Allah:
This isn’t exclusively an “Obama problem” — the boss emeritus has been scorching ICE for its catch-and-release policies for ages, starting long before O took office — but it’s important counterprogramming to the left’s narrative that Obama is some sort of fanatic about deporting illegals. Jeff Sessions put one hole in that balloon last week when his office ran the numbers and found that that if you’re here illegally and don’t have a criminal record, you’re already basically exempt from deportation. ICE won’t touch you, whether because you qualify for some sort of statutory exclusion or because Obama’s definition of “prosecutorial discretion” means that he can refuse to enforce the law in hundreds of thousands of cases.
Now here comes Mark Krikorian’s Center for Immigration Studies to add another puncture: Even among illegals who do have criminal records (not including traffic violations), tens of thousands are being released back into their communities by ICE after apprehension. That’s fully 35 percent of “criminal aliens” whom they encountered.
These figures suggest that despite claims of a focus on public safety, the administration’s prosecutorial discretion criteria are allowing factors such as family relationships, political considerations, or attention from advocacy groups to trump criminal convictions as a factor leading to deportation.
For example, the prosecutorial discretion directives issued by ICE headquarters instruct officers to release illegal aliens if the alien is a parent or caregiver, if the alien claims to be in school, if the alien has been here a long time, or if the alien claims to be eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, among other factors.8 If an alien is found to have applied for legal status, protocol requires the deportation charges be put on hold, and the benefits application may be expedited, presumably to spare the alien the consequences a criminal conviction might have on the alien’s eligibility for the legal status. In addition, ICE agents and officers have been instructed to ignore convictions for state crimes if the conviction occurred under a state law that the administration opposes or thinks is too harsh. Finally, many criminal aliens have been released from ICE custody, received case continuances, and sometimes even case dismissals as a result of petitions, protests, and vigils staged by illegal alien advocacy groups.
One locality that has been specifically targeted by ICE for politically motivated prosecutorial discretion is Maricopa County, Ariz. ICE attorneys in the Arizona field office reportedly are required to terminate deportation cases in which illegal aliens have been convicted of felony identity theft, which is a “crime involving moral turpitude” that requires mandatory detention and should cause the alien to be removed.
According to a House Judiciary report on ICE’s 2012 numbers flagged by CIS, 26,000 “criminal illegals” were released last year and then went on to commit more than 4,000 major felonies, including 59 murders.
Well, that’s one reason Holder wants felons to vote. Here’s the other.
Five times that many were deported in 2013. The total deported was 364,700. That’s the lowest number of deportations for any year that Obama has been president. But it’s still higher than the highest number during any year of the George W. Bush administration. You might also note from the chart that the number of criminals deported has been higher during every year of the Obama presidency than the highest number for any year that Bush was in office. Or that any republican president was in office, for that matter.
Counterprogramming? Doesn’t he mean propaganda?
The numbers aren’t the left’s narrative. They’re statistics.
@Greg:
The article is about illegal aliens with criminal records, not about total deportations.
But regardless, why would Bush’s bad policies excuse Obama’s bad policies?