Immigration agents tried to deport only about a fourth of the cases they encountered in 2013, said a report being released Monday from the Center for Immigration Studies that shows just how much President Obama’s policies have cut down on potential enforcement. Jessica Vaughan, the report’s author, called it a form of “catch and release.” She said agents at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement received more than 720,000 hits on immigrants who could be eligible for deportation but filed charges against fewer than 195,000 of them. Of those let go, 68,000 had criminal convictions on their records. All told, more than 870,000 immigrants have been ordered removed from the U.S. but are defying the government and refusing to leave. “These numbers confirm that interior enforcement has been anything but tough — that in fact, ICE is releasing more illegal aliens and more criminal aliens than they’re trying to remove,” said Ms. Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates a crackdown on immigration. The American Immigration Council, though, said the numbers were “completely misleading” and that many of those ICE agents encountered were likely kicked out of the country even if they weren’t officially put into deportation proceedings. The AIC said the more than 720,000 immigrants ICE encountered also likely included many legal immigrants whose “interaction with law enforcement was so minor that they are not even legally subject to removal.” “CIS is essentially asserting that a legal-permanent resident or a recently naturalized citizen with a broken tail light should be charged by ICE and removed from the country although there is no basis in law for such action,” said Benjamin Johnson, AIC’s executive director. The debate over deportations comes as Obama is under pressure to cut deportations even more.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 11:20:29 +0000
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