offenses and even 303 convictions for “fight escape” — a category that would seem to make them bad candidates for being released back into the country.

The immigrants are in addition to the 68,000 other immigrants that ICE officers came across but didn’t put into deportation proceedings.

According to the Washington Times, ICE has thus far refused to comment upon the report, leaving some degree of confusion over exactly how these astonishing decisions were reached.  It is speculated that some were “likely released in response to an old court decision that said if a home country won’t take immigrants back, the U.S. must release them,” which sounds like a strong contender for Dumbest Idea In History.  Home countries aren’t generally eager to take illegals back, especially if they’re dangerous criminals… so if they don’t end up under long-term lock and key in some other component of the U.S. justice system, they’ve basically got a license for mayhem, with nothing worse than relatively brief incarceration by ICE to fear?

Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies seems convinced that most of these releases were made at the discretion of ICE officials, who are actually reducing the number of beds they have available to hold detainees.  The Times says these former detainees are “supposed to be subjected to other methods such as monitoring, bond, or their own recognizance,” which doesn’t sound very comforting, especially for the 303 subjects who have already been prosecuted for “flight escape.”

One of the core issues in the immigration mess is the abject refusal of America’s political class to attend to their duties.  Many of them despise this particular duty – Democrats looking to import a new Big Government-friendly electorate, business interests who want cheap labor, people who find the notion of national borders ideologically repugnant, and those who think immigration enforcement is a political loser because it angers powerful demographics far more than lax border controls anger the broader U.S. electorate.  Even politicians who basically accept the federal government’s duty to secure the national borders and safeguard citizenship don’t want to divert resources away from their favored agenda items to handle this unpleasant task.  Dollars spent on immigration enforcement don’t buy votes.

That’s why many conservatives are deeply skeptical of “comprehensive immigration reform.”  The existing law enforcement regime cannot, or will not, handle its most basic and obvious duties.  Something is deeply wrong with a government that shrugs and unleashes people with 87,000 serious criminal convictions upon the American taxpayer… in defiance of often-repeated promises that only noble, loving, hard-working families will be able to get on the promised “pathway to citizenship,” while those who break laws other than immigration law will be deported.

Rarely do we get any news about this government’s approach to citizenship and border security that inspires any confidence about its ability and enthusiasm to hold up its end of any amnesty deal.  Instead, we keep finding out the government lies incessantly to us about immigration, refuses to put any real effort into enforcement, and has no great sense of fealty to legal American citizens.  At best, the federal government views border security as a problem to be managed, not a duty it is honor-bound to fulfill.