Thread: Border agent: 'We might as well abolish our immigration laws altogether'

By PAUL BEDARD • 2/4/16 10:40 AM

In a shocking reversal of policy, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents are being told to release illegal immigrants and no longer order them to appear at deportation hearings, essentially a license to stay in the United States, a key agent testified Thursday.

What's more, the stand down order includes a requirement that the whereabouts of illegals released are not to be tracked.

"We might as well abolish our immigration laws altogether," suggested agent Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council.

Testifying on the two-year border surge of immigrant youths, Judd said the policy shift was prompted by Obama administration "embarrassment" that just over half of illegals ordered to appear in court actually do.

"The willful failure to show up for court appearances by persons that were arrested and released by the Border Patrol has become an extreme embarrassment for the Department of Homeland Security. It has been so embarrassing that DHS and the U.S. Attorney's office has come up with a new policy," he testified before the immigration subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee.

The biggest change: Undocumented immigrants are no longer given a "notice to appear" order, because they simply ignore them. Judd said that Border agents jokingly refer to the NTAs as "notices to disappear."

He said the the new policy "makes mandatory the release, without an NTA, of any person arrested by the Border Patrol for being in the country illegally, as long as they do not have a previous felony arrest conviction and as long as they claim to have been continuously in the United States since January of 2014. The operative word in this policy is 'claim.' The policy does not require the person to prove they have been here which is the same burden placed on them during deportation proceedings. Instead, it simply requires them to claim to have been here since January of 2014."

But even then, he added, the agency has been told not to track the illegals.

"Not only do we release these individuals that by law are subject to removal proceedings, we do it without any means of tracking their whereabouts. Agents believe this exploitable policy was set in place because DHS was embarrassed at the sheer number of those who choose not to follow the law by showing up for their court appearances. In essence, we pull these persons out of the shadows and into the light just to release them right back to those same shadows from whence they came," he said.

The go free policy, he said, has prompted thousands of Latinos to cross the border, and among them are hundreds of criminal foot soldiers, according to other testimony.

"Immigration laws today appear to be mere suggestions. There are little or no consequences for breaking the laws and that fact is well known in other countries. If government agencies like DHS or CBP are allowed to bypass Congress by legislating through policy, we might as well abolish our immigration laws altogether," Judd concluded.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/bo...rticle/2582401

By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Thursday, February 4, 2016

The Obama administration has revived the maligned illegal immigrant “catch-and-release” policy of the Bush years, ordering Border Patrol agents not to even bother arresting and deporting many new illegal immigrants, the head of the agents’ labor union told Congress on Thursday.

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said Homeland Security was embarrassed by the number of illegal immigrants not showing up for their deportation hearings, but instead of cracking down on the immigrants, the department ordered agents not to arrest them in the first place — meaning they no longer need to show up in court in the first place.

Mr. Judd said the releases are part of President Obama’s “priorities” program, which says he’s only worried about illegal immigrants who came across after Jan. 1, 2014. Mr. Judd said illegal immigrants without serious criminal convictions on their record only have to claim they came before 2014 — without even needing to show proof — in order to be released without ever being arrested.

“Immigration laws today appear to be mere suggestions,” Mr. Judd testified to the House Judiciary Committee’s immigration subcommittee. “That fact is well known in other countries.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...licy-illegals/

Every Presidential candidate, in every TV interview, TV Ad, rally, town hall & event on the trail, needs to raise this issue and clearly explain to the
voters the current Obama immigration policy and the harm he has already done to us from his failure to secure the borders.

ie... imported diseases Zika Virus, Chagas disease, Enterovirus D-68, Chikungunya, Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever, Tuberculosis, Schistosomiasis and Chicken Pox to name a few.


If the Obama Administration is embarrassed by the number of illegal aliens 'Failure to Appear Orders', just maybe it would be a greater
embarrassment if every day the candidates are informing the American people of the Obama border shame.

"We might as well abolish our immigration laws altogether," suggested agent Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council.

I'm sure most BP agents are extremely frustrated with the Obama administration. Just imagine the anguish most of them go through from having their hands tied by Obama and his appointed minions.

They are humiliated.

I know these guys and they just want to do their jobs and protect the homeland.

The moral at US Customs is horrible.

By Dan Cadman, February 8, 2016

On February 4, the Washington Examiner carried a story detailing a secret directive ordering Border Patrol agents to immediately release — without processing for deportation — aliens apprehended along the frontier, simply upon their assertion, without verification, that they have been in the United States since prior to January 2014.

The directive was revealed by a Border Patrol union official testifying before Congress on the renewed surge of illegal aliens on our southern border, with numbers that exceed those who came during the 2014 summertime surge. Center for Immigration Studies' Director of Policy Studies Jessica Vaughan also testified.

The article in the Examiner, by the way, was headlined "Border agent: 'We might as well abolish our immigration laws altogether'". As one of my friends, a fellow retiree, promptly responded in our email exchange over the matter, "Memo to the Patrol Agent: We already have."

In a prior blog post, I speculated that with his term of office winding down the president might feel like a free agent, virtually unfettered in his attempts to completely dismantle immigration enforcement as a part of his "legacy". This would be particularly true if he is not invested in the outcome of the next election, which to date seems to be the case — witness his recent hosting of Democratic Socialist candidate Bernie Sanders at the White House, despite Sanders being the prime opponent of the president's own former secretary of state.

I mentioned two ways in which this ultimate dismantling might come about. One involved stacking the deck of key appointments, such as enlarging the bench of immigration judges with individuals who share the president's open borders outlook. That has been happening in earnest, and as one can see from a cursory glance at the official website of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, it includes not just rank-and-file judges, but also a slew of six new assistant chief immigration judges who will ride herd over the others. Can anyone doubt their philosophical proclivities?

The other way involves continuing to mandate executive actions that crush even the semblance of immigration law enforcement. This most recent directive to the Border Patrol certainly meets that test. And it is not the only one. The administration has also directed that aerial surveillance of our borders be cut in half. This is incredible at a time when ISIS terrorists have threatened to infiltrate the United States by any means necessary. One suspects that they care little about that fight, though, since they have shown no will for it to date, and since it will become the inheritance of the next president. It takes little imagination to gauge that the reasons for the cut are twofold: First, to permit the flooding of our borders with citizens from our southern neighbors in a way that they believe, or at least hope, will force the issue of a future broad-based amnesty. Second, and more prosaically, to minimize the possibility that there will be a leak of aerial surveillance videos that reveal exactly how damaging the new rules of engagement for Patrol Agents are by showing footage of large numbers of aliens crossing the border with impunity and indifference to the possibility of apprehension.

All of this is disturbing and ironic against the backdrop of the still-pending Supreme Court case that will examine the legality of past executive actions that directed the grant of lawful presence and work authorization documents to hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens — actions the administration has defended on the basis that it has the right to "enforce" the law as it sees fit. One senses they may know that their Potemkin village of a defense is in trouble, as signaled by the Court's demand that both parties prepare briefs on the question of the president's constitutional obligation to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" — an issue that was not a part of the suit until the justices insisted upon it.

But as with ISIS, and with the hundreds of thousands of relocated-but-untracked illegal aliens, the fallout of the Supreme Court case will inevitably fall on other shoulders to clean up. Meanwhile, the president and his advisers continue to have a field day with the Constitution and the laws. If our immigration system is broken, look no farther than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to find the Wrecker in Chief.

http://www.cis.org/cadman/we-might-w...migration-laws