Aliens Convicted of Murder, Other Serious Crimes Released by Administration
Published on September 8th, 2014
Many police departments around the country have adopted the motto, “To Protect and Serve,” to describe their mission.
The primary purpose of the immigration laws of the United States is to protect innocent lives and the jobs of American workers. Certainly these goals are important and consistent with the motto above. The clearest evidence of the importance and intentions of the immigration laws can be found in one of the sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), Title 8, United States Code, Section 1182, which enumerates the categories of aliens who are to be excluded.
Among these classes are aliens who suffer from dangerous communicable diseases or extreme mental illness. Additionally, convicted felons, human rights violators, war criminals, terrorists and spies are to be excluded from entering the U.S., as well as aliens who would seek unlawful employment, thus displacing American workers or driving down the wages of American workers who are similarly employed and aliens who would become public charges.
The administration has not only failed to effectively enforce these fundamental and essential laws but has taken to the outrageous tactic of finding all sorts of justifications to release criminal aliens from custody and place them back on the streets of towns and cities across the United States where they pose a threat to public safety.
On August 21, 2014, Senator Chuck Grassley, the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued the following press release:
Undocumented Immigrants Convicted of Homicide Released in Communities Across the Country
The press release contained a link to a letter Grassley sent to Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson on June 9, 2014.
Here is how Senator Grassley’s letter to Johnson began:
Dear Secretary Johnson:
According to multiple news reports, in 2013, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released from its custody 36,007 immigrants who had been convicted of a crime and were awaiting the outcome of deportation proceedings.
This included 116 individuals who had been convicted of homicide, with a total of 193 homicide convictions between them.
On May 12, 2014, ICE reportedly claimed that it was required by court decisions to release convicts who accounted for75% of these homicides. Two days later, ICE revised that figure to 72%. So, by its own admission, ICE voluntarily released convicted criminal aliens who accounted for the remaining 28% even though it had the discretion to detain them and keep them off the streets.
Such a serious breach of public safety requires accountability and answers for the American people.
This is not the first time that the administration has played politics with our immigration laws and with public safety by releasing criminal aliens into communities that, it is worth noting, are most often immigrant communities in which immigrants from the same countries as the released criminals came from, thereby endangering the safety, indeed, the lives of innocent people.
On February 27, 2013, I was interviewed by Neil Cavuto on his program on Fox News to discuss the administration’s release of thousands of illegal aliens, including those with convictions for serious crimes because of the then-impending sequestration of funds. Fox News posted a video of my interview on its website with the title, “Release of many illegal immigrants as automatic cuts loom.”
During my interview I said that immigration law violations were not “victimless crimes,” but that under the administration policies, immigration law violations have become “punishmentless (sic) crimes.” I also predicted that these and similar actions to impede immigration law enforcement would create a huge incentive for aspiring illegal aliens, from around the world, to see these measures as the equivalent of the firing of a starter pistol, and that for aspiring illegal aliens, the “finish line” is the border of the United States. I also made a similar statement in my prepared testimony when, on March 20, 2013, I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the topic of “Building an Immigration System Worthy of American Values.”
My concerns were apparently justified. Consider that we have, within the past several months, witnessed a massive influx of aliens from Central America flooding across the U.S.-Mexican border, overwhelming the already sparse resources of the Border Patrol and ICE.
The practice of releasing criminal aliens has continued with the administration refusing to release relevant information about the identities of these criminal aliens and other essential information about these outrageous practices.
The time has long since come for the federal government in general, and the administration in particular, to adopt the slogan, “To protect and serve,” as its inviolate mission statement as so many police departments around the United States have done.
Earlier I referenced my testimony before the March 20, 2014, Senate hearing at which I testified. Another point I made in my testimony is a fitting closed for today’s post:
Back when I was an INS special agent I recall that Doris Meissner who was, at the time, the commissioner of the INS, said that the agency needed to be ‘customer oriented.’ Unfortunately, while I agree about the need to be customer oriented what Ms. Meissner and too many politicians today seem to have forgotten is that the ‘customers’ of the INS, and of our government in general, are the citizens of the United States of America.