Administration Plots More Cuts in Deportations

At the behest of President Obama the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is looking for more ways to be nice to illegal aliens, despite its supposed duty to enforce the laws they are violating. Obama pushed the agency to do so because he was feeling intense pressure from illegal alien advocacy groups to ease up on his alleged “record deportations” of illegal aliens.

The truth of the matter is that this bogus “record” came about from some creative book-keeping by the DHS—something that agency was recently forced to admit. Namely, it padded the total number of deportees (people expelled from the interior) with illegal aliens nabbed at the border and sent home. Genuine deportations have declined under Obama.

Nevertheless, this Big Lie whipped up the outrage among illegal alien supporters that the administration hoped it would, and now Obama and DHS are using it as cover to further their goal of cutting deportations even more. According to news accounts, DHS is considering plans to call off enforcement against illegal aliens who have not committed what it considers to be serious crimes.

Interestingly, one group DHS is considering for this category is illegal aliens who have been deported once and have returned to the U.S. Under the law, people who return illegally after being deported have committed a felony. And that’s not a serious crime? Another category are illegal aliens who fail to obey deportation orders to leave the U.S. and hide out to avoid arrest. They number around 800,000.

The administration justifies this plan as it usually does with regard to immigration law enforcement, by twisting the legal principle that it has authority to set priorities for making arrests. Yes, it can set priorities for some arrests, but it has no authority whatsoever to place whole categories of lawbreakers off-limits from law enforcement.

Recently, twenty-two Republican senators sent President Obama a sternly-worded letter denouncing the plans that he and the DHS are considering. It stated, “We write to express our grave concerns over the ‘enforcement review’ you ordered . . . the changes under review would represent a near complete abandonment of immigration law enforcement . . . and the notion that the United States has enforceable borders.”

It continued, “As a result of your policy, individuals here illegally who do not meet administration “priorities” are . . . largely exempt from the law.” And it concluded, “Your actions demonstrate an astonishing disregard for the Constitution, the rule of law, and the rights of American citizens.”

It seems, however, that not even the proposals under consideration will satisfy illegal alien advocates. Their next goal, according to some accounts, is putting virtually all illegal aliens off-limits to deportation and granting them “temporary” work permits. If they can get away with this, assisted by the administration, Americans will have to wonder why we even have a Congress to make laws.

The senators who wrote the letter to Obama need to think about this themselves, and consider what their next step might be.